by DGR News Service | Oct 14, 2021 | Climate Change, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home
This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine.
BY ALEC CONNON & ERIKA LUNDAHL
Shanai Matteson, a 39-year-old White settler, sat in the stuffy overflow room watching the packed Public Utility Commission meeting, along with more than a hundred others, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2018. Over several hours, she listened as dozens of people—Native elders, local landowners, and young people concerned about their futures—testified against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, urging the commission to deny the project a key permit. She listened, too, as Enbridge workers, bused in by the company, voiced their support for the pipeline.
Matteson remembers the collective dismay and anger in the room as the five-person board approved Enbridge’s permit request. She also remembers what happened next: Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, stood up and told the commissioners that they had just declared war on the Ojibwe people.
Outside of the conference hall, organizers held a rally. Matteson listened as Winona LaDuke, a member of the White Earth Nation and executive director of the nonprofit Honor the Earth, spoke alongside several youth interveners—teenagers who were suing to stop the pipeline in court. Listening to their words, Matteson was moved by their unwavering dedication―to the land, water, and climate, but also to upholding the treaty agreements, which were being violated by this pipeline project.
After the news conference, Matteson packed her two young children into the car. They drove for nearly three hours before reaching a part of the land where the Mississippi starts to widen into one of the nation’s most storied rivers. It was a place she knew well. Matteson’s family had lived in the area for five generations, ever since her great-great-grandfather, Amasa, settled a homestead and opened a small sawmill on 1855 Treaty land. She’d grown up in the nearby town of Palisade, Minnesota, population 150.
Here was where Enbridge planned to drill the Line 3 pipeline under the Mississippi.
Standing on the riverbank that night, Matteson made a pledge to do everything she could to uphold the treaties and to stop Line 3. “I remember that day, saying to myself ‘I am making a commitment to this fight,’ ” Matteson recalls.
Defending Treaty Rights: From the Salish Sea to Line 3
On July 25, a Lummi Nation-carved totem pole will pass through the Mississippi Headwaters, under which Enbridge plans to drill the Line 3 pipeline. It’s part of a 1,500-mile journey from the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest through numerous Indigenous sacred sites, including Bears Ears in the Southwest and Standing Rock in the Midwest, en route to Washington, D.C. The totem pole is intended to invite Native and non-Native people to connect with the idea of broken treaties and the ongoing efforts to honor them, especially when treaty rights come into conflict with extractive capitalism.
Putting a hand on the totem pole, as people are invited to do at each sacred site event stop, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe for the many stories, hopes, and prayers it carries—and to offer their own. The 24-foot pole, hauled on a trailer behind a pickup, bears images that tell stories of the present-day struggles faced by Indigenous communities—including the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, the crisis of children held in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the work of language revitalization. One carving is a grandmother with seven tears, using culture to teach her granddaughter how to turn trauma into wisdom. The totem pole aims to serve as “a reminder of the promises that were made to the first peoples of this land and waters,” Lummi master carver Jewell James told The Washington Post.
These promises were made in the form of nation-to-nation treaty agreements, recognized in the U.S. Constitution as “the supreme law of the land.” For non-Native individuals residing in the U.S., treaty rights are still the legal mechanism giving people the right to live on ceded tribal land. Put another way, if settlers (like the two of us writing this piece) are not actively holding up their end of the deal, then they forfeit the right to be here.
In exchange, the U.S. government promised tribes services, such as health care, education, and housing—and in many cases, treaties reserved the right for Native people to hunt and fish within their traditional territory. Instead, the reality has been a history of genocidal massacres, forced displacement, brutal residential schools, the outlawing of language, religion, and culture, and broken treaty obligations. Only by confronting the context of the U.S.’s settler-colonial history can settlers begin to reckon with their personal identity as treaty people.
“Part of what’s so wonderful about the pole is how it invites people to learn about the treaty, and to learn about the true history of this country,” says Lummi tribal fisher and treaty advocate Ellie Kinley, co-founder of Sacred Sea, a Indigenous-led nonprofit whose mission is to defend Lummi sovereignty and treaty rights and promote Indigenous stewardship of the Salish Sea.
“Once you know the true history, you can learn from it, and become wise from it.”
“We Are All Treaty People”
On June 7, 2021, about 2,000 people attended Treaty People Gathering, a mass Line 3 protest in rural northern Minnesota. At one of two actions that happened that day, more than 1,000 people marched to a part of the Mississippi where the pipeline is slated to be drilled; at the other action, hundreds risked arrest (and more than 200 were arrested) shutting down an Enbridge work station for the day.
“We Are All Treaty People” was one of the gathering’s main rallying cries. They are words that Matteson has thought seriously about since that night at the Commission hearing.
