You may not know this, but our US postal system is under attack. The 1% are looking to divvy up our postal services and properties so they can make big profits. Bankster-driven bubbles and crashes create government deficits, mass unemployment, foreclosures and debt nightmares for the 99%. Deficits and bankruptcies created by this economic crisis are used by the 1% to demand cuts in government spending and the privatization of public services. Public education, health care, water and power utilities, parks, libraries, highways, military, prisons, and postal systems, are all threatened with conversion to for-profit institutions. Thus in 2006, Congress passed poison pill legislation forcing the United States Postal Service (USPS) to pre-pay 75 years worth of employee health care benefits in advance, over a 10 year period. For 30 years prior, USPS was in the black. But not anymore. After 7 years of forced prepayments there is now a $16B deficit, $15B directly caused by this pre-funding requirement.
Even though the City government officials and citizens opposed the sale of the building, USPS management moved forward as if providing service to the people was secondary. So many of us in the East Bay organized independently and later as Save the Berkeley Post Office, Strike Debt Bay Area and Berkeley Post Office Defense to occupy the grand steps of the post office with tents, literature and food tables on July 27, 2013. We protested the sale of the historic building, the potential privatization of our postal system and the destruction of our commons. We had banners, signs and loads of information to pass on to the public as we occupied. There were as many as 24 campers and a dozen tents at one time, some just slept in sleeping bags. The camp bravely remained there 24/7 for 33 days until Berkeley Police tore out our tents on the night of August 28. Most of the tents and belongings were destroyed or lost. A few items were recovered and now we are filing claims with the City for reimbursement. City officials professed solidarity with our camp even as police harassed and shut us down. So why did they crash us down? Only time will tell, but it seems the usual – destroy the action, claim ignorance, wait to be sued, pay the tab, then repeat. During the encampment we made the issue of privatization and the selling off of our commons into an item for discussion across the nation. Even the New York Times and Washington Post published an article on the Berkeley Post Office occupation.
If we look back in history, our postal system existed before 1776 and was the first iconic presence of US public services. It was in every state and county. Letters were expensive, and mostly for the rich, however postage was subsidized for newspapers. This was done purposely to serve the information needs of the commons and to keep the people politically informed. In 1911 Postal Banking was introduced. The minimum deposit was $1 and the maximum was $2,500, and paid two percent interest on deposits annually. It issued US Postal Savings Bonds in various denominations that paid annual interest, as well as Postal Savings Certificates and domestic money orders. Savings in the system spurted to $1.2 billion during the 1930s and jumped again during World War II, peaking in 1947 at almost $3.4 billion. Organized to benefit immigrants and the working poor who didn’t trust commercial banks, the US Postal Savings System was shut down in 1967. Private banks had captured the market, raising their interest rates and offering the same governmental guarantees.
Zoom ahead to 2013 and we find our postal commons under attack by corporations and the rich. Having blown their wad on the shadow wealth of the derivatives and financials market, dynamiting the housing market with predatory loans and cheap buyups of foreclosed properties, they are now circling public service institutions around the globe. And postal systems are profitable privatization targets. Postal privatizations are underway in the UK, the EU, Japan and other nations. Here at home they have been selling off historic downtown Post Office buildings, eliminating mail collection boxes, cutting back staff and services. All justified by an engineered deficit!
Congressman Darrell Issa from Southern California was the author of the poison pill 2006 legislation and has recently proposed the elimination of home delivery of the mail, requiring each of us to daily pick up our own mail. UPS and FedEx desire the postal system package mail, Pitney Bowes desires the distribution business. Commercial businesses won’t touch home mail delivery as it the most expensive operation from which they will not be able to profit.
From my perspective, the largest group of losers in this privatization “reform” are prisoners. Over 2 million people are warehoused in prisons/jails and growing numbers of human beings are now being housed in I.C.E. detention facilities, which also face privatization demands. The trend of building more jails in California is on the rise thanks to people like Gov. Jerry Brown who feels that non-violent and aging prisoners just CANNOT be let out to join the greater society. The one form of communication with that outside world for many of the poor people who make up most of those incarcerated, is the US post office (USPS). The cost of a stamp vs the cost of a 15 minute phone call once a week ($17.00) can be as much as $16.54. Prison jobs can range from ZERO (GA) to 4.73 a day. You can see how the postal service means a great deal to incarcerated people. The idea of a privatized postal service would mean a great deal of economic hardship on those incarcerated far away from family and friends. Hawaiians are routinely shipped to prisons in states like Arizona, making visits nearly impossible and phone calls too expensive. If USPS becomes a privatized entity we can surely expect the cost of stamps to rise considerably and the level of service will decline. A for-profit organization has only one objective…to maximize profits and minimize expenses. The USPS and other public institutions have no such goal. They are run to provide a service at cost, rolling any “profits” back into service. Why would anyone think that a private corporation would do a better job than the public sector?
The effort to save the Berkeley Post Office is still being fought even though the camp has been removed. There is a lawsuit; an official appeal by the Mayor and City Council to Postal management; and a move to rezone the parcel to eliminate commercial uses and mandate civic uses only, making a purchase by profiteers undesirable. And, if the sale goes forward, possibly announced after October 5th, we will be back with our tents to say… “no to the sale! no to privatization! this is OUR commons and we won’t let you, the 1%, have it!”
When I showed up at the Montana Rainbow Gathering and unknowingly camped across the main trail from a large fenced area with a menacing “Enter at Your Own Risk” sign, I had no idea that these neighbors would shape and impact not only my experience that week, but the experience of those who participated in the Nonviolent Communication workshops I came to offer as well.
Initially I found it amusing that this group of people would choose to identify their camp as “The Projects.” “How strange that the elements of outside society are re-creating themselves here,” I thought. I had never heard of this camp despite this being my fifth national rainbow gathering. Many of the other rainbow attendees refer to this crowd as “crusties.” The typical Project camper, of which there were a few dozen it seemed, is a traveler (hitchhiker, train hopper) with dirty black and grey clothes, usually with patches and holes, but more of the latter. They were loud and raucous, ignoring the rainbow policy of “No alcohol in the gathering!” asking passersby to give them snacks, and setting off fireworks till the wee hours of the morning (another rainbow no-no with the dangers of forest fires, not to mention people wanting to experience the rejuvenation of the quiet forest outside city limits).
It didn’t end there though. This group was on one side of many conflicts throughout the week. I don’t think they always “started” it per se, but they did seem to be purposefully antagonizing those around them with such antics as putting logs and digging holes in the path at night, so that people walking through without a flashlight would trip. Ouch. My approach to this was to just go around, because I quickly came to the conclusion that the more people reacted to their behavior in any way, the more things escalated. I also saw what they were doing as mostly harmless, a letting off of steam that builds up from being in cities too long.
