Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

Misdirection & Target Selection, Part 1

We’re up against a lot. With hun­dreds of species going extinct every day, with the oceans being vac­u­umed of life, with the last ves­tiges of wild forests being felled or burned and the heart of the plan­et being torn up to poi­son the air, civ­i­liza­tion is dri­ving Earth towards biot­ic col­lapse.

We’re up against a lot. With hun­dreds of species going extinct every day, with the oceans being vac­u­umed of life, with the last ves­tiges of wild forests being felled or burned and the heart of the plan­et being torn up to poi­son the air, civ­i­liza­tion is dri­ving Earth towards biot­ic col­lapse. We can’t afford to waste time or ener­gy with so much at stake; dis­man­tling the soci­ety that is dis­man­tling the plan­et is no easy task.

For more than 30 years now, the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment has been work­ing toward that end, yet in few (if any) cir­cum­stances have we been able to seri­ous­ly dis­lodge the foun­da­tions of indus­tri­al­ism. Despite our best efforts, the species count con­tin­ues to decline as the car­bon con­tin­ues to rise. Those we’re up against are well pro­tect­ed and have immense resources at hand to pro­tect them­selves from dis­rup­tion.

Sys­tems of power—such as patri­archy, white suprema­cy, cap­i­tal­ism, civilization—safeguard them­selves through brute force. They react with over­whelm­ing vio­lence against those who oppose them. How­ev­er, this isn’t the only tool avail­able to those in pow­er, and rarely is it the first to which they reach when they feel threat­ened. One of the more sin­is­ter and effec­tive tech­niques is sys­temic mis­di­rec­tion.

Oppres­sive and destruc­tive sys­tems pro­tect them­selves first and fore­most through dis­guise and decep­tion. They hide their weak­ness­es and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, coax­ing us into attack­ing dum­my tar­gets or sym­bols of their pow­er, rather than the mate­r­i­al struc­tures that sup­port their pow­er. The results are ones we’re all famil­iar with (or should be): we focus our atten­tion on spe­cif­ic symp­toms of the prob­lem rather than the under­ly­ing caus­es, and our efforts for polit­i­cal change are dif­fuse and unco­or­di­nat­ed, chal­leng­ing only par­tic­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tions of larg­er oppres­sive pow­er sys­tems, rather than the sys­tems them­selves. We wan­der into a strate­gic dead-end, and ener­gy is redi­rect­ed into the sys­tem itself.

We are guid­ed into a strate­gic dead-end, and our ener­gy is redi­rect­ed to bol­ster the sys­tem itself.

Break­ing free of this mis­di­rec­tion-dynam­ic requires a thor­ough lift­ing-back of the veil that’s been draped over our eyes. It means focus­ing our efforts where they will be most effec­tive, tar­get­ing crit­i­cal nodes and bot­tle­necks with­in indus­tri­al sys­tems to bring civ­i­liza­tion down upon itself.

We need crit­i­cal and strate­gic process­es of tar­get selec­tion. One pow­er­ful tool towards this end is the CARVER Matrix. CARVER is an ana­lyt­ic for­mu­la used by mil­i­taries and secu­ri­ty cor­po­ra­tions for the selec­tion of tar­gets (and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of weak points). “CARVER” is an acronym for six dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria: crit­i­cal­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty, recu­per­abil­i­ty, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, effect, and rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty.

Crit­i­cal­i­ty is an assess­ment of tar­get val­ue and is the pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion in CARVER and tar­get selec­tion. A tar­get is crit­i­cal if destruc­tion, dam­age or dis­rup­tion has sig­nif­i­cant impact on the oper­a­tion of an enti­ty; or more blunt­ly, ‘how impor­tant is this tar­get to ene­my oper­a­tions?”  Dif­fer­ent tar­gets can be crit­i­cal to dif­fer­ent sys­tems in dif­fer­ent ways: phys­i­cal­ly (as in inter­state trans­mis­sion lines), eco­nom­i­cal­ly (such as a stock exchange), polit­i­cal­ly, social­ly, etc.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that noth­ing exists in a vac­u­um; soci­ety is made up of inter-relat­ed enti­ties and insti­tu­tions, and our tar­gets will be as well. Thus the crit­i­cal­i­ty of a poten­tial tar­get should be con­sid­ered in the con­text of the way that tar­get relates to larg­er sys­tems. For exam­ple, there are thou­sands of elec­tri­cal trans­mis­sion sub­sta­tions all over the world, and hence they may ini­tial­ly seem non-crit­i­cal. How­ev­er, some sub­sta­tions car­ry a much greater load than oth­ers and are sys­temic bot­tle­necks, whose dis­abling would have rip­ple effects across entire regions. Crit­i­cal­i­ty depends on sev­er­al fac­tors, includ­ing:

  • Time: How rapid­ly will the impact of the attack affect oper­a­tions?
  • Qual­i­ty: What per­cent­age of out­put, pro­duc­tion, or ser­vice will be cur­tailed by the attack?
  • Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: What will be affect­ed in the sys­tems of which the tar­get is a com­po­nent?

Acces­si­bil­i­ty refers to how fea­si­ble it is to reach the tar­get with suf­fi­cient peo­ple and resources to accom­plish the goal. What sorts of bar­ri­ers or deter­rents are in place, and how eas­i­ly they can be over­come? Acces­si­bil­i­ty includes not only reach­ing a tar­get, but the abil­i­ty to get away as well.

Recu­per­abil­i­ty is a mea­sure of how quick­ly the dam­age done to a tar­get will be repaired, replaced or bypassed. Just about any­thing can be replaced or rebuilt, but some par­tic­u­lar things are much more dif­fi­cult, such as elec­tri­cal trans­form­ers, few of which are man­u­fac­tured in the U.S. and which take months to pro­duce.

The fourth selec­tion fac­tor is vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Tar­gets are vul­ner­a­ble if one has the means to suc­cess­ful­ly dam­age, dis­able, or destroy them. In deter­min­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, it’s impor­tant to com­pare the scale of what is nec­es­sary to dis­able the tar­get to the capa­bil­i­ty of the “attack­ing ele­ment” to do so. For exam­ple, while an unguard­ed dam might seem a vul­ner­a­ble tar­get, if resisters had no means of brin­ing it down, it wouldn’t be con­sid­ered vul­ner­a­ble. Specif­i­cal­ly, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty depends on the nature & con­struc­tion of the tar­get, the amount & qual­i­ty of dam­age required to dis­able it, and the avail­able assets (per­son­nel, funds, equip­ment, weapons, moti­va­tion, exper­tise, etc.).

Next is effect.  Effect con­sid­ers the sec­ondary and ter­tiary impli­ca­tions of attack­ing a tar­get, includ­ing polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects. Put anoth­er way, this could be rephrased as “con­sid­er all the con­se­quences of your actions.” How will those in pow­er respond? How will the gen­er­al pop­u­lace respond? How will this affect future efforts?

