Open Letter to My Sisters (originally posted Jun 22, 2011)

Sisters,

I strongly support the call by NWSA members to honor the GA travel, conference and tourism boycott due to the recent passage of HB87.

At this moment in time, we all see the crisis in governance, the crisis of capitalism, of identity in our country. As any astute scholar or practitioner of justice-making change knows. there are moments when it is clear that a line in the sand has been drawn. That line, in terms of human rights, wimmin's rights, and migrant rights, was SB1070 in Arizona.

As people of conscience, peoples whose very existence in the academy, whose very voices in public discourse are only possible because of social movements and other people in previous generations who took risks and hits to do what was clearly the right and just thing to do, we *must* stand with our sistren and brethren, and our members who are the targets of this legislation to fight injsutice, as well as take a clear stand against those who perpetrate hate crimes through so-called legal systems.

In addition, like the forced sterilizations of eugenics science policy from the 1920s through the 1960s that targeted poor white, Black, Latin@ and native Americans in the US and in places including Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Nicaragua, racist policies are often carried out with a particularly brutal force on systemically vulnerable groups of women and children. These are the sisters who have taught me, mentored me, challenged and supported me over the years.

As sisters, we must stand in strong solidarity with each other, now. We are more powerful than I think we know. This is the moment to honor the words of June Jordan, immortalized by Sweet Honey in the Rock, that honored the sisters in struggle against apartheid in the townships of South Africa. We are the ones we've been waiting for. These, and other reasons, are why I support the call to honor the travel ban and the boycott.

In addition, I know that many things are not what they seem. In the spirit of openness and transparency, as I know that in general we in NWSA share the values of justice and fairness, I would like to hear from the NWSA leadership:

(1) What steps did you take to explore the option of honoring the travel boycott and moving the conference out of Georgia before they sent us the email on May 16?

(2) What steps are you taking to substantively meet the call by Georgia organizations to meet with the organizers if an organization cannot or will not honor the travel boycott?

Thank you.

In loving, powerful sisterhood,

Diana Pei Wu

Antioch University Los Angeles

Posted via email from Decolonizing Environmentalism

... "But some of us are brave." :: NWSA and the GA Boycott of HB 87

... "But some of us are brave."

Sisters, these are the moments when we are called, not only to be brave, but to be bold in doing so.

Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, when transgender women of color led the fight against unjust police repression and surveillance of trans and queerfolk in Greenwich Village, New York City.

Today, courageous youth and young people "came out" in the Georgia City Capitol and in the streets near the Gold Dome. They have come out as undocumented and unafraid, as has Jose Vargas, the queer Filipino Pulitzer Prize winning journalist formerly with the Washington Post, in the New York Times and last night on the Maddow Show.

This fight, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is against the re-institution of Jim Crow legislation in the South and throughout the nation. The target is "migrant"-looking people right now - that means many of us, our families, loved ones, communities.

And if not now, history shows that unjust means of surveillance and state-sponsored violence often start off with a test population and then expand the technology to the general population once the technology of repression is honed and ready to be implemented at scale. That's the rest of us.

History shows that the impacts on women of color in these kinds of times can particularly inhumane: women have had their children taken from them and put under CPS even as they are put into deportation proceedings.

A woman who called the local police in a DV case found herself put under deportation proceedings. There are several documented such cases across the U.S.

When we look back, will we, NWSA, have stood against fear and hatred, or will we have done nothing in the name of financial expediency and procedural ease?

I urge us to begin and continue, publicly, the deeper process necessary to be able for us to honor the boycott of HB87 and to stand with love and justice, now, and in the future.

* * * * *

To summarize a few hours of research, here are some of the options thus far, most of which have not yet been explored, to the best of our collective knowledge:

I sent this list of options in a different version of this email to the NWSA Staff and Governing Council and have not received any reply, so I am posting it publicly.

Additional resources for moving the conference:

Other conferences that moved from Arizona last year:

* MALCS

* and a good 50 or so organizations who have said that they will not go to AZ as long as SB 1070 is on the books. http://altoarizona.com/az-boycott.html

 

Other conferences that moved their conference for another reason:

* American Studies Association (San Antonio, TX) - to honor a labor boycott of the hotel

 

What happened to a conference that didn't move AND didn't treat their membership with respect when asked:

* American Bar Association (bad publicity for the Association AND for the hotel: this has been used successfully in other conference negotiations to convince a hotel to allow an organization to break the contract without losing the deposit)

 

INMEX: www.inmex.com

* INMEX is a social justice event planning service that helps organizations negotiate contracts that can be re-negotiated in the event of labor, environmental and social justice boycotts; started by some folks who used to work with UNITE HERE. We (NWSA) could contact INMEX and ask for help. In addition, I would offer that NWSA could consider always using INMEX in the future.

Current organizations honoring the GA Boycott: http://www.wearegeorgia.org/action-center/boycott-signon-supporters/

 

Paulina Hernandez (Southerners on New Ground, one of the lead organizations calling for the boycott and Somos Georgia) and Lisbeth Gomez. Email: paulina@southernersonnewground.org

 

We can do this! We must.

