The United States of America was founded on stolen land. The legacy of violence, discrimination, and criminal disregard for indigenous people continues today.
April 7, 2020
The undersigned Indigenous peoples and organizations write this letter to denounce the discriminatory response to COVID-19 and express our deep concern of the situation faced by hundreds of thousands of diverse Indigenous peoples of the immigrant community in the United States (U.S.), those in detention centers under the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), those survivingin makeshift camps on the northern Mexico border under the U.S. government’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), who are being systematically excluded in the COVID-19 pandemic response mechanisms.
We recognize that the global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people indiscriminately. However, we highlight that the most vulnerable are the most affected and devastated by this pandemic: those living inextreme poverty and chronic malnutrition who are unable to access or pay for medical care, the undocumented, and those with limited English and/or Spanish languages, as they cannot understand the information about COVID-19 and/or express their medical and financial needs during this pandemic.
The lack of recognition of our Indigenous identity and the exclusion of our languages at the local, national, and international levels puts our lives at risk, threatens the survival of our People, and violates our rights of self-determination, autonomy and to be free from any kind of discrimination.
Language exclusion is illegal due to Executive Order 13166 regulating access to services provided to Persons with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) by federal departments, their agencies and the organizations contracted by them.
The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of The United States Department of State (DOS) program etc., are excluding our peoples and communities at the Southern border and throughout the U.S.
Specifically, the rights established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), describe the minimum human rights standards such as the right to revitalize and use our languages (Art. 13), establish and use the media in our own languages (Art. 16), the right to better economic and social conditions, such as health, (Art. 21) and the right to determine and develop priorities in all areas, including health (Art. 23).
We are deeply concerned that these minimum standards are not met and as a result, our peoples are being excluded from essential information and services to survive the Pandemic.
The continued lack of information in Indigenous languages predisposes our peoples, an already extremely vulnerable group, to more difficulties and health impacts. We face the exclusion of our Indigenous languages, as well as the lack of recognition of our existence, resulting in dangerous consequences for our peoples and our survival. As background, the deaths of five Maya children at the facilities of the Border Patrol (BP) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before the pandemic indicates, unfortunately, what wecan expect.
Faced by this situation, we Indigenous peoples and organizations are organizing and articulating efforts to respond to the needs and priorities of our peoples in our own geographic regions and at the national level. Asan example, we are creating materials in Indigenous languages with Public Service Announcement videos on notices, public services, and information about COVID-19, printed materials, and cards that identify our primary language (I speak cards).
However, we are deeply concerned that our peoples, who constitute a large majority in the public services sector in urban and rural areas (for example, agriculture, construction, domestic services, and cleaning); mostly undocumented, without health insurance and those living in poverty, are not being adequately informed about resources and services at this time. For example, being informed of where to find food and health centers and/or access to computers for distance learning for their sons and daughters in their respective locations. We are concerned that most members of our community are unable to benefit from local, regional and national programs and services due to their legal status.
We express our outrage because in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our community continues to suffer deportations, family separations, immigration raids, and the lack or null attention in cases of people in detention with contagion of the virus under the responsibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The criminalization of our communities will only increase fear and panic and will unnecessarily contribute to dangerous conditions resulting in the further spread of COVID-19 perpetuating genocide against Indigenous peoples, a genocide that has a long and dark history in the United States, and throughout the Americas.
FACED BY THIS SITUATION, WE REQUEST THE SUPPORT TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND ORGANIZATIONS, ANDTOOUR INDIGENOUS PROPOSAL BEFORE COVID-19
First, that the local, municipal, state and federal governments consult with our organizations and peoples to learn about our existence and needs.
Second, that the different government agencies support strategies already led by Indigenous peoples rooted in our experience and knowledge of the needs and priorities identified by our own peoples and communities.
Third, financial support:
Any legislation to provide COVID-19 relief and the benefits derived from such legislation must be accessible to Indigenous peoples.
The Interpretation of COVID-19 services and benefits legislated by Congress at the end of March 2020 in Indigenous languages.
Technical support to our organizations for our Educational Campaigns on COVID-19.
The creation of a communication mechanism / platform such as a telephone line and a website aimed for Indigenous peoples in priority languages so that they are aware of the resources available to them.
Fourth, the assignment of contact people between government agencies and our organizations to support prevention, mitigation, and monitoring of COVID-19, and the exchange of community and government resources.
During this time of crisis for humanity, we unite as one voice and express our concerns, but also our recommendations to meet the needs of our peoples, who survive their respective realities based in our languages, traditions, worldview and experiences.
Together, valuing and respecting the diversity of all our communities, peoples and cultures, we will be able to respond to the needs of our peoples and future generations.
LA Comunidad Ixim, Maya Collective in Los Angeles, CA
Alianza de Organizaciones Guatemaltecas de Houston
Red de Pueblos Trasnacionales/Transnational Villages Network (Pueblos Nahuas-Tlaxcalteca, Mixteco y Nahua/ Nahuas-Tlaxcalteca, Mixteco and Nahua Peoples)
Red de Intérpretes Indígenas/Network of Indigenous Interpreters (Pueblos Mixteco, Tlapaneco, Nahua, Mam, Cuicateco, and Kichwa)
Colectivo de Intérpretes Comunitarios Pixan Konob’de Champaign IL
These are very important questions. They deserve a detailed response.
We must begin with this: no one has a plan to deal with nuclear issues, because there are no solutions. This is the insanity of the nuclear industry: to willfully unearth and concentrate radioactive material in a way that increases its deadliness by millions of times. Nuclear waste will remain toxic for billions of years.
How do we react to this? Where do we go from here? It’s essential to debate this issue. Let’s begin by examining the three main parts of the nuclear industry: nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants and reactors, and nuclear waste.
Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons are quite stable, and will not—as far as we know—explode on their own.
Alan Weisman writes, “The fissionable material inside a basic uranium bomb is separated into chunks that, to achieve the critical mass necessary for detonation, must be slammed together with a speed and precision that don’t occur in nature.”