Last is rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty; will the attack be rec­og­nized as such, or might it be attrib­uted to oth­er fac­tors (e.g. “It wasn’t arson­ists that burned down the facil­i­ty, it was an elec­tri­cal fire”). Depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances, this can cut either way; tak­ing cred­it for an attack can bol­ster sup­port and bring more atten­tion to an issue, but it may also make action­ists more vul­ner­a­ble to repres­sion. Rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty also applies at a more indi­vid­ual lev­el: were fin­ger­prints or oth­er evi­dence left at the site of the tar­get through which the iden­ti­ty of the attack­ers can be deter­mined?

Often, numer­i­cal val­ues between 1 and 10 are giv­en to each of the tar­get selec­tion cri­te­ria in the CARVER Matrix, and then totaled for each poten­tial tar­get. More gen­er­al­ly, CARVER presents a crit­i­cal frame­work for strate­gic plan­ning and deci­sion-mak­ing, help­ing us to avoid mis­di­rect­ed action.

It needs to be said that this sort of crit­i­cal and cal­cu­lat­ed approach to resis­tance efforts applies to non­vi­o­lent & above­ground groups and oper­a­tions as well as those that are mil­i­tant or under­ground. Non­vi­o­lent resis­tance is too often dis­tort­ed to fit roman­ti­cized ideas of a moral high ground, and is rel­e­gat­ed to pure sym­bol­ism. But strug­gle (whether vio­lent or non­vi­o­lent) isn’t about sym­bol­ic resis­tance; it’s about fac­ing down the real­i­ty of pow­er, iden­ti­fy­ing its lynch­pins, and using force to dis­able or break them. The par­tic­u­lar tac­tics we use deter­mine the form the force will be applied in, but unless we iden­ti­fy and tar­get the crit­i­cal lynch­pins, the dai­ly destruc­tion wrought upon the earth will con­tin­ue unabat­ed as we strike at the dis­trac­tions dan­gled before us.

For too long our move­ments have fall­en prey to poor tar­get selec­tion or mis­di­rec­tion. When we’re not too busy fight­ing defen­sive bat­tles, we focus our ener­gies on those enti­ties which are either entire­ly non-crit­i­cal to the func­tion of indus­tri­al­ism or are invul­ner­a­ble giv­en our capac­i­ty for action. And the world burns while we spin our wheels.

In part 2, we will take a clos­er look at sev­er­al exam­ples of dif­fer­ent actions, apply­ing this ana­lyt­i­cal exam­i­na­tion to bet­ter under­stand the impor­tance and rel­e­vance of tar­get selec­tion in rad­i­cal move­ments.

The forces we’re up against are ruth­less and cal­cu­lat­ed; they’ll do what­ev­er they can to keep us inef­fec­tive, and when that fails, they bring down all the repres­sive force of which they’re capa­ble. If we’re to be suc­cess­ful in stop­ping indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion, we’ll have to iden­ti­fy and under­mine its crit­i­cal sup­port sys­tems. We don’t have much time, which is why we can’t afford to waste it on actions, tar­gets or strate­gies that don’t move us tan­gi­bly clos­er to our goals.

Shell — Idiots at work

Hav­ing only just start­ed work­ing on the con­tro­ver­sial tun­nel, Shel­l’s engi­neers are already fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.

As local peo­ple always pre­dict­ed, the doib, an unusu­al blue/grey min­er­al soil found under peat bog, is caus­ing issues.

Hav­ing only just start­ed work­ing on the con­tro­ver­sial tun­nel, Shel­l’s engi­neers are already fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems.

As local peo­ple always pre­dict­ed, the doib, an unusu­al blue/grey min­er­al soil found under peat bog, is caus­ing issues.

This is the first time such a machine has had to deal with this unsta­ble vis­cous mate­r­i­al. This once again high­lights the exper­i­men­tal nature of the project.

Despite hav­ing tak­en more than a year to design and build, accord­ing to our sources the TBM got stuck after 30 meters hav­ing only just reached the doib. As we write there’s no end in sight for this headache.
The tun­nel and pipeline cuts right through Sruwad­da­con Bay which is a des­ig­nat­ed con­ser­va­tion site, a can­di­date Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC) and Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area (SPA).

Shell has insult­ing­ly named the Cor­rib TBM ‘Fion­nu­ala’ after the female of the Chil­dren of Lir, one of the leg­ends most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Erris region.

Although the envi­ron­men­t’s help is wel­come, we could always use more peo­ple here. Now that the spring is here come and help make 2013 anoth­er unlucky year for Shell.

Back­ground infor­ma­tion on the tun­nel (source : Shell.ie) :

“The TBM for the Cor­rib tun­nel was designed and built in Schwanau, Ger­many by Her­renknecht, one of the world’s largest mak­ers of TBMs.”

“The tun­nel will have an exter­nal diam­e­ter of 4.2m and an inter­nal diam­e­ter of 3.5m and will run at depths of between 5.5m and 12m under Sruwad­da­con Bay”

“When con­struct­ed, the tun­nel will [if it’s built] be the longest tun­nel in Ire­land and the longest gas pipeline tun­nel any­where in Europe.”

“As the TBM moves for­ward, a series of 1.2m wide con­crete rings made up of pre­cast inter­lock­ing con­crete seg­ments is erect­ed.   These con­crete rings, which are fab­ri­cat­ed in Ire­land, will even­tu­al­ly line the entire tun­nel.”

“As the cut­ter head rotates, hydraulic cylin­ders attached to the spine of the TBM pro­pel it for­ward a few feet at a time.”

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com

Tar Sands Blockade Activists Forced to Settle Lawsuit But Will Continue to Fight

TransCanada Claimed $5 Million in Damages

On Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 25th, a group of activists agreed to a se

TransCanada Claimed $5 Million in Damages

On Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 25th, a group of activists agreed to a set­tle­ment in TransCanada’s law­suit against Tar Sands Block­ade, Ris­ing Tide North Texas, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, and nine­teen indi­vid­u­als. The SLAPP suit (Strate­gic Law­suit Against Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion) alleged that direct action against Key­stone XL has cost Tran­sCana­da $5 mil­lion. This con­tra­dicts fre­quent pub­lic state­ments by TransCanada’s spokes­peo­ple that block­aders were not imped­ing con­struc­tion in any mean­ing­ful way.

The eight Tex­ans who came to court to defend them­selves on Fri­day, some of whom had not been active­ly involved with Tar Sands Block­ade since protests in August, were threat­ened with los­ing their homes and life’s sav­ings if the law­suit went for­ward. In order to pro­tect the liveli­hoods and depen­dents of brave activists like Tam­mie Car­son, who locked her­self to a truck car­ry­ing Key­stone XL pipe, the activists agreed to set­tle the law­suit. The cor­po­ra­tion will not seek the $5 mil­lion in finan­cial dam­ages, and the named defen­dants and orga­ni­za­tions agreed to not tres­pass on Key­stone XL prop­er­ty in Texas and Okla­homa or face addi­tion­al charges.