In 2020, after two decades living and working in Minneapolis, Matteson moved her family back to Palisade. She quickly got involved with the Welcome Water Protector Center, a cultural camp supporting people standing with the Ojibwe opposing Line 3. She is now close friends with Tania Aubid, the founder of the camp and the Ojibwe woman who informed the PUC commissioners that Line 3 was an act of war upon her people. The women’s friendship has given them both the strength to do more. In early 2021, they embarked on a hunger strike together. To bring attention to the fight to stop the pipeline, Matteson went 21 days without food; Aubid went 38.
When asked why she moved with her two young children to the Welcome Water Protector Center, Matteson is clear that protecting the water and the climate were reasons, but so too was ensuring that her government upholds its side of the treaties.
“I’ve been reminded by so many Indigenous people that the treaties are not just a concern for Indigenous people,” she says, golden light falling between the trees at camp. “They were entered into by the U.S. government, and as citizens, we have a responsibility to ensure our government honors that law.”
Over the course of the 19th century, the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Nation, and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe signed treaties with the U.S. government—treaties that granted rights to U.S. citizens and reserved rights for tribal members. In recent years, tribal attorneys have argued that Line 3 would infringe upon those treaty-protected rights, including the right to cultivate and harvest wild rice―manoomin in the Ojibwe language―which is regarded as a sacred species and is a vital source of sustenance for local tribal members. “It’s a perpetuation of cultural genocide,” founder of Line 3 resistance group, Giniw Collective, Tara Houska told The Guardian, describing the impact Line 3 would have on manoomin.
It has been a long road for the tribal attorneys, a road made more complicated by the fact that some Native-owned construction companies and two other Ojibwe nations support the pipeline. Most recently, on June 14, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled against the tribes, finding that Enbridge had appropriately demonstrated that there was a need for the pipeline. There are, however, reasons to believe the Tribes’ case will fare better in a case at federal court, where it is to be heard in the coming months. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the favor of treaty rights in two high-profile cases.
But as the case makes its way slowly through the federal court system, the fight for treaty rights is playing out on its own timeline in the woods of rural Minnesota.
Before Line 3 was anywhere near the edge of the great Mississippi, Aubid and Winona LaDuke built a waaginogaaning, a traditional Ojibwe prayer lodge, on the banks of the river, in the exact spot where Line 3 was slated to be drilled under its waters. Earlier this year, in the depths of the Minnesota winter, Enbridge workers appeared on site, nailing “No Trespassing” signs to trees.
The workers informed Aubid and LaDuke that they were trespassing on Enbridge property.
“No, you’re trespassing,” Aubid replied.
When the workers returned with law enforcement, Aubid handed the police officer a copy of the 1855 Treaty Authority letter, informing them of her legal, treaty-protected right to practice her religion there. The police and the Enbridge workers left Aubid in her prayer lodge soon after, but nobody expected Enbridge to stay away for long.
They didn’t. In July 2021, Enbridge drilled under the river, despite Aubid, Matteson, LaDuke, and others wading into the river to try and stop them.
The prayer lodge still stands in the path of the pipeline, and dozens more people have joined the Welcome Water Protector Center as the fight against the pipeline is reaching a boiling point. Since December alone, nearly 600 people have been arrested for actions related to stopping the construction of Line 3 and tens of thousands more have marched, demanded that Biden intervene, and protested the banks funding the pipeline.
Aubid is clear on what she hopes will happen next. “We’d like more people to come here,” she says. “We’d like people to help us protect the lands, protect the waters, and to do what they can to uphold their side of the treaties.”
Later, as we walk beside the languorous waters of the Mississippi, Matteson reminds us of the importance of settlers upholding the treaties. “This isn’t history,” she says. “This is happening here. It is happening now.”
CORRECTION: This article was updated at 5:26p.m. on July 20,2021, to reflect the current state of the drilling. Read our corrections policy here.
by DGR News Service | Oct 10, 2021 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Listening to the Land, Movement Building & Support, Repression at Home
This article originally appeared in Survival International.
Featured image: The Ayoreo have previously blocked the trans-Chaco Highway to draw attention to government inaction over the destruction of their forest. © GAT/ Survival
The survival of the last uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon is at stake.
Indigenous people living in a South American forest with one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation have appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to save it from total destruction. Their uncontacted relatives are fleeing from one corner of the remaining forest to another, seeking refuge from ever-present bulldozers.
The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode of Paraguay’s Chaco forest have been trying since 1993 – when they submitted a formal land claim – to protect their forest in the face of a rapidly expanding agricultural frontier.
In 2013, given a total lack of political will in Paraguay to uphold the law and stop the destruction of their lands, they requested that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights intervene.