Sometimes these folks got into fights with each other, which once again didn’t bother me as much as some other people. It seemed like consensual fighting, more letting off steam. This is just what these people did for fun. It’s not my idea of a good time, but different strokes for different folks. Sometimes it did seem that people got involved who were not so consensual about it, however, and that’s when it became really dramatic. During these times, I found myself in a conundrum. Despite my skills with NVC, there was simply too much going on for me to see any meaningful way I could contribute to defusing a brawl. There were so many people yelling, there were already people from Shantisena (the rainbow peacekeeping infrastructure) trying to help, that all I could do was give silent empathy to all involved from the sidelines, and try to help the sensitive souls of bystanders by inviting them over to my camp, Empathic Rejuvenation, to relax and ground.
During these times, I wondered if this was a situation for protective use of force. Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), made this distinction between using force to protect health and safety, and using force to punish–punitive use of force. The second would be considered violence in the NVC system. For me the line between these two things gets really blurry though. Although most NVCers, including myself, would see capital punishment as punitive use of force, proponents could argue it’s protective in the sense that it can discourage others from killing people (whether or not this is the case, people can and certainly do argue it). One of our options, that was never acted on, was to ask the police overseeing the gathering to intervene with this camp. I was even convinced for a day or two that this would be a good course of action, mainly because I was sick of the fireworks.
But, I thought, wouldn’t I be hypocritical if I asked the police to intervene for my cause (no fireworks) but oppose them for intervening in other cases? There are many “illegal” things happening at a rainbow gathering–people walk around nude, have their dogs off leashes, and bring a variety of blacklisted substances for recreational or spiritual use. No, I didn’t want to promote such an arbitrary double standard. I want to let go of brute force as a solution to minor problems, and find other creative ways to deal with social challenges. What this meant in this case, was until we found a better way to work with this group of people, we had to default to putting up with them in the meantime. In the grand scheme of things, walking around logs and holes is not that big of an inconvenience. I’d like to save protective force for more important things–such as when there really are nonconsensual fights, although in this case brute force didn’t seem to help with that either, just more escalation.
I still don’t know what creative solution would work for the Projects and the rest of the rainbows to live together in peace. One thought I have is to work with the Shantisena crew next year, offering them the powerful tool of NVC-style empathy, both for their own rejuvenation and to use in the midst of conflict. This idea inspires me; I see it as a new frontier in human development (which I also see in the gathering as a whole). It is painful to me to see how quickly some of the people who say we want a new world resorted to brute force in the face of The Projects, a tactic of the so-called “old paradigm.” I believe looking at situations through the lens of human needs helps to defuse a lot of the “us vs. them” energy and open up at least the possibility for a solution that works for everyone involved. I hope that activists and rainbows and all cultural transformers will consider learning more about the NVC system for resolving conflict; it is one of the few things that gives me hope that the miracle of a more peaceful society will ever emerge.
Resources for learning NVC: BayNVC.org, (Also see Miki Kashtan’s blog “The Fearless Heart”) norcalnvc.org (in Chico, where I live) cnvc.org (Center for Nonviolent Communication, founded by Marshall Rosenberg)
When I was a kid, I used to watch my mother soak things in hot, sudsy water and then pick the price tags off with her fingernails.
Sometimes, I wish I could soak my soul in that water, that I might cleanse myself of all reminders of the cost of things.
$
A few weeks ago, I was sipping tea with my favorite Marxist–he bought me the tea cuz I’m hella broke–and I was telling him how I’d been offered a job that pays $50 an hour, but I was thinking about not taking it.
“Why not?” he asked. “You need that money.”
I had been jobless for over a year, and to survive, I’d been borrowing money from the people I love. My friends were running out of slack, though, and if I didn’t find a job soon, I’d have to move out of my coveted Berkeley attic corner (I pay $215 a month to live in a drafty rat-infested attic with 3 other people) and move back in with my foster parents in the cultural desert of Seattle Suburbia.
“I just don’t think I should start working yet…” I grappled to explain. “I mean… being jobless is teaching me something… something about value, about capital, about the way money moves people… and I think… I’m close–really close–to figuring out what money really is.”
“No, Teresa,” the Marxist gazed at me with intensity. “Money is a magical and elusive thing. You could spend your entire life studying it and never figure out what it is.”
$
But still, I couldn’t stop thinking about money, about the symbols we use to represent value.
In the mid-1800s, Karl Marx devoted himself to the study of capital. So desperate he was to understand the ebb and flow of value that he quit working and spent every waking hour in the London library, studying. He wrote thousands of pages about the way Capitalism works, creating perhaps the most comprehensive explanation of an economic system ever.
But in his manic efforts to understand it, Marx neglected to participate in the system he was trapped in. …and the Beast of Capitalism punishes nonparticipation without mercy.
As Marx wrote, four of his children starved to death.
$
In December of 1989, I worked my first job. I was five years old, selling sprigs of mistletoe door-to-door for $1 a bundle and I loved doing it! I still remember one young man who bought a sprig, winked at me, turned around, and held the mistletoe over a woman’s head. They kissed like at the end of Little Mermaid, and I beamed at them, proud that my mistletoe had facilitated such an excellent moment.
If someone had told me I was doing it for the money, I would have laughed so hard! But I quickly learned that those little paper rectangles were important: money was the symbol that allowed me to take part in the magical ritual of exchange, an ancient ritual that brings random strangers together to share a few moments of existence before going back to the meantime of our lives.
I made over $100 selling mistletoe, and gave it all to my mom. Her eyes lit up–just like when the checks arrived from her sisters. My mother usually spent her days locked away in her room, but with a huge wad of cash in her hands, her depression completely dissipated. She had power now. Power to do things beyond the meager allotment sent by the Welfare office.
“Santa is going to bring extra toys this year!” she grinned.
¥
After college, I traveled to Japan to teach English. I had been looking forward to the job for months–I love teaching! And sure, the students would be paying for the English lessons, but I thought of the monetary exchange as a ritual that would allow the real magic to happen: the sacred connection between human minds grappling to understand a topic.
But after arriving in Japan, I quickly learned that most of my students weren’t interested in the joy of learning: they behaved like customers: arms folded, eyes narrowed, as if it was my job to serve them a Unit-of-English-Language.
For the first time in my life, I learned what it is like to be reduced to an object, a sum of my functions. Some customers treated me so poorly, I wanted to run from the room. But I was held hostage: if I walked out, I’d lose my job. And I needed that job to pay off my college debt.
“How do you stand this place?” I asked my coworker, Ben, who’d worked at the Language Company for several years.
“I don’t,” he smiled robotically. “When I get to work in the morning, I turn my emotions off. And I don’t feel a thing until I leave the office at the end of the day.”
“That’s horrible!” I said.
“Just wait until your first paycheck comes,” Ben replied. “You’ll realize it was all worth it.”
So when my paycheck came, I tried to make it feel worth it: I drank fine saké with my new friends, traveled to some spiffy ancient shrines, and adorned my body with designer clothes from Osaka’s fashion district. But none of these things could make me feel happy–nothing could buy back the 200+ hours I spent each month feeling miserable at work.
I arrived in Japan in summer of ’07, just in time to watch the Japanese economy collapse. Every couple days, I’d reach the transit station and the neon signs would be flashing: “All Trains: 45 Minute Delay.” This meant that yet another newly-fired businessman had thrown himself in front of a commuter train. It always took the transit workers 45 minutes to clean the flesh from the tracks.
Starting in middle school, Japanese kids are taught to pack their feelings in and work hard–even if the work doesn’t make sense, even if they are being treated poorly–for the sake of future remuneration. Like Christians setting aside their own pleasure for the sake of a future reward, Japanese people are taught to displace their pleasure for symbols: grades and money. But when you hollow yourself out for the sake of symbols, what is left when those symbols are taken away?
“You should feel lucky,” said my coworker, Steve, “that you weren’t born in China.” Before coming to Japan, Steve had spent two years working at an orphanage in China. The parents of the 200+ babies he tended were still alive: they were workers at a nearby purse factory. These people had to work 17-hours-a-day, 6-days-a-week, and if they complained, they risked losing their jobs and starving to death. On Sundays, the workers came to the orphanage to clutch their babies with bloodied fingers. These people received pennies for the each purse they made, which were sold for about $400 at designer boutiques in Japan, America, and Europe…. so that workers like me could make our paychecks “feel like something.”
One day in the break room, my coworkers began discussing the ways they’d thought about killing themselves.
“Sometimes, when a lesson is going really bad,” Ben said, “I think about throwing myself off a tall building and smashing through the windows of the building next to it. It would feel so good to go out like that–to use my body to break something.”
A few weeks later, I left Japan. I would have to find some other way to pay off my college debt.
$
When I was 15-years-old, I learned that college costs extravagant amounts of money, so I informed my mother that I was going to stop giving her cash.
“But I need that money,” my mom sounded frightened.
I worked several jobs–shelving books at the library, delivering newspapers, keeping grounds for the landlord–and I gave most of the money to my mom. I thought it was a frivolous thing, that she didn’t depend on the money, that it just made her life a little more fun.
“If you need cash,” I said, “just ask your sisters.”
“Not until they apologize!” A few years before–right around the time I started giving my mom money, actually–she had stopped talking to her wealthy sisters. Three of her five sisters had married rich men, and they sent cash to anyone in the family who groveled hard enough.
“Well,” I said, “if you want extra money, you’ll have to swallow your pride and talk to your sisters, cuz I’m saving up for college.”
Within the next year, I managed to save over $3000–almost enough for 6 months tuition. I was off to a good start. But shortly after my 16th birthday, I went to the bank to and discovered my account was empty. My mother had used her Legal Guardian privileges to drain every penny.
So I got better at hiding my money.
But once I was no longer providing for her, my mom started treating her children differently…
By the time I was 17, the household had grown so violent, my younger sister and I were forced to leave.
$
“I hate our aunts,” said my 14-year-old cousin, Billy.
“You shouldn’t say bad things about The Aunties,” I said. I was a 21-year-old college student, and wanted to be a positive role model.
“Dude, they lie all the time,” Billy said. “And they gossip about my mom.”
He was right: I had once heard one of my aunts on the phone with Billy’s mom, saying “I love you,” and then, immediately after hanging up, she had turned to me and said “My sister is such a worthless person!” Billy’s mother had schizophrenia and didn’t have a husband. Perhaps that is why her sisters thought it was okay to speak so unkindly about her.
“But the aunties love you,” I heard myself say.
“They never visit,” Billy countered.
“But they send you and your mom so much money!”
“Yeah, but money isn’t love.”
I smiled. Money isn’t love. Billy was always challenging me to see those horrible truths I so often tried to ignore. That was something I loved about him: he was never afraid to call me on my bullshit.
Two years later, at the age of 16, Billy swallowed a bottle of painkillers.
When Billy died, I had been frantically trying to find a ride out to see him. I had a horrible feeling… But everyone was so busy working, they didn’t have time to give me a ride. I don’t own my own car, and didn’t I have the cash for a Greyhound ticket.
$
When my sister and I left home as teenagers, we were lucky enough to be living in the Seattle ‘burbs, an area oversaturated with cash.
When local folks found out that my sister and I were “homeless,” they shared their food, guest rooms, let us ride their horses, and one family even took us on a one-week vacation to Disneyland. It seemed to make people feel powerful to share their resources and luxuries with us. When we thanked them, they always beamed, saying stuff like “Well, it makes me feel great to share what I have!”
Eventually, one family in town let us stay with them on a permanent basis. Our new foster parents pushed us to finish high school, and helped us get the loans and financial aid we needed to go to college.
$
A few days after Billy died, I finally got a ride out to the Oregon Coast to see him. I thought that seeing my cousin’s body would create some sort of resolution, but instead, I left the morgue wanting answers.
“Billy was such a nice kid,” his English teacher told me, “but he just wouldn’t do his homework. So I had to fail him. Then, last month, he dropped out of school…”
“His mom wouldn’t let him study,” said one of his classmates. “I went over there to help with his homework, and his mom pulled a gun on me–a fucking gun!–and told me to leave. I guess she was jealous or something.”
“Sometimes he’d come over to our place for a few hours to hide from his mom,” said a neighbor. “We had to send him home at dinnertime, though. We can’t be feeding someone else’s kid, you know.”
It seemed like everyone in the town liked Billy, and knew that he was experiencing intense violence at home. So why hadn’t they rallied to help him the way people had rallied around me and my sister? I felt like I’d fallen into some horrible alternative universe.
I asked the priest at Billy’s church to explain.
“This town is poor,” the priest said as we folded programs for Billy’s funeral. “And it gets poorer every year.”
The town’s economy had tanked in the 1980s after the Oregon fish and lumber industries collapsed. Soon after that, corporate franchises like Wal-Mart and McDonalds moved in. Before long, a majority of people in town were working for the franchises, receiving minimum wage. The low wages made it impossible for people to shop locally, so almost all the local businesses went under. Now, a majority of the town’s money was leaving the town’s economy, flowing from the franchise cash registers almost directly into the pockets of CEOs and Wall Street investors.
“There are over 500 homeless youth in the area,” the priest said. “And countless more at-risk teens. And we are powerless to help any of them. We just don’t have the resources.”