Despite this legal set­back, mem­bers of Tar Sands Block­ade are as deter­mined as ever to stop Key­stone XL. The sus­tained direct action cam­paign will con­tin­ue. Here’s a chronol­o­gy of all the direct actions tak­en since August 2012.

Defen­dants made the fol­low­ing state­ments in response to the set­tle­ment:

Tam­mie Car­son, a life­long Tex­an, grand­moth­er, and defen­dant from Arling­ton, TX, said:

“I took action for my grand­kids’ future. I couldn’t sit idly by and watch as a multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate bul­ly abused emi­nent domain to build a dirty and dan­ger­ous tar sands pipeline right through Tex­ans’ back­yards. I had no choice but to set­tle or lose my home and every­thing I’ve worked for my entire life.”

 

Ram­sey Sprague, Tar Sands Block­ade spokesper­son, and defen­dant from Fort Worth, TX, said:

“Tran­sCana­da is dead wrong if they think a civ­il law­suit against a hand­ful of Tex­ans is going to stop a grass­roots civ­il dis­obe­di­ence move­ment. This is noth­ing more than anoth­er exam­ple of Tran­sCana­da repress­ing dis­sent and bul­ly­ing Tex­ans who are defend­ing their homes and futures from tox­ic tar sands.”

Lau­ren Regan, an attor­ney with the Civ­il Lib­er­ties Defense Cen­ter and one of the legal coor­di­na­tors for the Tar Sands Block­ade made the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“The SLAPP suit (Strate­gic Law­suit Against Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion) filed against the peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that are fight­ing against TransCanada’s uneth­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive pipeline will nev­er stop the people’s resis­tance to the XL Pipeline. Tran­sCana­da has repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to vio­late the law and bul­ly the peo­ple of Texas: through cor­po­rate cor­rup­tion and lies, they obtained “com­mon car­ri­er” sta­tus in Texas in order to steal pri­vate prop­er­ty from low income and hard work­ing Tex­ans; they have attempt­ed to bring the full weight of the police state upon non­vi­o­lent activists in an attempt to crush their peace­ful resistance–using mace, tasers, and phys­i­cal bru­tal­i­ty.

Despite phys­i­cal harm, lengthy incar­cer­a­tions, felony charges, and now civ­il law­suits to restrict their right to protest, the peo­ple have not been deterred and have only been embold­ened in the face of Transcanada’s attempt at repres­sion and bul­ly­ing. At each attempt by Tran­sCana­da to chill the cit­i­zens’ rights to protest the XL Pipeline, the people’s lawyers will stand up to defend them in the Court’s. For every pro­tes­tor that is jailed or beat­en, ten more arrive to take that person’s place. For every home­own­er who has had their land stolen, and dan­ger­ous tar sands oil now threat­ens their health and envi­ron­ment, peo­ple from around the coun­try will band togeth­er to pro­tect the next threat­ened com­mu­ni­ty through a vari­ety of non­vi­o­lent tools. Resis­tance is Fer­tile. The sur­vival of the plan­et in the face of glob­al cli­mate change deserves noth­ing less.”

Armed indigenous community forces Petroamazonas to abandon oil project in Ecuador

An indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in the Ecuado­ri­an Ama­zon has won a reprieve after build­ing up an arse­nal of spears, blow­pipes, machetes and guns to fend off an expect­ed intru­sion by the army and a state-run oil com­pa­ny.

An indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in the Ecuado­ri­an Ama­zon has won a reprieve after build­ing up an arse­nal of spears, blow­pipes, machetes and guns to fend off an expect­ed intru­sion by the army and a state-run oil com­pa­ny.

The res­i­dents of Sani Isla expressed relief that a con­fronta­tion with Petroa­ma­zonas did not take place on Tues­day as antic­i­pat­ed, but said the firm is still try­ing to secure explo­ration rights in their area of pris­tine rain­for­est.

“We have won a vic­to­ry in our com­mu­ni­ty. We’re unit­ed,” said the com­mu­ni­ty pres­i­dent, Leonar­do Tapuy. “But the gov­ern­ment and the oil com­pa­ny won’t leave us alone. “

The Kich­wa tribe on Sani Isla, had said they were ready to fight to the death to pro­tect their ter­ri­to­ry, which cov­ers 70,000 hectares. More than a quar­ter of their land is in Yasuni nation­al park, the most bio­di­verse place on earth.

Petroa­ma­zonas had ear­li­er told them it would begin prospect­ing on their land on 15 Jan­u­ary, backed by pub­lic secu­ri­ty forces.

Before the expect­ed confrontation,the shaman, Patri­cio Jipa said peo­ple were mak­ing blow­pipes and spears, try­ing to bor­row guns and prepar­ing to use sticks stones and any oth­er weapons they could lay their hands on.

“Our inten­tion was not to hurt or kill any­one, but to stop them from enter­ing our land,” he said.

It is unclear why Petroa­ma­zonas hes­i­tat­ed. The com­pa­ny has yet to respond to the Guardian’s request for a com­ment.

Locals spec­u­lat­ed that it was due to a reaf­fir­ma­tion of oppo­si­tion to the oil com­pa­ny at a marathon com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing on Sun­day.

“They’ve heard that we are unit­ed against the explo­ration so they have backed off,” said Fredy Gualin­ga, man­ag­er of the Sani Lodge. “We’re hap­py they haven’t come. Life is going on as nor­mal.”

The relief may not last for long giv­en the huge fos­sil fuel resources that are thought to lie below the for­est.

“It was a close thing, but we’re not out of the water. The oil com­pa­ny has not giv­en up. They will con­tin­ue to hound us and to try to divide the com­mu­ni­ty. But at least we have a few days respite,” said Mari Muench, a British woman who is mar­ried to the vil­lage shaman.

The elect­ed lead­ers of Sani Isla have pledged to resist offers from Petroa­ma­zonas for the dura­tion of their term.

“This pol­i­cy will remain in place dur­ing our peri­od in office. We’re com­mit­ted to that and we will do what we can to make it more per­ma­nent,” said Abdon Gre­fa, the speak­er of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The bat­tle has now moved to the judi­cial sys­tem and the court of pub­lic opin­ion. Their appeal for an injunc­tion went before a judge on Wednes­day and they are call­ing on sup­port­ers to help them build a long-term eco­nom­ic alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels.

“We hope peo­ple will write protest let­ters to Petroa­ma­zonas, come and vis­it our lodge, pro­mote Sani, donate mon­ey to our school and projects, vol­un­teer as teach­ers or pro­vide funds to stu­dents to trav­el over­seas so they can learn what we need to sur­vive in the future,” said the com­mu­ni­ty sec­re­tary, Klid­er Gualin­ga.