The biggest danger of nuclear weapons is that they will be used in warfare. The threat is very real. And this risk will continue as long as nuclear arsenals are maintained in working order. And they are not just being maintained. They’re being expanded.
Even if nuclear weapons are never again used, they will corrode over time, releasing radiation from the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium inside them. This radiation will seep into groundwater and soil.
While high-energy industrial societies continue, the threat of nuclear war will only grow more serious. We support all efforts to reduce the risk of nuclear war through de-armament, dismantling of the industry, regulation and control measures, etc.
Nuclear Power Plants and Reactors
There are more than 440 nuclear reactors around the world, and each is a disaster waiting to happen.
Nuclear reactors are most dangerous in two situations: first, as at Fukushima, when direct physical damage to the plant disables back-up generators and other safety equipment. And second, as at Chernobyl, when design flaws combine with user error to create a catastrophic failure.
Charles Perrow called these types of situations “system accidents.” A system accident is when multiple failures in a complex system interact with each other in unforeseen ways, creating a larger unexpected problem. His conclusion was that nuclear technology should be abandoned completely.
Reactors are designed to cope with simple black-outs, so failure of the electrical grid is one of the least dangerous of possible disruptions to a nuclear plant. It is unlikely that a single dramatic blackout will collapse the industrial economy and cause widespread nuclear catastrophe.
However, lasting power disruptions to nuclear facilities can lead to meltdowns. This will happen no matter what. Increasing extreme weather events, economic instability, refugee crises and war will lead to blackouts and brownouts. Societies must prepare for this by safely dismantling nuclear power plants as quickly as possible.
It is possible that in the future, an increasing number of medium-scale power disruptions will encourage the decommission of nuclear power plants, or at least force closer attention to safety precautions. For example, several countries have started to shut down or put on hold their nuclear programs since the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
We support the expansion of these efforts. The nuclear power industry must be shut down. Engineers, politicians, and civil society have a responsibility to shut down the nuclear industry and dismantle it as “safely” as possible. The problem is, there is no safe when you are dealing with materials that will kill for billions of years.
And not only is the nuclear industry not shutting down—it is expanding. According to the World Nuclear Association, there are 55 nuclear power plants currently under construction.
Nuclear Waste
The most serious problem related to the nuclear industry isn’t reactors, but the radioactive waste they create. In the United States alone, there is at least 500,000 tons of Uranium-235—depleted uranium leftover from nuclear reactors. This material has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Depleted reactor fuel is (oddly enough) is more than a million times as radioactive as when it was raw ore. And the amount of it is growing steadily. Globally, around 13,000 tons of depleted fuel accumulates every year.
Ironically, depleted Uranium is often used in warfare, since it makes effective armor-piercing ammunition. In some locations, notably Falluja, U.S. military depleted uranium ammunition has led to explosions in birth defects and cancer.
Stored radioactive waste was the major issue with the Fukushima meltdown in 2011—not the power plant itself. Stored radioactive waste was the largest concern during the fires near the Los Alamos nuclear waste storage area in both 2000 and 2011, and after the near-flooding of a nuclear reactor in Mississippi in 2011. The reactor at any given nuclear plant contains only a small amount of active fuel compared to the spent fuel held within temporary storage facilities.
There is no good way to store this waste. No matter how it is contained—baked into glass sheets, poured into 55-gallon drums, encased in giant steel flasks and entombed in concrete, buried under mountains—it is still a threat to future life. Metal corrodes. Glass breaks. Earthquakes upend mountains. And 500 million years from now, this material will still kill any living creature that approaches it.
Are We “Hostages to Modernity”?
In a recent public panel, a public intellectual used the phrase “hostages to modernity” to describe how we are ‘locked in’ to a high-energy, industrial way of life because we must steward the nuclear industry. Is this true? Are we hostages to modernity?
In a sense, we are. The technical knowledge and engineering capacity to deal with nuclear issues as safely as possible is the sole domain of industrial society.
And yet this is an oversimplification of a complex situation. As we have seen, industrial societies are creating more nuclear power, more weapons, and more toxic waste far faster than any dismantling or cleanup is proceeding. And any “cleanup” that is being done is necessarily partial. Chernobyl is still toxic, as is Rocky Flats, Los Alamos, and Fukushima. There is no way to clean up these problems—only to mitigate some of the dangers.
So What Is To Be Done?
We believe the most responsible approach combines accelerated dismantling and cleanup of the nuclear industry using modern tools with a rapid dismantling of industrialism itself.
The ruling class is building more nuclear power and pushing us ever deeper into a full-on ecological apocalypse. Species extinctions. Extreme weather. Ocean acidification. Dead zones. Overfishing. Desertification. We are in a situation of converging crises.
In these dangerous times, nuclear meltdowns are just one of the catastrophes we face. And regardless of the scale of their horror, we have seen that life can survive nuclear catastrophe. The current “exclusion” zone around Fukushima encompasses about 600 square kilometres of land. This temporary boundary will probably — like Chernobyl—ironically end up ecologically richer over the coming decades. Chernobyl was a horrible disaster. Yet it has had a positive ecological outcome: industrial human activity has been kept out of the area and wildlife is flourishing. There are now packs of wolves, endangered horses, wild boar and roe deer running wild in Chernobyl. It’s one of the most important wild bird areas in all of Europe. Hanford is the same. The nuclear waste at Hanford keeps one stretch of the Columbia River more wild than anywhere else, and it is this stretch that is the most important section of the river for wild fish.
This is not to say that the radiation doesn’t harm wildlife. It’s estimated that there is 50% less biodiversity in the most radioactive areas around Chernobyl.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the day-to-day workings of industrial civilization are more destructive to life on this planet than a nuclear catastrophe. It would be hard to do worse than Chernobyl.
More nuclear disasters will almost inevitably occur in the coming decades, whether or not the electrical grid is dismantled. Hazardous radioactive waste will accumulate as long as industrial civilization continues, and there are no safe long-term storage facilities anywhere in the world. So nuclear reactors will become more and more dangerous as larger and larger stockpiles of spent fuel are kept on-site.
