by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 19, 2012 | Alienation & Mental Health, Gender, Male Violence
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
“Hello! I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story.” These were the words written on the first two flashcards that 15-year old Amanda Todd shows viewers in the silent video she created about two months before she recently committed suicide to escape social torture.
Anti-bullying posters hang in every public school across the United States, yet kids continue to harass and hurt each other without intervention. Every school day, 150,000 students stay home out of fear of being picked on. Bullying has become epidemic, but still is only a symptom of the broader culture in which it exists. Despite even the most earnest efforts, youth problems and school problems cannot be solved until social problems and cultural problems are.
Amanda Todd is dead not only because she was born into this culture of bullying, but because she was born into it with a female body. Her flashcards continued: “In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam meet and talk to new people. Then got called stunning, beautiful, perfect, etc. Then wanted me to flash. So I did. 1 year later I got a msg on facebook from him. Don’t know how he knew me. It said if you don’t put on a show for me I will send ur boobs. He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family names. Christmas break. Knock at my door at 4am. It was the police. My photo was sent to everyone. I then got really sick and got anxiety, major depression, and panic disorder.”
While tragic to be sure, Amanda’s case is but one among countless more that lead girls and women first to crippling depression and then to their deaths.
“I then moved and got into drugs and alcohol,” the flashcards went on. “My anxiety got worse…couldn’t go out. A year past and he came back with my new list of friends and school. But made a facebook page. My boobs were his profile pic. Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me…again. Then nobody liked me. Name calling, judged. I can never get that photo back. It’s out there forever. I started cutting. I promised myself never again. Didn’t have any friends and I sat at lunch alone. So I moved schools again.”
The public humiliation visited upon Amanda Todd is a routine experience for women living under patriarchy, the system currently ruling the world through a campaign of violence. Many girls who have been similarly targeted have not and likely will never have their stories told because, unlike Amanda, they have the added disadvantage of being poor or lesbian or not white on top of already being female, which is hard enough.
“Everything was better even though I sat still alone at lunch in the library every day. After a month later I started talking to an old guy friend. We back and fourth texted and he started to say he liked me. Led me on. He had a girlfriend. Then he said come over my gf’s on vacation. So I did…huge mistake. He hooked up with me. I thought he liked me. 1 week later I get a text get out of your school. His girlfriend and 15 others came including himself. The girl and 2 other just said look around nobody likes you. In front of my new school (50) people. A guy than yelled just punch her already. So she did…she threw me to the ground and punched me several times. Kids filmed it. I was all alone and left on the ground. I felt like a joke in this world…I thought nobody deserves this. I was alone.”
Patriarchy means rule by men. Women can certainly support this system, as we see in the case of the girls who attacked and abandoned Amanda Todd instead of supporting her when she needed it the most. Never will women truly benefit from patriarchy, though, as it is predicated on their subjugation to men. Patriarchy is a system of power that controls women’s lives in every sense: economically, socially, bodily, and otherwise. Men and women are trained from birth to accept and fit into their respective social classes, known in shorthand as masculinity and femininity.
Masculinity says that men are only real men when they are violating or dominating someone else, someone whom they’ve deemed as “Other.” Femininity is also designed by and benefits men, because it attempts to naturalize female submission by claiming that women just like to be hurt and controlled. The school years are some of the most formative for human development, and so serve as a prime opportunity to indoctrinate children into the myth of patriarchy.
Kindergarten through twelfth grade schooling may be too far back for some to clearly remember, but surely the word “cooties” rings a bell. In this single word is all we need to know about how girls and boys are trained to see one another. What they see is that despised “Other.” Not human beings. From girls versus boys playground games, to boys at a slumber party huddled around a Playboy, to incidents of date rape after prom, children know perfectly well the meaning of sexism, of sexual hatred, regardless of if they articulate it or not. Boys know how to do it and girls know how it feels to have it be done to.
And children know perfectly well the meaning of homophobia and racism, too.
Amanda’s flashcards continue: “I lied and said it was my fault and my idea. I didn’t want him getting hurt, I thought he really liked me. But he just wanted the sex…someone yelled punch her already. Teachers ran over but I just went and layed in a ditch and my dad found me. I wanted to die so bad…when he brought me home I drank bleach. It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actually die. Ambulence came and brought me to the hospital and flushed me.”