In 2016, at the government’s request, they agreed to enter formal negotiations with the government for their land titles, but for 5 years, and despite 42 meetings, the destruction of their forest has continued unabated. Satellite photos reveal that the Ayoreo now live in an island of forest surrounded by monocultures and beef production.
The Ayoreo have now announced they are pulling out of the negotiations, and have written again to the Inter-American Commission, asking it to order the Paraguayan authorities to finally return their land to them, and expel the agribusiness corporations that have taken it over.
Although most Ayoreo-Totobiegosode were forcibly contacted by American evangelical missionaries some years ago, an unknown number remain uncontacted in the last island of their forest, which is now being cut down around them.
Earlier this year one uncontacted group made contact with a settled community of their relatives, to express their fear at the destruction of their forest refuge, before returning to the forest.
The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode leader Porai Picanerai, who was forcibly contacted by the American New Tribes Mission in 1986, said: “My uncontacted relatives are suffering and in danger because they barely have any space now to live in. There are many outsiders occupying our land and burning the forest for beef production.”
Porai also said: “After having participated in most of the 42 meetings, I can confirm that the government doesn’t keep its word, that it lies and doesn’t want to protect my people or return the lands that we’ve always lived in and cared for. We’ll only get the government to act by going to outside bodies like the Commission.”
Survival Researcher Teresa Mayo said today: “The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode have called a halt to the negotiation process as the government was just dragging it out while allowing the rampant destruction of the Ayoreo’s forest to continue. The state knows that it simply has to do nothing to effectively condemn the uncontacted Ayoreo to death – and if a government sees the solution to its “problem” as the extermination of a people, we’re talking about genocide.”
by DGR News Service | Oct 9, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Direct Action, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home, Toxification
Original Press Release
Cas Yikh of the Gidimt’en Clan are counting on supporters to go ALL OUT in a mobilization for the biggest battle yet to protect our sacred headwaters, Wedzin Kwa. We have remained steadfast in our fight for self-determination, and we are still unceded, undefeated, sovereign and victorious.
In January 2019, when Gidimt’en Checkpoint was raided by the RCMP, enforcing an injunction for Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, your communities rose up in solidarity!
You organized rallies and marches. You published Solidarity Statements. You wrote your representatives. You put on fundraisers and donated to the Legal Fund. You pledged to stand by the Wet’suwet’en. The pressure worked to keep Wet’suwet’en land defenders and supporters safe as they navigated the colonial court system. All charges were dropped.
In January 2020, you answered the call to #SHUTDOWNCANADA! The world watched as the RCMP violently confronted unarmed Wet’suwet’en land defenders, on behalf of CGL, in an intense 6-day struggle for control over the territory, following industry’s eviction by Hereditary Chiefs.
This invasion ignited a storm of solidarity! The Wet’suwet’en were embraced in beautiful and powerful actions coast to coast and overseas. During February and March, thousands of people rose up in hundreds of demonstrations in solidarity with Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protection against the fracked gas industry.
During a wave of international uprisings, Canada came under fire for its refusal to engage in meaningful Free, Prior and Informed Consent with Indigenous Nations across Turtle Island. Canada’s denial of responsibility and failure to implement the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples resulted in the fight for #LANDBACK.
We are humbled by the power of our allies, friends and supporters. We have love, respect, and gratitude for those that stood their ground beside us on the yintah to defend Wedzin Kwa. We vow to reciprocate the solidarity from everyone that followed, all our allies/relatives and supporters that put their feet in the street defending Indigenous sovereignty.
Now, we need you to rise up again.
October 9th-15th 2021, go #AllOutForWedzinKwa
⭐ Come to the land: https://www.yintahaccess.com/come-to-camp
⭐ Find or host a solidarity rally near you: https://fb.me/e/1fv4oHsfv
⭐ Pressure the government : call the BC Oil and Gas Commission, the Ministry of Forests and the Environmental Assessment office:
BC Oil and Gas Commission (2950 Jutland Rd, Floor 6, Victoria BC): https://www.bcogc.ca/what-we-regulate/major-projects/coastal-gaslink/
Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations & Rural Development Contacts:
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/organizational-structure/ministries-organizations/ministries/forests-lands-natural-resource-operations-and-rural-development/ministry-contacts
Enviromental Assement Office: https://projects.eao.gov.bc.ca/p/588511c4aaecd9001b825604/project-details
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PROJECT LEAD: MEAGHAN HOYLE; (778 974-3361), MEAGHAN.HOYLE@GOV.BC.CA
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EXECUTIVE PROJECT DIRECTOR: FERN STOCKMAN; (778 698-9313), FERN.STOCKMAN@GOV.BC.CA
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COMPLIANCE & ENFORCEMENT LEAD: COMPLIANCE & ENFORCEMENT BRANCH (250-387-0131), EAO.COMPLIANCE@GOV.BC.CA
⭐ Donate: https://go.rallyup.com/wetsuwetenstrong/Campaign/Details
⭐ PayPal yintahaccess@gmail.com
⭐ Share our posts: Use the hashtag #AllOutForWedzinKwa to spread the word!