Future nuclear disasters from shoddily-maintained plants will be very bad, but business as usual is far more destructive. And while nuclear radiation diminishes over time, unless something decisive is done, greenhouse gases levels will increase faster and faster as they pass tipping points.
There is no easy answer here. There is no simple solution. There is only the urgency that comes from confronting a stark reality. The nuclear industry must be dismantled—just like the fossil fuel industry, the mining industry, the industrial logging and fishing industries, the industrial agriculture industry. It must be shut down.
Further Reading and Videos
Nuclear weapons, power and waste create an immense amount of risk to the entire natural world (including humans). A number of civilian and military nuclear accidents have happened. These lists are incomplete, only include accidents, and do not account for the planned and deliberate harm caused by the mining, production, storage, waste disposal, or use of radioactive materials at weapons.
On top of that, mining for uranium itself is destructive to the land as well as the lives that depend on the land. Here’s an article about Uranium Mining On Navajo Indian Land.
The Philippines is poor because of a 500-year legacy of colonization. Today, the Philippines is in a neocolonial situation: it is an economic colony.
Poverty kills millions per year. And now, in the midst of coronavirus, government violence, corruption, incompetence, and indifference to the poor is exposed more starkly than ever.
This piece begins with vignettes from Deep Green Resistance organizers in the Philippines, and concludes with a piece from the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal detailing the Duterte administration’s response.
Homeless people are being arrested for not following home quarantine.
A group of children arrested were arrested for violating curfew and put into a dog cage.
Politicians, celebrities, and the rich are able to access coronavirus testing even they don’t have any symptoms, while poor people with symptoms receive no tests.
CoViD-positive patients without serious symptoms are being discharged from hospitals but have nowhere to go.
Philippines: The Duterte regime and the COVID-19 pandemic — the case of a weak but authoritarian state
Update: On March 23, Duterte put to Congress the erroneously titled “Bayanihan Act of 2020”. The word ‘bayanihan’ means community assistance or ‘communitarian’ and the spirit of ‘bayanihan’ means assistance given voluntarily and without any monetary consideration by a member of the community. The title itself is fake, a lie. Nowhere in the bill does the spirit of ‘bayanihan’ prevail. The doctors, nurses, health workers, grocery employees, transport workers and all the frontliners who are heading the fight against COVID19 are not empowered in this bill — instead it extends more power to Duterte, the bureaucracy and his minions. This bill is sinister in many ways, as it aims to give wide powers to a president who’s proven to being incompetent in dealing with the pandemic.
March 23, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In the Philippines we have a combination of the worst features of the state under the current conditions of global capitalism. The capacity of the Philippine state to provide even the modicum of public services, systems and related infrastructure, such as health, water, power, housing, public transport, public education, etc., has been gutted after decades of structural adjustment programs, debt and the dictates of neoliberal economic policies imposed by international financial institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, ADB, bilateral and multilateral agreements with imperialist countries, enthusiastically embraced by the country’s technocrats and successive elite governments. This ailing public sector, co-exists with ‘the strong arm’ of a state that has maintained and even increased its capacity to mobilise the military and the police to impose a range of authoritarian measures, from a war against the urban poor resulting in the death of tens of thousands, mainly youth, in the guise of a campaign against drugs, to martial law in the Southern island of Mindanao. Today, this dual character of both a weak and strong armed state, is starkly demonstrated in the Duterte regime’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of March 22, the Department of Health reports 380 cases of COVID-19, with 17 recoveries and 25 deaths – a high mortality rate of approximately 7%. With no mass testing undertaken these figures are unreliable. Meanwhile health services are starting to flounder and health workers are falling ill though the anticipated exponential rise of the disease is still ahead of us.
Eleven hospitals and medical centres have issued an “urgent appeal” that an “alarming number” of their personnel were under the 14-day mandatory quarantine for individuals exposed to COVID-19 patients, as persons under investigation “continue to flock” to their emergency rooms every day. These hospitals and medical centres report that most of their “regular rooms have been turned into COVID-19 isolation areas,” leaving less healthcare resources for non- coronavirus patients who also have life-threatening conditions.
“The panic is escalating, mortality is increasing, our supplies of personal protective equipment are running short, our frontline staff are increasingly getting depleted as more of them are quarantined or physically and emotionally exhausted, and a number of our medical colleagues are already hooked to respirators fighting for their lives in various ICUs [intensive care units] … Even our ICUs are getting full. Soon we will have a shortage of respirators. We have every reason to be scared; we are, indeed very scared because we feel that we are on our own to face our countrymen in dire need of help.”
Despite the number of DOH-confirmed cases that is comparably lower to infections in other countries, the appeal points out that they are dealing with COVID-19 patients with “increasing mortality“, which in turn exposes their attending medical staff to more danger than usual. The country has no comprehensive universal health care program and one of the most expensive health services in the region.
Instead of addressing the weakness in the health system and infrastructure as its main priority, the Duterte regime’s strategy has been to declare a lockdown of the entire capital region around Metro Manila – the National Capital Region – from March 15 to April 14, which it describes as “imposing stringent social distancing measures”, with land, domestic air and sea travel to and from Metro Manila suspended, mass gatherings prohibited, community quarantine imposed, government work suspended (except for a skeletal workforce) and the suspension of classes. The announcement was made by President Duterte at a press conference ringed with the chiefs of the PNP and AFP, and police and troops immediately deployed at checkpoints to prevent people from travelling in and out of the NCR. No attempt was made during subsequent press conferences given by the President to explain the public health measures to be undertaken, such as testing programs, for which there is now a rising clamour. This was followed by an announcement on March 17 of the entire island of Luzon placed on lockdown described by government officials as an “enhanced community quarantine,” which limits the movement of people going in and out of the island region, home to at least 57 million.