Few will hesitate to sum up the case of Amanda Todd as bullying, plain and simple, but perhaps it’s not so plain or simple. In her article about the Amanda Todd tragedy, educator and feminist Fazeela Jiwa takes the term “bullying” to task. She writes, “Bullying glosses over structural reasons for violence—reasons like race, gender, ability, and sexuality, among a myriad of insidious social hierarchies.”
From what is public knowledge about the trajectory of Amanda’s suffering, it’s hard not to see that the bullying she experienced was a direct result of her being female. Like all girls and women, she was a target of male violence. As Amanda has made clear, she was majorly coerced and exploited by two distinct male characters: the first pressured her to show her naked body over the internet, images of which he saved and used as blackmail against her for more sexual favors; the second manipulated her into having sex with him, only to later pit his girlfriend against her which resulted in the severe ambush that brought Amanda to first attempt suicide.
“After I got home all I saw on facebook—she deserved it,” read Amanda’s words. “Did you wash the mud out of your hair? I hope shes dead. Nobody cared. I moved away to another city to my moms. Another school…I didn’t wanna press charges because I wanted to move on. 6 months has gone by…people are pasting pics of bleach, clorex, and ditches. Tagging me. I was doing a lot better too. They said she should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn’t so stupid. They said I hope she sees this and kills herself.”
A few years ago, an anti-bullying event was hosted at City Hall. I and two other young activists and personal friends of mine were asked to speak on a panel on behalf of a radical community space with which we were involved. Other panels included teachers, parents, therapists, and students. All presented from their unique perspectives on the harms of bullying in school environments. Lesbian and gay high school students shared stories of being personally abused by kids at school: they told stories of being physically struck, shoved, and spit on. Many heterosexual students spoke, too. They were not spared from bullying either, targeted usually because they apparently looked or talked the wrong way.
Most of the adults who spoke suggested as a solution more strict consequences for those caught bullying. They also suggested more established support networks for the victims. Both ideas seemed appropriate to me, yet clearly incommensurate on their own. These have been the same solutions offered for years and bullying has not been prevented as a result. When it was my panel’s turn to speak, we pointed out that bullying is not an isolated act, but an obvious by-product of a culture sick with the drive of competition. We dared to be more explicit about the root problem: capitalism. (In case you’re wondering, no. The police stationed at the City Hall building were not in attendance at the event. And no, they did not ask us to spend the night.)
Who is ultimately responsible for Amanda Todd’s death? Who can stop bullying?
Is it the teachers? First of all, that depends on if the teacher is a decent human being. Many teachers, especially those who are male, do nothing but egg on the aggression in students. For our purposes, though, let’s say the teacher truly does care and wants to do what she or he can to prevent bullying. Well, next is how. The means available for teachers to make a difference are rapidly dwindling with school boards and administrations being taken over by the right-wing, comprised of people who are bent on disallowing even art and music programs, never mind a comprehensive anti-bullying curriculum. Regardless, much bullying happens out of the sight of teachers. It’s in the bathrooms, in the hallways, at recess, or before or after school.
Then it’s up to the parents to stop it. Once again, this depends on the parents being good human beings. Judging by the mass injustice and ecological crises caused by this society, I don’t see much reason to be optimistic about most people. However, for our purposes, let’s pretend these are parents that truly do care, that want to do what it takes to stop their child from bullying others or from being bullied. The parents can spend all the time they’d like having conversations with their child after school, but most kids learn just as much or more about life from the other kids they are around during the day. Unless every parent of every student is teaching the same lessons of love and compassion, and unless every student is listening in earnest and soaking up the morals, it’s only a matter of time before one child comes across another who says something like, “hey, let’s go make fun of that girl’s crooked teeth” or “hey, look at that fat kid.”
All of this brings us back to the original culprit; the one that creates the indecency of so many teachers and parents who enable bullying. I’m speaking of the dominant culture. If we have any chance of stopping the cruelty committed by children, we must stop the cruelty committed by adults. Where do we think the kids learn it? As Fazeela Jiwa notes, “Violent behavior stems from a tolerance of, or a reluctance to acknowledge, the power imbalances mired in the fabric of our social structures at all age levels…The same oppressive learned behaviors occur in the workplace, in bars and clubs, on the street, and in other adult-inhabited places.”
This whole country was founded on bullying. It started and continues with the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, the use of women as chattel, and the destruction of the natural world. To stop bullying means to stop the misogynists, white supremacists, homophobes, and earth-killers in power. It means to end capitalism.
Amanda Todd’s never ending story eventually did end when she tried again to drink bleach, and this time succeeded in taking her life. Even after her death, people continue to celebrate her humiliation and complain about the public outcry as annoying. This is sadism beyond words.
