A Socialist Party USA Statement
May Day 2010

“Ideas,” someone once wrote, “move rapidly when their time comes.” As we gather to celebrate May Day, the continuing capitalist crisis makes socialism an idea ready to move rapidly. While the banks have received trillion dollar bailouts, working people still face mass unemployment, state and local budget cuts and deepening personal debt. Capitalist crisis has made the socialist vision of a world where human needs are put ahead of individual profits even more relevant. Our task on May Day is to convert socialism from a good idea into a movement to transform our society.

Capitalism Exposed
The recent economic crisis was more than a banking crisis or a housing price bubble. It was a demonstration that there is a fundamental problem at the center of capitalism. That problem lies in the nature of corporations themselves. Noam Chomsky once described corporations as “unaccountable private tyrannies.” There is no democracy inside of a corporation and, as a result, there is no democracy on our worksites. Corporations are undemocratic entities created only to make profits from exploiting the labor of workers.

The undemocratic corporate model now also dominates American politics. A corrupting system of campaign donations and lobbying ensures that both Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of corporate America. When corporate profits declined, politicians began handing out trillions of dollars in public money to them. When these same corporations fired millions of workers, neither Democrat nor Republican attempted to stop them.

Socialist Solutions
Socialism offers an alternative to undemocratic profit-mad capitalism. By ensuring that people’s needs for housing, healthcare, education and employment are guaranteed, a socialist society will offer equality of opportunity. By bringing democracy to the economy through worker’s control of production, we will make sure that the place where most people spend their adult lives operates democratically. By organizing participatory budgeting, we will put people at the center of the system – fully empowered to make decisions concerning the future of the society they live in.

The powerful necessity of socialist ideas can be seen most clearly with the issue of immigration. The capitalist state presents restrictions and police actions as the proper way to keep immigrants in line. Conversely, socialists support the rights of all workers regardless of their status. We support the creation of an unconditional amnesty program and seek to build solidarity amongst workers throughout the world. Where capitalism offers ICE raids and the Border police, we support human freedom and social solidarity

May Day - Our Day
May Day is our day. A day when trade unionists, anarchists and socialists gather to state clearly that another world is possible. This other world is a democratic participatory one, where resources are shared for the betterment of humanity. However, democratic socialism will not come about spontaneously – we must get organized. So, today we invoke the names of Eugene Debs, of Cesar Chavez, of Dr. Martin Luther King to call on all working people to join the struggle for socialism. Move rapidly, act boldly, we have a world to win!

Join a Socialist Party USA supported May Day Demonstration in your area - click here

from People of Color Commission Socialist Party USA

April 29, 2010 - The Socialist Party USA calls for the immediate repeal of the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (SB 1070) in Arizona. This law sanctions racial profiling and gives cover to the repressive actions of officials such as the racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Further, we call for an immediate moratorium on all police raids of immigrant communities, we demand the closure of the immigrant detention camps and an end to the militarization of the US-Mexico border.

Arizona has become the epicenter of struggle for the rights of immigrants. The state offers the clearest example of the abject failure of the current immigration policies in the United States. These policies rely on the use of force – ICE raids and the border police – backed up by an equally brutal labor discipline that traps the undocumented in low-wage dead-end jobs. The results are well known – the splitting up of families, the death and criminalization of migrants and a race-to-the-bottom for work conditions and wages. A 2009 mass march in Phoenix, Arizona led by young people who had been separated from their undocumented parents and families highlighted the terrible human costs of these systematic attacks on immigrants. SB 1070 seeks to take this process a step further by transforming Arizona into the equivalent of a police state where anyone with brown skin becomes a suspect. In response, immigrant communities and their allies, all across the country, are mobilizing to demand an end to the repression.

Such fervor has not, however, made it to Washington, where Democrats are preparing reform legislation that amounts to more of the same. Much like the recent healthcare reform, immigration reform has been watered down to suit the needs of Republicans and employers. This is no surprise since, as a candidate, now President Barack Obama never fully distanced himself from the Republican's positions on immigration: the border wall, more military presence on the border, and building more detention camps. Despite this, he still gained the support of mainstream immigration reform groups who slowed down a vibrant May 1st Immigrant Rights movement. The now disarmed movement was left without any commitments from Democratic candidates and with no plans to mobilize after the elections.

The current legislation under consideration will do little to address the problem. Bills such as “The Dream Act” of 2009, which would provide conditional permanent residency to a few immigrants who entered the country as minors or have “good moral character,” will not break the crisis in Arizona. Instead, such reforms attempt to paper-over the demands from immigrant communities in order to continue the cycle of militarization, repression and wage slavery.

Socialists have something significant to offer to the immigration reform discussion. We call for an unconditional amnesty program for all undocumented people. This demand is based on our desire to create a world in which everyone will be able to move freely across borders, to visit, to work and to live wherever they choose. Amnesty will also allow workers, documented and undocumented, to begin to advance serious demands for wages and benefits. Amnesty will move us out of the current immigration crisis and towards a society based on freedom.

Defeating SB 1070 is an urgent first step in this direction and the Socialist Party USA encourages our members and allies to join in this struggle.

¡No somos criminales, somos trabajadores internacionales!
¡Que viva la justicia y la dignidad de los migrantes unidos sin fronteras!"

by Kristin Schall

As another school year draws to a close, schools in cities across the country will be shutting their doors permanently. This is one result of the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top Program.” The program offers education grants to states that meet a series of criteria. The criteria make clear the administration’s agenda of standardization and statistics based education. They include the implementation of data systems and quality assessments, but what is most revealing is the criteria that states “ensure successful conditions for high performing charter and other innovative schools.”

For many states this has meant making the decision to lift caps on charter schools, replacing low performing typical public schools with charters and instituting incentive pay for teachers whose students score high, or improve their standardized test scores. Because of massive budget deficits, many states have taken the bait and have begun to move to the public-private charter school model, arguing that charter schools give students the best possible chance at success. While states have acted on the economic incentive, well meaning parents have been propagandized into believing the charter school myth based on promises of educational choice and rigorous academic standards. But the charter school promises are far murkier than they first appear.

A series of recent studies suggest that charter schools do not provide any inherent advantage over their typical public school counterparts. One study found that only 17 percent of charter schools produce learning gains that are better than typical public schools, 37 percent of charter schools produced learning gains that were significantly worse than those of typical public schools and the rest produced almost identical results compared to typical public schools.

The proliferation of such negative research on charter schools has lead early staunch supporters of the privatization scheme, such as education historian Diane Ravitch, to waver. In a recent article for the Los Angeles Times, Ravitch writes that “Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levelers are not working.” She also points out that on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), the federally administered exam that tests students in a wide range of subjects and provides a continuing assessment of education standards throughout the country, from 2003 through 2009 charter schools have never outperformed public schools.