We are currently under “enhanced community quarantine,” which is strict home quarantine for all households, with transportation suspended, provision for food and “essential health services” regulated, and with a heightened presence of uniformed personnel to enforce quarantine measures. This has been enforced with Barangay checkpoints (local checkpoints within Local Government Units), for which a pass is needed to pass through, with very limited movement which includes only the driver of the vehicle on the main highways such as Edsa or the driver and one assistant. These checkpoints, visible outside my bedroom window, now cordon off and isolate barangays around Metro Manila. Except for groceries and drug stores, all shops have been closed. Some barangays have even imposed 24-hour curfews.
Duterte has repeatedly announced that anyone violating this state of enhanced community quarantine will be arrested, including for “resistance and disobedience to persons in authority” under the provisions of the penal code. Students, workers and people simply trying to shop for food are now being arrested.
Unlike in South Korea where the military and police carried out temperature checks, testing, clean up and disinfecting, the armed personnel at the checkpoints here are doing none of this. In the first few days they weren’t even provided with basic safety equipment, such as masks and hand sanitizer.
The most immediate impact has been on workers and the army of the unemployed who make their livelihoods in the ‘informal sector’, who have been prevented from making a living. On the first day of the lockdown this led to tense scenes at the checkpoints ringing the borders of the NCR, with commuters venting both their anger and despair at the checkpoints. The impact on the livelihoods and lives of working people and the poor has been immediate and devastating. Our organisers are unable to provide assistance to the communities that they work in, such as providing food, masks, etc., in meaningful numbers, at most being only able to assist a couple of hundred households at any one time.
Meanwhile, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has announced a one-time financial assistance of P5,000 for every worker who could not work during the one-month lockdown. This is already a very measly amount (USD 3 per day for 30 days), and yet the assistance can only be procured if the employer sends the required documents to the DOLE. Workers are not allowed to do it themselves. Many are also complaining that their employers do not want to avail of this, as they still want workers to report to work during the lockdown. And for those who are locked down outside Metro Manila, they could not even petition their employer to follow up the assistance. Contractual workers are practically blocked from availing of the assistance as their ‘employer’ is a third party agent which may not even be registered in the corporation list of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Workers in the informal sector receive no assistance, and the government merely advise them to contact the local government units for work related to anti-COVID19 campaign in the communities.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development has temporarily suspended its poverty alleviation cash grants for the social pension and unconditional cash transfer (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps) as well as the distribution of 4Ps cash cards to the country’s poorest families to supposedly “minimize the exposure of the beneficiaries and DSWD employees to the threats of COVID-19”.
The situation in the Philippines stands in stark contrast to other countries in the region, such as Vietnam and South Korea, which are being looked upon as examples of how to deal with the pandemic. Vietnam, bordering China, with a population of around 97 million, has managed to contain the spread of the disease, successfully keeping the number of cases at 76 (as of March 19), with no deaths, over two months after the first cases were reported. A key part of the containment strategy was to develop a fast and affordable test kit in one month, which according to the WHO should have taken four years to develop. The test, developed by a group of Vietnamese researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, costs about $15, and is capable of returning results within 80 minutes, with a specificity of 100% and sensitivity of five copies per reaction.
South Korea, with a population of around 51 million, as of March 19, has conducted more than 307,000 tests, the highest per capita in the world, with 633 testing sites nationwide. Results are swift, too, coming by text within 24 hours. Korean healthcare, a highly regulated, efficient single payer system, is also prepared to face epidemics. Broad government powers acquired during the MERS crisis has given South Korea one of the most ambitious tracking apparatuses in Asia. Health authorities can sift through credit-card records, CCTV footage, mobile-phone location services, public-transport cards and immigration records to pin down the travel histories of those infected or at risk. Admittedly, a double-edged sword, this tracking system proved to be effective in curbing the recent COVID19 crisis in the country.
Philippines, with a population of 109 million, has only six testing sites across the entire country — three hospitals in the NCR, and one each in Baguio, Cebu and Davao. There’s now a rising clamour for mass testing. A petition by Scientists Unite Against COVID-19, an alliance of more than 1,000 biologists, health experts, and other individuals, as well as 336 organizations, has called for widespread testing to be conducted, as mitigation strategies such as social distancing and community quarantine are not enough and for expanded, decentralized, testing facilities across the country.
According to March 10 media reports, only 2000 kits were available. Duterte’s family members and other Duterte cronies have been given preferential treatment, even though they don’t meet the Department of Health criteria that only the elderly, those with underlying conditions and those whose ailments have progressed to severe or critical would be tested for the virus. People have commented angrily on social media, with some labelling it a “test kits crisis”, describing the preferential treatment given to the President’s family and cronies as “shameless, obscene and disgusting”. On March 21 media reports said that 100,000 new test kits have arrived, donations from China, South Korea and Brunei, but this will only be for testing of severe or vulnerable persons under investigation and not for mass testing.
A test kit was quickly developed by scientists from the University of the Philippines and is capable of fast detection of the novel coronavirus, but it will only be available for use only after two to three weeks, the time it will take the Department of Health to validate the tests.
Some local government units (LGUs) are taking the initiative. The Pasig City Mayor ordered thelimited mobilization of tricycles in the city to bring health workers and patients with immediate medical needs to hospitals. His appeal to the national government to allow the use of tricycles for public health and safety, since a maximum of only two passengers are allowed in the vehicle, was rejected. All Pasig City Hall employees will be paid full salaries with hazard pay and overtime for those employees in the frontlines. The City of Marikina is another LGU taking positive steps, with the initiative to set up local testing units using the University of the Philippines test kits. The regime has responded by threatening mayors with criminal charges, saying they would “closely monitor the compliance of LGUs in the directives of the Office and to file the necessary cases against the wayward officials.”
Duterte has announced a ₱25.1 billion ‘war chest’ to fight COVID-19, but only ₱3.1 billion has been allocated to actually combat COVID-19, including the purchase of test kits and drugs, while the ₱14 billion boost to the tourism budget will, we suspect, be used to “bail out” the anticipated losses of airlines, hotels, casinos, resorts, and tourism-related capitalists. Only ₱2 billion has been allocated to compensate workers affected by the crisis.