⭐ Check out our TAKE ACTION page for resources and previous actions
The time is NOW to recognize Indigenous sovereignty around the world.
It is up to the Gidimt’en, Wet’suwet’en, and our supporters to determine the fate of future generations. #ALLOUTFORWEDZINKWA
More info:
1 year recap with Dr Karla Tait : https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/17858045/tdest_id/1618577
Solidarity action archive: https://www.yintahaccess.com/new-folder
1 year recap video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=540243243557568
by DGR News Service | Oct 5, 2021 | Repression at Home, The Problem: Civilization, Worker Exploitation
This post includes sections on: can capitalism be reformed, proposed reforms, do reforms protect capitalism, why reforms won’t work, and capitalism undoes reforms that benefit ordinary people.
This post is critical of reforms because they mostly protect capitalism in different ways and get in the way of building transformational mass movements. But I also do not completely discount them, as I think they might have a positive part to play in moving us towards ending capitalism.
This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.
Can capitalism be reformed?
The obvious answer is no. But its more complicated than that. It depends what you mean by reform and timescales. If the question means can capitalism be reformed long term to meet the needs of ordinary people, then no way. If you mean when capitalism gets out of control can it be reformed so things are a bit less unequal to quieten demands for system change, then quite possibly, such as the 1930s in the US and the post-war decades in the UK.
Twenty-first-century capitalism may be less profitable but the corporate elite are clearly securing massive profits. These could be redistributed in workers wages, or from tax increases to fund a welfare state to meet everyone’s needs, unlike the substandard social safety net we currently have. I do think redistributive reforms are possible but it will require pressure from mass movements, which do not currently exist.
The Tory response to Covid could be seen as a reform and it certainly shows what’s possible. It contradicts the neoliberal claims that if we leave things to the free market and everything will be fine. I more see this as crisis response, with the Tories needing to balance the demands of the public to meet their basic needs and capitalists demands to keep the economy running. Extending the job retention or furlough scheme in the Spring and Winter was due to pressure from unions and business leaders, but there has not been a strong demand from the left. The question now is how will the government deficit be paid for – tax rises or more austerity. We’ve still not recovered from the last round of austerity by the coalition government following the 2008 financial crisis. Austerity now would continue the process of rolling back postwar gains related to benefits, more NHS privatisation and the welfare support for the most vulnerable (see the final section of the post for more on this).
Proposed reforms
Many reformist capitalists do not support the neoliberal form of capitalism – extreme inequality and corporate power – that we live under at the moment. They want a ‘fairer’ or ‘more equal’ form of capitalism. There are no shortage of proposals to reform capitalism, these include Robert Reich, David Korten, Thomas Piketty, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University, Dominic Barton, the global managing director of McKinsey & Company, Ray Dalios, George Soros, Joseph Stiglitz.
Then there are different names for a better capitalism: decent capitalism, responsible capitalism, inclusive cap, stakeholder cap, ethical capitalism, conscious capitalism, Economic Dignity, Common-Good Capitalism.
In the UK, Ed Miliband when he was the leader of the Labour Party (2010-2015) wanted to introduce a proper industrial strategy to introduce national and regional investment and to bring in controls over the excesses of corporate behaviour. The Corbyn project presented itself as democratic socialist but due to the limits of global neoliberalism, could have only moved us towards social democracy. The current Tory government are looking to copy past Labour Party policies with their ‘levelling up’ rhetoric, although it seems unlikely they will follow through.
The UK left-leaning think tank Institute for Public Policy Research came out with its 10 point plan for a better Britain in 2018: Reshaping the economy, Securing good pay and good jobs, Improving the private sector, promoting competition and protecting consumers, Increasing public investment, Strengthening the financial system, Tackling wealth inequality, Fair and simple taxes, Environmental sustainability, Devolution. It’s likely that Theresa May when Prime Minister was sympathetic to some of these ideas.
Do reforms protect capitalism?
Mostly yes. Many on the radical left argue that fighting for reforms maintains capitalism by making it more stable or profitable.
Nate Hawthorne has a more nuanced understanding. He describes in this post that reforms help capitalism function, he gives the example of extending credit to companies so they can operate. This could be broadened to include all the things that governments do that make the economy and business environment easier for companies to operate in and make profits.