Despite overwhelming data disproving any inherent charter school advantage, the Obama administration continues to push forward with the call for charter schools as the solution for the country’s education crisis. What the administration is supporting then is not enhanced education for students, but allowing the charter schools to continue undermining the egalitarian foundations of public schools in the US. The public school system operates with the belief that all children have a right to k-12 education regardless of their economic, social, or developmental background. Charter schools run counter to this assumption. Because they are privately administered, charters are allowed to cherry pick their students. Therefore, they tend to enroll students who need the smallest amount of educational support. They serve a disproportionately low number of english language learners (ELL), children with special needs, and children who come from unstable homes compared to typical public schools. Instead, they enroll the most motivated students with the most involved parents. Like Obama’s “choice and competition” solution to the healthcare crisis, the “choice and competition” solution to the education crisis serves to create a multi-tiered system that provides high quality education for a select few and educational warehousing in underfunded public schools for the rest.

The private administering of charter schools have another, more nefarious function that also fits well with Obama’s overall neoliberal vision-- a thinly veiled attempt at busting teachers’ unions. According to the 2009 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the education sector has a unionization rate of 38.1 percent, which is more than double the 12.3 percent overall unionization rate. Clearly, the long-term process of union busting has, thus far, been less effective in the education field. By increasing the number of privately administered charter schools, the vast majority of which are unorganized worksites and are openly hostile to unionization, charter schools are being wielded as a weapon to attack organized labor.

The attack on teachers will have serious consequences in the classroom. Charter school proponents typically describe teachers unions as playing a major part in the creation of the education crisis. They argue that the tenure policies of unionized schools allow bad teachers to remain in the classroom and that school administrators need to have the uninhibited power to hire and fire at will. However, the job security, pensions, health and other benefits offered by unionized schools are what attracts highly qualified people to the field. Union busting in the school systems will not only do damage to workers rights, it will put students at a disadvantage because the most qualified people will not be attracted to the insecure, hostile, and intellectually stifling work environment of charter schools.

Charter schools actively undermine what we have come to expect from public institutions. They replace universalism with selectivity, equality with exclusivity, and favor developing a handful of individual students over enhancing the quality of life of our communities. They are just one of a series of attacks on public services and fit perfectly into the overall neoliberal project of privatization and market driven values. Trade unions will undoubtedly play an important role in resisting these trends, but socialists also have something to contribute. We can move the conversation beyond just defending what are less than efficient public institutions and think about transforming education into an empowering experience that enhances the well-being of our communities.

by Billy Wharton

The following is an interview with Lauren Elliott, an activist with United Students Against Sweatshops. Lauren organized support for a one-day strike carried out by cafeteria workers at Tulane University. The strike was one part of a larger “Clean Up Sodexo” campaign which aims to protest work conditions created by the French multinational corporation Sodexo. While Sodexo runs public relations campaigns about being a responsible employer, its employees face low-wages and discrimination on the worksite. Strike actions against the company have now spread to the University of Pittsburgh.

Billy Wharton - Tell me about the action carried out at Tulane. Why did the workers go out on strike? What are work conditions like? What do you hope to win?

Lauren Elliott - On Friday, April 23, the 50 out of 54 Sodexo employees scheduled to work in the Tulane cafeteria, Bruff Commons, went on a legal one-day strike to protest unfair labor practices committed by Sodexo - mostly intimidation and threats by management towards workers involved in organizing efforts. These workers have been organizing with the international union SEIU since last fall and would like to form a union free from intimidation from their management. Sodexo workers on Xavier and Dillard's campus (two other universities in New Orleans) are unionized with SEIU. The main complaints from the workers regarding working conditions are a total lack of respect from management (one woman has been working for Tulane food service for 40 years and must ask permission to go to the restroom), inadequate healthcare benefits (for most employees the healthcare plan provided would cost 2 weeks of their salary), and poverty wages (almost all make below $10.00, and again the woman who has been here 40 years make $9.50/hour). Many workers have waited over a year for raises, only to receive a raise of $0.20 or less. Many were hired told they could rise to management, only to realize they would be unable to do so because Sodexo would never provide training (they prefer to hire outside management).

You can find testimonials directly from workers at www.tulane.usas.org

BW - What resistance strategies are you employing? Is this primarily a worker's action? Are you looking to building community-labor support? How are other groups on campus reacting?

LE - Since February, students have been organizing around two demands: 1) That the workers, who are laid off over the summer, all receive a guarantee that they would have the first right to recall in the fall. This is to ensure that management does not target anyone for organizing activity. 2) That our university implement a Labor Code of Conduct that applies to all faculty, staff, contracted and subcontracted workers on Tulane's campus. The main component of this is the right to organize free of intimidation. The workers will receive the first right of recall (although the language isn't as strong as we would like), and the Labor Code of Conduct has been forwarded on the Social Issues Committee. Our fall campaign with focus on the implementation of the Code.

Because as tuition paying students, our power lies in pressuring our university (as opposed to Sodexo). We demand that our university hold Sodexo accountable for the same labor practices Tulane University guarantees its employees. The power is in the hands of the client, and if Tulane tomorrow said Sodexo had to change its practices or risk losing its contract, Sodexo would do so. Our campaign over the past months has involved a series correspondence between President Cowen, rallies, marches, meetings with Sodexo management. In addition to student-planned events, we have accompanied the workers twice when they went to deliver letters to Sodexo management. Here is a video of our first action in March: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxVkrTQApWk. You can see the letters and press coverage on our website (www.tulane.usas.org).

Generally, groups on campus have been very supportive. We had a petition signed by 1200 students and the faculty drafted their own letter with 110 signatures, which was delivered to our president with the first letter. Faculty members are continuing to organize around the implementation of the Labor Code of Conduct. Community members and local business have also show support through food donations for our worker appreciation BBQ.


BW - Last year there were only five strike actions carried out in the country, one of the lowest numbers since World War II. Tell our readers why you think a strike is necessary at this point?

LE - At Tulane, the strike was necessary because it was the first time the workers had the opportunity to be public, vocal, and united. Up until the strike, only a few workers had the courage to share their stories at rallies and at city council. Most feared that if they went public with their support of a union they would retaliation from management. The day of the strike they stood at the picket line and said "Look at us, we are human!" as their managers walked by. After months of silence and fear, the workers were tired of being tired. Finding courage in each other, they demanded that management see them, hear them, and treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve. The first worker back on the job on Saturday told me that his manager said "Good Morning" to him for the first time ever.

BW - How can people outside of the New Orleans area contribute to your struggle?

LE - The should definitely check out the website, videos, etc. Listen to the stories of the workers at Tulane. Then they could reach out the service workers in their own area. I bet they have stories to share that have never been shared. I imagine many are also fearful to tell the truth about their working conditions. Hear their stories, build relationships, cross boundaries generally not crossed. After that, the organizing can begin.

