This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
By Barbara Williams
The word “Minnesota” derives from one of two Dakota words, either Mni Sóta meaning clear blue water or Mnissota meaning cloudy water. Just one letter can change the entire meaning. Just one oil spill could ruin the entire ecosystem.
I traveled to northern Minnesota with Jane Fonda and Tessa Wick in March to stand with the Ojibwe who are fighting a massive assault on their ancestral territory. Line 3 is a pipeline that was built in the 1960s and currently has 900 structural problems according to Enbridge, the Canadian company that owns it. Under the guise of replacing it, Enbridge is in fact abandoning the old one and aggressively laying the infrastructure to expand it into a larger pipeline with greater capacity. The proposed monstrosity would snake through 200 pristine lakes and rivers in northern Minnesota including watersheds for the wild rice that is unique to this part of the world and has been intrinsic to the Anishinaabeg/Ojibwe way of life for centuries. A spill could permanently destroy rice beds as well as the fish and wildlife habitat. Enbridge has had over 800 spills in the last 15 years, most notably the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history when 1.2 million gallons leaked into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. A spill is inevitable.
During his lame-duck period, Donald Trump approved Line 3, in spite of no environmental impact study. It is currently under review. Now that justice has been rendered in the George Floyd case, there is hope that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will turn his attention to the social and environmental injustice of Line 3. President Biden should overturn the Army Corps permit to Enbridge as he did with the Keystone XL pipeline.
Our first stop was at a compound on the White Earth Reservation. It houses 8th Fire Solar, a facility where tribal members are building thermal solar panels. It is the headquarters for Honor the Earth, an organization founded by Winona LaDuke, with the mission of creating awareness and support for Native environmental issues. Winona is a magnetic and fiery leader who has long been a vital force protecting the earth. In addition to harvesting wild rice (manoomin) and building solar panels, Winona runs a fledgling hemp business, taps maple trees, and has ventured into small-batch coffee roasting. The people on the White Earth Reservation are making every effort to be self-sufficient through sustainable activities.
We were served delicious buffalo egg rolls while the women water protectors shared stories of getting roughed up by the local police for protesting the pipeline. They were strip-searched and kept in overcrowded cells—in the time of COVID-19. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has created an Enbridge-funded account to pay for policing Enbridge opponents—meaning they are paid more when they harass and arrest activists. When we were convoying to a press conference, the two women driving in front of us were pulled over for not signaling 100 feet before turning. Fortunately, they were both constitutional lawyers—and white, I might add. After delaying them for 15 minutes, the officer realized what she was up against and backed down.
On the banks of the Crow Wing River, against a backdrop of Ojibwe grandmothers in traditional garb, Jane and Winona shared a panel with Tara Houska, an Ojibwe, Yale-educated tribal lawyer who hung up her suit in D.C. to come back and live with other water protectors on a 70-acre resistance camp called the Giniw Collective.
Jane’s presence had brought out a slew of media. She has become the wise woman educating and inspiring her vast network of old and new fans. She spoke knowledgeably on the salient issues surrounding climate change. She emphasized the importance of good-paying jobs being in place as we transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy. She mentioned a statement Winona made about a moment when we had the choice to have a carbohydrate history or a hydrocarbon history, and we chose the wrong one, adding, “It’s time to correct that.” Tara explained the illegitimacy of Line 3 being built on public lands. She has joined the charge of young activists fed up with ineffectual political policy who are using their bodies and agency to say “no more.” Winona quoted Arundhati Roy, urging us to see the “pandemic as portal”: “We must go through the portal leaving dead ideas behind, ready to imagine a new world.”
The crowd was energized; everybody was wearing red. There was a festive feeling of optimism in the air. At key points, a giant black bear puppet roared with approval or grunted with displeasure. Indigenous drummers drummed. River otters played.
Four years ago, I accompanied Jane on a flyover of the Canadian tar sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, source of the dirty oil that Enbridge exports. From the air, the open-pit mines made me think of cancer sores with the outgoing vessels bringing disease to the rest of the body. The jobs pay well. It’s how my sister and her husband bought their home. Workers go where the money is. But it’s a dying industry. Justin Trudeau enthusiastically signed on to the Paris climate accord and vowed to invest in renewable energy sources, but he has bowed to the corporate powers who are squeezing out every ounce of filthy lucre from the tar sands before they collapse. Not only is tar sand extraction the dirtiest and most inefficient process, but it’s also the most uneconomical. If the government took the bold step of subsidizing other sectors of the economy such as renewables, housing and transportation, to the degree they subsidize the tar sands, it would be far more beneficial to the economy and people’s lives—in the long run. But they are shortsighted.
The fish and wildlife that the Métis First Nations of the Athabasca region have traditionally subsisted on are riddled with deformities and tumors. Eighty-seven percent of the community believes the tar sands are responsible. We sat with Cece, who was a heavy equipment operator for seven years. At 60 years old, she had outlived all her coworkers, including her husband, who died of cancer the year before. She ran for tribal chief on a platform of pushing for stricter tar sands regulations, but the industry bribed her opponent with the promise of a senior care facility if he would show his support. She lost by one vote. Divide and conquer, the age-old tactic of domination.
With Line 3, Enbridge does not want to repeat the clashes they encountered at Standing Rock, so they have pumped money into targeted communities. The chronic neglect of government on the reservations, exacerbated by the economic downturn from the pandemic, has served to Enbridge’s advantage. People need to feed their families, and Enbridge is there with the jobs. Enbridge created a trust from which the Fond du Lac tribal government doles out monthly payments to their members. It’s a terrible dilemma for individuals who fear reprisal if they express opposition. The project has created deep divisions within the Indigenous community, but the vast majority are fervently against it.