 

If in good faith, NWSA has exhausted all the above options after carefully exploring and considering them, and only then finds that we cannot move the conference, the community organizers and many of us would be down to help NWSA make the conference a true support to the many multi-layered struggles happening in Georgia and the region, in principled, just, loving, brave and bold ways.

 

In sisterhood, love and justice,

Diana Pei Wu, PhD

Antioch University Los Angeles

Posted via email from Decolonizing Environmentalism

Half of the World's refugees are running form US Wars

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/06/24/253135/half-of-worlds-refugees-are-running-from-u-s-wars/

Posted via email from Decolonizing Environmentalism

Untitled

Response-_Species_Extinction_and_Human_Population.pdf Download this file

The Center for Biological Diversity is making disturbing claims about the relationship of human population growth to species extinction rates and also to climate change.

According to this graph, they attempt to make the claim that increases in population growth have led to increases in species extinctions since the 1800s.

In high school and college calculus mathematics courses, you learn that more than the actual number of any phenomenon, it is often, when looking for causality, important to actually look at key points where the slope of the graph is changing – to look at the rate of the phenomenon, as well as the changes in the rate, or slope, of a graph. The idea is to look at points in time where things are accelerating or decelerating and look for system drivers at those points.

If we look at this graph, you actually see the following trends:

1. Although the rate of population of human beings was increasing since the 1800s, the rates of species extinctions are not significantly changing until somewhere between 1920 and 1930.
2. Somewhere between 1930 and 1940 the species extinction curve starts to trend upward. What’s going on in that time globally? The end of the Great Depression, the massive expansion in land use for agroindustrial uses, and the expansion of the use of buses and privately owned cars, as well as exploration and drilling for oil.
3. The species extinction rate starts to increase during WWII.
4. The species extinction rate starts to decrease right at the end of WWII.
5. The human population growth rate slows during WWII.
6. By 1950 the human population growth rate is increasing again.
7. Around the beginning of the 1970s, the species extinction rate starts to pick up. This is the era, in international development, of the “Green Revolution” and of large industrial infrastructure projects – roads, dams, and the like.
8. In the beginning of the 1990s, we enacted NAFTA, and this is the place where the extinction rate kicks up again.
9. There is a slight, final kick up in the rate of extinctions in the late 2000s.

Now, I assigned the arrows to the graph based on the rates of change in the graph, before I knew what the related dates were.

When I look at the points where the arrows identify conjunctures, correlated with my study of international development and world history, you find that perhaps that changes in species extinctions rates are more related to changes in resource use patterns, in particular of extensive land uses, including industrial agriculture and oil, coal and other fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and development, are more correlated to changes in the rates of species extinctions, than to human rates of population growth, or changes therein. 

 

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Shocking ICE Raids the Strawberry Days Festival in Glenwood Springs, Two Fathers Detained While Waiting for Kids at the Bouncy Castle.

ICE Raids the Strawberry Days Festival in Glenwood Springs, Two Fathers Detained While Waiting for Kids at the Bouncy Castle.

Father’s Day Festival Raid by Local Law Enforcement and ICE Chills Relations with Latino/a and Immigrant Communities; Hurts Business and Safety.

Glenwood Springs, CO — The Strawberry Days Festival in Glenwood Springs is usually remembered as a treasured summer family event. This year, some children will also remember it as the day their family was ripped apart by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As the Alvarez family was waiting for their children to come out of the Bouncy Castle, they were approached by a couple of Garfield County Sheriffs deputies who led the men away behind the carnival rides. While there, 2 plainclothes ICE agents approached, checked, and detained both men. Brothers Cesar and Julio Alvarez were then taken to an ICE van in the back of the fair, while their 4 children waited with their aunt and mother.

Lorenza Alvarez, Julio’s 7-months pregnant, US born wife, came looking for her husband and her brother-in-law and was treated poorly by agents as she explained that Cesar was the only caretaker of twin 11-year-old girls. Following an extended conversation, Cesar was released but Julio was taken away for processing at an ICE detention center in Glenwood Springs. The stress was almost too much for the pregnant Mrs. Alvarez, and she had to be taken to Valley View Hospital for emergency care.

Teaming up with the Garfield County Sheriff’s Department, undercover ICE agents conducted this dragnet operation at a family fair on Father’s Day, in violation of their own operating regulations — which call on them to “refrain from conducting enforcement actions or investigative activities at or near sensitive community locations, such as schools, places of worship... and venues generally where children and their families may be present.”

“This operation has revealed the Glenwood Springs ICE office to be a rogue agency operating outside of clear ICE directives to not conduct operations in “sensitive locations.” said Brendan Greene, Rocky Mountain Coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition,“ The fact that ICE and local police went after dads at the carnival on Father’s Day has been spreading throughout the immigrant community. This has the potential to negatively impact the success of Strawberry Days for years to come; not to mention erode what little trust remains between the immigrant community and the Garfield Co. Sheriff’s office.”