***
Lauren Elliott is a member of United Students Against Sweatshops and a senior at Tulane University in New Orleans. She will be graduating this May and will continue her organizing work in New Orleans.

from Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal

All over the world workers are organising ...

We are organising to demand a living wage. For health and safety at work. For compensation and rehabilitation. For the rights of migrant workers and refugees, for citizenship rights for migrant workers and their families. For the right to employment on equal terms. Workers are organising against deportations, against racism, against discrimination. Workers are organising against wars that are a disaster to millions of workers.

Workers are organising for secure jobs. Against casualisation, contracting out and outsourcing. Workers are organising for the rights of women workers. For better working conditions, to stop work becoming harder, faster, more stressful and dangerous. For shorter working hours, for paid leave and paid holidays. For affordable housing and health care. For free education and welfare, against child labour and poverty and inequality. Workers are organising for the rights of Indigenous communities who have been stripped of their land and resources. Workers are organising to fight discrimination against minorities, women, lesbians and gays.

While we struggle against these problems, we see that our planet is being ruined through reckless, wasteful and unsustainable production for profit.

Workers can fix these problems. Workers can reorganise all industry to produce for peoples’ need instead of profit. Resources can be distributed to people and places who need them so that our children will have a future.

To do this workers have to dismantle imperialism and the capitalist system. We need to make decisions together in our own workplaces, unions and political organisations about the way production and sharing need to be restructured. We need this. We have the numbers. We control production. Capitalists will be defeated.

Click here to endorse the joint May Day statement

Endorsed by:

All Pakistan Federation of United Trade Unions

Anadolu Kultur Merkezi (Anatolian Cultural Centre, Australia)

Australia Asia Worker Links, Australia

Bangladesh Saniukta Tanti Samity (National Organisation of Self Employed Handloom Weavers Workers, Bangladesh)

Chennai Metro Construction & Unorganised Workers Union Tamilnadu, India

ChinaWorker

Committee for Asian Women, Thailand

Committee for a Workers' International, Malaysia

Communications Union CEPU (T&S Vic), Australia

Disability Support Pensioners Australia

Ejaz Ul Haque Siddiqui (Pakistan Workers Federation)

G.R.S.E. Workmen's Union, India

Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union

ITGLWF Philippines council

Jatio Garment Sramik Federation (National Garment Workers Federation, Bangladesh)

Jatiyo Sramik Jote (National Workers Unity, Bangladesh)

Kesatuan Kebangsaan Pekerja-Pekerja Perusahaan Alat-Alat Pengangkutan Dan Sekutu (National Union of Transport Equipment & Allied Industries Workers, Malaysia)

Konfederasi Kongres Aliansi Serikat Buruh Indonesia -- KASBI (Confederation Congress of Indonesia Unions Alliance)

Korea Federation of Construction Industry Trade Unions

Latin American Solidarity Network -- LASNET, Australia (Red de Solidaridad con los Pueblos Latinoamericanos)

Migrant Workers Solidarity Network, Bangladesh

Migrants Rights Council, India

New Trade Union Initiative, India

Pakistan Labour Federation

Partai Rakyat Demokratik -- PRD (Peoples Democratic Party, Indonesia)

Parti Sosialis Malaysia -- PSM (Socialist Party of Malaysia)

Partido Lakas ng Masa (Strength of the People Party, Philippines)

Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party, Philippines)

Peace and Justice for Colombia, Australia

Perhimpunan Rakyat Pekerja (Working People Association, Indonesia)

Progressive Labour Party, Australia

Revolutionary Socialist Party, Australia

Socialist Alliance, Australia

Socialist Alternative, Australia

Socialist Party, Australia

Socialist Worker, Arotearoa New Zealand

Solidarity, Australia

Textile Garments Workers Federation, Bangladesh

Trade Unions of the Philippines and Allied Services

Unite, Australia

Workers' Liberty, Australia

Working People's Association, Indonesia (PRP, Perhimpunan Rakyat Pekerja)

Workers' Rights Coalition, Australia

from Wikipedia

The Great American Boycott (known in Spanish as El Gran Paro Estadounidense, "the Great American Strike") a one-day boycott of United States schools and businesses by immigrants, both legal and illegal, of mostly Latin American origin that took place on May 1, 2006.

Boycott organizers to coincide with May Day, the International Workers Day observed as a national holiday in Asia, most of Europe, and Mexico, but not officially recognized in the United States due to its Communist associations.

The organizers called for supporters to abstain from buying, selling, working, and attending school, in order to demonstrate through direct action the extent to which the labor obtained of illegal immigrants is needed for the economy of the United States. Supporters of the boycott rallied in major cities across the U.S. to demand general amnesty and legalization programs for such non-citizens. For this reason, the day is referred to as A Day Without an Immigrant in reference to the 2004 political satire film A Day Without a Mexican.

The boycott was announced on April 10, 2006 in Los Angeles, California by the March 25 Coalition of Catholic groups, immigration advocacy organizations, and labor unions. Hermandad Mexicana, an affiliate of the Mexican American Political Association, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Amigos de Orange, and local MEChA chapters all promptly joined. It was coordinated nationally by the May Day Movement for Worker & Immigrants Rights.


The coalition arose out of protests against H.R. 4437, a legislative proposal that was passed by the United States House of Representatives on December 16, 2005 by a vote of 239 to 182, only to die in the United States Senate by not being brought to the floor before the 109th Congress ended. This bill would have made residing in the U.S. illegally a felony and imposed stiffer penalties on those who knowingly employ and harbour noncitizens illegally. It also called for the construction of new border security fences along portions of the 2,000-mile United States–Mexico border. The coalition takes its name from the date of the first mass protest against the bill, a day which saw upwards of 500,000 demonstrators on the streets of Los Angeles, as well as hundreds of thousands in other major U.S. cities. The March 25, 2006 protests were noted for their peaceful nature, despite the controversy surrounding the immigration issue.

by Luis Gonzalez
from Upside Down World

The international conference has started and the peoples and social movements are launching a planet-wide mobilization to defend Mother Earth.

This alternative meeting of civil society was convened at the initiative of Bolivian president Evo Morales and dissident countries that did not sign the Copenhagen Accord at the World Climate Conference, which occurred in Denmark last December.

To shouts of “Planet or death! We shall overcome!” the indigenous leader gave a speech to social leaders and more than 5,000 people congregated in the stadium of Tiquipaya, a town 20 km from the city of Cochabamba.

He affirmed that this encounter will decide the destiny of the planet and he gave responsibility to developed countries for the failure of Copenhagen and for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. However, Morales said, the forum itself is a “triumph for the peoples,” and he promised to join the social movements in making Kyoto a reality and reducing emissions of gases in developed countries.