The left and progressive movement here has been campaigning against Duterte’s military response to a public health crisis and has been put forward a platform of demands that include: Mass testing for all citizens; Free hospitalization of victims, persons under investigation (PUI), and person under monitoring (PUM) for COVID-19; Mass disinfection in all communities; Food and water rationing for workers and the poor; Distribution of face masks, hygiene kits, vitamins, and contraception; Assistance to farmers, drivers, and other affected workers; Release of 4Ps for beneficiaries; Paid emergency leave to uninsured workers; Refund tuition to students due to class suspension; Price control of commodities; Electricity, water, and communications to be provided 24/7; Allowing vehicles and tricycles to provide transport to medical workers and people with medical needs; Suspension of rent, water, electricity, communications, and other fees; Disarming the large numbers of military and police forces deployed so as not to cause terror to the people; and a debt moratorium.
Internationally, authoritarian trends are also being inflamed, corporate profits prioritised and public health measures relegated to an afterthought at best. According to March 21 media reports, the US Justice Department has asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the coronavirus spreads through the United States. The move has tapped into a broader fear among civil liberties advocates and Donald Trump’s critics — that the president will use a moment of crisis to push for controversial policy changes. And even without policy changes, Trump has vast emergency powers that he could legally deploy right now to try and slow the coronavirus outbreak. British government statements on ‘herd-immunity’ have more than a hint of eugenics.
As of March 23, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed 14,655 people worldwide. More than 77% of these deaths are outside China, where it started. In less than three months it has gone from being an outbreak in Hubei Province, to a global medical, economic and social crisis. Data from China suggests many countries are at the beginning of an exponential rise in infections. Comparisons of death tolls and number of cases in different countries show large differences in the death rate between countries. These do not follow a simple, linear pattern of rich countries fairing better than poor countries, although this is one trend (Italy’s GDP per capita is more than three times that of China’s and South Korea’s GDP per capita is slightly lower than that of Italy, for example). They reflect differences between countries in wealth, priority given to healthcare, willingness and ability of governments and states to take control of the economy, social solidarity and trust between society and authorities responsible for the response to the pandemic. Overall, capitalist society is proving unable to respond rationally to the pandemic, which will massively increase the death toll and the social and economic impacts.
The COVID-19 crisis needs to be considered as part of the environmental crisis created by capitalism that is threatening humanity with extinction. Scientists for some time have been warning of increasing frequency and severity of epidemics caused by novel pathogens, with recent pandemics including SARS, MERS and Swine Flu providing warning. Climate change itself increases the spread of pandemics. Moreover, the causes of pandemics such as COVID-19 include many factors also fuelling climate change as well reflecting the more general breakdown in the world’s ecosystems, and their ability to sustain life, as a result of the capitalist mode of production. Factors include industrialised agriculture, wilderness and ecosystem destruction, concentration and movement of people, and pollution. Unless the global environmental crisis is addressed, there will be an in increase in the frequency and severity of novel pandemics. In this regard pandemics are no different to the typhoons, fires, droughts, etc, whose increased frequency and severity is associated with the looming Anthropocene apocalypse.
Imperialism has exacerbated the crisis in many ways. Decades of structural adjustment and imposed debt have left the countries of the Global South without the health and social welfare infrastructure needed for normal times, let alone during a lethal pandemic. The international division of labour that creates unprecedented wealth for the Western capitalist ruling class involves massive labour migration of workers with little or no access to healthcare, while absurd degrees of international travel — for “business” and leisure — are part of elite lifestyles. Imperialist war further degrades the ability of societies to provide healthcare, while horrifically increasing the need for it. War also creates massive population displacement. War, poverty and racist immigration policies have created a large population of highly mobile, undocumented people with no access to healthcare and well beyond the reach of any screening or tracking. The European and US capitalist economies are dependent on the labour of undocumented refugees and migrants.
The use of crippling economic blockades by the Western imperialists, the US in particular, further exacerbates the crisis. Before the COVID-19 pandemic appeared, Venezuela and Iran were both already struggling with severe shortages of medicine and medical equipment due to US sanctions. In Iran this has meant the impact of the pandemic has been particularly devastating. The chaos created by major imperialist wars on Iran’s eastern and western borders means that this devastation is rapidly spreading to neighbouring countries. The six decade-long blockade of Cuba is threatening a particularly perverse impact on the global COVID-19 pandemic. Confirming that the blockade is a response to the positive example set by Cuba’s socialist revolution, the impoverished, blockaded island has prioritised healthcare to such an extent that the US elite cannot hide from its own population the fact that Cubans have significantly better healthcare than working class Americans! Moreover, Cuba has pioneered “medical solidarity” with more doctors and health workers serving poor communities throughout the world than the World Health Organisation. The BBC reported on March 22, that the pandemic-traumatised population of Italy (a rich imperialist country) were enthusiastically welcoming the arrival of Cuban medical personnel while European Union officials fretted over the “bad optics” of Italians seeing aid arrive from Cuba, China and Russian, but not the EU. The Western countries could provide finance and technology to enable Cuba to increase its worldwide medical solidarity. Instead the US is working on tightening anti-Cuban sanctions to prevent countries from receiving Cuban medical aid.
The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated many normally invisible social and economic relationships of capitalist society and has exposed much of its exploitative and irrational nature. Paradoxically — because people are its agent of transmission — the pandemic is both anti-social and social. It is anti-social because the fear of contagion from other people can exacerbate the social divisions, individualism and alienation inherent in capitalist society (and ruling class entities are enthusiastically using the pandemic to fuel these, for example US leaders calling it “the Chinese Virus”). But it is social because combating the virus is dependent on recognising that the overall health outcomes for everyone (included society’s most privileged) is dependent on the outcomes of the whole of society, including the most exploited and marginalised. This is true for both within and between nations.