With people coming to work from all over the country, the Enbridge man camps are potential COVID-19 superspreaders. According to the Violence Intervention Project in Thief River Falls, at least two women have been sexually assaulted. Numerous women say they have been harassed by pipeline workers and do not feel safe. Two Enbridge employees based in Wisconsin were recently arrested for sex trafficking.
Jane did a Skyped interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. In a breathtaking six-and-a-half-minute uninterrupted spiel, she laid out the micro and the macro of the entire situation. Later, she worried it might have come across as manic. No, Tessa and I assured her, it came across as urgent.
After a long drive, Tara led us down a narrow, snow-covered dirt road to a small encampment of tents where they were sugaring the maple trees. Sap is collected and continuously poured into a gigantic hand-hewn pot mounted over an open fire, then reduced down for several days. It’s very labor-intensive—the ratio is 26 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. They are not selling the syrup; they want to hold on to it in case there’s a shortage or some other catastrophe occurs. They’re holding on to their wild rice too. Everyone is on tenterhooks waiting for a decision from the White House. Their future hangs in the balance.
Barbara Williams is a Canadian musician, actress, and activist. As a musician, she has performed in concerts devoted to peace, workers’ rights, and the environment. She is the author of The Hope in Leaving: A Memoir.
Georgia – Locals are protesting a large hydro power plant in the valley of the Rioni river in western Georgia. DGR stands in fierce solidarity with grassroots movements fighting the construction of dams and power plants against corrupt governments and multinational cooperations.
The government of Georgia has rented out an area of 281 hectares to a Turkish investor for 99 years to build and run a large dam and hydro electric power plant. Protesters claim that the government has sold another 293 hectares without official documents.
construction of the hydroelectric power stations in Rioni Gorge is being carried out by the Turkish company ENKA. The project is fiercely opposed by the local population because the construction of the hydroelectric power plant will require the relocation of dozens of families, and also by environmentalists who argue that the construction of the hydro power plant will lead to environmental and seismic risks.
The locals have set up a camp to protest against the project, occupying the site for more than 6 months now.
While the government initially tried to ignore the protests, the protesters, calling themselves “Guardians of the Rioni Valley”, have been able to mobilize an impressive number of people to join the occupation. Opponents of the hydro power plant construction could be seen clashing with police while demanding to open barricades to the village where the construction is being carried out. According to Varlam Goletiani, one of the protest organizers, nine protesters were arrested during rallies held on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 13th and 14th.
The activists have also filed a lawsuit in court, in which they are attempting to challenge the permission for the construction of the power plant.
“We are calling on communities in different cities, we will close the entire country, I say it again if our demands are not met. Our action plan today is linked to the sit-in, we will remain here. If the government does not take into account the will of the Georgian people, we will organize protests in different cities and block the whole country. This will continue until our requirements are met. If eventually, they will stay stubborn and not take into account everything that is happening here today against the Namakhvani hydroelectric power station, then we will plan large-scale work in the capital, and thousands of people will take to the streets until we completely break their backs, until they will have the feeling of the government we hired.” stated Goletiani.
“It is clear that the project will not only not contribute to the energy security of the country, as indicated by the government, but that the agreement provides for heavy and indefinite fiscal burdens for the state budget,” EMC reports.
The statement continues, “The agreement also shows a number of guarantees and conditions of support given to the company by the state, which made it possible to circumvent the strict requirements of the legislation and start the construction process by obtaining basic permits.
“The analysis of the agreement shows that the company is actually using Georgia’s natural resources free of charge and does not undertake to sell energy on the domestic market, which invalidates the country’s energy security or even economic benefits.
“The list of possible circumstances in which the company seeks compensation from the state is indefinitely extensive and puts the country in an unequal position due to the fact that it seeks to reinsure risks beyond the control of the state with budgetary funds. Under the agreement, all possible business risks are insured in the state budget in favor of the company.”
The main demand of protesters remains that Enka Renewables leaves the Rioni Valley forever.
Protect Thacker Pass with activists Max Wilbert, Will Falk and Rebecca Wildbear
Activists aiming to stop Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass open-pit lithium mine – what would be the United States’ largest lithium mine, supplying up to 25% of the world’s lithium – launched a permanent protest encampment hours after the Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to the mine on January 15.
The Green Flame brings you the voices of land protectors Will Falk and Max Wilbert who mean to stay for as long as it takes to protect this old-growth sagebrush mountainside despite winter conditions at Thacker Pass. Rebecca Wildbear, river and soul guide, lover of the wild, joins us in honoring and calling for defense of the Great Basin, Thacker Pass and the whole of wild creation. Many thanks to Green Flame sound editor Iona and to the many non-human voices – Golden Eagle, Coyote, and Greater Sage Grouse – speaking to us in this Protect Thacker Pass episode of the Green Flame.
Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.
Hundreds of Jenu Kuruba people have launched an indefinite protest in the Nagarhole National Park, India, to demand that the authorities stop trying to evict them, and recognize their rights to the forest.
According to India’s Forest Rights Act (FRA), the tribe has rights to live in, “protect” and “conserve” their lands.
The Jenu Kuruba’s rights to their lands should have been recognized many years ago – they first submitted their claims in 2009. But like many tribes across the country, their claims have been ignored.