Morales also proposed the creation of a Climate Justice Tribunal, to judge and sanction countries responsible for harm to the environment. A world-wide referendum prepared in this forum will catapult this civil action and will be presented at the next UN climate talks.


Participants initiated conference with a K’oa, a traditional Andean ceremony in which offerings are made to Pachamama, Mother Earth. A celebration lead by elder men and women took place at the foot of the stage and in the center of the stadium.

Over 15 thousand delegates registered for the conference, 8 thousand of which come from outside the country. More than 40 official government delegations are present in the event. According to official figures, representatives from 28 countries in Africa, 28 European countries, 17 Asian countries, 13 Central American countries, 12 South American countries, 6 countries of Oceana, and 3 North American countries are attending.

Among the speakers are Vandana Shiva of India, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina, François Houtard of Belgium, Miguel D’Escoto of Nicaragua, Frei Betto y Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Q’orianka Kilcher of the United States, Timothy Byakola of Uganda y Jose Bové of France.

by Renée Feltz
from NYC Indypendent

The pledges made at the failed U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December would allow global temperatures to rise as much as 5 percent, turning Africa into an arid wasteland and drowning many islands.

So it’s no wonder that developing nations that face the worst effects of increasing world temperatures were dissatisfied with the summit. Among those most upset was Bolivian President Evo Morales, who told reporters, “We have an obligation to save [all of] humanity, not just half of humanity.”

Morales has invited the world to an alternative “People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” that he will host in a village called Tiquipaya, outside of Cochabamba.

As The Indypendent went to press, more than 10,000 people were expected to gather for the summit April 19-22, joined by heads of state from many of the countries that felt left out of the U.N. talks.

“The only way to get negotiations back on track, not just for Bolivia or other countries, but for all of life, biodiversity, our Mother Earth is to put civil society back into the process,” said Pablo Solón Romero, Bolivia’s ambassador to the U.N.


Concern about climate change is already widespread in Bolivia, which has seen the water supply for its capital, La Paz, decrease by at least 40 percent from the melting of the Tuni Condoriri glacier.

On the summit’s agenda is a proposal to create a climate justice tribunal that could enforce emissions commitments and keep global warming down, ideally to one degree celsius. Another agenda item is the wording for a “Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights” that would be the equivalent of the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Working groups will tackle issues like “climate debt” with writer Eduardo Galeano and “climate migrants” with author Naomi Klein. The group “Do we need a referendum on climate change?” will include Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.

Boliva’s ambassador to Switzerland, Angelica Navarro, told reporter Joseph Huff-Hanon that the summit will differ from what happened in Copenhagen, but “by no means is the Cochabamba meeting replacing the U.N. system. It’s an effort at dialogue, at opening up to each other.”

Already, progress is being made. At a U.N. climate discussion in Bonn, Germany held just days before the People’s Summit, Bolivian representatives got the negotiating teams to delay a deadline for proposals to the next major U.N. climate summit, in Cancún, Mexico, in late November.

This means that plans made in Cochabamba could be included in the follow-up to Copenhagen, perhaps yielding a more inclusive, and maybe more successful, outcome. “The central aim of any climate summit is not to save itself and accept any outcome,” observed Solón, “but to come to an agreement that will save humanity.”

by Eduardo Galeano
from Climate and Capitalism

April 21, 2010 - Unfortunately, I shall not be able to be with you. Something has come up that prevents me from traveling.

But I’d like to be, in some way, part of this meeting of yours, this meeting of mine, since I have no choice but to do the little that I can rather than the much that I want to do.

And, to be there without being there, at least I am sending these words.

I’d like to say to you: may all that is possible, and impossible too, be done, so that the Summit of the Mother Earth will be the first step toward the collective expression of the peoples who do not lead, but suffer from, global politics.

I hope that we will be able to advance these two initiatives of compañero Evo’s, the Climate Justice Tribunal and the Global Referendum against a system of power founded on war and waste, which holds human life in contempt and hangs an auction flag over our earthly goods.

I hope that we will be able to speak little and do a lot. Serious damage has been done, and is being done, to us by discursive inflation, which in Latin America is more dangerous than monetary inflation. Besides, we are, above all, fed up with the hypocrisy of rich countries, which are leaving us without a habitable planet while making pompous speeches to cover up their heist.



Some say that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays virtue. Others say that hypocrisy is the only proof of the existence of the infinite. And the logorrhea of the so-called “international community,” the club of bankers and warriors, does prove that these two definitions are correct.

I’d like to celebrate, in contrast, the force of truth that radiates from the words and silences born in the human communion with nature. And it is no accident that this Mother Earth Summit is being held in Bolivia, this nation of nations, which is discovering itself after two centuries of living a lie.

Bolivia has just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the people’s victory in the war of water, won by the people of Cochabamba, who were capable of defeating an all-powerful corporation from California, the owner of the water of Bolivia thanks to a government which claimed to be Bolivian but was very generous to other people.

This water war was one of the battles which this land keeps fighting in defense of its natural resources — in other words, in defense of its identity with nature.

There are voices from the past that speak to the future.

Bolivia is one of the American nations where indigenous cultures have managed to survive, and their voices are now ringing with more force than ever before, despite the scorn and persecution they suffered for a long time.

The entire world, stunned as it is, is wandering about like a blind man in the middle of a crossfire, having to listen to those voices. They teach us that we, tiny beings called humans, are part of nature, relatives to all those who have legs, paws, wings, or roots. The European conquest condemned the indigenous, who lived in that communion with nature, for idolatry, and for believing in that communion they were flogged, their throats were slit, or they were burned alive.

From the times of the European Renaissance, nature has been turned into a commodity or an obstacle to human progress. And, to this day, this divorce between us and her has persisted, so much so that there still are people of good will who are moved by poor nature, so abused, so wounded, but are seeing her only from outside.

Indigenous cultures see her from inside. Seeing her, I see myself. What is done against her is done against me. In her I find myself, my legs are also the road on which they walk.

Let us celebrate, then, this Summit of the Mother Earth. And may the deaf listen: the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity.

With hugs sent on wings, from Montevideo.

***
Eduardo Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971). This article was translated by Yoshie Furuhashi for MRzine, from America Latina en Movimiento

by Ballivian Eliana
from Climate and Capitalism (originally published in Los Tiempos)

April 22, 2010 - The questions were asked by Juan Pablo Guzman, Vice Foreign Minister: “Will the number of heads of State who participate in the Conference weaken the upcoming XVI International Conference on Climate Change to be held in Mexico in December?… We aren’t going there to negotiate anything. We aren’t going to be carrying out negotiations. It is simply a space where governments can explain their position on climate change. We don’t apply violence, we apply the force of reason.

The governments that will participate are those most committed to this issue, and this will advance clarification which will help influence what the sensible positions are to be taken in Mexico.