‘Idle No More’ protest in London UK as movement vows to target tar sands

This morn­ing, British and Cana­di­an sup­port­ers joined Clay­ton Thomas-Muller, from the Math­ais Colomb Cree First Nation in Man­i­to­ba, to present a peti­tion in sup­port of the Idle No More move­ment to the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment at its High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don. A group of around 20 gath­ered on the steps of Cana­da House in Trafal­gar Square. Clay­ton from the Cana­di­an Indige­nous Tar Sands Cam­paign opened with a tra­di­tion­al song and spoke, fol­lowed by Melis­sa Adams from the Nis­ga First Nation in British Colum­bia, Jess Worth from the UK Tar Sands Net­work and James Ather­ton from Lush Cos­met­ics.

The Idle No More move­ment has seen mass protests, road and rail block­ades and upris­ings across Cana­da in recent weeks, and con­tin­ues to grow. Inspi­ra­tional Attawapiskat Chief There­sa Spence remains on hunger strike after more than a month, deter­mined to keep fast­ing until she is able to meet with Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er and Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al David John­ston. She wants to dis­cuss the ways in which First Nations’ treaties are being under­mined by a series of Bills pushed through by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, which aim to make it eas­i­er for indus­tries, such as those oper­at­ing in the con­tro­ver­sial tar sands, to extract nat­ur­al resources from Indige­nous lands. On Fri­day, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Nation whose health and tra­di­tion­al liveli­hoods are being dev­as­tat­ed by pol­lu­tion from the tar sands indus­try upstream, vowed to block­ade the main high­way to the tar sands if their demands for a reasser­tion of Indige­nous rights over those of indus­try are not met.

Today’s sol­i­dar­i­ty protest in Lon­don involved hand­ing in a peti­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Harp­er signed by Oxford res­i­dents at a protest in Oxford last Sat­ur­day. The peti­tion called on the Harp­er gov­ern­ment to ‘stop putting the inter­ests of the tar sands indus­try and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive com­pa­nies above the rights of its First Nations’, to uphold the Treaties orig­i­nal­ly signed by First Nations and the British Crown, and to set aside any leg­is­la­tion that under­mines them.

The protest then vis­it­ed Buck­ing­ham Palace, to acknowl­edge the his­tor­i­cal colo­nial rela­tion­ship between Britain and Cana­da. As Clay­ton said: “2013 is the 250th anniver­sary of the Roy­al Procla­ma­tion which helped set the bound­aries of Cana­da and estab­lished the legal rela­tion­ship with Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties. We felt that it would be very sym­bol­ic to take a ban­ner to the Queen Vic­to­ria stat­ue, giv­en she was the sig­na­to­ry to the treaties in Cana­da which the Harp­er gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to under­mine.”

Clay­ton con­tin­ued: “The com­plete gut­ting of all envi­ron­men­tal approval, reg­u­la­to­ry and enforce­ment mech­a­nisms in Cana­da, through the pass­ing of a series of Bills by the Harp­er gov­ern­ment, mean that the reasser­tion of Abo­rig­i­nal & Treaty rights are the last best hope to pro­tect both First Nations’ & Cana­di­ans’ water, air and soil from being poi­soned for­ev­er by big oil and min­ing cor­po­ra­tions. We have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to stand up and fight against this threat, not just for us but for all those across the earth who are feel­ing the effects of cli­mate change and water inse­cu­ri­ty.”

Jess Worth, from the UK Tar Sands Net­work, said: “We are stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty today with Indige­nous peo­ples in Cana­da who are see­ing their right to a healthy life in a clean envi­ron­ment on their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries auc­tioned off to the high­est cor­po­rate bid­der. As the Cana­di­an tar sands indus­try seeks to squeeze every last drop of ever-more-pol­lut­ing oil out of a plan­et that can no longer take it, we all have an inter­est in the suc­cess of the Idle No More move­ment which seeks to uphold First Nations’ rights and pro­tect Moth­er Earth.”

James Ather­ton, from Lush Cos­met­ics, said: “It is great­ly impor­tant to sup­port and encour­age move­ments like Idle No More, which acknowl­edge human rights and envi­ron­men­tal issues as inter­linked. For too long, the voic­es of Indige­nous peo­ple around the world have been sup­pressed by colo­nial, dom­i­neer­ing mind­sets that live on in polit­i­cal and indus­tri­al sys­tems. The Idle No More move­ment calls for change which is well over­due, and we sup­port the rev­o­lu­tion that is need­ed to cre­ate this pos­i­tive change.”

For more infor­ma­tion, see:
www.no-tar-sands.org
www.idlenomore.ca
www.ienearth.org/what-we-do/tar-sands
www.climaterevolution.org.uk

The peti­tion text in full:

To:
Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er, c/o the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion, 38 Grosvenor Street, Lon­don W1K 4AA

We request that the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da stops putting the inter­ests of the tar sands indus­try and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive com­pa­nies above the rights of its First Nations. The gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly putting through eight Bills that vio­late exist­ing treaties and will have the effect of under­min­ing and destroy­ing First Nations’ rights, tra­di­tions and ter­ri­to­ries. In par­tic­u­lar, Bill C‑45 will have sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for the abil­i­ty of First Nations to con­trol what hap­pens on their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries. This Bill is a mas­sive, com­plex doc­u­ment and needs prop­er review and con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple that it will direct­ly affect. This has not hap­pened.

This has pro­voked a coun­try-wide grass­roots upris­ing, Idle No More, which we sup­port.

We request that the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da upholds all treaties signed between First Nations and the Crown, and imme­di­ate­ly sets aside any leg­is­la­tion that could under­mine these treaties. We fur­ther request that the prin­ci­ples of free, pri­or and informed con­sent, as recog­nised in the UN Dec­la­ra­tion on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples, are adopt­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Cana­da when deal­ing with all issues that impact First Nations.

The world is watch­ing you.

Six People Arrested Inside Enbridge Hearings

Van­cou­ver, BC / Coast Sal­ish Ter­ri­to­ries – This morn­ing (15th Jan), six peo­ple direct­ly inter­vened in the Enbridge pipeline joint Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment and Ener­gy Board hear­ings and put cli­mate change on the agen­da.

Van­cou­ver, BC / Coast Sal­ish Ter­ri­to­ries – This morn­ing (15th Jan), six peo­ple direct­ly inter­vened in the Enbridge pipeline joint Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment and Ener­gy Board hear­ings and put cli­mate change on the agen­da. The group man­aged to make their way past police unde­tect­ed and into the secured 4th floor of Vancouver’s Sher­a­ton Wall Cen­ter. Once inside they revealed shirts embla­zoned with mes­sages like “Stop the Pipelines” and pro­ceed­ed to use police tape to cor­don off the hear­ing area as a “cli­mate crime scene.”

