Police-Brutality

by Indigenous Environmental Network Cannon Ball - On November 20th at approximately 6PM CST over 100 Water Protectors from the Oceti Sakowin and Sacred Stone Camps mobilized to a nearby bridge to remove a barricade that was built by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and the State of North Dakota. This barricade, built after law enforcement raided the 1851 treaty camp, not only restricts North Dakota residents from using the 1806 freely but also puts the community of Cannon Ball, the camps, and the Standing Rock Tribe at risk as emergency services are unable to use that highway. ...

Featured Image: Police clashes. Credit: Frenadeso By Richard Arghiris / Intercontinental Cry Panama’s national police left approximately 20 indigenous Ngäbe protesters injured last week in what one medic described as an “absurd and irresponsible act." The protesters, all residents of Gualaquita, mobilized against the Barro Blanco hydro dam after the project’s owner and operator, Honduran-based Generadora del Istmo (GENISA) began flooding the Tabasará River basin with blessings from the government. ...

By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance This year’s Fourth of July week grew in horror as it passed. Each day brought new nightmares that struck me at a dizzying pace. By the end of the week, after I decided I was sick of weeping, I turned off the television, shut my Facebook tab, and remembered that the best antidote for despair is action. My week started hopefully enough in Eugene, Oregon where I participated in a training hosted by members of Deep Green Resistance called Extraction Resistance: A Three Day Training in Direct Action. One of the goals of the event was to normalize direct action tactics, and I was asked to write a primer on the topic. This is that primer. ...

Originally published in the September/October 2012 issue of Orion. Now republished for the first time online. In an era of government-sanctioned polluters, communities must defend themselves Several years ago I spoke at a benefit for an organization working to prevent a toxic waste site from being built in their community. Yet another toxic waste site, the organizers clarified, since there already was one. It should surprise no one that their community was primarily poor, primarily people of color, and that the toxic waste was being brought in so that distant corporations could reap bigger profits. ...

By Pushpa Achanta / Waging Nonviolence In early October, news emerged that India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change was blocking the implementation of a high-level government panel’s report on tribal rights that recommended the creation of stringent rules to safeguard indigenous people from displacement. Meanwhile, two state governments have begun implementing a much different set of guidelines — issued in August without any interference — that allow the private sector to manage 40 percent of forests for profit at the expense of indigenous forest dwellers. In addition, another ordinance passed this year will permit private corporations to easily acquire land and forests from indigenous communities and carry out ecologically harmful mining. These legislative and policy decisions are usually made without the knowledge of indigenous communities whose lives, livelihoods and ecosystems will be worsened by these irresponsible actions of the government. Hence, indigenous communities in Uttar Pradesh, a northern state and Odisha, in the east, are strengthening their organizing to protect their rivers, lands, forests and hills from “development” that would displace thousands of local residents and destroy the environment.“People from my community and I were beaten, detained or jailed unnecessarily for opposing tree felling in our forests, some years ago,” said Nivada Debi, a feisty 38-year-old woman from the Tharu Adivasi community in Uttar Pradesh. “We visited the police station multiple times for their release. The government did not assist the injured. Despite the police and government indifference, we will fight for our land and environment.”A mother of four children subsisting on the forests, Debi is active in grassroots resistance that started nearly 20 years ago and has grown into the All India Union of Forest Working People, or AIUFWP. The group is made up of many indigenous people who subsist on forests and are collectively protecting forests from poachers and encroachers. ...

by Fionuala Cregan / Intercontinental Cry On August 19, members of the People’s Guarani Assembly of Takova Mora blocked a main highway in the Chaco region of Bolivia demanding their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding oil extraction on their communal lands. The Government responded by sending in 300 police who broke up the demonstration by force. Police repression of the blockade in Takovo Mora. (Photo OIEDC) ...

By Richard Arghiris / Intercontinental Cry Protests against the Barro Blanco hydro dam in western Panama turned violent last Saturday, July 25, when riot police, claiming to act in self-defense, unleashed pepper spray and batons on some 50 Ngäbe activists, women and children among them. At least three protesters were badly injured in the clash. The crackdown occurred during a visit to the area by the Panamanian Vice President Isabel Saint Malo, who, under the pretext of dialogue, convened three Ngäbe leaders behind closed doors at the Centro Misionero (Mission Centre) in the town of Tolé. Despite a reasonable request to be included in the meeting, leaders from local community groups were excluded. Activists responded to Saint Malo’s move by blockading the Carretera Interamericana, the country’s principle highway. ...

By J. G. / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains On March 15th the International Day Against Police Brutality was observed for the first time in Memphis, Tennessee by the Black Autonomy Federation. People came to the event from as far away as Iowa, Ohio, and Denver. People gathered first outside city hall and spoke. Cardboard coffins were lined up facing out from city hall representing 13 of the 14 people killed by the Memphis Police Department in the last thirteen months. ...

By Joshua Headley / Deep Green Resistance New York As a socially conscious person situated within the heart of global industrial civilization, I often experience, directly and indirectly, injustices on a daily basis. A week ago, the NYPD (via two plainclothes officers) murdered a 16-year-old boy, Kimani Gray, firing 11 shots – hitting him 7 times in total; 3 in the back, 4 in the front. Monday night a large crowd began a vigil that would kick-off a week full of protest in the neighborhood – the night culminated in trash being thrown into the streets to slow down the riot police, glass bottles being thrown at officers from rooftop buildings, and the NYPD entering numerous apartments without warrants. Following that night (and for every day since) the East Flatbush neighborhood has been under military-style occupation with no less than three riot police on every single corner for more than 30 blocks. By Wednesday, the NYPD had declared the neighborhood a “Frozen Zone,” essentially affirming martial law by limiting press access and arresting anyone who did not precisely follow police instructions. One week later, tensions are still as high as ever, and justice has yet to be served. ...

By Colombia Informa; translation by Molly Fohn After two weeks of peaceful protesting against oil exploitation in Arauca, on February 12 that department’s social organizations began a strike announced a few days earlier as a response to the repeated broken promises by the national government and transnational companies. The last attempt at dialogue took place on Monday, February 11, between the Commission’s spokespeople (composed of a delegation of indigenous people, peasants, youth, women, workers and community members) and representatives of the Minister of the Interior, as well as oil companies that operate in the region, with the goal of establishing the conditions that would allow the fulfillment of those promises that they’ve been making since May 2012. ...