The purpose of the current Conference in Cochabamba is to raise consciousness that things are not going well. Just as it happened in Bolivia, change comes because people want change and people want change when they become conscious that things are not going well.

We believe that the World People’s Conference in Cochabamba will raise world consciousness and mobilize the consciousness of the peoples of the planet because 120 countries are coming here to understand more and come together so that seed will spread throughout the planet. The people from each of these countries in attendance will be able to demand changes from their governments, which is the major reason they are here, to take information and experiences back to their countries and have influence.


The challenge is the capitalist model is more entrenched in other countries than in Bolivia. Is it too intense to have influence on the consciousness that can be generated from this Conference?

I must say, we are never defeated in advance. Maybe 10 years ago if we had wondered whether or not our process of change could happen in Bolivia, it would have seemed impossible.

In Bolivia consciousness has advanced enormously, as demonstrated by the last two elections. People don’t vote for privilege amongst themselves but for honesty, they vote real change.

We believe that this consciousness is growing worldwide. This movement is happening among all peoples of the planet and popular consciousness is beginning to rebel, to understand and to get informed. The people are understanding and beginning to demand changes from their governments.

Making this change happen will be an important result of this Conference. This is the priority on the Conference.

Do you think the world referendum Bolivia is demanding to be proposed will replace the exiting system of production? Will it get much support amongst nations?

It is important to understand a world referendum requires that many people in the world believe and understand what is happening with climate change and have a new consciousness that there needs to be a world referendum.

The destruction or reclamation of the health of mother earth doesn’t necessarily have to be something that is decided among governments. With small meetings called summits where five, six or seven countries come together and decide on a new path then all of us on planet earth are and will be affected.

Simply, we believe that human beings have the right to express themselves and change this situation through peaceful means, with an honest voting system and democracy.

We also believe that nature has rights which is why we have proposed the rights of Mother Earth and of animals, plants, of everything that is alive. They also have the right to continue to live and to not be destroyed by the ambitions of some nations that want to produce just to produce, consume just to consume, consume fundamentally to generate profit. They are already rich countries, but they want to be richer, and for that they want to continue to produce and damage the world.

There are groups that know their ideology is destroying life but have no interest in changing. This is an important problem.

The conciousness that is developing among peoples may not have been given at birth but can and will develop. When peoples begin to be concerned and begin to try to understand the problems, they decide to make changes.

We have faith that, as in Bolivia, this consciousness will emerge. Which is why we are holding this Conference, to ensure the great mobilization of worldwide consciousness that will allow us to change the situation. Planet Earth will only be saved to the degree that the peoples of the world decide to save it, not the governments but the peoples.

And when the peoples decide to change the pattern of consumerism, of production, and live in harmony with nature, and we believe that this change will happen, but we don’t know when, but we do believe and we are on that path.

We have demonstrated with the President (Evo Morales) that we are experts in the impossible, it was impossible that we would win the election with 52%, noone has won that before, everyone believed it was impossible, and we did it in the election.

This Conference is being organized in the midst of a crisis being suffered not only in Cochabamba but in the whole country, and we know many countries are sitting in their own garbage. Do you think this issue will be covered by the working groups?

We are holding the Conference unafraid to face all problems. We know we have local problems and of course we are going to face them. But we are going to face them with unity, we are sharing ideas because we debate them, we dialogue, and we arrive at understandings.

We know that the problems of climate change will not be solved tomorrow, but we know we have to begin to change things now, and part of this process, as it pertains to climate change both internationally and nationally, is to sit down to dialogue and debate what are we doing well and what are we doing wrong to attain living well in harmony with nature, to end poverty and respecting Mother Earth.

Glaciers at risk due to rising temperatures this is a fact. One of the questions that several industrialized nations that participated in the Copenhagen Summit last year want to make official in Mexico later this year is their goal of allowing temperature to rise “only” two degrees due to the greenhouse effect, even though the Bolivian glacier Chacaltaya, in the Department of La Paz, died with a rise in temperature of 0.5 degrees, Guzman recalled.

“In this Conference we are going to be a determinant force to prevent a rise in temperature,” asserted Vice Minister for Foreign Relations, Juan Pablo Guzman, one of the Coordinators of the World People’s Conference. Guzman also commented that the death of the glacier of Chacaltaya was documented by the Bolivian scientist Edson Ramirez from the hidrology institute of the Universidad Mayor de San Andres.

by Leonard Peltier
from Leonard Peltier Defense Site

My warmest regards to our host, Bolivian President Evo Morales.

To Presidents Rafael Correa, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and other esteemed Heads of State; national representatives; and all concerned citizens in attendance at the People’s Conference on Climate Change: I send warm greetings and thank you for your participation.

Today, environmentalists are often portrayed as marginal intellects and labeled “lunatic fringe,” rather than progressive thinkers with the ability to foresee the true cost of destructive corporate practices. I applaud your intent to ignore your detractors and admire your efforts to refine the proposals from the Copenhagen meetings—in particular, towards the creation of a world tribunal for climate issues and a global referendum on environmental choices. I know the calculus of this work is difficult to solve. Listening to the voices of so many to create a common solution is a unique and difficult challenge, but also a special opportunity. I offer prayers for your success.

My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most.


The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction.

In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle
has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage.

To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.

It is time for all our voices to be heard.

It is time we all listen, too—or else our collective Mother will dramatically and forcefully unstop our ears.

The Indigenous Peoples have been the keepers of knowledge and wisdom—long ago bringing forth foods, medicines, and other products from which the world population still benefits. The loss of our lands and cultures, therefore, is a loss for the entire human family. We are all citizens of Earth and this planet is our only home. What affects one, affects us all. We are all interconnected and our fates are intertwined.

We can indefinitely survive here, but only if we work together to adopt sustainable models for living responsibly. We cannot continue to destroy Creator’s work, or allow others to do so, in the belief that there will be no consequences.

I pray for a new age—a new understanding, consciousness, and way of being—a new path for all the peoples of the world.

Aho! Mitakuye Oyasin!

(Thank you to all my relations. We are all related.)

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,



Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP-Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
PO Box 1000
Lewisburg, PA 17837
USA

by Brian Tokar
from The Indypendent

Thursday, April 22, 2010 - The 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day is upon us, and many seasoned environmentalists are nostalgic for the heady days of the 1970s, when 20 million people hit in the streets and eventually got Richard Nixon to sign a series of ambitious environmental laws. Those laws managed to clean up waterways that were turning into sewers, saved the bald eagle from the ravages of DDT, and began to clear the air, which in the early 1960s was so polluted that people were passing out all over our cities.