“Cli­mate change is killing thou­sands of peo­ple every year, pri­mar­i­ly in devel­op­ing coun­tries and Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties that are the least respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing this prob­lem. Despite this fact, the Joint Review Pan­el has instruct­ed those par­tic­i­pat­ing in the hear­ings not to talk about cli­mate change. This is a shock­ing­ly irre­spon­si­ble move con­sid­er­ing Canada’s tar sands con­tain twice the amount of car­bon diox­ide emit­ted by glob­al oil use in our entire his­to­ry. New fos­sil fuel pipelines are an irre­spon­si­ble step in the wrong direc­tion.” said Sean Devlin.

The impacts of cli­mate change have been draw­ing glob­al atten­tion recent­ly, between Hur­ri­cane Sandy, unprece­dent­ed dead­ly typhoons in the Philip­pines and pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able tem­per­a­ture records in Aus­tralia. In this urgent con­text the JRP has des­ig­nat­ed cli­mate change and the car­bon emis­sions of Canada’s tar sands “out­side of the panel’s man­date,” a move that offi­cial­ly dis­cour­ages inter­ven­ers from rais­ing these crit­i­cal issues dur­ing their oral state­ments.

“Enbridge and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment are using their posi­tion of author­i­ty with­in this process to coerce mem­bers of the pub­lic into silence on these issues. The major­i­ty of First Nations and set­tler com­mu­ni­ties in the province oppose fos­sil fuel pipelines. We respect those who are voic­ing their oppo­si­tion to the pipelines inside the hear­ings, but the hear­ing process is mean­ing­less, espe­cial­ly since Harp­er has changed the law, giv­ing his cab­i­net final say on pipeline projects,” said Fiona De Bal­asi Brown.

Today marks the sec­ond day of the Joint Review Pan­el hear­ings in Van­cou­ver and the sec­ond day that the mem­bers of the pub­lic have crossed police lines to make their oppo­si­tion heard. On Mon­day more than a thou­sand pro­test­ers peace­ful­ly forced their way past police onto the Sher­a­ton prop­er­ty drum­ming so loud­ly the noise could be heard inside the hear­ings. Pub­lic out­rage has been embold­ened by a deci­sion to exclude the pub­lic from the hear­ings in Van­cou­ver, a move the BC Civ­il Lib­er­ties Asso­ci­a­tion crit­i­cized yes­ter­day as “poten­tial­ly unlaw­ful.”

The Economics of Insurgency — Thoughts on Idle No More & critical infrastructure

News reports are ablaze with reports of loom­ing Indige­nous block­ades and eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion.

News reports are ablaze with reports of loom­ing Indige­nous block­ades and eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion. As the Idle No More move­ment explodes into a new ter­ri­to­ry of polit­i­cal action, it bears to ampli­fy the incred­i­ble eco­nom­ic lever­age of First Nations today, and how fright­ened the gov­ern­ment and indus­try are of their capac­i­ty to wield it.

In recent years, Access to Infor­ma­tion (ATI) records obtained by jour­nal­ists reveal a mas­sive state-wide sur­veil­lance and “hot spot mon­i­tor­ing” oper­a­tion coor­di­nat­ed between the Depart­ment of Indi­an Affairs, the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police (RCMP), the Cana­di­an Secu­ri­ty Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (CSIS), local secu­ri­ty forces, nat­ur­al resource and trans­porta­tion min­istries, bor­der agen­cies, and indus­try stake­hold­ers. These efforts have been explic­it­ly mobi­lized to pro­tect “crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture” from Indige­nous attack.

What is crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture? Accord­ing to an RCMP inter­nal doc­u­ment con­cern­ing the risk of Abo­rig­i­nal protest, “crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture refers to infra­struc­ture, both tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble, that is essen­tial to the health, safe­ty, secu­ri­ty or eco­nom­ic well-being of Cana­di­ans and the effec­tive func­tion­ing of gov­ern­ment.” RCMP Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tions have pri­or­i­tized four crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture sec­tors: finance, trans­porta­tion, ener­gy, and cyber-secu­ri­ty.

On Jan­u­ary 5 alone, INM protests includ­ed five bor­der cross­ing block­ades, bridge block­ades, and rail line dis­rup­tions span­ning the coun­try.

And it’s not only intel­li­gence ser­vices that are warn­ing of threats to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

Con­ser­v­a­tive mil­i­tary ana­lyst Dou­glas Bland has also long warned that Canada’s eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is based on the “crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that trans­ports nat­ur­al resources and man­u­fac­tured goods from mines, oil fields, hydro-elec­tric facil­i­ties and fac­to­ries to inter­na­tion­al mar­kets.” With­out these crit­i­cal sys­tems, he cau­tions, “Canada’s econ­o­my would col­lapse.”

Though Bland has coun­seled a con­cil­ia­to­ry approach to Abo­rig­i­nals in order to stave off the com­ing cri­sis, his alarmism – and that of oth­er right-wing pun­dits – simul­ta­ne­ous­ly jus­ti­fies the state’s secu­ri­ty and sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus by man­u­fac­tur­ing a fear of native upris­ing. But for Bland and oth­ers, a com­ing “Native Spring” is less feared for its poten­tial “vio­lence” and all the more grave for its threat to prop­er­ty rights.

In Bland’s fic­tion­al book Upris­ing, he pre­dicts coor­di­nat­ed attacks by secret native cells on key instal­la­tions and urban hubs, such as the James Bay hydro-elec­tric dam and the down­town core of Win­nipeg. This attack on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture telling­ly ends in a blaze of hero­ic Cana­da-US mil­i­tary attacks on the rebel army. (The US gets involved only when they real­ize their source of elec­tric­i­ty, oil, and gas is at stake.)

Here­in lies the real role of right wing alarmists in the INM move­ment: to main­tain the eco­nom­ic sta­tus quo, because ter­ri­to­ry is cap­i­tal. Land is mon­ey. And the cir­cu­la­tion of goods, resources and ener­gy through ter­ri­to­ry is the very essence of cap­i­tal­ism today.

The fact is that crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture in Cana­da is at the mer­cy of Indige­nous peo­ples, who are more rur­al than Cana­di­ans and have access to impor­tant arter­ies for eco­nom­ic flows: trans­porta­tion cor­ri­dors, ener­gy sec­tors, and sites of nat­ur­al resource extrac­tion.

This vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is dead­ly to the logis­tics indus­try. Logis­tics is a busi­ness sci­ence con­cerned with the man­age­ment of goods and infor­ma­tion through glob­al sup­ply chains. As the World Bank has declared: “A com­pet­i­tive net­work of glob­al logis­tics is the back­bone of inter­na­tion­al trade.” For an indus­try depen­dent on main­tain­ing open chan­nels for cap­i­tal cir­cu­la­tion, a block­ade means mas­sive loss­es: the truck­ing indus­try alone is worth $65 bil­lion and employs more than 260,000 dri­vers.