Marxist geographer David Harvey wrote on March 20: “The economic and social impacts are filtered through “customary” discriminations that are everywhere in evidence … the workforce that is expected to take care of the mounting numbers of the sick is typically highly gendered, racialized and ethnicized in most parts of the world. It mirrors the class-based work forces to be found in, for example, airports and other logistical sectors. This ‘new working class’ is in the forefront and bears the brunt of either being the workforce most at risk from contracting the virus through their jobs or of being laid off with no resources because of the economic retrenchment enforced by the virus. There is, for example, the question of who can work at home and who cannot. This sharpens the societal divide as does the question of who can afford to isolate or quarantine themselves (with or without pay) in the event of contact or infection.”
COVID-19 has also illustrated that the ineffectiveness of military/police/border security responses in protecting the elites from some aspects of ecological collapse (including pandemics) does not stop these being the default responses. The neoliberal capitalist state is unable to deal with crises even when it would benefit capitalist society to do so. Social solidarity is a necessity for surviving catastrophe but in capitalist society social solidarity is a challenge to the existing order. The responses of Vietnam and Cuba reflect the merits of socialism both in terms of rational organisation of society (and use of infrastructure and resources) and in terms of social cohesion.
The inability of capitalism to respond to this pandemic that threatens the whole of global capitalist society — including its elites — is reflective of capitalism’s genocidal and suicidal response to broader environmental apocalypse. The demands that the movement has campaigned for now re-emerge with a deadly relevance and urgency. Let’s put them up again, adapted to the current context. All of the above demands show the necessity of our campaigns and of socialism.
How a culture behaves during a time of crisis is directly related to how it used to behave before the crisis. The capitalist authoritarion nature of the Duterte regime seen now is no more than an extension of the capitalist authoritarion nature of the Duterte regime before the pandemic hit. In the book “Deep Green Resistance“, Aric McBay uses a few potential scenarios to describe how the conditions during a collapse will differ based on what the conditions were before the collapse.
What is decolonization? What does the term mean, and what is entailed? In this conversation, we discuss the question of decolonziation with Sakej Ward.
Sakej (James Ward) belongs to the wolf clan. He is Mi’kmaw (Mi’kmaq Nation) from the community of Es-gen-oo-petitj (Burnt Church First Nation, New Brunswick).
Having taught, organized, advised and led various warrior societies from all over Turtle Island down into Guatemala and Borike (Puerto Rico) Sakej has made warrior-hood his way of life.
This conversation is excerpted from a recent episode of The Green Flame, a Deep Green Resistance podcast.
What is Decolonization?
Max Wilbert: Can you help define Decolonization for us and help us understand what this entails? I think a lot of people when they hear the term Decolonization, they think of a process that occurs primarily in the mind and that seems like a part of it to me, but I think there’s more to it. I’m just wondering if you can help us unpack that idea.
Sakej Ward: I don’t know what’s happening in the States, but here in Canada the term Decolonization is being hijacked, so we see institutions like even government institutions or universities in particular that are trying to redefine it and like water it down and use token measure of indigenous inclusion and then call it like a decolonizing initiative and it really isn’t right. So, let’s talk about this, what we really mean.
Now, to explain Decolonization I’ll do it in a simple way, I would just simply say it’s the undoing of the destruction of colonialism and it’s the undoing of colonial influences. So I’m talking about things like the undoing of the destruction of our lands, the destruction of indigenous culture, the destruction of even our governments, destruction of our population, our people, and as you mentioned even our minds, individual minds and our spirits.
Two Sides of Decolonization: Anti-Colonial Action and Cultural Resurgence Action
So I’m talking about reversing all that. So if Colonization was about the destruction of the indigenous way of life in our indigenous world, Decolonization is about ridding ourselves of all those efforts, initiatives, and influences. So the way I usually talk about it, there is basically two efforts or two actions that we could look at these broad spectrums of actions, and the first one is ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS and the other one is CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTIONS.
So the ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS are actions we take to disempower or eradicate colonialism. CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTIONS are the opposite; these are actions we take to rebuild indigenous nations, right? So we do some examples like, for instance, ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS, you know, right at the top of my head, here I would say anti-industrial initiatives.
Dismantling the Colonial Economy: Anti-Industrial Actions
So anything that is about destroying our homeland, and so, you know, opposing pipelines like in Wet’suwet’en they’re doing a great job taking on the pipelines, they’re opposing logging, commercial fishing, mining, all these destructive processes to the land and that’s ANTI-COLONIAL EFFORTS, right? Because, like I said, at the core of Colonialism is the idea of extracting the resources of another country or the benefit gain of what used to be referred as Motherland, a Metropole, nowadays is just a particular family or a particular group or particular corporation, right?
And also, anti-colonial actions do also include things like opposing colonial political authority, that’s where we really get down to the things like challenging colonial assertions of sovereignty, so these become actions where you help raise awareness around things like the Doctrine of Discovery and that’s where Europe particularly through the Vatican gave themselves permission to seize all non-Christian lands. So the idea of discovering the land and then claiming it as their own, now belonging to France or Britain or Spain or Portugal, with a colonial construct, right? This was something that the Vatican in their papal bulls Had said go ahead and do this and I’m giving you permission to go out and claim lands for the sake of the Christian Empire, right?
MW: Right
Dismantling Colonial Culture
SW: So we have to challenge those things like the Doctrine of Discovery, because that is at the heart of colonial assertion of sovereignty, when we say sovereignty we’re talking about absolute power, absolutely like governing power over land, and we’re talking about the idea of these Doctrines of Discovery are completely illegitimate, we know it’s based on racism, it’s based on the idea also that Christianity has security over the world or our right to rule the world, so we have to challenge these.
Another anti-colonial action could be like opposing dominant culture ‘cause right now dominant culture is European, Eurocentric-based culture, right? So things like Western Liberalism which focuses on the individual. Indigenous culture was focused on the collective and the next generations, right? It wasn’t about the individual, so it was about thinking about externally, thinking about other people, your community, your nation, and generations yet to come.