While environmental awareness has clearly seeped into mainstream consciousness in the US, today’s environmental movement is floundering, even though the stakes are higher than ever. While grassroots campaigners continue to fight for endangered forests, challenge polluting companies in their communities, and confront the coal industry’s assaults on the mountains of southern Appalachia, the best known national organizations can point to precious few substantive victories of late. Most appallingly, they have utterly failed to demonstrate meaningful leadership around what climatologist James Hansen calls the “predominant moral issue of this century,” the struggle to prevent the catastrophic and irreversible warming of the planet.

As British journalist Johann Hari reported in The Nation back in March, this is partly the result of a legacy of collaboration between increasingly corporate-styled environmental NGOs and the world’s most polluting corporations.

In response to the climate crisis, we are seeing unprecedented collaboration between large environmental organizations and corporations seeking to profit from new environmental legislation. The notorious Climate Action Partnership (known as USCAP) has brought Alcoa, DuPont, General Electric and General Motors together with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy to push for the “market-based” approach to climate legislation known as “cap-and-trade.” This would create a vast, highly speculative market in carbon credits and offsets, with gigantic perks for corporations and little benefit for the planet. The push for cap-and-trade legislation has receded for now under pressure from both right wing anti-tax fanatics and market-skeptical environmentalists, but Washington observers anticipate that an even worse climate bill will be announced later this month by Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Graham, and laden with far more blatant giveaways to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.


Where has the environmental movement gone wrong? To better understand this, it’s helpful to take a brief journey back to the time of the original Earth Day. Where did Earth Day come from, and how did all those 1970s environmental laws actually come to be enacted?

The First Earth Day

It turns out that the original Earth Day on April 22, 1970, was initially a staged event. Politicians like Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and Rep. Pete McCloskey (Republican of California) took the lead in crafting the first Earth Day celebration that unexpectedly brought millions of people out into communities around the country. The events were supported by establishment institutions such as the Conservation Foundation, a corporate think-tank founded by Laurance Rockefeller in 1948. Nixon even began the year with a presidential proclamation saying that the 1970s would be the “environmental decade.”

Many anti-Vietnam war activists came to view Earth Day (originally the Environmental Teach-In) as a devious attempt to divert national attention away from the war, from the antiwar movement’s planned Spring Offensive, and from efforts to raise awareness of the common causes of war, poverty and environmental destruction. An editorial in Ramparts, the most prominent dissident magazine of the period, described Earth Day as, “the first step in a con game that will do little more than abuse the environment even further.”

The April 1970 Ramparts featured a striking exposé on “The Eco-Establishment,” which focused on the corporate think-tanks that were helping to shape the era’s emerging environmental legislation. “[T]oday's big business conservation,” Ramparts editorialized, “is not interested in preserving the earth; it is rationally reorganizing for a more efficient rape of resources … and the production of an ever grosser national product.” They continued:

“The seeming contradictions are mind-boggling: industry is combating waste so it can afford to waste more; it is planning to produce more (smog-controlled) private autos to crowd more highways, which means even more advertising to create more “needs” to be met by planned obsolescence. Socially, the result is disastrous. Ecologically, it could be the end.”

Journalist I.F. Stone wrote in his famous investigative weekly, “[J]ust as the Caesers once used bread and circuses so ours were at last learning to use rock-and-roll idealism and non-inflammatory social issues to turn the youth off from more urgent concerns which might really threaten the power structure. … [W]e may wake up one morning and find there is nothing left on Earth to pollute.”

To everyone’s surprise, Earth Day turned out to be the largest outpouring of public sentiment on any political issue to date. It drew public attention to environmentalism as a social movement in its own right, perhaps for the first time. And it set the stage to pressure Congress to pass 15 major national environmental laws over a 10-year period, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, Toxic Substances Control Act and the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Environmental Regulation: The Back-story

The origin of those 1970s environmental laws also has an underappreciated back-story. Throughout the 1960s, people were responding with horror to the increasingly visible effects of smog, oil spills, pesticide contamination and other environmental assaults. Cities and states responded by implementing their own, sometimes far-reaching programs of environmental monitoring and enforcement. Creative environmental lawsuits established important and unanticipated precedents, extending the right of citizens to sue to protect ecological values and furthering judicial review of the actions of government agencies.

This proved costly for business, and corporate interests came to view federal intervention as a possible solution. “[T]he elite of business leadership,” reported Fortune magazine on the eve of Earth Day in 1970, “strongly desire the federal government to step in, set the standards, regulate all activities pertaining to the environment, and help finance the job with tax incentives.”

Far from an interference with business prerogatives, environmental regulation by the federal government became a way to allay public concerns while offering corporate America a menu of uniform and predictable environmental rules. The laws passed in the aftermath of Earth Day helped fund essential public works projects, such as the construction of sewage treatment plants, and offered protections for public health and biodiversity, but also routinized and standardized the permitting of most industrial facilities. Most important, federal rules often pre-empted states and localities from enforcing regulations more stringent than those advanced at the national level; this core principle of federal pre-emption has again reared its head in today’s Congressional debate over climate legislation.

Just a decade later, Ronald Reagan packed the new regulatory agencies’ staffs with corporate hacks who were openly hostile to their agencies’ missions. (George W. Bush replicated this strategy with a vengeance in the early 2000s.) Reagan’s first EPA administrator resigned after two years in office, facing charges of contempt of Congress, after replacing the agency's senior staff with officials from companies like General Motors and Exxon, and mercilessly slashing the budget. Reagan’s cartoonish Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, spoke publicly of Armageddon and the need to exploit as much land as possible before its coming. Watt’s policies, according to former New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff, “introduced policies aimed at transferring control of public lands and resources to private entrepreneurs at a rate that had not been seen since the great giveaways of the nineteenth century.”

The Environmental Status-quo


Meanwhile, throughout the 1970s and eighties, representatives of the largest national environmental groups became an increasingly visible and entrenched part of the Washington political scene. As the appearance of success within the system grew, organizations from the National Wildlife Federation to the Natural Resources Defense Council restructured and changed personnel so as to more effectively play the insider game. The environmental movement became a stepping stone in the careers of a new generation of Washington lawyers and lobbyists, and official environmentalism came to accept the role long established for other regulatory advocates: that of helping to sustain the smooth functioning of the system. Environmentalism had been redefined, in the words of author and historian Robert Gottlieb as “a kind of interest group politics tied to the maintenance of the environmental policy system.”

This shift in the character of the most nationally visible environmental groups spelled the end of bold new policy initiatives on behalf of the environment. An environmental mainstream adapted to “insider” politics proved incapable of sustaining even a moderate Congressional consensus in favor of environmental protection, and ultimately helped prepare the stage for the anti-environmental backlash of the 1980s and beyond. The largest environmental groups launched direct mail appeals that brought in vast new funds, reflecting people's outrage against the Reagan administration's anti-environmentalism. Ironically, the success of these appeals pushed many groups further toward a conspicuously top-down, corporate-style structure. Those advocating a more corporate style invariably won internal battles within the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and even Greenpeace. They increasingly avoided issues and tactics that might prove alienating to wealthy donors.