$
My foster dad runs a company in the Seattle area. It’s a good company: a firm that cleans up hazardous waste. He thinks capitalism is working.
“Why?” I asked last time I visited home.
“Because companies like mine are able to provide well-paying jobs with health care to almost a hundred people.”
But not every company is able to be so noble. Once a company reaches a certain size, the CEOs are legally bound to make more money last quarter than they did this quarter–to make a profit. To facilitate this exponential increase of profits, they must create new markets, reduce the quality of goods, and/or reduce the quality of life for their workers.
My foster dad looked at me with deep concern and admitted, “We give our employees annual raises, but not enough to match the rising cost of living. And we have to slash health benefits every year because the cost of insurance is skyrocketing. This year, we had to cut optical… Next year it might be dental…”
My foster dad is trying to run a good company, but his company is trapped in a competitive profit-based economy, so, just to stay afloat, he is forced to reduce the quality of life for his workers every year.
How long will it be, I wonder, before the suburbs of Seattle begin to look like Billy’s hometown?
$
Recently, I spoke with my computer-savvy friend, Brian, who has worked in the Seattle-area tech-industry for the last 15 years. Brian says working conditions are getting worse every year.
Employers like Microsoft and Google no longer take responsibility for their workers, instead calling them “independent contractors.” They only allow these “contractors” to work 5 months out of the year–this allows the employers to legally skirt their duty of providing healthcare for their workers, while also making it difficult for workers to organize and demand better conditions.
In Brian’s most recent job, he worked for Google in a warehouse near Seattle. During the stressful 5-month contract, two of Brian’s coworkers were arrested for bringing guns to work. Brian blames the horrible conditions: Google imported a boss from the tech sweatshops of India to run the place, and this man had all the workers frantically competing against each other, threatening to fire people who didn’t meet the daily work quota. “I have never been forced to work so hard for so little,” Brian says.
During Brian’s time working for Google, he was hounded by creditors, who took almost his entire paycheck. At one point, Brian was left with $30 to live on for 2 weeks. During that time, he ate little more than a carton of eggs. Once a shapely man, Brain’s skin now hangs from his bones.
In a globalized system of Capitalism, the lowest standard of working anywhere lowers the bar for everyone else on earth. If someone in India or China is willing to do your job at a lower pay and without benefits, then it is only a matter of time before your job is reduced to the same inhumane level, or exported all together.
$
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been jobless for over a year.
When I first lost my job in January 2011, I furiously hunted for a new one. But as the weeks turned into months of joblessness, I eventually lost hope and stopped looking. Now, after a year without an earned income, this high-paying job has turned up, but I’m terrified to take it.
I think I’ve become anorexic about money. As anyone who has suffered from anorexia knows, it isn’t about looking skinny: anorexia is all about control. Throughout your life, you watch your weight fluctuate wildly, until finally, you go a little crazy and say “enough is enough” and you just stop eating. That’s about how I feel with money right now. I’m terrified to trade my labor for money again, whether it’s for $5 or $50 an hour because the moment I step back in onto the Capitalist rollercoaster, I will no longer be in control: the market could fluctuate or my job could be eliminated.
And I am tired of having to gamble in order to feed myself.
$
But even though I didn’t receive any pay this year, I’ve worked quite hard. I edited newspapers, interned at a publishing house, and staffed a youth program–all as an unpaid volunteer. And it felt great to work without money holding me hostage!
I love working, but I never went to touch money again. Because money cheapens everything. Because once we are told we are working for mere symbols (whether it’s grades or cash), we forget our responsibility to check in and be present for the moments that make up being alive, and we forget our responsibility to create real meaning–not just symbolic meaning–in the things we do every day.
$
But my friends have run out of slack. And even though I’ve had a great time working for free this year, my relationships have suffered.
When I lost my job a year ago, I had been living with a man with whom I had been desperately in love. But once I didn’t have my own income, a new, horrible power dynamic entered our relationship: I found myself unable to genuinely express my emotions around him because I felt indebted for the food and shelter he provided me. Our love soon grew cold, and after 2 years together, we went our separate ways.
A similar coldness has entered all my relationships that involve borrowing money. Being put in the position of begging the people you love for money puts a price on love. Soon, your friends can’t trust you to be honest with them. And you wonder if you can trust yourself.
I think I am beginning to understand how my mom and Billy’s mom became so twisted: living on the edge of poverty in Capitalism is living on the edge of death. You feel like a vampire, leeching off the people you love just to survive. They say if a vampire tries to eat food, the food will turn to ashes in her mouth. It is like that with love when you are poor and desperate: love is transformed into lifeless scraps of paper before it can reach you. You take the paper so you can eat today, and your heart begins to starve.
$
When I was a kid, I used to watch my mother soak things in hot, sudsy water and then pick the price tags off with her fingernails.
But I know I cannot soak my soul in that water, for if I cleansed myself of all marks of cost, nothing would be left.
Because Capitalism is not some abstract thing. It is deeply personal. It creates the channels through which care reaches (or doesn’t reach) each of us. And that care transforms us into who we are.
And perhaps my Marxist friend is right: I will never fully understand money. Because the effort to understand money is the effort to understand yourself. It is the effort to understand the flow of power through your life, and the flow of your life as you chase symbols.
I am a hairless mammal. I am completely dependent upon my society for my biological survival. But under Capitalism, my very existence is denied to me if I don’t, in some way, interact with money. It is simply a matter of choosing whether I want money to taint my work-life, or whether I want it to taint my friendships…
$
So I followed the Marxist’s advice and took the $50 an hour job. But what am I doing for this money? I am tutoring a 15-year-old boy whose name, ironically, is Billy.
Like my cousin, this Billy failed high school English. But unlike Billy, his parents have money. His mother is the CEO of a major oil company, and she is giving me hundreds of dollars a month to help her son raise his grades so he can get into a good college. It is important that her son goes to college–not because college guarantees a job (in fact, a majority of unemployed people right now have a college degree)–but going to college has become part of the myth that entitles people to join the 1% of the population that controls a majority of the planet’s resources.
When her Billy is done with college, there will be a six-figure “entry level” job waiting for him, and he will believe he earned it.
$
What does it mean when a CEO can spend $400 a month to have her son tutored, while factory workers must send their children to live in an orphanage? What does it mean when an investor can jet to Sicily for a weekend jaunt, while the restaurant workers that staff the companies he “owns” don’t even get paid maternity leave? What does it mean when one community is able to help its homeless youth, while another community cannot?
I’d call this Feudalism, but the truth is, it is much worse.
Our ancestors brought this Demon of Capitalism upon us because they wanted to end the harsh disparities of Feudalism–a system in which 1% of the population claimed absolute power because they were born into “noble families.” But Capitalism is simply a new myth to uphold the same disparities:
Now, instead of claiming their power through birthright, the ruling 1% claim they have earned their power. This is the myth that money creates.
Those of us at the bottom of the pyramid receive money for working hard, so we believe the myth that the ruling class also earned their positions. But the average CEO makes 650 times the amount as the average American worker. How could it be possible to earn such an inflated amount of power?
The horrible truth is that money has nothing to do with work, and everything to do with power. The people who are already in power have access to infinite amounts of money because they own our debts, they set our wages, and they print the money that we are given for our labor. And we are tricked into believing that other people can somehow earn this level of power, when the game was rigged in their favor from the beginning.
On top of normalizing the same disparities that existed under Feudalism, the Capitalist myth includes the need for exponential increase of profits. So products will continue to break sooner and sooner, the planet’s resources will continue to be devoured, and the conditions for workers will get worse with each passing year. All so the CEOs can convince the investors that their company made a profit. All so the aristocrats can play a game that justifies their own status.
$
My mother lives alone in a trailer park now. I visit her a few times a year, and she always asks for money. She knows I don’t have any–that I am broke and still haven’t paid off my college debt–but she still asks. Old habit, I guess. Perhaps it is the only way she knows how to ask for love.
$
A few months after Billy died, some marine biologists found his mother’s body floating in a tide pool, her fingers wrapped around the gun in her pocket, her bleached hair dancing with the ebb and flow of the sea.
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None of us chose to be born into Capitalism, but every day, we choose to continue it.
From the moment we received our first grades in school, we became invested in the system–a system of competing to receive symbols instead of working to build love. We became transfixed by the game of “Just one more dollar, just one more paycheck, just one more lottery ticket, just one more investment…” Soon, we become so invested in our symbol-laden Capitalist Identities, we forget to ask ourselves if the system is worth it. But as we run faster and faster chasing the Idol of Money, why does happiness draw further and further away?
Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.
This issue we tried a lot experiments with how we make the paper. We added an extra weekend to the editing process to try to allow more time for article revisions and better communication with authors. This also gave us more time to focus on the detail work of putting together this beast, which we normally cram into a short span of time. This was supposed to make for more of a clear-headed and rested layout. . . although it is after midnight as this is getting typed. Also to try to make the articles easier to read, we discussed changing the type font for all the text, but ended up deciding to print some pages in our regular font, and other pages in a serif font (Garamond). Let us know which one you prefer, or if you have any other suggestions and perhaps by next issue we’ll pick one or the other. Most daring of all we tried to have the articles online and available for proofreading a week before we went to print as opposed to the night before. This good idea took several hours to implement and was summarily ignored — like a lot of “improvements” that radicals put forth.
Real life disrupted all the fancy processes when several people who were halfway done with pages had to leave so they could do jail support for friends who got arrested after an Occupy the Farm encampment was raided at 4 am. This is our favorite problem to have when we make an issue.
While our collective has conflicting opinions about social media, and typically the internet just confuses us, we compromised and one of us registered a tumblr account for the collective. You can see pictures of us making the paper and more at slingshotnews.tumblr.com.
Transition is the only constant. As we stumble forward with the project and our process, a few long-time members of the collective are leaving, just as a new wave of people are joining.
Slingshot lost another alumni in March when Harlan Cross passed away. We originally met Harlan listening to his pirate radio show while we were doing layout. He had contests on his show and offered a free prize to winners, which he would drop off at Long Haul the day after the show — things like a potato or a rock in a paper bag labeled “free prize.” Harlan was wickedly funny and creative, a righteous union organizer, fearless radical, and a loyal friend. He had a brilliant appreciation for the absurd and the counter-culture. Harlan was a punk in the 70s who appreciated a wide range of music throughout his life. Hell — he was also a Deadhead. Like a lot of people on the margins, Harlan spent time in prison on drug charges, was homeless sometimes, and battled substance abuse. We’ll miss him.
While we were making this issue, climate scientists announced that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere had exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in 2 million years. This was on top of the super strange weather no one can help but notice: late snow storms, early heat waves, no rain when its supposed to rain, or else intense flooding. Such climate chaos is exactly what scientists have been telling us would happen as global warming puts more energy into the climate systems, making them more unstable and energetic. You’d expect we’d be able to list a few climate related protests or actions in our calendar, but we couldn’t find much. As a matter of fact, protests of any kind against anything were hard to find, which is reflected in this issue. There are lots of articles about ideas — less so on putting theory into practice. We sense the system is fragile and vulnerable, but it may not topple on its own without some help from you.
Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors, etc. to make this paper. If you send something written, please be open to editing.
Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot Collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collectives members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.
Thanks to the people who made this: Aaron, Becca, Bill, Cris, Darin, Eggplant, Enola!, Hanora, Hayley, Jesse, Joey, J-tronn, Kermit, Kris, Lew, Moh, Stephski, Tessa, Xander. and all the authors and artists who contributed work.
Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting
Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on August 18, 2013 at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)
Article Deadline & Next Issue Date
Submit your articles for issue 114 by September 14, 2013 at 3 p.m.
Volume 1, Number 113, Circulation 20,000
Printed May 16, 2013
Slingshot Newspaper
A publication of Long Haul
Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue
Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703
Phone (510) 540-0751 • slingshot@tao.ca slingshot.tao.ca • fucking twitter @slingshotnews
Circulation Information
Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue or back issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Each envelope is one lb. (9 copies) — let us know how many envelopes you want. In the Bay Area, pick up copies at Long Haul or Bound Together Books in SF.
Slingshot Free stuff
We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues of Slingshot for the cost of postage: Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. Also, our full-color coffee table book about People’s Park is free or by sliding scale donation: send $1 – $25 for a copy. slingshot@tao.ca / Box 3051 Berkeley, 94703.
I am a trans person who is newer to the term cis. I don’t use the term and I don’t really like it, because I find the term confusing (what the hell does it mean? I did study and understand the Latin roots blah blah, which to me only adds to the confusion) and insulting (I know it’s about trans people not feeling othered, but do we have to call our friends who don’t identify as trans “cis” which sounds like they are cysts?) I do want to support my younger radical trans friends in developing new language that takes the burden of otherness off of our shoulders, but then again I feel othered often within activist communities, with their strict language and code rules that are supposed to be challenging mainstream hierarchies but end up creating hierarchies within its PC activist scenes (yes, activism does act and react just like all those “shallow” rocker and hipster scenes, the same popularity contests ensue because I haven’t picked up on the new PC term of the moment.) Personally I find “cis” ageist and classist, if we are gonna keep going down these roads of political critique, ageist because most older trans folks don’t know the term, and classist because the whole analysis and linguistics around it smacks of college privilege.