Dismantling the Philosophy of Colonization
We also need to get away from things like Capitalism, Christianity, you know oppose all that stuff, as well as something that kinda throws people off is the idea of rights, right-based conflicts. Rights, at least from the dominant culture comes the idea, you could go back to critical theorists like Locke and Hobbes and you see that what they’re saying is rights come from the crown, that means the government, right?
And particularly Hobbes is saying that the crown owns all your rights in order to create a society, and they will tell you what rights you have to be able to function in a society, so you know your rights and your freedoms are all owned by the government and they’ll let you know which ones you can exercise in this model society they create, right? “So indigenous people talk about fighting for rights”, no, we’re really saying that we’re just fighting for the little morsels of political freedoms that the government will give us, right? We’re acknowledging that they have the right to even take them from us to create their society, right?
And, so a lot of times I talk about “no, we have to be more conscious of the idea of INDIGENOUS RESPONSIBILITIES not RIGHTS”, and our responsibilities are the idea of how we relate to the land in a good way, how we relate to the life of the land and our people and our next generation in a good way. Rights is something I can go my entire life without never exercising. The right to, say, “go fish”, and I never have to exercise it at all. A responsibility is a different thing, it’s an obligation, I have a duty to go out and protect that land, I have a duty to go and protect the next seven generations.
So, the dominant culture is really focused on this idea of rights, but really indigenous thinking should be more about responsibilities, and we have to be able to oppose these things. So, on the ANTI-COLONIAL ACTIONS think about imposing industrial initiatives, colonial political authority, dominant culture, we’re gonna oppose all that and that’s anti-colonial actions.
The Necessity of Cultural Resurgence
But, the CULTURAL RESURGENCE ACTION that’s more like indigenous nation building and that’s what we’re talking about healing our homelands, that’s, you know, obviously the ecology, and the environment that’s been utterly decimated under the last five hundred years of Colonialism.
So, we have to talk about how do we rebuild that, how do we rebuild the life in the lands, how do we re-establish a connection and the relationship with our homeland. And it’s understanding that being on indigenous land isn’t just a physical experience, it’s also a cultural-spiritual experience that we have with the lands and the life of those lands. How do we rebuild our ways of governance and how do we empower our traditional government.
Reclaiming Identity
Another thing we could look at in terms of CULTURAL RESURGENCE is reclaiming our identity and we spoke a little [about that] earlier because as colonial subjects or colonial citizens we are utterly controlled by their laws, and this was imposed on us, you know, there was never a vote for indigenous people to say “yes, we want to become part of the colonizer”, there was never a self-determining action to say we want to be part of that, it was always imposed.
Here in Canada, the word Aboriginal was used because after the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, Aboriginal became a legal definition when they talk about indigenous people, and what happens is because it’s a legal definition, they have to define the scope of what it means to be Aboriginal. So, they’re controlling the identity, and basically what it comes down to is an Aboriginal persona can practice non-threatening culture and you could go sing, you could dance, you could tell stories, you can entertain the colonizer as much as you want. You could put on what they always referred to as “our customs” are regalia or cultural clothing.
We could put that on and put on a show for the Queen when she come in to visit Canada and they love that, but the minute we say being indigenous means occupying our land, have access to our land, have a relationship with our land, that becomes threatening to the colonizer, that becomes threatening to the idea of private property.
So the concept, the legal definition of Aboriginal, it’s really about limiting the scope of what it means to be indigenous. So we don’t really have these political rights to access land, and we again we see this happening in Sudan, where the hereditary Chiefs who really are the legitimate leaders of that land are being challenged and faced with conflict of the Colonial States who are telling them by way of the Canadian definition of Aboriginal that they have no real power or no real consent over the land.
So we see in this idea of Indigenous versus Aboriginal being played out in the Wet’suwet’en, and then also in terms of the Cultural Resurgence, we have to talk about rebuilding our culture itself, the language, our history, our ceremonies, our rituals, our customs, and what it amounts to is rebuilding the framework that makes up a worldview, and within our culture, our culture was very spiritual, so we are talking about rebuilding that spiritualism that was part and parcel of our worldview.
Summary: What is Decolonization
And finally, by rebuilding our connection to the land, rebuilding our government and rebuilding our culture hopefully that will remind us about the need to rebuild our sacred responsibility to that land. I hope it fills in all those pieces so we understand how important that really becomes again and that’s what I think of when I think of Decolonization, it’s the Anti-colonial actions as well as these cultural resurgence actions that go on simultaneously.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Please contact us if you can help transcribe this podcast, or want to get involved.
Throughout the history of human civilization, imperialism has driven the conquest and colonization of indigenous communities, cultures, and land. The land that they hold sacred is turned into commodities and resources to be “managed” by the settlers. Colonization of the indigenous people continues to this day and will continue until serious political resistance is undertaken with solidarity from non-indigenous people. DGR has developed Indigenous Solidarity Guidelines for any non-indigenous people supporting the decolonization of indigenous people.
Columbus and Other Cannibals provides an indigenous perspective of violence and destruction caused by the dominant culture. For Indigenous Eyes Onlyhelps indigenous communities in the process of decolonization.
“Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.” (Premise 2, Endgame, Derrick Jensen)
Colonialism is the brutal act of greed taking from indigenous people on their own land. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the Western Hemisphere since 1492.
The latest came just yesterday, as the United States Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt ordered the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s reservation “disestablished” and its lands taken out of trust.
Tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell confessed bewilderment about the reason for the federal government’s crusade against the tribe, while also affirming a long-standing commitment to resist and fight for their lands in a post on the tribe’s website:
“…we the People of the First Light have lived here since before there was a Secretary of the Interior, since before there was a State of Massachusetts, since before the Pilgrims arrived 400 years ago. We have survived, we will continue to survive. These are our lands, these are the lands of our ancestors, and these will be the lands of our grandchildren. This Administration has come and it will go. But we will be here, always. And we will not rest until we are treated equally with other federally recognized tribes and the status of our reservation is confirmed.”