In the ener­gy sec­tor, Cana­da has oil reserves sec­ond in the world after Sau­di Ara­bia, though less acces­si­ble – 98 per cent of this oil is in Alber­ta and 95 per cent of it is in the tar sands, where effec­tive Indige­nous resis­tance by Treaty 8 and oth­er First Nations has led to glob­al boy­cott cam­paigns and fierce resis­tance.

In north­ern BC, the Unist’ot’en Clan, with sup­port from grass­roots Wet’suwet’en, have built a com­mu­ni­ty of resis­tance direct­ly on the GPS co-ordi­nates of the pro­posed pipeline route from the Alber­ta tar sands to the Kiti­mat port. From this camp they have evict­ed sur­vey­ors work­ing for Pacif­ic Trails Pipeline. Mean­while, in Ontario, Enbrdige’s Line 9 has been has been opposed by the Onei­da, the Hau­denosaunee Devel­op­ment Insti­tute, and Aami­ji­waang First Nation, who have all vowed to fight the pipeline to pro­tect their lands and waters.

In terms of nat­ur­al resource extrac­tion, over 10 per cent of Canada’s econ­o­my is com­prised of the nat­ur­al resources sec­tors and earth sci­ence indus­tries, which direct­ly employ close to 763,000 peo­ple. The great­est con­cen­tra­tion and cor­re­la­tion between Indige­nous lands and min­er­al claims are being cur­rent­ly devel­oped in the north­ern mod­ern treaties and ter­ri­to­ries, such as Nunavut; Yukon; the James Bay region of Que­bec, and the Que­bec-Labrador bor­der; on unced­ed north­west­ern BC lands (e.g. on Nakazdli, Tzal­ten, and Tlin­git tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry); and in north­ern Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” on his­toric treaty lands, par­tic­u­lar­ly Treaties 3 and 9.

In addi­tion to min­er­al resources, over half of large intact for­est land­scapes are found on lands in his­tor­i­cal Abo­rig­i­nal treaty areas. More specif­i­cal­ly, as Glob­al For­est Watch reports, “Treaties 8 and 9 con­tain about a quar­ter of all of Canada’s intact for­est land­scapes and close to half of all the intact for­est land­scapes that occur with­in treaty areas. Mod­ern land claim set­tle­ments con­tain about a quar­ter of Canada’s intact for­est land­scapes.”

That is not to say mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion con­cern­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture has not been tak­ing place. The prob­lem is that it has exclu­sive­ly been between indus­try and gov­ern­ment, instead of between Indige­nous peo­ples and the state. Jour­nal­ists have been uncov­er­ing mul­ti­ple inci­dents of high-lev­el co-ordi­na­tion between indus­try and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. For exam­ple, Access to Infor­ma­tion requests revealed that the gov­ern­ment has been shar­ing infor­ma­tion with the oil indus­try on envi­ron­men­tal­ists and Indige­nous groups twice a year since 2005 at secret brief­in­gs, even on such seem­ing­ly irrel­e­vant activ­i­ties such as par­tic­i­pa­tion in anti-G20 demon­stra­tions.

The irony is that many cor­po­ra­tions are tired of hav­ing oper­a­tions held up by Indige­nous protest and are will­ing to go fur­ther than gov­ern­ments to rec­og­nize Indige­nous rights. The log­ics of colo­nial­ism and cap­i­tal­ism divide here around con­flict­ing objec­tives of ter­ri­to­r­i­al acqui­si­tion ver­sus the cir­cu­la­tion of goods. But more often than not, the state and indus­try con­verge around the com­mon inter­ests of the rul­ing class. For Indige­nous peo­ples, this becomes a ques­tion of co-ordi­nat­ing lever­age.

In con­clu­sion, I want to high­light three main con­cerns expressed in the risk assess­ments under­tak­en by RCMP, CSIS, Indi­an Affairs, and right-wing thinkers on Indige­nous upris­ing that fore­ground Indige­nous eco­nom­ic pow­er.

The first is that a mis­han­dling of con­flict will gal­va­nize co-ordi­nat­ed efforts of First Nations across the coun­try; hence the rel­a­tive­ly hands-off approach tak­en until now. In the Fed­er­al Coor­di­na­tion Frame­work for the AFN Day of Action in 2007, the pro­posed solu­tion in the case of co-ordi­nat­ed mobi­liza­tion is to “iso­late the splin­ter group.”

Sec­ond, the eco­nom­ic cost of even a few hours of such co-ordi­nat­ed efforts would be crip­pling and impos­si­ble to police giv­en cur­rent resources.

Third – and this is one of the most wor­ri­some trends to observers – sol­i­dar­i­ty and co-ordi­na­tion between non-Natives and Indige­nous peo­ples will encour­age the move­ment to build.

As a final thought, while the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion might have been tak­en by sur­prise by the strength of Idle No More, the gov­ern­ment had long pre­pared for this inevitabil­i­ty. As far back as 2008, when changes were first pro­posed to the Nav­i­ga­ble Waters Act, CSIS’s Inte­grat­ed Threat Assess­ment Cen­tre warned about “poten­tial unrest.”

Cana­da cre­at­ed the cri­sis of insur­gency. Canada’s greed cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion where Indige­nous peo­ples stand with almost noth­ing to lose. There­fore, the fight is theirs to take. It is also ours to sup­port.

Read the full arti­cle here.

Anti-road campaigners peacefully resisting camp evictions (16 Jan)

The evic­tion of the two remain­ing camps (“Base camp” and “Decoy Pond Wood” – see here and below for maps) has begun, and cam­paign­ers are resist­ing peace­ful­ly in tree­hous­es and tun

The evic­tion of the two remain­ing camps (“Base camp” and “Decoy Pond Wood” – see here and below for maps) has begun, and cam­paign­ers are resist­ing peace­ful­ly in tree­hous­es and tun­nels. Please protest, sup­port and pub­li­cise!

Bailiffs arrived just before 8am, and the evic­tion prop­er began around 8.15am. As at 8.37am there were 30+ bailiffs on site with more secu­ri­ty arriv­ing, focussing main­ly on the tunnel(s). As at 8.59am it was no longer pos­si­ble to access the camp via the access road to Adam’s farm (though oth­er cross-coun­try routes may still be avail­able), and Har­ris fenc­ing was being brought in.

Please note: This is only the end of the begin­ning for the protests against the Bex­hill Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR)! We urgent­ly need to replen­ish our finances fol­low­ing the last month of protests, so please con­sid­er giv­ing a dona­tion, using the “donate” but­ton on our web-site and Face­book page, if you are able.

 

Press release Combe Haven Defend­ers [1]
Wednes­day 16 Jan­u­ary
Con­tact 07926 423 033

EVICTION OF ANTI-ROAD CAMP NEAR HASTINGS HAS STARTED
Pro­tes­tors resist­ing peace­ful­ly in tree­hous­es and tun­nels

Wednes­day 16 Jan­u­ary, 8.16am: Oppo­nents of the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) are defend­ing trees and  occu­py­ing tun­nels at their main protest camp in Crowhurst. Secu­ri­ty guards and bailiffs, sup­port­ed by police, began attempts to evict the camp at 8am today.

The main camp, which has been in place since 21 Decem­ber, is locat­ed on the pro­posed route of the BHLR close to Adam’s Farm, Crowhurst [2]. Fur­ther trees on route are occu­pied by pro­tes­tors at near­by “Decoy Camp”.

The peace­ful protests against the road– which have now been run­ning for a month, with 12 arrests – have seized nation­al atten­tion over the past week [3].

Tree-felling work for the road start­ed on 14 Decem­ber 2012 and rep­re­sents the first sig­nif­i­cant work on the high­ly-con­tro­ver­sial £100m road, one of over forty “zom­bie roads” that were declared dead years ago but have now been resus­ci­tat­ed as part of as part of Britain’s largest road-build­ing pro­gramme in 25 years [4, 5].

Con­tact 07926 423 033

NOTES
[1] http://www.combehavendefenders.org.uk
[2] Near­by post­code TN33 9AY. For map see http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/camp-groundrules-directions/
[3] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/recent-media-coverage/
[4] See ‘Con­tro­ver­sial ‘zom­bie roads’ scheme to be resus­ci­tat­ed’, Guardian, 10 Octo­ber 2012, http://tinyurl.com/zombieroads
[5] http://bettertransport.org.uk/media/26-Oct-roads-report

Police say camps to be evicted this week, as 400-year-old oak felled

Con­trac­tors moved in in force on Mon­day (14 Jan­u­ary) to evict the “Three Oaks” camp near the rail­way line opp.

Con­trac­tors moved in in force on Mon­day (14 Jan­u­ary) to evict the “Three Oaks” camp near the rail­way line opp. Upper Wilt­ing Farm in Crowhurst (see press release below), and police have told activists that they plan to evict the remain­ing two camps (“Decoy Pond Wood” and “Base Camp” – see map below) this week.

So if you want to come and help peace­ful­ly stop the felling (whether in an arrestable or non-arrestable role): now’s the time! See here for more info re. the Camp.

[Update at 12.30pm: Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by secu­ri­ty and con­trac­tors, activists at the “Three Oaks” protest camp were able to delay the felling of the 400-year-old oak by 3–4 hours this morn­ing. Two peo­ple were final­ly evict­ed from high-up in the oak, and a third per­son, locked-on near the base, was also removed. No arrests were made, and the trees in ques­tion are now being felled.]

Press Release
14 Jan­u­ary 2013
Combe Haven Defend­ers

CHAINSAWS MOVED IN TO FELL 400-YEAR-OLD OAK AT HASTINGS TREE PROTEST

9am, Mon­day 14 Jan­u­ary, Crowhurst:  Con­trac­tors prepar­ing the way for the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) are believed to be felling a 400-year-old Oak Tree as they evict the “Three Oaks” protest Camp near the rail­way line opp. Upper Wilt­ing Farm (TN38 8EG) in Crowhurst (see map below).

Police, secu­ri­ty, chain­saw oper­a­tives, and a dig­ger moved in on the tree-protest Camp (one of three along the route of the BHLR) this morn­ing, short­ly after 7am. Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by police and secu­ri­ty, as at 8.30am sev­er­al activists were in the trees and at least one was locked-on.

Accord­ing to a recent report in the Guardian: “When the landown­er signed the com­pul­so­ry pur­chase order for the land at Three Oaks, where a fly­over is to be built above the rail­way, he per­suad­ed the coun­cil to spare one tree thought to be 450 years old (not a promise the pro­test­ers expect to be kept).” [3]

Two more protest camps (“Decoy Pond Wood Camp” and “Base Camp”) have not yet been evict­ed.

The BHLR is one of over forty “zom­bie roads” that were declared dead years ago but have now been resus­ci­tat­ed as part of Britain’s largest road-build­ing pro­gramme in 25 years [4].

[2] See map here: www.combehavendefenders.org.uk
[3] “Road protests return: a new gen­er­a­tion takes on the bypass builders”, Guardian, 12 Jan­u­ary 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/12/combe-haven-green-protesters-trees
[4] http://bettertransport.org.uk/media/26-Oct-roads-report

Self-Determination and Self-Defense in Cherán, Michoacán

On Decem­ber 11, 2012, the US Jus­tice Depart­ment announced that bank­ing giant HSBC was immune from pros­e­cu­tion despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence that they con­sis­tent­ly failed to imple­ment con­trols against mon­ey-laun­der­ing. Assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al Lan­ny Breuer said: “Had the US author­i­ties decid­ed to press crim­i­nal charges, HSBC would almost cer­tain­ly have lost its bank­ing license in the US, the future of the insti­tu­tion would have been under threat and the entire bank­ing sys­tem would have been desta­bi­lized.”

The entire bank­ing sys­tem would have been desta­bi­lized?

 

The Depart­ment of Jus­tice opt­ed rather to charge HSBC a record-break­ing 1.9 bil­lion dol­lar fine, and ordered the bank’s activ­i­ties mon­i­tored for five years. The 1.9 bil­lion is equiv­a­lent to five weeks’ worth of HSBC earn­ings, in oth­er words, a drop in the buck­et. The sad­dest part of the sto­ry in the main­stream media, is the focus on mon­ey laun­dered and mon­ey fined, as opposed to lives lost and crime legit­imized in one of the most grotesque admis­sions of com­plic­i­ty with orga­nized crime in the so-called war on drugs. Basi­cal­ly what was announced to the world by the US Jus­tice Depart­ment was that the mon­ey ran too thick, and the crim­i­nals were too pow­er­ful. The glob­al eco­nom­ic impact of pros­e­cut­ing a bank where the dirty mon­ey has been going, was too dan­ger­ous to risk. “Sor­ry kids, but we guess the bad guys win.”

In Cher­an, Michoa­can, Mex­i­co the news of HSBC’s immu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and US sanc­tions comes as no sur­prise. Orga­nized crime has been preva­lent in the com­mu­ni­ty since 2000. After a 2008 may­oral race that left a PRI (Insti­tu­tion­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Par­ty) can­di­date in office, illic­it activ­i­ty increased sub­stan­tial­ly. The com­mu­ni­ty learned that orga­nized crime is an inte­gral part of local pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics every­where. Cher­an is a beau­ti­ful small indige­nous Purepecha moun­tain com­mu­ni­ty sur­round­ed by pre­cious forests, that knows the true cost of those prof­its laun­dered. Imme­di­ate­ly after the 2008 may­oral race the com­mu­ni­ty began expe­ri­enc­ing the dev­as­tat­ing effects of dog eat dog cap­i­tal­ism of which orga­nized crime is only anoth­er part.

The ille­gal log­ging indus­try began to rav­age the community’s most pre­cious forests, which have been tra­di­tion­al­ly respect­ed as a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion by the Indige­nous Purepecha peo­ple to their ter­ri­to­ry. The log­ging began to look a lot more like pil­lag­ing and when com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers began to attempt to defend their forests, they were met with a real life night­mare: the log­gers were not only aid­ed and pro­tect­ed by gov­ern­ment agen­cies and local police, the entire log­ging oper­a­tion was being coor­di­nat­ed by mem­bers of a major orga­nized crime syn­di­cate. [To this day I am told by com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers not to name the actu­al syn­di­cate in any­thing I write or say, or risk an almost cer­tain death.]

The first com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who began to defend their for­est were sim­ply and quick­ly assas­si­nat­ed. From 2008–2011 the sit­u­a­tion only became worse. Crim­i­nals charged pro­tec­tion to run even a small busi­ness in the com­mu­ni­ty of Cher­an. The for­est was raped and ter­ror reigned as any­one felt at risk. The city would become a ghost town by sun­set. This is a real­i­ty con­front­ed by too many com­mu­ni­ties in Mex­i­co every day.

Mur­ders, dis­ap­pear­ances, kid­nap­pings, the crim­i­nal amounts of ille­gal log­ging and the reign of ter­ror came to a head on the ear­ly morn­ing of April 15th, 2011. A group of women had begun qui­et­ly orga­niz­ing in the days before an action to bring the rav­aging of their town to a halt. On April 15th, with chil­dren and youth at their sides, the women rose up and attempt­ed to detain log­gers trav­el­ing through town. The log­gers tried to run the women over and in response the com­mu­ni­ty react­ed as a whole, and began burn­ing the log­gers’ vehi­cles and began detain­ing the log­gers them­selves.

It is at this point that the com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized the com­plic­i­ty of the local police when it was police offi­cers who guid­ed orga­nized crime thugs to the place where the log­gers were being held, in an attempt to vio­lent­ly release them. The com­mu­ni­ty erect­ed “fogatas” or bon­fire bar­ri­cades through­out town in order to pre­vent vio­lence against com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. With­in days the com­mu­ni­ty decid­ed that it no longer trust­ed any politi­cians from any polit­i­cal par­ty or any of the local and state police. They began to orga­nize for self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-defense and chose to return to their tra­di­tion­al Purepecha forms of self gov­er­nance.

A gen­er­al coun­cil of com­mu­ni­ty elders was elect­ed and com­mis­sions were formed in order to car­ry out the community’s logis­ti­cal, social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal needs. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers sim­ply say that they referred to their his­to­ry and referred to their elders in order to return to the way the com­mu­ni­ty was orga­nized before polit­i­cal par­ties, police, and orga­nized crime exist­ed. The gen­er­al coun­cil is legal­ly rec­og­nized as the gov­ern­ing body of Cher­an, Michoa­can today.

The com­mu­ni­ty has main­tained that they only have three demands: safe­ty, jus­tice, and the refor­esta­tion of their ter­ri­to­ry. They have active­ly been refor­est­ing the entire region and take that aspect of their strug­gle very seri­ous­ly, and remind us that for them pro­tect­ing the for­est is both a tra­di­tion­al and a spir­i­tu­al oblig­a­tion. Cher­an does not believe that any­body will ever be able to bring them jus­tice for their dead, dis­ap­peared, and dis­placed as a result of the con­flict, nor do they expect any­one in pow­er to under­stand the jus­tice they seek for the for­est. Today Cher­an knows that jus­tice is some­thing that they will have to take care of obtain­ing on their own from now on. When it comes to safe­ty, the world is able to see what it looks like for a com­mu­ni­ty to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for its own safe­ty through tra­di­tion­al indige­nous forms of self gov­er­nance and self-defense.

Short­ly after the 2011 upris­ing began, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers state that the local politi­cians and the police sim­ply exiled them­selves in fear from the com­mu­ni­ty, war­rant­i­ng no need to run them out of town. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers took the local gov­ern­ment offices, took police trucks, took the polices’ weapons, and put them all to use. His­tor­i­cal­ly, Cher­an had tra­di­tion­al­ly been “policed” or defend­ed by mem­bers from the com­mu­ni­ty. In a vol­un­tary rota­tion mem­bers from each of the four “bar­rios” or neigh­bor­hoods would patrol the com­mu­ni­ty for self-defense in what is known as the “com­mu­ni­ty ron­da.” After the upris­ing the gen­er­al coun­cil made a call out for vol­un­teers to par­tic­i­pate in the com­mu­ni­ty “ron­da”, or com­mu­ni­ty guard. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers main­tain that police are imposed by the gov­ern­ment, but the “ron­da” is a tra­di­tion­al way in which com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers pro­tect them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ty. Today the “ron­da” is sep­a­rat­ed into two parts. The “ron­da comu­ni­taria” which is respon­si­ble for patrolling and pro­tect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty from with­in its bor­ders and the “guard­a­bosques” or for­est defend­ers, which patrol the out­skirts of town and deep into the forests in order to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers liv­ing in those more rur­al areas and in order to pro­tect the for­est itself.

Cher­an is not the first com­mu­ni­ty in Mex­i­co to return to their tra­di­tion­al means of com­mu­ni­ty self-defense, nor is it the first place in the state of Michoa­can, nor in the indige­nous Purepecha region. Oth­er com­mu­ni­ties have engaged in sim­i­lar prac­tices of self gov­er­nance and self-defense, and lit­tle by lit­tle more and more com­mu­ni­ties are see­ing tra­di­tion­al self gov­er­nance and self-defense as a viable alter­na­tive to cor­rupt pol­i­tics and sub­mis­sion to orga­nized crime. Recent­ly coun­cil mem­bers from Nurio, Michoa­can, a larg­er com­mu­ni­ty and long time prac­ti­tion­er of self gov­er­nance and self-defense, sug­gest­ed that the entire Purepecha region should begin to orga­nize a region­al “ron­da” that could poten­tial­ly coor­di­nate self-defense patrols on a region­al lev­el for the indige­nous Purepecha peo­ple liv­ing through­out the state of Michoa­can.

It is hard not to throw your hands up in the air in res­ig­na­tion when you hear about crim­i­nals such as HSBC being grant­ed immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion and sanc­tions, but it is even hard­er not to throw a fist in the air when you see indige­nous Purepe­chas suc­cess­ful­ly over­com­ing orga­nized crime, cor­rupt politi­cians, and big busi­ness by estab­lish­ing mod­els for self-deter­mi­na­tion and self-defense, on a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

Simòn Sedil­lo