Adds Greene, “The local ICE office and the Garfield Co. Sheriff, by irresponsibly targeting the city’s flagship summer event, has hurt not only the City of Glenwood Springs, but also any other town in the Valley that is hoping to have a successful festival this summer. They should be ashamed of themselves for hurting the Valley’s businesses in this way.”

Local Spanish language DJ, Axel Contreras, heard about ICE’s presence at the carnival and went to investigate. “I have lived in the Valley and attended Strawberry Days for 20 years…in all of my years here, even when there were terrible storms, I have never seen Strawberry Days as empty as it was on Sunday after word had spread in the community that ICE was conducting an operation.”

This type of enforcement operation is often extremely disruptive to small towns like Glenwood Springs, where the Latino/a community has grown to become a major supporter of the Festival over the last decade.

CIRC has been receiving complaints from the immigrant community about how the Garfield County Sheriffs Departments has been closely collaborating with, and in the case of last weekend’s raids at the carnival, taking the lead in ICE enforcement operations.

“I can’t think of a better way to ruin community policing than having local law enforcement troll for undocumented workers at community events like Strawberry Days.” said attorney Ted Hess, who is representing one of the detained men, “ This unholy alliance of ICE and local cops destroys trust between the community and the police.”

Posted via email from Decolonizing Environmentalism

Breaking news from Bonn on climate negotiations: Bolivia & Tuvalu

Special to Climate Connections from Tina Gerhardt, 

independent journalist 

Bolivia has taken a firm stance at the opening of the UN climate negotiations in Bonn today, stating that it opposed the Cancún Agreement in Mexico and refuses to negotiate it now in Bonn until its concerns, particularly vis-a-vis the fundamental issue of REDD, are addressed. Discussions will resume this afternoon, taking up this topic. 

Tuvalu - calls bluff on lack of transparency in Mx in "facilitator groups" that made decisions

- calls attention to conflict of interests and "material" motivations for decision-making on REDD

- demands transparency and that Annex I and Annex II party representatives be consulted

- demands representation of the interests of indigenous groups

Requests the chair of the SBSTA reassure Bolivia in expressed concerns.

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California Assembly Approves Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

A big week for progressive legislations:

this, the TRUST Act and the CA DREAM Act are on their way ...

---------- Forwarded message ---------

California Assembly Approves Domestic Workers Bill of Rights 

Assembly approves sensible, clear guidelines for domestic workers and employers
Bill will improve quality of care for families

SACRAMENTO

 - The California Assembly approved AB 889 today, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, sponsored by Assemblymembers Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and V.M. Pérez (D-Coachella) passed.  The bill now heads to the Senate for approval. Co-sponsored by Assemblymembers Allen (D- Sonoma), Cedillo (D- LA), Ma (D- San Francisco), Monning (D- Carmel) and Senator De Léon , the bill would improve the quality of care for children, families and seniors by expanding basic labor protections for household workers and setting industry-wide standards. While current exclusions for domestic workers are confusing and leave well-meaning employers vulnerable to liability, the standards AB 889 provides will create clarity and strengthen an industry which is vital to many Californians.

“Today’s vote was a historic step forward for the rights of domestic workers in California. For decades domestic work has been excluded from both state and federal labor laws and worker exploitation in this industry has remained invisible and unmonitored. AB 889 will end that by establishing the same basic protections under the law that many of us take for granted,” said Ammiano.

“This legislation helps us to bring a critical workforce out of the shadows and into the light of day.  Domestic workers must be assured the rights and protections that all California workers deserve,” said V. Manuel Pérez, chair of the Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economic Development, and the Economy.

The Assembly vote follows last year’s successful passage of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York. Domestic workers have historically been exempted from laws governing the rights afforded to other workers -decent wages, a safe and healthy workplace health, workers compensation and other labor protections. Domestic workers are among the most isolated and vulnerable workforce in the state. The unique nature of their work requires protections to prevent abuse and mistreatment from occurring behind closed doors, out of the public eye. This bill provides domestic workers with industry-specific protections to use kitchen facilities and cook their own food, and creates standards for sleep, sick days, living wage increases, and paid vacations. 

"Pues esa victoria significa que vamos poco poco en el camino de luchando para ganar estos derechos que no han sido reconocidos en este trabajo digno," said Maria Reyes of Mujeres Unidas y Activas.  "This victory signifies that we're moving step by step on the path to victory to win rights that have never been recognized in this dignified work."

"The Bill of Rights creates helpful guidelines for employers of domestic workers. Employers have a vested self-interest in this campaign- by working to support the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, we are investing in building communication and trust with workers who support some of the most intimate parts of our lives, providing home care to people with disabilities and elders, or caring for our children and our homes." Jessica Lehman, employer of a personal attendant in her home and a member of Hand in Hand: Domestic Employer Association.

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