I actually read Enola D’s apology for Slingshot running Robert Eggplant’s article before I read his critique of the term cis, and I have to say the righteous PC shame feel of that apology made me feel more offended and isolated than his article (although I realize she was venting for many people), which I rushed out to read. I have critiques of Eggplant’s writing too, his defensiveness about being labeled cis and white comes off as silly when one puts into context how trans people and people of color are almost always having to be labeled, while non trans and white people have been considered the norm and thus haven’t had to feel how gross it can be to be labeled as “other”. Labeling has a way of feeling negative, boxed in, even when it is meant to be clinical or empowering. So the shoe is being put on the other foot, but the problem is that we aren’t transcending the bullshit, we are just shoving it around. Ok we all have shit on our shoes, maybe that is a good starting place. I don’t think Eggplant should get to decide what language is acceptable within activist or trans communities, but that he is daring to share his feelings and thoughts should be appreciated even if you disagree. We all need to be talking about this shit.
In the late nineties and early two thousands other trans friends and I used the term Tranny, which is out of favor and considered offensive now in many circles, but to us we were re-defining the term; we were showing our pride and fearlessness to be ourselves, that to be different and unique was a plus. We also used the term “Genny” to describe non trans folks, which was playfully jabbing. Genny meaning both genetic and generic gendered. I don’t use those terms anymore, because like the current terms of trans and cis, the problem of either/or continues. To me one of the most beautiful aspects of the trans experience, for trans and non trans folks alike, is that it shows that life isn’t just either/or. My non trans friends don’t claim to fully understand my experience, but they don’t want to be a cyst, they’d probably be fine with being a sis, but if we are gonna really have to study Latin to understand this debate, then I’d say cis is even worse, because no one is a rock forever embedded on the far or near side of some arbitrary line. In the late nineties there were debates within the trans community between those who identified as transsexual and transgendered. At the time, after a couple years of hormones and electrolyis, and legally changing my gender, I identified as transsexual, and understood my transsexual friends critique of transgender as being too broad, anyone who wore clothes usually assigned the opposite gender suddenly could claim transgendered when us who were changing ourselves completely in a path that is long and painful were suddenly out-dated. But as time went on and I discovered I was a transgendered transsexual, becoming re-empowered with my gender-queer self, I came to feel that this desperation to claim a term, to decide who is trans and who isn’t, is repeating the same either/or bullshit that oppresses so many trans folks of all types. As a trans person coming from punk rock I’ve found it easier than some trans people to live as my own gender version, although that doesn’t slow homophobic or transphobic attacks, or change the fact that I still have to constantly remind people that I prefer the she pronoun, but I had a subculture when many don’t. Really there is no one trans experience, there are unlimited trans experiences: some trans folks are empowered by calling themselves trans, who fall all over and beyond the gender spectrum, while others don’t want that label, who identity as a man or woman and so rightly expect to be respected as such.
This debate reminds me of another debate raging around the use of the word “queer”, and who should or shouldn’t identity as queer, queer as an inclusive or exclusive term. As one who has been massively shaped by queer culture in many forms, yet doesn’t identify with LGBT as an institution, being part of the thrown-on tail end B and T of that lineage, I’m tired of L and G people deciding who should or should not be queer, as if they are the “pure” queers, and us others just don’t count as much. These days trans-ness is a lot more visible, and accepted, than in the nineties when I was coming out, when radical feminism often still thought of transwomen as co-opting women’s bodies, and transmen as traitors to womanhood. We’ve moved beyond that reactionary and simplistic outlook just like we are now more supportive, at least in activist political speak, of people of color and sex workers. Of course, the reality isn’t so clean cut, the same shit goes on and on, and those who are labeled as other, be it trans, of color, queer, or sex worker, still get the brunt. So I can see the reasoning of cis as a term, and white privilege is something all white people should learn to de-construct, but what I’d say is missing from more recent political analysis is class. Of course everyone thinks they’re poor since we’re all from the 99 percent, but class is more than how much money you currently make. Class is culture, and who can argue that the Bay Area has been getting richer and richer, and side effects of this are that the punk scenes and activists scenes also are getting richer, but none of these college kids want to think of themselves that way, so they own poorness as they marginalize poor people all around them. I find Eggplant’s piece, problematic as it comes across as coming from working and poor cultural perspectives, old school saying-it-like-it-is style, and I’d say we need more of that, and less confusing college speak that only those ‘in the know’ understand. This piece is written with love and respect for Slingshot, Enola, Eggplant, Kermit, and all those trying to be trans allies, let’s keep talking!
Slingshot collective will make the 2014 organizer this summer. Drop by or contact us to help. We are a tiny collective — even smaller in the summer with members traveling — so we’re relying on the Slingshot miracle to make the organizer. That’s when a variety of folks we’ve never met before show up during the two weekends we make the organizer to sit in our loft making art, listening to music, eating food and making decisions at meetings. Sound like fun? Join us.
In May and June, we’ll edit, correct and improve the list of historical dates. Deadline for finishing: June 22. 
If you want to design a section of the calendar, let us know or send us random art by June 22. Deadline to finish calendar pages or give us suggestions for 2014 is July 27. We need all new radical contact listings and cover art submissions by July 27. 

If you have ideas for the short features we publish in the back, let us know by July 27. We try to print different features every year. 
 
If you’re in the Bay Area July 27/28 or August 3/4, we’ll put it all together by hand.
Though there are a number of wonderful radical essays and pamphlets about the U.S. Grand Jury system floating around online, most of them are (justifiably) lengthy, full of inaccessible legal jargon, or buried in larger guides on fighting state repression. As a result, even as anarchists celebrate the exciting release of the Pacific Northwest Grand Jury Resisters, widespread confusion about what a grand jury actually is persists. What I’m presenting here is intended only as a cursory introduction to Grand Juries for anarchists who, like me, want to spend as little time as possible talking about the legal system.
The Basics:
The kind of jury that most people are familiar with is merely one of many varieties that a prosecutor (a lawyer responsible for presenting a case against people accused of crimes, or ‘defendants’) can choose to assemble, called a ‘petit jury’ or ‘trial jury’ – think To Kill a Mockingbird. The purpose is a familiar one: to decide whether or not someone who has been indicted (formally accused of a crime) is actually guilty, and if so, to determine the punishment. Scenarios in which a trial jury is assembled typically include a defendant who has been charged with a crime, a defense lawyer who represents them, the eponymous jury of twelve or fewer people who lawyers from both legal teams deem representative of the general population (naturally, they rarely represent much more than the lawyers’ worldview), and a judge who presides over the case, supposedly to make it fair to all parties or whatever. A federal grand jury court, however, does not include any of these people: it only includes a prosecutor, their hand-picked assemblage of sixteen to twenty-three jurors, and a few witnesses who have been given a subpoena (an order to appear before the jury).