JK Thimma, a Jenu Kuruba leader from Nagarhole, said today: “We Adivasi [tribal] people know how to take care of the forest and animals and we can do this much better than them. This is what we should fight for. We want the Forest Department to leave and hand over the forest to us, we will take care of the forest.”
The evictions and harassment that the Jenu Kuruba have endured are part of a racist and colonial conservation model that takes indigenous peoples’ land and turns it into protected areas for tourism, accompanied by gross human rights abuses.
The protest comes at a time when dissent is being brutally crushed in Modi’s authoritarian India. The police response to farmers’ protests in Delhi sparked international outrage and many Adivasi activists, such as Hidme Markam, have been arrested and imprisoned for speaking out.
For many years, WCS India has led the call for the relocation of tribal peoples from tiger reserves, insisting these are “voluntary relocations” which benefit the tribes. Yet communities report worse living conditions and a desire to return to their forest, prompting the US government to halt funding for relocations in the name of conservation.
JK Thimma told Survival: “WCS go to the Forest Department and bring officials and come here to tell us to leave.” He added: “We don’t want any money. We want to live free in the forest. The tribes, the forest and the animals are all one thing. If the officials come and shoot us we are ready to die, but not to leave the forest.”
The Jenu Kuruba have lived in and protected the forests of Karnataka for millennia.
They worship the tiger, and their careful management of the forest has ensured a healthy tiger population.
Muthamma, a Jenu Kuruba woman explained: “We’ve lived together with tigers for centuries, we don’t kill them and the tigers don’t kill us. We revere the tiger as a deity; we have a tiger altar over in the forest. The conservationists from the city don’t understand the forest. As long as we’re alive the tigers will still be safe. If we disappear, the loggers and poachers will have free rein.”
Another forest-dwelling tribe, the Soliga, were the first tribe to get their community forest rights recognised in a tiger reserve – which then saw tiger numbers increase far more than the national average.
Survival’s Senior Researcher Sophie Grig said today: “The Jenu Kuruba face constant harassment and threats from forest guards, who stop them from growing their food, building their houses, practicing rituals in their sacred groves or accessing their family graves. All these are flagrant violations of their rights. The Jenu Kuruba are the true conservationists and protectors of Nagarhole’s forests – it’s high time that their rights to live in, protect and conserve their ancestral lands are recognised.”
This article was written by Sarang Narasimhaiah and Mukesh Kulriya and published on Roarmag.org in the 5th February 2021. Sarang and Mukesh offer the reader a detailed account of the protests, why people are against corporate rule and what the protests may lead to.
Featured image by Mukesh Kulriya.
Amidst the months-long, farmer-led protests on the outskirts of Delhi, the foundations of a more democratic and anti-corporate India are being built.
On January 26, 2021, India observed its 71st Republic Day under historically unprecedented circumstances. On an occasion meant to commemorate the adoption of the Indian Constitution, two fiercely antagonistic visions of the country locked horns with each other in the capital of Delhi.
On the Rajpath ceremonial boulevard in the heart of Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s homegrown Hindu nationalist proto-fascism was on full display. It was no coincidence, for example, that the winner of the Republic Day Parade’s tableaux competition was the state of Uttar Pradesh, whose float celebrated the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and its impending replacement by a Hindu temple — a blood-soaked, decades-long travesty that has dovetailed with the rapid proliferation of the Hindu right.
In other parts of Delhi, however, a rather different spectacle was unfolding, as tens of thousands of farmers, primarily from the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana, took over the streets of the city with their tractors.
For the past two months, hundreds of thousands of farmers have camped out on the outskirts of Delhi to protest three recently passed, transparently pro-corporate agricultural laws that stand to devastate their livelihoods. Coordinated by the Samyuta Kisan Morcha (United Farmers’ Front or SKM), the participants in the January 26 rally attempted to proceed along three pre-planned routes, but came up against police barricade after barricade. In the most explosive moment of the day, a section of the tractor parade broke away and entered the Red Fort, an iconic historical landmark in the heart of Delhi. Amidst gunfire, teargas, and lathi (baton) charges by state authorities, as well as a widely condemned internet shutdown, the protesters raised their own flags over a location famous for the prime minister’s hoisting of the Indian tricolor on Independence Day.
Notwithstanding predictable condemnations from India’s “law and order” liberals and leftists, the storming of the Red Fort and the Indian state’s hyper-repressive response exemplify how the protesting farmers have rocked Modi and the BJP to their core. They pose the most fundamental threat to the BJP’s neoliberal Hindu chauvinist agenda since Modi first came to power in 2014.
INDIA’S DESCENT INTO NEOLIBERAL HINDU NATIONALIST AUTHORITARIANISM
While the scale of the current resistance is unprecedented, the government’s targeting of vulnerable populations is not. Farmers are but the latest to appear in the cross hairs of the Modi government. Immediately after receiving a renewed mandate in India’s 2019 general election, Modi and the BJP stripped the majority Muslim region of Kashmir of its statehood, while simultaneously intensifying its brutal occupation by Indian military and paramilitary forces. This move came on the heels of the BJP-controlled northeastern state of Assam’s publication of a National Register of Citizens, which deliberately targeted Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are automatically presumed to be “illegal immigrants,” for detention. Finally, in December of 2019, India’s Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which grants citizenship solely to non-Muslim refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and could set the stage for rendering up to 200 million Indian Muslims stateless.