Those who are bullied need to know it’s not their fault. Those who are not bullied need to stand in absolute solidarity and intervene at every instance of abuse. As long as some people profit, whether socially or economically or both, from another’s suffering, none of us are free. Amanda’s never ending story is the never ending story of so many suffering under this cruel and ruthless culture. Unless we rise up to stop it, we can expect nothing from the future but more Amanda Todds.
“Why do I get this?” the flashcards in Amanda’s video finished. “I messed up by why follow me. I left your guys city. I’m constantly crying now. Every day I think why am I still here? My anxiety is horrible now. Never went out this summer. All from my past…lifes never getting better. Can’t go to school meet or be with people. Constantly cutting. I’m really depressed. I’m on antidepressants now and counseling and a month ago this summer I overdosed. In hospital for 2 days. I’m stuck…whats left of me now. Nothing stops. I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 4, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Inter-Press Service
The land conflict between the Guaraní-Kaiowá indigenous people and large landowners in the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul is a powder keg ready to explode, say observers.
Nísio Gomes, Jenivaldo Vera, Rolindo Vera, Teodoro Ricardi, Ortiz and Xurete Lopes are just a few of the names on a long list of people murdered in this state in recent years, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI).
The statistics gathered by the Council, founded in 1972 by the Brazilian National Bishops’ Conference, reveal that 279 indigenous people have been killed since 2003 in land disputes with landowners and ranchers.
The most recent case is that of Eduardo Pires, who disappeared on Aug. 10 when armed men attacked a group of Kaiowá people in the Arroio Korá indigenous reserve, located in the municipality of Paranhos in the south of the state, near the border with Paraguay.
Arroio Korá, an area of roughly 7,000 hectares, was officially recognized as indigenous land on Dec. 21, 2009 by then president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But one week later, a Federal Supreme Court ruling on an appeal filed by a landowner exempted a 184-hectare section of the land from this status.
“Even with this partial embargo, the government did not foresee that the rest would be effectively turned over to the Guaraní-Kaiowá,” said Flávio Machado, the CIMI regional coordinator in Mato Grosso do Sul. “The community, which is made up of around 600 members, currently occupies around 700 hectares. When they decided to retake control over the rest of the land, they met with a violent response,” he told Tierramérica*.
According to Eliseu, a Kaiowá leader who was present when the attack took place, on the morning of Aug. 10 some 400 members of the community set up a camp on a section of the officially recognised reserve land where a ranch is located.
A short time later, a number of armed men arrived. “I heard the gunshots and took off running. We are a people with a culture of peace, we have no weapons, but we are not going to give up fighting for our land. If we are going to die, we would rather die on our own land,” he told Tierramérica.
No one has seen Eduardo Pires since the attack. “I believe he is dead,” said Eliseu.
The Federal Police of Mato Grosso do Sul are in charge of the case. “The indigenous people say that one of them is missing. We are investigating, but we have nothing concrete. We have to be impartial,” Federal Police Superintendent Edgar Paulo Marcon commented to Tierramérica.
The following week, CIMI reports, the police removed a number of ranchers and their cattle from the area. Since then, the Kaiowá have been targeted by threats, the most explicit of which is a filmed declaration by Luis Carlos da Silva Vieira, known as Lenço Preto (“Black Kerchief”), posted on YouTube.
“We are going to organize and prepare for confrontation…They only want the land to be bothersome. We have weapons. If they want war, they’ll get war,” he states repeatedly.
In response, the Kaiowá community published a letter calling for urgent attention from the government. “Faced with a collective death threat, made publicly in the press by the landowners, we request an investigation and severe punishment of these promoters of the genocide/ethnocide of indigenous peoples.”
“Everyone knows that they have sophisticated and fearsome weapons, that they have money obtained at the expense of indigenous blood to buy more weapons and to hire gunmen… We do not have guns and, above all, we do not know how to use them,” the letter continues.
“We want to reiterate and highlight the fact that our fight for our ancestral lands is aimed solely at protecting human life and the fauna and flora of the planet Earth; it is not our intention to kill anyone.”
From Upside-Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3844-brazil-landowners-declare-war-against-indigenous-guarani-kaiowa-in-mato-grosso-do-sul
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 20, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
John R. Platt recently examined the impacts of shark finning for his Extinction Countdown blog on Scientific American:
The appearance of a shark fin piercing the ocean surface is often seen as a sign of danger to humans. Even more dangerous to sharks is the sight of a shark fin floating in a bowl of soup.