The Sierra Club grew from 80,000 to 630,000 members during the 1980s, and the conservative National Wildlife Federation reported membership gains of up to 8,000 a month, totaling nearly a million.The World Wildlife Fund, later notorious for its efforts to establish national parks on the U.S. model in Africa and LatinAmerica, grew almost tenfold. The total budget of the ten largest environmental groups grew from less than $10 million in 1965, to $218 million in 1985 and $514 million in 1990. By the early 1990s, even the thoroughly mainstream former editor of Audubon magazine would lament that “naturalists have been replaced by ecocrats who are more comfortable on Capitol Hill than in the woods, fields, meadows, mountains and swamps.”

Environmental groups also began their flirtation with corporate sponsorships, so aptly summarized by Johann Hari in The Nation. In the lead-up to the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, activists (including this author) began closely investigating those ties, and revealed links between groups such as the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society, and a rogue’s gallery of major oil, chemical, utility, and banking corporations. The Multinational Monitor explored links between environmental organizations’ directorships and corporate boards, university researchers scrutinized the big environmental groups’ stock portfolios, and others explored the even more nefarious ties that tainted the world of “progressive” foundations.

From Corporate Environmentalism to Green Consumerism

By 1990, everyone seemed to want to be an environmentalist. President George Bush, Sr. proclaimed himself a defender of the environment, and briefly aimed to distance himself from the anti-environmental excesses of the Reagan years by adopting the first national cap-and-trade system to address the problem of acid rain. Senator Al Gore, the 1988 presidential primary campaign's leading Democratic war hawk, began speaking out about global warming and other environmental threats. Britain's reactionary Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called herself a “green.” Even the president of the World Bank won praise from environmental publications for voicing concerns about the Bank's role in environmental destruction. The Environmental Defense Fund led the way in pushing for a more aggressively “market-oriented” approach to environmental policy.

So it was not a huge surprise when the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990 became the coming-out party for a more overtly corporate brand of environmentalism. Earth Day celebrations became a virtual extravaganza of corporate hype, and “green consumerism” was the order of the day. The official overriding message was simply, “change your lifestyle,” by recycling, driving less, and buying green products. And while the national Earth Day organization turned down some $4 million in corporate donations that didn’t even meet their rather flexible criteria, celebrations in several major U.S. cities were supported by notorious polluters such as Monsanto, Peabody Coal and Georgia Power. Everyone from the nuclear power industry to the Chemical Manufacturer's Association purchased full-page advertisements in newspapers and magazines proclaiming that, for them, “Every day is Earth Day.” The now-familiar greenwashing of Earth Day had begun.

Some activists responded by organizing more politically challenging local Earth Day anniversaries of their own, focusing on local environmental struggles, urban issues, the nature of corporate power and a host of other problems that were systematically excluded from most official Earth Day events. Left Greens and Youth Greens in the Northeast initiated a call to shut down Wall Street the Monday following Earth Day, and were joined by environmental justice activists, Earth First! organizers, ecofeminists, New York City squatters and many others. In the early morning of April 23, just after millions had participated in polite, feel-good Earth Day commemorations all across the country, hundreds converged on the New York Stock Exchange, with the goal of obstructing the opening of trading on that day.

Juan Gonzalez, in his New York Daily News column, decried the weekend’s “embalming and fire sale of Earth Day,” and told his 1.2 million readers, “Certainly, those who sought to co-opt Earth Day into a media and marketing extravaganza, to make the public feel good while obscuring the corporate root of the Earth's pollution almost succeeded. It took angry Americans from places like Maine and Vermont to come to Wall Street on a workday and point the blame where it belongs.”

The 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action reflected the flowering of grassroots environmental activity that had emerged throughout the 1980s, partly in response to the compromises of the big environmental groups. The popular response to toxic chemical pollution — launched by the mothers of sick children living near the severely polluted Love Canal in upstate New York — grew into a nationwide environmental justice movement that exposed the disproportionate exposure of communities of color to toxic hazards. Earth First! grew as a decentralized network of grassroots forest defenders, using theatrical direct action, combined with acts of industrial sabotage, to stem the tide of forest destruction. Others joined in solidarity with indigenous peoples’ movements around the world that had arisen in defense of traditional lands, responding to the new onslaught of neoliberal development policies. During the lead-up to Earth Day 1990, a hundred environmental
justice activists signed a letter to the eight largest national environmental organizations challenging the dearth of people of color on those groups’ staffs and boards, along with their increasing reliance on corporate funding.

The Clinton-Gore administration of the 1990s perfected the art of channeling environmental rhetoric while simultaneously encouraging increased resource extraction — prefiguring Barack Obama’s recent overtures to the nuclear, oil and coal industries.

As the decade ended, environmental activists made a strong showing in Seattle, as a key part of the broader coalition of social justice, labor and green groups that successfully challenged the World Trade Organization. But the Bush years that followed were a time of increasingly frustrating defensive battles. While many of the grassroots initiatives of the 1980s and nineties continued (see Douglas Bevington’s new book, The Rebirth of Environmentalism), others felt dismayed by the ineffectiveness of large environmental groups. This led to the continued evolution of Earth First! and other radical formations. By the late 1990s, groups like the Earth Liberation Front shifted toward more secretive and aggressive types of property destruction and sabotage in defense of nature. In 2006, the FBI declared “environmental terrorists” to be the top domestic security threat, even though no one had been harmed in any of their actions. The so-called “green scare” of the Bush years eventually landed at least 16 eco-militants and animal rights activists in federal prison, replete with “terrorism enhancements” to their sentences, as a consequence of the notorious “Patriot Act.” Also in the early 2000s, renewed grassroots campaigns aimed to reclaim urban spaces and challenge the genetic engineering of food, among many other new issues.

Over the last few years, it appeared that the climate crisis might be ushering in a renewed wave of grassroots environmental action in the United States. A 2009 student environmental conference attracted some 3000 participants to Washington, D.C., and the event was followed by a symbolic blockade of the city’s large coal-fired power plant. On the tenth anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle on November 30, 2009, climate justice actions across the US included the lock-down of an intersection outside the Chicago Climate Exchange (home of the corporate-driven “voluntary” carbon market), a blockade of a major component for a new coal-fired power plant in South Carolina, protests of large banks that finance the coal industry and other mega-polluters, and a rally outside the Natural Resources Defense Council’s offices to protest their aggressive advocacy for carbon markets. People in West Virginia and across southern Appalachia have stepped up resistance to the ravages of mountaintop removal coal mining, while others across the country — from Vermont to the Navajo Reservation — have redoubled their efforts against Obama’s planned expansion of the nuclear industry.