These measures — and the brutal repression of the mass protests that followed in their wake — demonstrate the Modi regime’s determination to lay the foundations for the ultimate goal of a Hindu supremacist ethnostate upheld by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organization or RSS for short), the engine of the Hindu nationalist machine that was directly inspired by the Hitler Youth and Mussolini’s Black Brigades.
The social and cultural dimensions of the Hindu right’s authoritarianism underwrite its unabashedly neoliberal economic agenda. Modi rose to national prominence by implementing the “Gujarat Model” of politics in his home state, which essentially promotes economic growth by any and all means necessary, including extreme violence. Modi’s ruthlessness earned him the support of India’s foremost corporate dynasties, from the Tatas and the Ambanis to the Adanis. In exchange for bankrolling his political ascendancy, Modi has rewarded his corporate backers handsomely throughout his time in office: the annexation of Kashmir, for instance, has created a prime investment opportunity for Reliance Industries, the gargantuan conglomerate owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.
In September of 2020, Modi and the BJP made perhaps their most profound corporate overture to date when they pushed through three agricultural bills that stand to “virtually kill the rights and entitlements of the agricultural population,” according to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions. As Peoples Dispatch explains, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 would prevent farmers from getting guaranteed prices for their crops by forcing them into an unregulated market space known as a “trade area.” Furthermore, the Essential Commodities Bill, 2020 would remove various items such as cereals, pulses, edible oils, onions and potatoes from the list of essential commodities, allowing large corporations to hoard these necessities.
Finally, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 would allow for contract farming in India, which, given that 86 percent of India’s farmers own less than two hectares of land, would further shift the balance of agricultural power in favor of large corporations. Ambani’s Reliance Industries and the Adani Group of fellow billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani rank among the foremost prospective corporate beneficiaries of these bills.
LESSONS FROM THE FRONT LINE
Why have the aforementioned farm laws brought millions of protesters into the streets of Delhi and many other parts of India? How have farmers sustained their protest for over two months? How have the Indian and international media covered the farmers’ actions, and how have movement participants sought to combat misconceptions often propagated by this coverage? What are the deeper roots of the ongoing struggle? What do these protests mean for India and the wider world?
Seeking answers to these pressing questions, I spoke to Mukesh Kulriya, a third-year PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Music who has been on the front-lines of the farmer-led mobilization at the borders of Delhi since it first began. Mukesh is a longtime member of the All India Students Association (AISA), the collegiate wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation.
Sarang Narasimhaiah: Could you describe the basis for the ongoing political action staged by farmers from Punjab, Haryana and other surrounding areas of Delhi, as well as so many other parts of the country?
Mukesh Kulriya:The immediate cause for this protest is that the Modi government passed three agricultural bills in a very undemocratic manner: these bills became laws under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Indian Parliament was not even in session. The way the bills were passed was also unconstitutional: agriculture is a state matter in India, not a federal one, so how can the federal government rule on it? Moreover, even if you take a cursory look at these bills, you can see that they are totally pro-market. We need to remember that this government also carried out labor reforms that snatched away essential labor rights from organized sector workers, allowing them to be hired and fired as their employers please and placing their right to unionization under threat. The largest working population of the country — the workers and farmers who make up 80-90 percent of India’s workforce — have been hammered by both these sets of bills.
There was a lot of uproar when these laws were first proposed, and people quickly started to mobilize against them in Punjab. For a couple of months, they were organizing at the village level, but by the end of August and early September, protests started to erupt in cities across Punjab. What distinguished these protests was that they recognized the laws as a neoliberal attack on agriculture, and so they began to target the corporations responsible. The Adanis and Ambanis run the largest conglomerates in India: they are heavily invested in the privatization of agriculture and also very close to the current regime. As such, the slogans raised at the protests have opposed Prime Minister Modi but have also declared that he is nothing but a puppet in the hands of these corporations. This is not some academic writing a paper that criticizes neoliberalization: rather, corporations are being named and shamed by the common people. Farmers have shut down virtually all stores owned by the Adanis and Ambanis, hitting these corporations where it hurts. They have also taken out toll plazas across the state and refused to pay their toll taxes. In these ways, a mass popular movement has emerged addressing the questions of livelihood, land and labor: the classic issues of India’s feudal system [which continue to indelibly shape its capitalist present].
Corporations are being named and shamed by the common people.
On November 26, 2020, Indian laborers opposed to the above-mentioned labor reforms as well as the farm bills called for an all-India strike, and this was hugely successful. 250 million workers participated in that strike [making it the largest labor action in recorded human history]. On that same day, farmers from Punjab decided that they should march to Delhi. When they reached the borders of the city, they were stopped by the police and other government forces, who dug 15-meter wide holes in the road, put up ten layers of barricades and barbed wire, and used tear gas and lathi charges against the farmers.
When videos of these attacks showing the brutality of this government started to circulate, many people were moved to take action. The next day, more people from Punjab and Haryana started coming to the borders of Delhi, and the state couldn’t do anything to stop them. The farmers and their supporters wanted to occupy a central space in Delhi, but the government tried to force them into a remote corner of the city; the protesters refused to use this site and decided to block the city instead. Incredibly, by now, the capital of India has been blocked by protesters for almost two months. Some of these protests are almost 15 kilometers long; you can see one to two hundred thousand people at one protest site alone.