Nate also describes the importance of the spreading of ‘capitalists class consciousness’ to ensure capitalist system stability. Capitalists will have ‘boss-consciousness’ related to their employees in their business but some will be more focused on increasing their personal wealth over the long term interests of the capitalists class. Reforms can limit the excesses of some self-serving capitalists. This is called the ‘corporate compromise’ by Young et al in Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It. The book describes how the creation of US legislation goes through a process of being generally agreeable to difference corporate interests to ensure the stability of capitalism [1]. It describes how Barak Obama worked very hard to keep the capitalist system stable so it worked for the business world as a whole [2]. And that Donald Trump violated the corporate compromise because he advanced certain business interests over others [3].
Reforms also prevent social unrest by doing just enough to stop it from boiling over. This relates to movements, campaigns, street protests, demonstrations and riots. Examples of this would be the US civil rights laws in the 1960s or the poll tax riots in 1990 in the UK.
Reforms have also saved capitalism from revolution by giving mass movements what they demand to quiet them down. The example here would be the New Deal in the US in the 1930s following a mass movements of trade unions, socialists and communists. [4]
As well as reforms protecting capitalism from itself, greedy capitalists or mass movements, reforms are also used to protect capitalisms profits in the form of anti-trade union laws. (for more information on this see a summary in the final section of this post).
Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression in the 1930s, several factors combined to saved capitalism: Keynesian economic theory; mass movements demanding state support and welfare reform; and the economic stimulation generated during the war and the rebuilding after. Richard Wolff asks an important question: has the systematic crushing of the left over the last forty years taken away one of the important mechanisms for protecting capitalism? [5]
Why reforms won’t work
There are several ways to think about this. First, if reforms are achieved that benefit ordinary people but you leave the capitalists in power, they will always undo or roll back any gains for ordinary people (see the next section for more details). The capitalists can’t help themselves. So reform is not enough and we need to end capitalism. [6]
Second, the mid-twentieth century reforms were achieved because of a combination of rebuilding after the war resulting in a high demand for labour, powerful working-class movements, the increasing profitability of capitalism with capitalist classes willing to share some of their profits, and British capital could not move abroad as it does now so had nowhere else to go. There is also an argument that the threat of communism from the Soviet Union put pressure on western elites and states. [7]
Third, currently, the left is so weak and corporate power so dominant that we’re not winning any reforms. This is the ‘structural power’ argument. [8]
Fourth, some on the left advocate a gradualist strategy through reforms to ending capitalism and creating a socialist society. There is a lot to unpack in future posts on this point but I do think that a rupture with capitalism will be required, a revolution.
Capitalism undoes reforms that benefit ordinary people
Since the 1980s the current form of capitalism, neoliberalism has been rolling back the gain that ordinary people made through the 20th century. Using the four categories from the previous post on these gains I will briefly describe how they have been undone.
First, what is privatisation? It is the selling off of publicly owned services, industries and institutions so they become privately owned and run. In the UK it started with the steel industry in the 1950s, then in the 1980s, Thatcher sold off a large number of public institutions, industries and services. Council housing was sold off in the 1980s through the right to buy scheme. The public services campaign group We Own It gives a great history of the privatisation of different publicly owned services, industries and institutions in Britain.
Parliamentary reform
Paul Foot in The Vote: How it was won and it was undermined, provides an excellent history of success of electoral reform up to the early 20th century. And then how it was undermined for the rest of the century. The continuing struggle for electoral reform is ongoing and important to weaken the Tories and open things up for the radical left.
Worker’s Rights
See a summary of the UK government anti-trade union legislation from 1980-1999 here and from 1979-2010 here. Since 2010 there has been the Trade Union Act 2016 [9], and then further restrictions since that act during related Covid.
Education
Stephen Ball in The Education Debate describes how since the 1980s schools have been remodelled on commercial and industrial institutions. He argues that neoliberalism has changed the British education system through four key mechanisms: top-down performance management, greater competitiveness and contestability, choice and voice, measures to strengthen the capability of public servants to deliver improved public services. Here is a summary by Ball of neoliberal education policy in Britain from 1979-2010 under the Tory’s and New Labour. And here is the We Own It perspective on Academy schools.
