Category Archives: Inspiring Moments in Resistance

An Indigenous Approach to Learning

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Relearning the Land: A Story of Red Crow College

Enlivened Learning Project (2015)

Film Review

Relearning the Land is the first in a series of documentaries exploring various alternative universities Canada, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, India, the USA, UK and Costa Rica. The Enlivened Learning Project maintains that modern university education is in deep crisis. Increasingly profit-driven and competitive, they tend to serve the interests of the global elite at the expense of society as a whole. Because they tend to alienate students from nature, community and one another, they are ill-equipped to prepare young people to address the urgent global economic and ecological crises we presently face.

This first film focuses on Red Crow Community College on the Kaina Reserve (part of the Blackfoot Confederation) in Southern Alberta. Founded in 196, the community college offers two year degrees in arts, science, nursing and Kaina Studies and is open to non-Blackfoot students. In addition to offering classes in Blackfoot language and First Nations history, Kaina studies offers classes in Blackfoot ecological knowledge, handed down from ancestors trained to look after the beaver bundle. A beaver bundle is knowledge of how to survive that plants and animals gift to human beings.

In the Blackfoot world view, human beings are the baby species and must learn from older species how to adapt and fit in. The European settlers erroneously believed their culture and technology was superior to that of First Nations people, which is why they tried to destroy their culture and technology by kidnapping their kids and forcing them to attend residential schools.

For the most part, first Nations technology, geared towards adaptation and survival was far superior to that of the Europeans. Left unchecked, European ignorance and arrogance is on track to destroy the entire human species.

Update: Sadly Red Crow College was burned down by an arsonist in August 2015 and the Blood Tribe is seeking donations to help rebuild it.

Doctoring LA’s Homeless

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Street Medicine

Jonny Kahleyn-Dieb and Tomi Hinkannen (2008)

Film Review

Street Medicine is an extremely inspiring documentary about a medical outreach program in Los Angeles Country that sends doctors out to assist uninsured homeless patient whose illnesses prevent them from attended Venice Outpatient Clinic.

The most common medical problems the encounter are TB and other chest infections and severe skin infections and abscesses. Owing to severe mental health cutbacks, many also have mental illnesses.

The clinic receives one-third of its funding from Hollywood celebrities and the rest from federal-state Medicaid funding.

The Yes Men: Culture Jammers Extraordinaire

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The Yes Men are Revolting

Directed by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (2014)

Film Review

Culture Jamming (def) – a tactic used by anticorporate social movements to expose corporate “methods of domination” by disrupting or subverting corporate media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions.

The Yes Men are Revolting is the third full length documentary by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (aka Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos). The Yes Men’s goal is to use satire and humor to underscore the total insanity of our present corporate-run society. For the first time, the 2014 film includes biographical material and frank discussion of Andy and Mike’s episodic despair over the difficulty of producing real change.

Most of their work relies on their elaborate impersonations of corporate oligarchs and government bureaucrats to portray the world as they believe it should be. The official and media reactions to the improbable causes their alter egos espouse are eye wateringly funny.

Among my favorites:

  •  The one in which they impersonate a Chamber of Commerce (official oil industry lobby) at the National Press Club calling for a carbon tax.
  • Their campaign to liberate Barbie and Ken from oppressive gender stereotypes.
  • The time they impersonate Shell Oil officials and throw a lavish party to celebrate the immense profit potential of melting Arctic Sea ice.
  • The time they pose as Gazprom officials presenting a kidnapped polar bear to the Amsterdam zoo.* This was after the US government revoked Shell’s Arctic drilling permit and the company partnered with Gazprom intending to drill the Russian side of the Arctic Circle.
  • The Brokers and Police March they organized during Occupy Wall Street.
  • Their promotion of a special NYPD program in which black males receive a free McDonald’s Happy Meal after their third stop and frisk.

The documentary climaxes with their best and most outrageous prank. First they they reserve a spot on behalf of General Colin Powell’s office at a Homeland Security conference. Then they impersonate a Department of Energy spokesperson and propose to replace all fossil fuels with solar panels and wind turbines to be owned and operated by Native American reservations. The segment culminates with all the defense contractors circling the room in a traditional indigenous dance.

* Amsterdam is home to the corporate offices of Royal Dutch Shell.

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I must admit to being totally addicted to the Yes Men. Here are their earlier films if you haven’t seen them:

The Yes Men (2003)

The Yes Men Fix the World (2009)

Grassroots Musicle

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In Defense of Life

Gaia Foundation (2016)

Film Review

The whole world is inspired by the courage and stamina of indigenous protestors at Standing Rock.