Since the ‘witnesses’ hauled before a grand jury haven’t been charged with a crime, prosecutors are able to elude the constitutional provisions that apply in criminal court. Whereas the sixth amendment of the constitution gives a defendant in a criminal trial the right to the presence of their lawyer not only during their trial, but also during police interrogation, a Grand Jury victim is prohibited from having a lawyer present during the prosecutor’s interrogation. The 5th Amendment specifically ensures that nobody shall be compelled to be “a witness against himself”… except in front of a grand jury. The ‘exclusionary rule’ in the fourth amendment holds that evidence collected in a manner that violates the constitution – by conducting an illegal search, for example – doesn’t apply to grand juries. While trial jurors are expected to be screened for bias, grand jurors are not. Since grand juries last for eighteen months at a time, and can easily be extended for another six months, assembling one more or less amounts to an extended suspension of constitutional law in a region.
The original intention of this practice, which dates as far back as a 1166 promulgation from King Henry II of England, was allegedly to curb state power: the American Bar Association (an organization that sets academic standards for lawyers) states that it, “act[ed] as a buffer between the king (and his prosecutors) and the citizens,” so a community jury could pre-screen people before a prosecutor charged any of them with a crime and brought them to trial. Even in colonial American courts, citizens could still submit allegations against other people that a grand jury would consider before deciding to prosecute. In practice, this often gave citizens some sway over powerful politicians: in one famous case, a grand jury refused to charge the anti-royalist newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger with a crime three times in a row, rebuffing the Royal Governor of New York’s attempts to try him for libel, which I guess is kind of cool. Nowadays, however, only a prosecutor can bring a case to a grand jury.
The Reality:
Of course, anyone who has been arrested and charged with a crime knows that prosecutors and cops rarely care about jury bias or the constitutional rights that defendants are given (not even in goddamn To Kill A Mockingbird!), and any anarchist who has read the constitution knows that public juries and constitutional rights are a lousy substitute for smashing capitalism anyway. But it’s easy to see how the ease with which grand juries avoid constitutional encumbrances would make them especially attractive tools for federal lawyers intent on making your life miserable.
Recently, federal grand juries have been established in the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota, and Santa Cruz, and given the Department of Justice’s recent obsession with beleaguering anarchists, it’s extremely likely that this legal tactic will continue to spring up in other famously radical regions such as the SF Bay Area or New Orleans. Law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors use grand juries to intimidate radicals, threatening to force them to testify against their allies and loved ones to destroy bonds of trust and community, especially in urban areas rich with anarchist activity. Well-organized resistances to the tactic have emerged, however, and if efforts are successful the new popularity of using grand juries to harass radicals will wane.
Your Options:
I’m not your lawyer, so none of this should be interpreted as professional legal advice. If a cop, federal agent, or any other kind of jerk approaches you with a subpoena, you may treat them how you would in any other situation: don’t give them any information beyond what is legally required in your state (this usually just means giving your name, but you should check your local laws to be sure). You are not legally required to let them search you or your home, or even to open the door for them (if they have a warrant, the situation may be a little more complicated). You are required to accept their paperwork and nothing else. If you don’t want to open the door for them, they are allowed to leave it near you (e.g. on your doorstep or next to you) to pick up later.
Afterward, you should contact a lawyer immediately, and assume that everything the cops tell you about grand juries is a lie until you confirm it with your new legal buddy. Warn your friends and family that a grand jury is in town: it is very possible that they will receive similar harassment soon. If you simply don’t show up in court, you will likely be charged with contempt of court (disobeying court orders), appear before a trial jury, and possibly even serve some jail time, though it’s possible that your court date will be postponed indefinitely. Either way, make sure to ask your lawyer about the possibility of requesting your judge to quash (nullify) your subpoena,.
If you do show up for your court date, you still have an important decision to make: will you cooperate with the prosecutor? You’ll be hard pressed to find many American anarchists who think it’s a good idea to do so under any circumstances and it’s not hard to understand why: it puts everyone you know (and many people who you don’t) at risk. You should expect that any answers that you give to a prosecutor’s questions, even the seemingly benign or trivial ones (“Do you know Jackie? Do you live alone? Have you ever gone downtown before?”), will be twisted beyond anything you could have foreseen, instantly turning you into an unwitting snitch, even if you didn’t intend to screw anyone over. You will have no idea what questions they will be asking you ahead of time, but many of the questions may be traps set up to catch you in the act of perjury (lying as a witness), so even seemingly innocuous answers like “I don’t know” can get you thrown in prison down the line. The prosecutor will try and convince you that grand jury cooperation is your get-out-of-trouble-free card, but you have absolutely no reason to believe anything they say; you may still be charged with a felony when a new lawyer takes over their job, or you may be summoned for additional interrogation in the future because prosecutors have you pegged as a talker. Ultimately, it’s entirely possible for a prosecutor to simply lie, locking up cooperators despite any prior promises.
Not everyone cooperates. Last November, one grand jury witness dealt with their summons by only giving the prosecutor their name and birth date. When given any other question, they simply responded with “I am exercising my state and federal constitutional rights including the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments,” until the exasperated prosecutor gave up. They were held in solitary confinement in federal prison for several months before their release, but it’s difficult to tell how many people (including themselves) they saved from long prison sentences.
Resisters may also be considering the irreparable social alienation their testimony would cause. It can’t be emphasized enough: cooperating with the prosecution team puts their friends, their neighbors, their family, and even complete strangers at risk of being thrown in jail, whether or not they have done anything illegal. So even if you think a grand jury resister believes that they’ve somehow cooked up a foolproof plan to spill the beans and get out of trouble, they can’t necessarily expect the people they love to be waiting for them when they get home, because whether or not they’ve “done the right thing” or behaved like “a good anarchist,” they are likely to be considered untrustworthy and dangerous for the rest of their lives. Some cooperators have left town altogether because they no longer felt welcome there. This pattern of social ostracization of cooperators doesn’t always end in tragedy, however: a judge recently released two Pacific Northwest grand jury resisters in part because he considered it unreasonable to imprison non-cooperators indefinitely when they would face serious social consequences for testifying.
It’s clear, then, that there are major downsides to snitching beyond the obvious moral or political issues that are more commonly raised. But people considering noncooperation with Grand Juries shouldn’t need to rely on super secret-agent anti-snitching stamina to be a member in a radical network: there are countless radical allies (and even a few liberal ones), including dedicated friends and strangers (and lawyers!) who will guide and support you through grand jury resistance if you choose to challenge the legitimacy of the twisted grand jury system. These are the people who deserve your trust, not the federal lawyers hunting for an easy snitch.