Social Welfare
The most recent reform of the welfare system was The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. A 2019 report by Frank Field MP, Heidi Allen MP and Feeding Britain called The ‘Other Britain’ and the failure of the welfare state, found that the welfare system is failing the most vulnerable. They list the key issues to be:
- benefit freeze – claimants no longer get an annual increase in line with inflation so have less and less to live on
- Universal Credit, issues include 5-week wait and advance payments, third party deductions and old social loans, sanctions, Work Capability Assessments
- Medical assessments and Personal Independence Payments (PIP)
- No recourse to public funds for migrants
- Jobcentres are unsupportive and uncaring
- The gig economy and the working poor cannot afford to cover their outgoing so need food banks
- Problem Debt due to low pay force people into high-cost debt
The increasing use of food banks in the UK is another clear indication that the welfare state is failing: “In 2019/20 approximately 1.9 million people used a food bank in the United Kingdom, around 300 thousand more than the previous year.” [10]
The NHS is a key institution of Britain’s welfare state. We Own It has identified three ways the NHS is being undermined:
- creating competition so private companies provide services funded by taxpayers;
- the reorganisation of the NHS so regional commissioning groups allow local NHS service contracts to be managed by private companies;
- the Tory governments have reduced the level of funding, which could make people think a publicly owned NHS isn’t working and so the private sector might be seen as a solution.
Endnotes
- Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It, Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee and Michael Schwartz, 2020, chapter 2
- Levers of Power, page 131
- Levers of Power, page 133
- https://lithub.com/howard-zinn-how-fdr-forestalled-a-second-american-revolution/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bT8f72s2uU
- Crisis and Openings: Introduction to Marxism – Richard D Wolff, 130 min, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Whccunka4
- AskProfWolff: A Critique of Robert Reich, 4 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNRyDa79ygA; Understanding Marxism: Q&A with Richard D. Wolff, 35 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-AkeOyiOQ; How Reaganomics Killed America’s Middle Class, 54 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdCNGkZoIZw&t=3004s; Crisis and Openings: Introduction to Marxism – Richard D Wolff, 129 min, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Whccunka4
- see conclusion of https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/27/the-tragedy-of-corbynism-a-postmortem. Also http://libcom.org/blog/reform-possible-22122011and http://libcom.org/blog/reform-possible-reformism-guaranteed-22122011
- Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It, Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee and Michael Schwartz, 2020
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Union_Act_2016 and https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/15/trade-unions-conservative-offensive-decades-strikes-labour
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users/
by DGR News Service | Oct 3, 2021 | Movement Building & Support, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home, Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: “The strategies and tactics we choose must be part of a grander strategy. This is not the same as movement-building; taking down civilization does not require a majority or a single coherent movement. A grand strategy is necessarily diverse and decentralized, and will include many kinds of actionists. If those in power seek Full-Spectrum Dominance, then we need Full-Spectrum Resistance.”
McBay/Keith/Jensen (2011): Deep Green Resistance, p. 240
This article originally appeared in Waging Nonviolence.
Featured image: Serbians hit a barrel with Milosevic’s face on it. (Actipedia)
A study of 44 dilemma actions over the last 90 years examines the many benefits of creative protests for social movements.
By James L. VanHise
At 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, 1982, the streets of Swidnik, a small town in southeast Poland, suddenly became crowded. People strolled and chatted. Some carted their TV sets around in wheelbarrows or baby strollers.
The residents of Swidnik had not gone insane.
They were protesting the lies and propaganda they were hearing on the government’s TV news, which aired at that time every night. Two months earlier, in an attempt to suppress unrest and crush the Solidarity trade union, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski had declared martial law in Poland.
As the protests began to spread to other towns, the communist government faced two unattractive choices: arrest people for simply walking around, or let the symbolic resistance continue to propagate. Because the Polish authorities were put in a situation where they had no good options, the Swidnik walkabout could be considered a dilemma action.
This is one example cited in a recent publication called “Pranksters vs Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism,” written by Srdja Popovic and Sophia McClennen.
“Dilemma actions are strategically framed to put your opponent between a rock and a hard place,” Popovic told me in an interview. “If your opponent reacts, there will be a cost. If your opponent doesn’t react, there will be a cost.”
Popovic is executive director of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization that trains activists around the world in civil resistance strategies and tactics. From real-world experience, he knew that using creative tactics like dilemma demonstrations and humor — what the authors call “laughtivism” — could be powerful tools for resisting authoritarian regimes or struggling for human rights.
It was his friend McClennen, a professor at Penn State University, who suggested they do a pilot study to quantify the value of such methods and include the results in the book. The research examined 44 dilemma actions between 1930 and 2019.
The case studies included the well-known barrel stunt concocted by Otpor, the Serbian youth group that was instrumental in ousting dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Otpor pranksters found an old barrel and painted Milosevic’s face on it. After alerting the press, they placed the barrel, along with a heavy stick, in a busy upscale shopping district. A sign instructed passersby to “smash his face for a dinar. ” Soon people were lining up to deposit a coin and take a whack at their leader’s image.