Taking Native Lands Is Top of the U.S. Agenda
Colonialism has always been about greed and taking. The wealthy settlers have never stopped trying to take all they can from native lands. This particular administration has been no different, and especially helpful to the cause, especially as it eyeballs all the energy reserves buried under native lands.
Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. The Trump administration has commissioned a coalition of advisors to take away as much of that land as possible for private use.
Trump’s Web Of Self-Interests Against Mashpee Wampanoag
If that wasn’t bad enough, the casino-mogul president is particularly interested in stopping the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe from building a casino just 18 miles from Rhode Island where Twin Rivers has two casinos riddled with Trump loyalists, lobbyists and investors. You can read all about this intricate connection between Trump and Twin Rivers here if you really want to.
A decade old Court decision Carcieri v. Salazar established that the federal government cannot take land into trust for tribes that weren’t “under federal jurisdiction” in the year 1934.
House Bill 312 was heading through with little opposition to settle the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s land issues once and for all, that is until Trump tweeted.
“Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.R. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally!”
PREMISE TWO: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Regardless of how you might feel about the construction of a casino, native people have been subjected to genocide; the robbing of their lands upon which their ancestors lived for millenia; and to the continual dismantling of their culture and murder of their people up to this present moment. Instead of in any way making reconciliation for these past wrongs, the U.S. continues the trampling of native people.
The issue of reservations and trust status has been a contention of radical indigenous people for a long time. In Hawaii, for example, the Kanaka (indigenous) community is divided over the issue of official U.S. government recognition. Some in the community wish to gain access to funding for health care, housing, education, and so on. Others see these as petty bribes. They contend that the Hawaiian nation was unjustly overthrown by the U.S. government, and that accepting “tribal” status would only legitimize an ongoing occupation that is entirely illegal and unjustified.
This is just one story from one day among many stories among many years. These conditions have never been tolerable, and they aren’t tolerable today. Colonization is not something from the past. It is an ongoing, everyday process. This is but one of the many reasons why we must build a real resistance.
Featured image: Flag of the San Patricios, or “Saint Patrick’s Battalion.”
I do not know if my blood took sides. I do not know if I descend from those brave enough to fight back. I do not know, but the memories come easily enough.
I search, so I may claim the unbroken chains, stretching far into the past, that bind us to resistance.
I find Pádraig Pearse dressing himself in the early morning hours of Monday, April 24, 1916.
I see him struggling with the buttons on his shirt as his fingers shake with nerves. I hear him anxiously muttering the opening to the speech he would give on the grey steps of the General Post Office in Dublin just a few hours later, “Irishmen and Irishwomen! In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood…”
I assume he probably knew that in a few days a firing squad would add his body, his brother Willie’s body, and the bodies of his compatriots to the heaps of dead generations that formed Ireland’s centuries-old resistance to colonization. His eyes might have paused for a moment on his left breast pocket wondering if they’d even bother to pin a target there for the riflemen in Kilmainham Jail.
I see young Tommy Woods, a 17 year-old boy, who left Dublin to volunteer with a contingent of Irish fighters known as the Connolly Column resisting Franco with Spanish Republicans. I am with Woods as he presses his hands over his wounds trying to hold his pumping blood in. I listen as the last sound he hears are the engines of Franco’s bombers overhead.
I wonder if that’s what Guernica sounded like.
I feel the sun rise hot and sticky over Chapultepec in September, 1847. I watch as 29 Irishmen, members of the Mexican Army’s St. Patrick’s Brigade, stand on gallows with hands tied behind their backs waiting for the Mexican flag to be taken from the top of Chapultepec Castle, so they can be hanged as deserters at the precise moment the American flag is raised.
I grimace as an army surgeon informs Colonel William Harney that the 30th member of St. Patrick’s Brigade to be hanged, Francis O’Connor, had his legs amputated the day before. I hear Harney scream, what he was later quoted as screaming, “Bring the damned son of a bitch out! My orders were to hang 30 and by God I’ll do it!”
Some of the men roll their heads against the scratchy hemp of the nooses rubbing on their ruddy, sunburnt necks. Some of the men hold rosary beads. Some of the men are telling jokes. One man has already pissed his pants.
All of the men cheer when Mexican cadet Juan Escutia rips the Mexican flag from it’s pole atop Chapultepec Castle and leaps to his death on the battlements below depriving the Yankees of capturing the Mexican flag for themselves.
I am Irish. I am white. I recall Cambridge historian Charles Kingsley’s letter to his wife in 1860 when he wrote of the people he encountered in Ireland, “I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country…to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.”
Or, the statement from Queen Victoria’s economist, Nassau Senior, when he stated in 1848 at the height of the Great Famine, that existing policies, “will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good.”
On the campus of the University of Notre Dame, where my father went to college, there is a statue depicting Father William Corby, one hand over his heart, one hand pointing at God, as he gives a sermon to the Union’s Irish Brigade of July 2, 1863. In the sermon, Father Corby warned troops that the Catholic Church forbade last rites and burial to soldiers who turned in the face of the slavers – enemy, Confederate soldiers – at Gettysburg. Father Corby, surviving the war, became the President of the University of Notre Dame.
Notre Dame students, forgetting Corby’s meaning and focused more on football, refer to the statue as “Faircatch Corby.”
A few years ago on St. Patrick’s Day, Subcomandante Marcos wrote, “When Mexico was fighting, in the last century, against the empire of the bars and crooked stars, there was a group of soldiers who fought on the side of the Mexicans and this group was called ‘St. Patrick’s Battalion’. And so I am writing you in the name of all of my companeros and companeras, because just as with the ‘Saint Patrick’s Battalion’, we now see clearly that there are foreigners who love Mexico more than some natives who are now in the government.”
I strive to remember the old alliances.
Edition of The Gaelic Journal published in 1882, part of the “Gaelic Revival.”
Author Bio
Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance.
Will graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and practiced as a public defender in Kenosha, WI. He left the public defender office to pursue frontline environmental activism. So far, activism has taken him to the Unist’ot’en Camp – an indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, and to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin.