This protest is significant to no small extent because Punjab is one of India’s more well-off states, largely due to agriculture. Punjab has been suffering as a result of India’s agricultural crisis in a very different way from the rest of the country. Punjab was basically a laboratory for the Green Revolution in India, along with Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. This makes it the only agricultural belt in the country where small farmers have a little money. However, because of pesticides and other chemicals used in industrial farming, this area has also become a cancer belt. There is actually a train that goes from Punjab toward my hometown in Rajasthan which is known as the “Cancer Express.” People see the money that agriculture brought to Punjab, but not the cancer, the huge indebtedness and the institutionalized drug racket that has been very active in the state.
Punjab has a long revolutionary history; the powers that be know that this state could be dangerous to them, and so they have sought to undermine its people while pocketing the wealth it generates. For that reason, it’s incredible to see young people who have been demonized as drug addicts come to the protest to show that they can be much more. They aspire for a better life that does not involve going abroad but rather fighting for better conditions in their homeland. You’re seeing the revitalization of a radical political consciousness in Punjab, in terms of poetry, in terms of music, in terms of the whole culture of organizing.
It is important to recognize that this is a mass movement by people who are not the poorest of the poor in the sense that the state believes. The state is used to looking at the farmer as someone who is worn and torn, who is very poor, who is very hungry, who is spreading their arms towards the state for some sort of help. However, these farmers, who are suffering even though they are relatively well-off, are very much challenging that image.
What does the day-to-day business of organizing the protests look like? And why have these protests been so effective?
The protest sites are basically temporary cities: you can get everything you need here. The protesters are runninglangars [traditional Sikh food services], medical services and many other kinds of services by themselves: they take shifts, and they do the monetary and physical labor to provide these services. People have realized that, when you fight against one kind of oppression, you also come to see other kinds of oppression that you perpetuate, and this realization has shaped the sociocultural structure of the protests: men are now cooking food, and women are leading political actions. The protests have been led by elders who have experience with mass movements, and they are striving to share this experience with younger generations like mine, who are seeing something like this for the first time in our lives; we are shouldering the logistics of the movement, learning as we go. We are learning that you can only save democracy if you take to the streets; you cannot expect democracy to work if you are sitting in your living room.
Many of the protesters are from rural agrarian communities, and so their day starts very early — around 5:00 or 5:30 am. They start cooking food, have breakfast and then head to their protest site’s central stage at 9:00 or 9:30 am. Every day, around 10 to 20 people go on a 24-hour hunger strike across all protest sites. In the daytime, people come from different parts of the country — or the world — to give speeches and show their solidarity.
We are learning that you can only save democracy if you take to the streets; you cannot expect democracy to work if you are sitting in your living room.
Every day, there is a meeting of the All India Kisan [Farmer] Coordination Committee, which is comprised of 32 different organizations. This movement does not have a single leader but rather a collective leadership. That’s also why it is so strong: “ordinary” people are so invested in the movement that no one has been able to hijack it. The Coordination Committee itself has been very clear that this is a people’s movement: if its leaders make any wrong decisions or unjustifiable compromises, they know that they will be thrown out the very same day.
The protesters are also saying that they are not in a hurry. They want the government to scrap the three laws, and they won’t settle for anything less. The kind of patience that they have is not conducive to settlement: they know that this is a long, drawn-out fight, and they are prepared to stay here for at least six months. The protesters are thus energetic but they’re also at ease, in a way; they know that they can’t be agitated and sloganeering all the time.
How have you and your AISA comrades endeavored to support the protesters?
Libraries are a key part of the temporary towns established by the protests. AISA is running an initiative known as the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Library at four protest sites. We open our library in the morning and a lot of people, from young students to older people, stop by and engage us.
We also started a newsletter,The Trolley Times. This newsletter was spurred at the initiative of a handful of independent individuals, and it is not associated with any single political organization. We realized that all recent social movements have relied almost solely on social media. Younger protesters had actually stopped considering fields of engagement beyond social media. As I said earlier, the people who are the backbone of these protests came to Delhi from their villages two months ago. They have been keeping their grounds while living about 10 kilometers away from their nearest stage; they know their responsibilities to the protests, and they are not looking for the limelight. Concerned that no one would talk to these people — or even acknowledge their presence — we wanted to ensure that they have a very clear sense of what is happening in the movement. These are older people, and so they are more likely to read newspapers and newsletters.
From the very first day that we published The Trolley Times, we got an amazing response. The vast majority of the Indian media is pro-corporate and owned by the same companies that want to privatize agriculture; these media are also pro-state, and so they demonize protesters with their propaganda. People realized that, to take ownership of this movement, they need their own voice. That’s what The Trolley Times aims to be. Becoming hugely popular within a day or two, The Trolley Times got a lot of media coverage, and it actually set a trend: now, there are three to four newsletters made by and for the movement. The Trolley Times gives a platform to first-time protesters, young protesters, elderly protesters and single women protesters. To a barber who came here to give massages to tired protesters. These are the small but important stories that we are able to cover. We have published eight editions so far; most of us are working over the phone — partly because we have no proper internet access here — and we are typing and editing the content for the newsletter as it is reported to us.
The Trolley Times gives a platform to first-time protesters, young protesters, elderly protesters and single women protesters.
We started another initiative called “Trolley Talkies,” which involves showing films about the farmers’ crisis as well as revolutionary movies about the Indian Independence Movement and other movements across the world. We show movies to energize people by entertaining them and educating them about the farm bills: we make connections across time and space by showing how neoliberalism builds upon the foundation established by British colonialism. First-time protesters in particular need to understand the historical nature of these protests: how are they linked to policies that were introduced in India in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s? How were these policies forced upon the people, and what are their implications? We have undertaken these and other artistic initiatives with the understanding that resistance is creative; you can also see this in the many songs that the protesters have composed and all of the artists from Punjab who have come out to support the protests. We need to employ all kinds of art forms to reach the masses.