Eventually the police arrived and, with the Otpor perpetrators laughing safely from a nearby coffee shop, the police vacillated. Do they arrest the mostly middle-class families who were standing in line, and risk provoking more opposition to the government? Or do they let the protest continue and potentially spread to other parts of the country? The police chose a third option. They arrested the barrel, and the next day the nation laughed when the opposition press ran pictures of the cops wrangling the barrel into their squad car.
Another case included in the study occurred in Russia. When the residents of a Siberian city were denied a permit to hold a street protest in 2012, they found a humorous workaround — have their toys demonstrate instead.
Activists staged a group of teddy bears, Lego people, toy soldiers and the like, all holding signs denouncing electoral corruption. Photos of the rebellious figurines spread across Russia, and soon others were reproducing the action.
Putin’s government was faced with two distasteful options: allow the dissent to flourish by ignoring the protests, or crack down on the tiny toy tableaus and look silly. The government chose to outlaw the action. Toys are not Russian citizens and therefore can’t take part in meetings, explained a government official in issuing the toy protest ban.
Like most tactics, dilemma actions rarely lead to the immediate granting of demands by the adversary. But generating a dilemma can sometimes dramatize injustices or contradictions in an opponent’s policies, making the invisible visible and changing the narrative around an issue. In fact, initial results of McClennen’s study suggest dilemma actions have the potential to provide a number of benefits that can help activists build successful civil resistance campaigns.
For example, protests that create dilemmas for an opponent are extremely successful at garnering media attention, attracting more supporters, and reducing fear among activists. The study also showed that incorporating a humorous element is an effective way of reframing the image of an authoritarian leader — from powerful or scary to weak and vulnerable.
McClennen, who stresses the research is very preliminary, is working with CANVAS to do a more rigorous study. “I do think … we will be able to show that a group can have outsized impact … if they use dilemma actions,” she said. “We think it, but we want to prove it.”
“It’s very important to calculate the costs and risks affiliated with a tactic, and involve your opponent’s reaction in the original planning process.”
There have been a few other academic efforts to analyze dilemma actions. “Pranksters vs Autocrats” incorporates ideas from a 2014 paper by Majken Jul Sørensen and Brian Martin that attempted to define some core characteristics of dilemma actions, and identify factors that can complicate an opponent’s response options. Sørensen is associate professor of sociology at Karlstad University in Sweden, and Martin is emeritus professor at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Martin says that many activists focus solely on what they are going to do — how can they express their anguish about a particular issue. But when they think in terms of planning a dilemma action, they are forced to consider how the other side is likely to respond.
“And as soon as you do that, then you’re thinking strategically instead of just reactively or emotionally,” Martin said. “And I think that’s one of the great values of dilemma actions. They make you realize it’s an interaction, and you need to think about what the opponent might do, and what their choices are, and select your own options in that light.”
The more you think the process through, the more likely you will succeed, says Popovic. “It’s very important to calculate the costs and risks affiliated with a tactic, and involve your opponent’s reaction in the original planning process,” he added.
All acts of resistance operate within preexisting situations. The objective of any such action should be to change the situation so that it is more favorable to the resisters, or less favorable to their adversary. And, in fact, there is no bright line between dilemma actions and other types of nonviolent protest.
“At the simplest level, a dilemma action is an action that poses a dilemma for whoever’s responding to it,” Martin said. “But distinguishing it from a non-dilemma action is not so easy.”
Conventional nonviolent protests and dilemma actions share similar dynamics, because simply refusing to use violence can sometimes create a quandary for the opponent. Imagine human rights activists in an authoritarian country organizing a traditional nonviolent protest march. The dictator may be forced into something of a dilemma.
Ignoring the demonstrators or acceding to their demands may make the ruler appear weak, increasing the prestige and power of the human rights group. On the other hand, beating or arresting nonviolent protesters can seem heavy handed, bringing sympathy and additional support to the group.
So in principle, says Sørensen, who co-wrote the paper on dilemma actions with Martin, any nonviolent action might be considered a dilemma action. “It’s a continuum of different types of actions — some of them obviously involve a dilemma while for others the dilemma is not very clear,” she explained. “The circumstances will play a big role, and whether it is a dilemma will depend on what context are we talking about.”
“Some targets tend to be more vulnerable or more susceptible to dilemma actions. People with big egos, for example.”
Deliberately creating dilemmas for an opponent is not always possible or appropriate. But thinking about how an adversary might react can help inspire creativity when planning any resistance action. Taking into consideration the characteristics of your opponent — their vulnerabilities, motivations, goals, tendencies and so on — is always useful, but essential when designing a dilemma action. That’s because there needs to be a target that will experience the dilemma, and some anticipation of what choices that entity will make.