In the meantime, take the advice of some folks from the Oakland Commune in the article “Stay Calm: Tips to Keeping Safe in Times of State Repression”: nurture healthy relationships in your personal community and deescalate whatever personal conflicts you have, as people are more likely to break down and snitch if they feel isolated, afraid, or contemptuous of their comrades. It will be easier to keep your wits about you in a time of crisis if you think of this an opportunity to build solidarity and strong social bonds in radical scenes often famous for fractious interpersonal drama and political infighting. You can start by reading some of the resources listed below and asking your friends / housemates / family / neighbors / coworkers / partners / etc how they feel about them. If we manage to get everyone on the same page, then when the Grand Slam comes, we’ll be ready.
Resources and Further Reading
“If An Agent Knocks…” is a classic and accessible guide to dealing with grand juries and assholes from the FBI. ccrjustice.org/ifanagentknocks
For true legal wonks, Susan Brenner and Lori Shaw of the University of Dayton created a bulky website dedicated to grand jury info. campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/
The absolutely wonderful Bay of Rage article mentioned above is available at bayofrage.com/featured-articles/stay-calm-some-tips-for-keeping-safe-in-times-of-state-repression/
I grew up in Richmond, California, of Yaqui / Mexican / Choctaw / Cherokee / European descent and became an activist in my early 20s. I began as an anti-nuclear activist in the early 1980s. I later worked on uranium and plutonium issues, as well as Native American issues.
My husband and I, as well as other Bay Area Native American community members, had been involved a bit with Occupy in Oakland. When Idle No More (INM) started in Canada in November of last year, we became very excited. The First Nation’s message regarding treaty violations and protecting the environment from governmental and corporate devastation resonated with us and with many others around the world. It was inspiring to see the Idle No More solidarity photos on social media from around the world from both indigenous and non-indigenous people.
There are so many issues that have affected us in Native America for hundreds of years that are now impacting U.S. and Canadian citizens. These issues include the theft of lands for corporate profits, environmental illnesses from the waste of the mining industry and other corporate environmental disasters, as well as the devastation of the land, water and air.
In December, 2012, there were local INM solidarity events beginning in the Bay Area and Northern California. These events included, and continue to include prayer, teach-ins regarding the devastation of the environment, indigenous issues and round dances, which are dances of unity, friendship and peace. They have been conducted in city plazas, at the Capital building in Sacramento, in shopping malls and parks.
The Keystone XL pipeline was an issue that I had been active in resisting since 2011. I was at both of the protests at the White House that year. When Forward on Climate was being organized this year, I helped mobilize the INM solidarity community in the Bay Area to be there. We were also at the March 23 event at the Federal Building in San Francisco and at the Earth Day action in April. Not only were we welcomed at these events, we opened them in the Idle No More format of prayer, education and round dances. This welcoming of our community into the environmental activist community has been very validating, and reminds me of the prophesy of the “Rainbow Tribe” of people of all colors who will make a stand to ensure life on earth continues.
There are many Native American and First Nations prophesies that are hundreds of years old that speak of the time we all find ourselves in today. Some tribes refer to this time as the “purification time”. Most of humanity is only beginning to understand that there is a natural balance that must be maintained in order for life to thrive on Mother Earth
Many tribal nations refer to the “original instructions” that were given to them thousands of years ago on how to live in right relationship with all of relations who share life here.
The INM solidarity groups here in the Bay Area welcome all people of good hearts to participate with us as we move toward the future we all want. www.GatheringTribes.com
The indigenous communities of Rio Blanco, Honduras blocked the main access road leading to the proposed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on April 1 to stop construc-tion of the dam. On the 2nd of April, they issued an ultimatum to the company, demand-ing the immediate removal of construction equipment & permanent removal of the project.
The communities of Rio Blanco, whom hold a community title to the territory, were not adequately consulted nor allowed to participate in the process leading to this project. Only the mayor of the municipality, and a few well compensated individuals, ratified the project. The right of indigenous peoples to determine their own process of development is guarantied by UN convention 169. The construction and completion of this dam will cause widespread environmental destruction, flooding inhabited and utilized areas, restricting the access of water to many thousands of people in Rio Blanco and down stream, cause the degradation of pristine natural areas, produce huge quantities of greenhouse gasses through the decomposition of submerged biomass, in addition to water and land contamination caused by the construction. Simply put, this dam is a death sentence to the indigenous communities that have lived here for generations.
This type of so-called “green development” has been greatly accelerated after the 2009 coup which has since opened the flood gates to transnational and neo-liberal exploitation of natural resources. Since 2009, there have been around 360 newly accepted development concessions in Honduras, 30% of which are on indigenous lands. Within this neo-liberal framework, dam projects serve a dual purpose. SIEPAC (Central American Electrical Interconnection System) part of the Mesoamerica Project (previously called Plan Pueblo-Panama) will connect the electrical grids of all Mesoamerica allowing cheap energy to be transported to the energy hungry USA. In addition, dams are necessary to redirect the enormous quantity of water needed for mining operations. For these reasons, resistance to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam and dam projects in general is extremely important because the dam will open the door to exponentially worse environmental degradation and destruction of indigenous cultures.
The danger to the communities of Rio Blanco for participating in this action cannot be understated. For example, the land reclamation action 3 years ago in Bajo Aguan has seen the murder of over 100 participants and counting. There has been an influx of heavily armed men in the area, and violent threats against participants have been consistent.
On April 12, 40 heavily armed National Police evicted the blockade but it was reestablished the next day. On April 19, 50 community members hiked to the construction site and peacefully forced workers and equipment to leave. Earth-movers had already caused heart breaking devastation to the river valley. The blockade and protests are on-going as Slingshot goes to press.
International solidarity plays an extremely important role in defending the human rights of those in defense of mother earth and indigenous culture. In addition to any form of solidarity action imaginable, the communities of Rio Blanco are asking for people to contact Honduran and corporate officials who are building and financing the dam. For more info contact www.copinh.org.
The California Department of Corrections (CDC) successfully apprehended and rehabilitated a billboard between Potrero Avenue and Highway 101 near 19th Street in San Francisco to support our colleagues in the military who have come under public scrutiny due to the recent hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay. Force-feeding creates stressful conditions for overtaxed medical personnel and dangerous working conditions for military police officers in the Immediate Reaction Force, who must subdue and restrain a detainee prior to his meal. The corrected billboard is currently at liberty and though it seems to have successfully readjusted to public life, it will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into prior criminal behavior. Founded in 1994, the CDC is a private correctional facility that protects the public through the secure management, discipline and rehabilitation of advertising. correctionsdepartment.org.