Around the world, sharks are in crisis. Many species have suffered population declines of 90 to 99 percent in recent decades, mostly to feed the seemingly endless demand for the tasteless concoction known as shark fin soup, which is served to mark important occasions such as weddings and business deals in China and some other Asian communities. An astonishing 10.3 million kilograms of shark fins and shark fin–based products were imported into Hong Kong in 2011, according to statistics released last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts Environmental Group in the report, Navigating Global Shark Conservation: Current Measures and Gaps (pdf). The organization says Hong Kong imports about half of the world shark fin harvest.
The Pew group obtained these figures from the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, but even they don’t tell the whole story. Previous research (pdf) has estimated the total worldwide shark fin catch to be three to four times what is legally reported. Because so much of the shark trade is illegal and carried out in the black market, the true total number of sharks killed each year is impossible to ascertain, but the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and other organizations estimate it at more than 100 million. Another group, Shark Defenders, puts the annual average at 38 million, citing the same 2006 research that quantified the shark-fin trade.
Another hidden part of the story, according to the Pew report, is the types of sharks being caught. Many of the nations that allow shark fishing do not require good record-keeping and allow fishermen to log all of their catches simply as “sharks” rather than specific shark species. Some nations even report their take in extremely broad categories such as “sharks, rays, skates, etcetera,” so there’s no specificity to what their fishing fleets actually landed.
Read more from Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/07/18/hong-kong-imported-10-million-kilograms-shark-fins/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 30, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Tom Knudson / The Sacramento Bee
The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes.
Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn’t intended to kill.
There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle.
“I called my supervisor and said, ‘I just caught a golden eagle and it’s dead,’ ” said Strader. “He said, ‘Did anybody see it?’ I said, ‘Geez, I don’t think so.’
“He said, ‘If you think nobody saw it, go get a shovel and bury it and don’t say nothing to anybody.’ ”
“That bothered me,” said Strader, whose job was terminated in 2009. “It wasn’t right.”
Strader’s employer, a branch of the federal Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services, has long specialized in killing animals that are deemed a threat to agriculture, the public and – more recently – the environment.
Since 2000, its employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West. They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves.
And in most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures were killed, or why. But a Bee investigation has found the agency’s practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.
The Bee’s findings include:
• With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family pets; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists.
• Since 1987, at least 18 employees and several members of the public have been exposed to cyanide when they triggered spring-loaded cartridges laced with poison meant to kill coyotes. They survived – but 10 people have died and many others have been injured in crashes during agency aerial gunning operations over the same time period.
• A growing body of science has found the agency’s war against predators, waged to protect livestock and big game, is altering ecosystems in ways that diminish biodiversity, degrade habitat and invite disease.
Sometimes wild animals must be destroyed – from bears that ransack mountain cabins to geese swirling over an airport runway. But because lethal control stirs strong emotions, Wildlife Services prefers to operate in the shadows.
“We pride ourselves on our ability to go in and get the job done quietly without many people knowing about it,” said Dennis Orthmeyer, acting state director of Wildlife Services in California.
Basic facts are tightly guarded. “This information is Not intended for indiscriminate distribution!!!” wrote one Wildlife Services manager in an email to a municipal worker in Elk Grove about the number of beavers killed there.
And while even the military allows the media into the field, Wildlife Services does not. “If we accommodated your request, we would have to accommodate all requests,” wrote Mark Jensen, director of Wildlife Services in Nevada, turning down a request by The Bee to observe its hunters and trappers in action.
“The public has every right to scrutinize what’s going on,” said Carter Niemeyer, a former Wildlife Services district manager who worked for the agency for 26 years and now believes much of the bloodletting is excessive, scientifically unsound and a waste of tax dollars.
“If you read the brochures, go on their website, they play down the lethal control, which they are heavily involved in, and show you this benign side,” Niemeyer said. “It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s a killing business. And it ain’t pretty.
“If the public knows this and they don’t care, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” Niemeyer said. “But they are entitled to know.”
Agency officials say the criticism is misleading. “If we can use nonlethal control first, we usually do it,” said William Clay, deputy administrator of Wildlife Services. “The problem is, generally when we get a call, it’s because farmers and ranchers are having livestock killed immediately. They are being killed daily. Our first response is to try to stop the killing and then implement nonlethal methods.”