Getting the target to overreact can be an effective strategy in certain situations. “Some targets tend to be more vulnerable or more susceptible to dilemma actions,” Popovic said. “People with big egos, for example, are very often good targets.”
But cornering an opponent can also risk a violent crackdown. “It’s a very thin line,” Popovic added. “You really don’t want a lot of people to get hurt because of any tactics … because that causes fear.”
While many dilemma actions target a group, like the police or a government, Popovic thinks that singling out an individual is better because it puts the onus of decision on that person. “When you target an institution, you want to figure out who are the people in this institution,” he explained. “When you are personalizing your tactics, it always works better than if you are generalizing.”
A well-known example of a personalized dilemma action unfolded during the height of the Iraq War. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who had been killed in action, set up camp outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas while he was vacationing there. She vowed not to leave until the president met with her and explained the purpose of the war, and why so many young Americans continued to die.
A photo of Casey Sheehan is held by his friends and family of at an anti-war demonstration in Arlington, Virginia on October 2, 2004. Cindy Sheehan herself is partly visible behind a cameraperson at left. Ben Schumin, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
Over the next three weeks, hundreds of supporters — politicians, celebrities and other bereaved parents — visited the encampment. Almost daily international press coverage of the standoff increased the pressure on Bush, leaving him no good options.
While sitting down with a grieving mother posed risks for the president by spotlighting the human costs of the conflict, every day he refused to meet brought more publicity for the growing antiwar movement. In the end Bush chose not to have the meeting, but the action was instrumental in shaping public opinion against the war.
Dilemma demonstrations have long been used, albeit sometimes accidentally or unconsciously, to leverage gains in resistance campaigns, but only recently have they become the subject of serious study. Works like “Pranksters vs Autocrats” offer insights into the dynamics of dilemma actions, as well as provide some hard evidence on the advantages of this technique.
The main value in thinking about dilemmas may be that it requires activists to plan actions that take into account how the other side is likely to react, and design tactics in ways that make the opponent’s response less effective. This approach can lead to protests that are proactive, strategic and ultimately more compelling.
James L. VanHise is a writer who lives in Raleigh, NC. He has written about Gene Sharp and civil resistance in The Progressive, Peace Magazine, Waging Nonviolence and elsewhere. James blogs about nonviolent strategy and tactics at nonviolence3.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Nonviolence30.
by DGR News Service | Oct 1, 2021 | Climate Change, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home, Toxification
Over the past three weeks Line 3 resistance has continued in Minnesota and around the country.
Since our last weekly recap…
The harm Line 3 has already caused Minnesota’s land and waters became more clear…
- The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced that it had ordered Enbridge Energy to pay $3.32 million for breaching an aquifer during construction last winter. Their failure to follow environmental laws on that occasion resulted in millions of gallons of groundwater flowing out of the aquifer, posing a risk to rare wetlands nearby. Watch a statement from Winona LaDuke about the incident here.
- The extent of damage at the Headwaters of the Mississippi River from spills of drilling mud during construction, often called “frac outs” is still being uncovered. Recent photos and videos by an independent media maker show significant devastation across the sensitive wetland ecosystem.
Financial institutions faced mounting pressure to defund Line 3 and similar projects
- The world’s largest industrial insurance company, Chubb, announced that it would no longer insure tar sands infrastructure projects like Line 3. Chubb is the latest in a series of insurance companies that have revoked their funding in response to climate justice activism against the Trans Mountain Pipeline. As a result of the shrinking pool of companies willing to insure these projects, Enbridge has reported concerns about their ability to acquire the requisite coverage for Line 3 in the future.
- Taysha Martineau, an Anishinaabe two-spirit leader with the movement to stop Line 3 declined the 30 Under 30 Climate Activist Award from NYC Climate Week, calling out the event’s sponsorship by Wells Fargo and Bank of America. In a statement she said, “I must humbly decline any award as both these banks fund the very pipeline that is harming my people.” Watch an interview with Taysha about her decision here.
Resistance continued on the frontlines
- Water protectors with Camp Migizi have been using boats to halt work at Line 3 hydrostatic testing facilities. Watch footage of this tactic in action earlier this month.
- The Giniw Collective shut down a major U.S.-Canadian tar sands terminal through non-violent direct action. The group staged multiple blockades to cut off all access to the Clearbrook terminal.
- In response to the news that Enbridge breached an aquifer, causing significant harm to surrounding wetland ecosystems, Winona LaDuke led the 8th annual Horse “Ride Against the Current of Oil” to the site of that incident to pray for the water. (Photos here)
Local and national elected officials continued to call on President Biden to Stop Line 3
Established in 1990, The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international environmental justice nonprofit that works with tribal grassroots organizations to build the capacity of Indigenous communities. I EN’s activities include empowering Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