Most of 2009’s climate actions, however, were aimed at trying to press national governments to reach a comprehensive agreement at the December UN climate conference in Copenhagen. The failure of diplomacy in Copenhagen deflated the energy of many activists, and the post-Copenhagen resurgence of climate actions has yet to materialize. Meanwhile, although Earth Day has become an annual ritual in some communities, as well as on many college campuses, the fortieth anniversary has brought a notable scarcity of attention.

One event this year, though, highlights how quickly corporate environmentalism has evolved from tragedy to farce. This gala event, held on April 21st in Washington, DC, was hosted by a group called the Carbon War Room, a rather exclusive alliance of elite environmentalists and financiers, headed by the notorious multibillionaire Richard Branson of the Virgin Group. Branson is most celebrated these days for his experimental biofueled airplanes, along with a venture to promote outer space tourism and public advocacy for geoengineering the climate. For only $450 (a third less for nonprofits), participants could have dinner with Branson, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and founding Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes at the new Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, just around the corner from the White House.

Meanwhile, the green marketing of products is alive and well, from clothing, to Priuses, to luxury ecotourism. The UK’s Guardian newspaper reported from a “green business” conference in London last year that “as much as 70 percent of future advertising would have an environmental focus.” They quoted a leading British supermarket executive questioning environmental limitations on consumer desires, arguing that such an approach simply “fails to see the enormous potential of consumers.” Another Guardian story reported on a Dutch study of consumer behavior, suggesting that ethical consumer choices are made chiefly for the added social status they confer. “Researchers found consumers are willing to sacrifice luxury and performance,” for example by buying a Prius instead of a Hummer, “to benefit from the perceived social status that comes from buying a product with a reduced environmental impact,” they reported.

Today, right-wing pundits depict environmentalism as an elite hobby that threatens jobs, while many progressive environmentalists cite the potential for “green jobs” to help reignite economic growth. Both views are sorely missing a central element of what has made environmentalism such a compelling counter-hegemonic worldview ever since the 1970s: the promise that reorienting societies toward a renewed harmony with nature can help spur a revolutionary transformation of our world.

This outlook has helped inspire anti-nuclear activists to sit in at power plant construction sites, forest activists to sustain long-term tree-sits, and environmental justice activists to stand firm in defense of their communities. People around the world are acting in solidarity with indigenous peoples fighting resource extraction on their lands. With climate chaos looming on the horizon, such a transformation is no longer optional. Our very survival now depends on our ability to renounce the status-quo and create a more humane and ecologically balanced way of life.

***
Brian Tokar is the director of the Vermont-based Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org) and a participant in the climate justice networks Climate SOS and the Mobilization for Climate Justice. He is the author of several books, including Earth for Sale: Reclaiming Ecology in the Age of Corporate Greenwash (South End Press, 1997), which is the source of many of the quotes in this article. An altered version of this article appeared in the April 21, 2010 issue of The Indypendent newspaper in New York City (indypendent.org).

from Wikipedia
Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes. Pachamama is usually translated as "Mother Earth" but a more literal translation would be "Mother world" (in Aymara and Quechua mama = mother / pacha = world or land; and later spread fairly modern as the cosmos or the universe). Pachamama and Inti are the most benevolent deities and are worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges, also known as Tawantinsuyu (stretching from present day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina).

In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. She causes earthquakes. Her husband was either Pacha Camac or Inti, depending on the source. Llamas are sacrificed to her. After conquest by Catholic Spain her image was masked by the Virgin Mary, behind whom she is invoked and worshiped in the Aboriginal ritual, in some parts of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru (Merlino y Rabey 1992).

Since Pachamama is a "good mother", people usually toast to her honor before every meeting or festivity, in some regions by spilling a small amount of chicha on the floor, before drinking the rest. This toast is called "challa" and it's made almost everyday. Pachamama has a special worship day called "Martes de challa" (Challa's Tuesday) where people bury food, throw candies, burn incense. In some cases, celebrants assist traditional priests, known as "yatiris" in Aymara, in performing ancient rites to bring good luck or the good will of the goddess, such as sacrificing guinea pigs or burning llama fetuses (although these last two are no longer very common). The festival coincides with Shrove Tuesday.

by Billy Wharton
from Dissident Voice

Wall Street stockbrokers opening doors for themselves? Rich widowers hauling their own trash to the basement? A trust fund twenty-something hailing a cab? Is the end of the world near? No. Just the latest demonstration of the power of working people as 30,000 New York City apartment building workers prepare to go on strike.

The workers, represented by the union Service Employees International Union Local 32 B-J, voted on April 1 to give their contract negotiators the right to call a strike action. This was no April Fool’s gag. The workers are angered by the paltry contract terms offered by their employer, the Realty Advisory Board (RAB). With an average salary of $40,000 a year, these doormen, concierges, handymen and porters are seeking cost of living adjustments and improved healthcare benefits. If acted on, the strike action would the first since the two-week work stoppage in 1991.

The RAB is an association of thousands of New York City landlords. As negotiations spiral ever closer to the April 21 deadline, they have sought to tighten up unity by releasing a fifty-page manual for building owners and issuing a gentle warning against individual negotiations with the union. During the last doorman strike of 1991, several building owners bypassed the RAB and signed “me-too” individual agreements with 32BJ that ended the strike at their particular building. This weakened the hand of building owners. The tactic remains an active fear for the RAB in this latest round of contentious negotiations.

The workers, for their part, are focusing on the extreme difference between their stagnant wages and the soaring costs of living in the region. The Consumer Price Index for New York City has increased by more than 11% since the doorman’s last contract and the popular benchmark of the price of milk has soared by 10%. In addition, Manhattan rents continue to buck national trends of decline and amount to nearly double those in cities across the country. Real estate is still booming in New York City and the doormen are looking for their fair share.

A potential strike is significant in the broader context of organized labor in New York City. New York is a union town, but the overwhelming number of organized workers labor in the public sector. They are, therefore, restrained from striking by New York’s draconian Taylor Law, which enforces a three-day fine for every one day out of work. New York’s doormen are employed privately and any potential strike action could become a representation of the anger felt by all workers – public and private. No road to a general strike, but an opening through which workers in the city might realize their collective power.

The question of the bargaining bluff always remains. Is the union just trying to create some leverage at the table by throwing around the word strike in the media? Are they really preparing the workers for a long struggle on the picket lines? The RAB and their constituent landlords seem to be taking the strike claim seriously. A notice went out to thousands of doorman building dwellers last week to prepare for the job action. On April 21, Manhattan’s upwardly mobile may awaken to a world made a little less comfortable as picket lines replace concierge service. Or, they can pay a bill that is now long overdue.

***

Billy Wharton is the editor of The Socialist magazine and the Socialist WebZine. He can be reached at: billyspnyc[at]yahoo[dot]com.