In Defense of Life is about four other successful grassroots campaigns in South Africa, the Philippines, Romania and Colombia to block multinational mining companies from destroying their communities. Interviews with some of the activists shed important insights into their motivations and organizing strategies.

In Kuazulu Natal (South Africa), local residents organized to block a coal mining company with plans to destroy six villages by blasting for coal.

In Nuevo (Philippines), the indigenous Ifoga people organized to block Oceania Gold from blowing the top off a mountain to mine for gold and copper.

In Sosia Montana (Romania), locals organized to stop the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources from blowing up mountains to create four open pit mines. This would have resulted in the forcible displacement of hundreds of residents, as well as the contamination of local water supplies with the cyanide used in gold extraction.

In Yaigoje Apaporis (Colombia), indigenous groups blocked the Canadian mining company Cosigo Resources from destroying the sacred La Libertad waterfall.

Bobby Seal on the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panthers

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In this presentation Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seal talks about the joint role he and Huey Newton played in forming the organization in 1966.

Seal’s genius as a grassroots organizer is what comes across most clearly in this talk. His initial vision in starting the Panthers was to use the 1965 Voting Rights Act to achieve “power” for African Americans by electing more black representatives to local, state and federal government. He maintains that monitoring police brutality and other tactics (like the children’s breakfast program) were merely a strategy towards this end.

Seal, who was employed in an Oakland jobs program for African American youth, recruited Huey (who had just started law school) because of his knowledge of the law. As brilliantly portrayed in Marvin Peeples 1995 film Panther, Huey became notorious for quoting large sections of the US Constitution and California law to Oakland police.

Seal is somewhat critical of Peeple’s docudrama, largely because it omits important historical details. An example is the crowd reaction – of supreme importance to Seal as an organizer – to the first confrontation between the Panthers and the cops. Another is the Nixon tape (which Seal, impersonating Nixon’s voice, describes in detail) in which the former president orders FBI director J Edgar Hoover to destroy the Panthers.

Seal also has some fascinating comments at the end about the Koch brothers and catastrophic climate change.

The film has an extremely long introduction and Seal’s talk begins at 21:00.

The FBI Infiltration of the Black Panther Party

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Panther

Directed by Mario van Peebles (1995)

Film Review

Panther is a highly engrossing docudrama about the formation of the Black Panther Party in Oakland California in 1966. It differs from most other documentaries on the Panthers in its emphasis on efforts by the Oakland police and the FBI to infiltrate and smash the group almost from their inception.

Panther traces the initial decision to form the Panthers to brutal beatings neighborhood residents received from the police when they held a candlelight protest demanding a stoplight at a dangerous intersection.

Under the leadership of Huey Newton, they formed Panther Patrols to intercede and stop the Oakland police from randomly beating and shooting black men on the street. It wasn’t necessary to use the rifles they carried – which were legal until Governor Ronald Reagan change the law in 1968. It was enough to show white racist cops that their knew their rights under the Constitution and California law and were prepared to shoot if necessary. The film’s re-enactments of Newton’s verbal confrontations with redneck Oakland police are priceless.

Under Newton, the Oakland Panthers exercised very strict discipline. Alcohol, drugs, womanizing and illegal weapons were strictly forbidden at meetings and protests. As men, women and children flocked to join the Panthers, they organized classes in literacy, Black history, revolutionary theory and firearms training – in addition to their famous children’s breakfasts and other food distribution programs.

The film’s dramatic tension revolves principally around the FBI’s escalating efforts to crush the organization as dozens of chapters sprang up and membership swelled into the thousands.

The film ends in 1970 following Huey Newton’s acquittal on trumped up charges of shooting Oakland cop John Frey. Panther portrays this as occurring simultaneously with an FBI decision to collaborate with the Mob to flood America’s inner cities with massive amounts of heroin.

The Torch and Pitchfork March Against TPP

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Dear Corporate Greed Resisters,

In order to create a global economy that prioritizes the well-being of people and the planet as opposed to corporations’ pursuit of higher returns, we must first defeat the TPP.

On Wednesday, riot police cracked down on protestors opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Lima. And on Saturday, thousands of people participated in protests in more than 40 cities all over Spain, counting on the support of over 1,300 organizations. The protests were a response to the Council of Ministers of the Spanish Government approving the signing of CETA by the European Union Council.

This November, it will be our turn to resist the passing of trade deals that threaten the environment and the working class as Obama pushes a Lame Duck Congress to pass the TPP. We will be hosting an action camp in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 13 followed by actions from Nov. 14-17. Once Congress leaves DC for the holiday break, we will be putting pressure on their home turf with local actions across the country. The first action of the #NoLameDuckUprising will be on November 14th:

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The Torch and Pitchfork March to Flush the TPP.
Share the event with all of your friends and families,
we need as many people as we can to join the rebellion.
Don’t forget to register for the resistance as soon as you can:

Register now to join the #NoLameDuckUprising! And join our weekly TPP Resistance Call this Wednesday, Oct. 19 at 9pm EST/ 6pm PST. Click here to register for the call.