In March, two congressmen – Reps. John Campbell, R-Irvine, and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. – introduced a bill that would ban one of Wildlife Services’ most controversial killing tools: spring-loaded sodium cyanide cartridges that have killed tens of thousands of animals in recent years, along with Compound 1080 (thallium sulfate), a less-commonly used poison.
“This is an ineffective, wasteful program that is largely unaccountable, lacks transparency and continues to rely on cruel and indiscriminate methods,” said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, a Bay Area nonprofit.
“If people knew how many animals are being killed at taxpayer expense – often on public lands – they would be shocked and horrified,” Fox said.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 6, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Maria Sanchez / Upside Down World
Tucked between sand dunes and the Pacific Ocean, perched on a small hill, is Xayakalan, home to members of the indigenous community, Santa Maria Ostula. Here, the sound of waves hitting the shore mixes with the cries of children playing among the wooden huts. Against this beautiful backdrop, a group of Mexican Nahua people are fighting to keep control of their land. The cost has been high.
Since 2009, this small community of around 3, 000 people has seen 28 of its members killed. Another four are missing. Those who dare step up to defend their indigenous rights are picked off one by one.
The Nahua people live on over 24,000 hectors of land, which they use for fishing and growing crops. They speak passionately of how the earth provides for them. Maria, not her real name, describes how she feeds her family from crops she grows outside her house. “Food is easy to come by here,” she states. “And the ocean always gives us a good meal.”
Maria and her community, unlike other groups of indigenous people, have maintained unbroken control of their land since before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. The community, in the past, has been successful in keeping invaders at bay. This time, they fear they will not be so successful.
Plans by local government to develop the coastline for tourism have stirred up old rivalries in the area. A land dispute going back to the early 1900s has once again reared its head. And this time, the stakes are high. Around 1,300 hectors of unspoilt land running from the coast up into the mountains is being targeted for development.
The Nahua people say that their community owns the rights to the land and have the legal papers to prove it. This claim is disputed by a group of local businessmen, who say the land was privatized in 1911 and that it belongs to them.
To stake claim to this uninhabited stretch of coastline, local businessmen from the nearby town, La Placita, moved onto the land in early June 2009. One man in his fifties, who declined to give his name, explained how the businessmen started giving away plots of land to those willing to join them in the fight against the Ostulan community. “They started building houses,” he stated. “They planted crops. Just like the local politicians they wanted to develop the land for tourism.”
People from Ostula asked local government to intervene on their behalf. Their appeals were ignored. Some in the Nahua community believe that local government is involved. “The government was in agreement with those on the land,” states one woman. Others nod in agreement, but are reluctant to say so out loud.
Towards the middle of June 2009, the community, tired of standing by while others occupied their land, decided to take action. The Nahua called a regional indigenous meeting, which was attended by neighboring indigenous communities. “At the assembly it was decided that we would fight for what is ours,” said Juan, not his real name. Juan explained how around 60 members of Ostula took back the 1,300 hectors that had been taken from them. “They greeted us with gun shots,” he said. “But through sheer number of people we managed to overcome them and drive them out.”
To protect the stretch of beach from further development, around 40 Nahua families set up home in the dunes. What started out as a strong movement in defense of their land has dwindled significantly today, with less than 15 families remaining. People are reluctant to explain why this has happened. And considering the daily threat of violence this is not surprising.
In October of last year, Pedro Leiva Dominguez, spokesperson for the community and member of the Mexican peace movement, was shot dead in Xayakalan. Nobody there is prepared to talk about his murder and who was involved.
“It was a family problem,” a man in his late fifties said.
“It was over an argument,” said one woman.
Pedro was not the first to lose his life defending his community and he would not be the last.
Since driving the local businessmen from the land, the community of Ostula has been constantly under threat of attack by the local drug cartel. This situation is further complicated by the presence of paramilitary groups operating in the area alongside organized crime.
The community is isolated and increasing vulnerable. Those who step up to protect the community do so at their own risk. Many of those who have been killed or kidnapped were the pillar stones of the Ostulan community, without them, the others fear that their movement will fail.
Just before Christmas, the community lost one more member. Don Trino, head of the community police, was abducted while traveling with members of the Mexican Peace Movement, headed by Javier Sicilia. His body was found the next day. He had been shot at point blank range and his body showed signs of torture. Those who knew him talk of his dedication to the cause. Those who remain seem determined to stay, however it is yet to be seen if dedication alone will save them.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3563-dying-in-defense-of-land-in-mexico