Throughout our work, we’re trying to make intersectional connections across different issues and policies. When you oppose the privatization of agriculture, you must also oppose the privatization of education, healthcare and everything else. You can’t be selective: neoliberalism is a policy framework and mindset that’s basically doing the same thing to students, to farmers, to workers, to everyone. It has to be fought tooth and nail as a singular entity.
I’m sure you have many options to pick from, but who are some of the most interesting persons you have met in your time out there?
The most interesting person I have met is this 17-year-old girl who came to the protest on her own. Her parents have a small patch of land, and she saw that, if these farm bills stand, her land will not be safe. She won’t be able to continue her education or make a career for herself, thus sacrificing her independence. And so she took a train to Delhi and stayed here for a long time, participating in the protest and looking after the library.
Her case shows how the protesters understand the gravity of this situation: they know that this is a do-or-die scenario. It also shows how this movement is not just about agencies like Khalsa Aid [an international humanitarian NGO based on Sikh principles] that are setting up big stalls to help people. This is also a movement in which people are coming out and helping at an individual level. You can find a lot of other similarly powerful stories here: whole families have come to the protest and haven’t left for the past two months. Young students are taking their exams here. Young professionals have left their jobs to be here. You see activists coming from all spheres of life: this is a mass movement, not a student movement, which tends to draw upon a very select population of the country. You can find an 18-year-old truck driver protesting alongside a PhD student like me. These kinds of social connections would have been impossible to imagine in normal times. This movement is basically a school of democracy: you learn that this is the people in all its variety, and you need to figure out how to work with them. A kind of professionalization is taking place among all the activists here, whether this involves media work, domestic labor, or any other tasks we undertake.
You have already talked about how the pro-state and pro-corporate media has been covering and, in key respects, not covering these protests. Would you like to address any specific misconceptions intentionally or unintentionally propagated by the Indian and international media, be it mainstream, independent, or even progressive or leftist?
How much should we expect of the Indian media? Two companies own 80 percent of the media. Reliance alone owns 36 news channels. They basically peddle lies day and night. They show a 10-year-old video as evidence that the protesters are Khalistani separatists [demanding a Sikh homeland]. That’s why, when a lot of media come here, their reporters don’t show their name tags and even cover up the tags on their mics; they know that they have no credibility here.
I think the biggest misconceptions about these protests is that these are rich people protesting, that they are motivated by electoral politics, and, of course, that foreign powers are behind these protests and that they are “anti-national” and anti-constitutional. One thing is clear: all protesters are bad protesters to this government. Students are anti-national, women are anti-national, Dalits are anti-national, Muslims are anti-national, workers are anti-national, farmers are anti-national. This is a majoritarian government for whom only a minority of people are actually citizens: the rest are all anti-nationals. This narrative is not only promoted by the government: it has been repeated by the pro-state media, and it has seeped into the international media’s coverage as well.
This movement is basically a school of democracy: you learn that this is the people in all their variety, and you need to figure out how to work with them.
Another misconception is that these protesters do not know about the law. The government and the pro-corporate, pro-state media are saying that the privatization of agriculture is good because it promotes competition. Competition among whom?
One more major misconception is that this protest only involves the Sikh farmers of Punjab. The government and mainstream media are trying to give the protests a religious angle, because that’s very easy, right? When minorities go against the majority and the majoritarian state, they are terrorists, right? We are trying to counter the idea that these are just some Punjabi Sikh men protesting against the Indian state through all our initiatives and activities. Protests are happening in virtually every part of India: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and even Kashmir. Just because all of these protesters are not at the Delhi border does not mean that they are not protesting.
We have also said again and again that we are here to peacefully protest and so, if anything goes wrong, the state is responsible. If anything unruly happens, we make sure we record it, so that we can provide those recordings to any media we contact and say, “Look at what we have witnessed.” We know that, when it comes to violence, no one can beat the state: it is the ultimate agent of violence, sometimes through the law and sometimes more directly through the police.
Why should people of conscience, especially progressives and leftists, across the world care about these protests and the issues that the farmers are addressing? How are these issues and the corresponding protests globally interconnected? And how have people of conscience from outside of India been showing meaningful solidarity with the farmers and how can they continue to do so?
Solidarity protests have been happening across the world; the mass support that these protests have received extends to the South Asian diaspora. The Trolley Times has further been translated into several languages and distributed not only in different parts of India but in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States as well.
At a foundational level, I’d desist from saying that this is a “farmers’ protest.” I’d only say that farmers are leading the protest. India is a poor country with a few rich people. Between 70 and 80 percent of Indians suffer from malnutrition. The Essential Commodities Act allows private businessmen to hoard essential items such as food grains and oil. The de-regularization of prices allows for black markets in such a way that you might end up with godowns [warehouses] full of food grains and a huge population at threat of starvation. In that sense, these laws are an attack not just on farmers but on everyone who eats. This should be a concern for everyone across the world who believes that every human being has a right to eat.
India also accounts for one-sixth of the world’s population. These laws stand to affect the food security, nutrition and overall health and safety of a huge number of people, which in itself should make them everyone’s concern.
Privatization is also a global phenomenon. Raise your voice against privatization in your home country. We don’t just want you to stand with us: we want you to stand up for yourself. These multinational companies have to be defeated not only in India, but also Africa, America, Australia, Europe — everywhere. Everyone is on their radar, and, to counter multinational companies, we need multinational protest.
In addition, these laws rob farmers on the one hand and consumers on the other. I am not here just to support farmers; I am also here as a consumer. I know that I will have to pay so much more to have a basic meal if these laws are implemented. Why should consumers pay so much for food when farmers aren’t even getting a fair price for their agricultural products?
What are the most significant challenges that this struggle will have to overcome if it is to prevail?
Since Day One, the movement has been trying to build broader solidarity. The protesters have been very careful to cause as little inconvenience as possible to local residents. We have also been trying to get them on our side through our media initiatives, with quite a lot of success. Government authorities have not been able to dismiss these protests as a one-off, despite their best efforts.
I think the biggest challenge is the arrogance of this government. State authorities have a tendency to do what they say. They know that these farm laws are dangerous, but, because they have already passed them, they will open up space to address much of their previous wrongdoing if they back down.
But this is to be expected of a government run by proto-fascist strongmen, right? Strongmen can never afford to seem weak, by their very definition.
The myth of the strong leader has to be busted. In a way, I think that this protest has already been successful, because it has democratized a large part of the population, even in just this one small part of India. The protesters have decided that the republic belongs to the people, not to the government.
Every day is very challenging. Any small incident of violence that could be attributed to us, even if we’re not responsible, could threaten the entire movement. Every passing moment is a relief, but the very next moment is a threat. There is a constant threat of state-sponsored violence on both the smaller and larger scale: people have been caught here with small guns. We are basically on night duty right now, looking out for any suspicious persons till 5:00 in the morning. We have been protesting for two months, and we don’t want something spectacular to happen one day that makes everything erupt. In that sense, it’s good that people have not been joining the movement in the thousands; rather, they have consistently been joining in the hundreds.
The protesters have decided that the republic belongs to the people, not to the government.
As I said before, this is not a fight against one government but rather an entire policy framework. Even if we are able to scrap these laws for now — and the government has admitted that it can put them on hold for 18 months — they will undoubtedly be brought back, with a more shrewd design and more brute force behind them. This is a fight that requires us to be on the tips of our toes for the rest of our lifetimes. The good thing is that, when people fight against the government, they gain a muscle memory and a consciousness that is the essence of democracy. A big chunk of the country is remembering what actually brought us independence from the British.
If this movement succeeds, you will see a flurry of mass movements around different issues. If these protests are not able to achieve their concrete goals, however, there will be a large vacuum in the imagination of the people, because they will think that, if protests of this scale cannot force the hand of this government, then nothing can.
Would you like to add anything before we sign off?
I’d just say to people who read this interview that we can’t theorize this movement yet. This is history in the making, but we still don’t know what kind of history it will be. Many of the people who are protesting right now never imagined that they would have to protest for something like this. We have to realize that the neoliberal system is going to consume each and every one of us — not just the most dispossessed, but even those who are slightly well-off. If you have a hundred people sitting in a room, and someone comes in and says, “One of you has to die,” everyone feels the threat that they could be the one. Don’t wait until you get attacked: notice when people around you are getting attacked, and raise your voice.
Protest gives us life: it gives us a fighting spirit and a sense of ownership. This country is ruled by a fascist government right now, but protest brings us back to our roots by saying, “This is our land. This is our people.” I think that kind of organic rather than national chauvinist engagement with your geographical part of the world, as well as your engagement with your own community, is absolutely vital.
Protest gives us life: it gives us a fighting spirit and a sense of ownership.
STANDING WITH INDIA’S FARMERS
Mukesh’s intimate, nuanced insights into India’s ongoing farmers’ rebellion stimulate as many questions as they answer. In spite of our lengthy conversation, we could not possibly cover the protests in all their complexity. Dalit — caste-oppressed — rights advocates both in India and the United States have inquired as to how the protesters intend to address the caste hierarchies that persist in agricultural communities across Punjab and the country as a whole, at the same time as a significant number of landless Dalits have declared their solidarity with the protesting farmers. Contradictions of this kind are almost bound to emerge within protests of the scale at hand, especially in a society that has yet to fully break out of the shackles of feudalism. The inevitability of these contradictions, should, of course not naturalize them and prevent their interrogation, not least of all because of their potential to weaken the movement in question overall.
However, perhaps the most pertinent question for politically engaged people of conscience outside of India is whether they will answer the farmers’ call to action, as Mukesh incisively and provocatively frames it. The neoliberal Hindu nationalist project is a profoundly transnational one, as I have argued elsewhere, and it necessitates transnational opposition, not just from South Asian diasporic communities but from all anti-fascists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians and politically engaged people of conscience everywhere. The Modi regime’s corporate backers, political lackeys and cultural instruments must be identified, exposed and shut down wherever and whenever they attempt to implement their poisonous agenda.
Editor’s note: DGR strongly opposes the three new farm laws that have inspired the farmer’s protests in India. However, we do not necessarily agree with all of the demands of the protestors.
This article original appeared on the People’s Archive of Rural Indiaon January 28, 2021. Written By Shraddha Agarwal.
Featured image by the Author
“We borrowed a 1,000 rupees from the seths [farm owners] to come here. In return, we will work in their fields for 4-5 days,” said Vijaybai Gangorde, 45.
She arrived in Nashik on January 23 at noon, in a tempo painted blue and orange – one of the first to reach the Golf Club Maidan in the city, to join the vehicle jatha (march) to Mumbai.
Vijaybai’s 41-year cousin, Tarabai Jadhav, was also travelling with her from Mohadi, their village in Nashik district’s Dindori taluka. They both work as farm labourers there for a daily wage of Rs. 200-250. The cousins came to Nashik to join other farmers – about 15,000 from mainly Nanded, Nandurbar, Nashik and Palghar districts of Maharashtra – going to Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, about 180 kilometres away, to protest against the new farm laws.
“We are marching for our upajivika [livelihood],” said Tarabai.
A sit-in and a march to Raj Bhavan, the Governor’s residence, in south Mumbai have been organised by the Samyukta Shetkari Kamgar Morcha on January 25-26, to express solidarity with the protesting farmers at Delhi’s borders. Farmers from 21 districts of Maharashtra, assembled together by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), are gathering in Mumbai for these protests.
For over two months, lakhs of farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, have been staging protests at five sites on the borders of Delhi. They have been protesting against three farm laws that the central government first issued as ordinances on June 5, 2020, then introduced as farm bills in Parliament on September 14 and hastened to become Acts by the 20th of that month.
The farmers see this legislation as devastating for their livelihoods by expanding the space for large corporate to exercise even greater power over farming. They also undermine the main forms of support to the cultivator, including the minimum support price (MSP), the agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs), state procurement and more. The laws have also been criticised as affecting every Indian as they disable the right to legal recourse of all citizens, undermining Article 32 of the Indian Constitution.
Vijaybai and Tarabai, who belong to the Koli Malhar Adivasi community, a Scheduled Tribe, paid Rs. 1,000 each for a seat in the hired tempo to Mumbai and back. They borrowed the amount because they had no savings. “We had no work during the [Covid-19] lockdown,” said Tarabai. “The state government had promised 20 kilos of wheat free for each family, but only 10 kilos was distributed.”
This is not the first time that Vijaybai and Tarabai are marching in protest.
“We had come on both the marches – in 2018 and 2019,”
they say, referring to the Kisan Long March from Nashik to Mumbai in March 2018, and the follow-up rally in February 2019, when farmers voiced their demand for land rights, remunerative prices for produce, loan waivers and drought relief. It is also not the first jatha from Nashik to protest against the new farm laws. On December 21, 2020, around 2,000 farmers had collected in Nashik, of which 1,000 set out to join their northern counterparts on the outskirts of Delhi.
“The only way we Adivasis can be heard is by marching [for our rights]. This time, too, we will make our voices heard,”
said Vijaybai, making her way with Tarabai to the centre of Golf Club Maidan, to listen to the speeches of AIKS leaders. After all the vehicles had assembled, the convoy left Nashik at 6 p.m. that evening. At Ghatandevi temple in Igatpuri taluka, Nashik district, the marchers halted for the night. Many of them had packed a simple meal – bajrarotis and garlic chutney – from home. After dinner, they spread out thick blankets over tarpaulin sheets on the ground beside the temple and fell sleep.
The next day, the plan was to walk down the Kasara ghat near Igatpuri and reach the Mumbai-Nashik highway.
As they prepared to leave at 8 a.m., a group of farm labourers discussed their children’s future in the agriculture sector. “Even though my son and daughter have both completed their degrees, they’re working on farms for a meagre income of Rs. 100-150 [per day],” said 48-year-old Mukunda Kongil, from Nandurkipada village in Trimbakeshwar taluka, Nashik district. Mukunda’s son has a BCom degree, and his daughter has done a BEd, but they both work as farm labourers now. “The jobs go only to non-Adivasis,” says Mukunda, who belongs to the Warli (or Varli) Adivasi community, a Scheduled Tribe.
“My son worked so hard in his college and now he works on farms every day,” said 47-year-old Janibai Dhangare, also a Warli Adivasi from Nandurkipada. “My daughter finished her pandhravi[Class 15, that is, a BA degree]. She tried to get a job in Trimbakeshwar, but there was no work for her. She did not want to leave me and go to Mumbai. That city is too far and she will miss home-cooked meals,” she said, packing away her leftover bhakris and loading her bag into the tempo.
The farmers and farm labourers walked for 12 kilometres from the ghat to highway with their flags, raising slogans against the new farm laws.
Their demand is for a repeal of the three laws as well as of the new labour codes, while also seeking a law to guarantee remunerative minimum support prices (MSP) and countrywide procurement facilities, said AKIS president, Ashok Dhawale. “This march is an important contribution to the historic nationwide struggle of lakhs of farmers in Delhi and all over the country against the neoliberal and pro-corporate policies of the central government,” said Dhawale, who is travelling with the group.
Upon reaching the highway, the farmers took their places in the vehicles and proceeded towards Thane. Along the way, various organisations supplied them with water bottles, snacks and biscuits. They stopped for lunch at a gurudwara in Thane. It was 7 p.m. on January 24 when the jatha reached Azad Maidan in south Mumbai. Tired, but with their spirits intact, some farmers from Palghar district entered the ground singing and dancing to the tune of the tarpa, a traditional Adivasi wind instrument.
“I am hungry. My whole body is hurting, but I’ll be fine after some food and rest,” said Vijaybai, after settling down with her group of farm labourers. “This is not new for us,” she said. “We have marched before and we will march again.”
Shraddha Agarwal is a reporter and content editor at the People’s Archive of Rural India
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