Please support the resistance in any way you can by sharing this email, spreading the word through social media, joining actions, participating in the TPP Resistance call and making a donation. 

Click here to donate. All donations of $25 or more will receive a Flush the TPP t-shirt. Thank you!

Unite for Global Justice,
FlushTheTPP Team

TPP Occucards
Flush the TPP on the web
Flush the TPP on Facebook
Flush the TPP on Twitter, @FlushTheTPP
Our mailing address is:
402 East Lake Ave. Baltimore MD, 21212Click here to donate.

Snowden: The Book Behind the Film

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snowden-files

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man

By Luke Harding

Guardian Books (2014)

Book Review

The Snowden Files is the fast-paced thrilleresque account of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s dramatic escape from US capture in Hong Kong, following his leak of thousands of computer files documenting Orwellian NSA surveillance activites. Earlier this year, this book was remade as the motion picture Snowden.

Published in the UK, The Snowden Files provides substantial background on the NSA’s British counterpart GCHQ, whose spying on innocent civilians is even more egregious than the NSA’s, owing to the country’s weaker civil liberties protections. In fact, the NSA relies on GCHQ to engage in certain types of snooping (on Americans) that are expressly forbidden in the US.

When Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald first broke the story that Internet giants Google, Facebook, Apple and Yahoo were secretly turning over vast amounts of customer data to the NSA, his editors were forced to release the story online from the Guardian’s New York office to avoid prosecution in Britain. Shortly after the story’s release, British police destroyed all the hard drives in the Guardian’s London office – in the belief they continued copies of NSA files Snowden had released.

I especially appreciated the book’s epilogue about Snowden’s life in Russia, as it dispels much of the western propaganda about his selling NSA secrets to Russia, his refusal to learn Russian (he speaks enough to do his own grocery shopping and is working to improve his fluency), and his (non-existent) job with a Russian tech company. At the time of publication, Snowden supported himself through savings and speaking fees.

Four other government whistleblowers (Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack, Ray McGovern and Thomas Drake) visited Snowden in Moscow in 2013, and the book recounts their meeting.

The book’s major shortcoming is its embarrassing fact checking lapses – for example the assertion that Putin “invaded” Crimea in 2014. Most independent sources confirm that in 2014 the legislature of the Autonomous Republic Crimea held a referendum in which 95.5% voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. The referendum was triggered when a US-sponsored fascist coup seized the government in Kiev.

New Zealand Co-Sponsors Nuclear Ban Treaty Resolution

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Traditionally anti-nuclear New Zealand is co-sponsoring the draft resolution ‘Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations,’ which calls for negotiations to begin next year on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, and is currently working its way through the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security.

The text of the draft resolution is available on the iCAN Aotearoa New Zealand site, with additional background information here.

New Zealand’s statements at the First Committee are being added to the iCAN Aotearoa New Zealand web site as they soon as they are received.

Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Resolution Submitted to UN

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Peace Movement Aotearoa·Thursday, September 29, 2016

 

iCAN Aotearoa New Zealand

 

The anticipated UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution calling for negotiations to begin next year on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons has now been submitted by the lead sponsors: Mexico, Austria, Ireland, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa. It is anticipated that other states will co-sponsor the draft resolution (including New Zealand, we hope) in the weeks ahead, and – unfortunately – that the nuclear-armed states and their supporters will fiercely oppose it.

States will vote on the resolution in the UNGA First Committee some time between 24 October and 2 November 2016. The draft resolution, ‘Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations’, is available on the iCAN Aotearoa New Zealand website

It has nineteen preambular paragraphs which – among other things – outline the urgent need for a world without nuclear weapons, reference the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and various nuclear disarmament initiatives, and welcome the outcome of this year’s Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) Taking Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations.

The draft resolution then has fifteen operative paragraphs which include:

“8. Decides to convene a United Nations conference in 2017, to negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination;

9. Encourages all Member States to participate in the conference;

10. Decides that the conference shall convene in New York, under General Assembly rules of procedure unless otherwise agreed, for 20 working days in 2017, two sessions, with the participation and contribution of international organizations and civil society representatives.

11. Decides also that the conference will hold a one-day organizational session in New York as soon as possible;

12. Calls upon States participating in the conference to make their best endeavours to conclude as soon as possible a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” …

Source: Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Submitted to UN
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons