Another US Land-Grab from Indigenous People Happening Right Now!

From the blog Intercontinental Cry, here is a letter from Margo Tamez asking for help for the people of El Calaboz, Texas as the Border Patrol, Army Corp of Engineers, and NSA harrass them to give up their ancestral lands in order for the border fence to be built.

Subject: Emergency in el Calaboz, Lipan Apache & Basque-Indigena North American Land Title Holders!!!

Dear relatives,
I wish I was writing under better circumstances, but I must be fast and direct.

My mother and elders of El Calaboz, since July have been the targets of numerous threats and harassments by the Border Patrol, Army Corps of Engineers, NSA, and the U.S. related to the proposed building of a fence on their levee.

Since July, they have been the targets of numerous telephone calls, unexpected and uninvited visits on their lands, informing them that they will have to relinquish parts of their land grant holdings to the border fence buildup. The NSA demands that elders give up their lands to build the levee, and further, that they travel a distance of 3 miles, to go through checkpoints, to walk, recreate, and to farm and herd goats and cattle, ON THEIR OWN LANDS.

This threat against indigenous people, life ways and lands has been very very serious and stress inducing to local leaders, such as Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, who has been in isolation from the larger indigenous rights community due to the invisibility of indigenous people of South Texas and Northern Tamaulipas to the larger social justice conversation regarding the border issues.

However recent events, of the last 5 days cause us to feel that we are in urgent need of immediate human rights observers in the area, deployed by all who can help as soon as possible–immediate relief.

My mother informed me, as I got back into cell range out of Redford, TX, on Monday, November 13, that Army Corps of Engineers, Border Patrol and National Security Agency teams have been going house to house, and calling on her personal office phone, her cell phone and in other venues, tracking down and enclosing upon the people and telling them that they have no other choice in this matter. They are telling elders and other vulnerable people that “the wall is going on these lands whether you like it or not, and you have to sell your land to the U.S.”

...

My mother is under great stress and crisis, unknowing if the Army soldiers and the NSA agents will be forcibly demanding that she sign documents. She reports that they are calling her at all hours, seven days a week. She has firmly told them not to call her anymore, nor to call her at all hours of the night and day, nor to call on the weekends any further.She asked them to meet with her in a public space and to tell their supervisors to come.They refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to harass and intimidate.

At this time, due to the great stress the elders are currently under, communicated to me, because they are being demanded under covert tactics, to relinquish indigenous lands, I feel that I MUST call upon my relatives, friends, colleagues, especially associates in Texas within driving distance to the Rio Grande valley region, and involved in indigenous rights issues, to come forth and aid us.

Please! Please help indigenous women land title holders resisting forced occupation in their own lands! Please do not hesitate to forward this to people in your own networks in media, journalism, social and environmental justice, human rights, indigenous rights advocacy and public health watch groups!

Margo Tamez

I can't claim to know alot about what is going on related to this border fence building. But I have heard about it running straight through backyards, environmental protections given the shaft, and ancestral graves dug up. When is it finally time to stand up and say "STOP THIS MADNESS?"

The myth of consumption

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for the meeting of your eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to loose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

Daniel Berrigan

I read this quote for the first time this morning in an amazing diary by Hillary Rettig and OPOL titled Giving Thanks for Progressive Activists and its been on my mind all day. I've been thinking alot about the myriad of myths that we respond to almost automatically without much awareness. When we read a quote like that, it resonates deeply. We know it is truth. And yet the myth that getting more for ourselves will somehow make us happy is how we tend to live our lives.

We've all had the experience of giving something meaningful to someone in need - be it emotional or physical. And we know that it brings a sense of happiness and meaning that can never be matched by our own possessions. So I wonder why we, as a culture, never seem to learn from these very real experiences we have.

I know that a big part of the problem is the bombardment of the media in creating the illusion that their products will bring happiness and fullfillment if we only work hard enough to have the means to purchase them. But I still believe that IN OUR HEARTS, we know this is a lie. And still the cycle goes on.

There are actually a myriad of complex issues that get in our way of giving rather than consuming, not the least of which is that we don't spend much time around those who are truly in need. Giving money to an organization that is going to give that man/woman/child a piece of bread means that we never see the look in their eyes and we loose that life-changing experience Berrigan is talking about.

But really, I think that what is ultimately at the root of our need to consume rather than share is fear. On the surface, its fear about what others will think of us if we don't have what we think that they think we should have. We need to prove ourselves worthy - to have somehow "made it" by the kind of possessions we have.

And then on a deeper level, there is the fear of not having enough. The myth of scarcity that Lynne Twist talks about in her book The Soul of Money. If we thought there was enough for us, we might be more likely to share. But we've never learned the meaning of "enough"...so we always need more.

Anyway, these are just some rambling thoughts I've had today, sparked by the quote from Berrigan. What I hope to take with me is the anticipation of the look in the eyes of someone who's hungry and I just happen to have a loaf of bread. That's the thrill I want to anticipate.

Blog Voices This Week 11/17/07

From the Boston Globe this week: Blog is Beautiful: People of color challenge mainstream views online:

These intellectual challenges to mainstream and other viewpoints are some of the opinions Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander-American, and black bloggers are exposing on a growing number of sites focused on social, political, and cultural issues. The sometimes facetiously named blogs range from Angry Asian Man to The Angry Black Woman. Readers can find Latino viewpoints at Guanabee, The Unapologetic Mexican, or Latino Pundit. Those interested in information from an Asian angle head to Ultrabrown, Zuky, or Sepia Mutiny. Sites created by blacks include The Field Negro, Too Sense, and Resist Racism....

These sites - many of which launched in the past year, although a few are older - have become places where people of color gather to refine ideas or form thoughts about race relations, racial inequities, and the role pop culture has in exacerbating stereotypes. The writers often bring attention to subjects not yet covered by mainstream media.

(links added)

I thought this week we'd take a look at the blogs that were highlighted in this article to find out what's on their minds lately. So lets start at the top and work our way down.

From Angry Asian Man we learn that John Howard may become the first Australian Prime Minister since 1929 to lose his seat in the House of Representatives. Seems those screeds against Asian immigrants might not work in a district that has become 41% Asian. Couldn't happen to a more bigoted guy!

Angry Black Woman has a few words about the tension between in-group condemnation and condemnation from without.

Guanabee posts a video he describes this way:

Boquillas del Carmen, a community in the Mexican state of Coahuila, has been turned into a veritable ghost town thanks to strict U.S. border security laws - a ghost town, that is, save for one angelic sound. The sweet, sweet crooning of Victor Valdez.

Did you know that Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican is doing movie reviews for Pacifica Radio? (someday we'll be saying we "knew him when." LOL) I've linked to his most recent post about "Lions for Lambs," but you'll have to click through to find out if he liked it.

In reference to the article up above, Latino Pundit says he's tired of the "brown thing."

We have "Bush-isms" and Ultrabrown has "Mush-isms" straight from Islamabad. But just like ours, some of his are more offensive than funny.

Kai from Zuky shares the poem "Pylon" by Gerald McCarthy in honor of Veterans Day.

abhi over at Sepia Mutiny has a wonderful tongue-in-cheek take on two of our recent attempts to track terrists here in the US: (1) the LA "Muslim Mapping Project" and (2) the "track falafel sales" project. I wish I had a nickel for every time in the last 7 years I've said, "if it weren't so tragic, it would be hilarious." But there I go again...

It was at The Field Negro that I saw a promotion for the documentary film Desert Bayou that records the experience of Katrina victims who were settled in Utah. I will definitely have to check that one out!

dnA over at Too Sense takes on Juan Williams' binary and simplistic commentary. And I just gotta love the digs he got in about Mr. William's employer, Faux News.

And finally, Resistance over at Resist Racism is looking for reassurance that she's not the only brown person who feels nervous going to the airport these days. She might appreciate this bit from Dahlak titled " "Just Another Routine Check."

People Power

Some words from the people on this hump-day:

Lessons Learned

As I mentioned last week, my friend and co-worker Pakou Hang lost her bid to unseat an incumbent on the City Council. I had a chance to talk to her yesterday about the election and she is pretty devastated. But the disappointment is not so much in the fact that she lost, but how it happened. Pakou managed her campaign the old fashioned way - true grassroots organizing. For an election that only produced about 5,000 votes total, she had over 400 volunteers on the ground working to get out the word and the vote. This was extremely encouraging in that just a few weeks before the election, no one had seen or heard much from her opponent, the incumbent.

But just a week before the election, things began to look a little more dark. You see, her opponent had two significant groups in his camp: the city's police federation and the local Chamber of Commerce. We're talking money and muscle. The first sign of what these folks had planned was a radio ad that broke just days before the election saying the police federation backed her opponent because he was the candidate who was "tough on crime." We'll never know who paid for the ad, but I think its pretty clear that the only folks who can afford that kind of media is the Chamber. While our community has its problems with crime and it is the top concern of most voters in local elections, overall this is a pretty safe city, as urban centers in the US go these days. The tone of the ad was definitely designed to "gin up the fear" about this issue though.

But the most disturbing turn of events happened on election day. Pakou reports that several precincts in her ward were circled by police cars all throughout the day with some officers challenging voters and election judges. This is even more significant than it might have been in other areas because, as you can see, Pakou is Hmong and was mobilizing the very large Hmong community in her ward. They are even more intimidated by a police presence than other communities because of the ways they were traumatized in Laos prior to immigrating to the US.

We'll never know if these activities were the reason Pakou lost the election, but its clear that while she was organizing the grassroots, her opponent had other tactics in mind for winning the election.

As I talked to Pakou yesterday about all of this, it came to me that this could be the lesson she and other progressives need to learn. I think its natural for people to project their own values and beliefs onto their opponents in political races. We see this all the time with the rabid right accusing the left of all of the things they are actually doing.

I also think that progressives, who believe in grassroots politics, tend to assume that their opponents do as well. We can be naive in too often believing the best about the opposition and don't prepare for the low blows they are capable of using.

I think its time we learned our lesson and wise-up a bit. That doesn't mean we need to join the opposition in the gutter. We just need to loose the naivete that tends to hold onto believing the best about people and prepare as best we can for the low blows.

During this Bush administration, we've seen that no matter how much we try to comprehend the depths to which they are willing to go, they continue to surprise us with their capacity for evil. That's why I embrace alot of what passes for "tin foil hat" theories. We've never been wrong when we've thought the worst. I think our errors are usually in the other direction.

Blog Voices This Week 11/10/07

I don't think that I'll usually have a theme for this weekly essay. But I recently saw a video in my travels around the net that inspired one for this edition. The video was made by Sudy at A Womyn's Ecdysis:



There is a movement underway on these blogs. And today, I'd like to give you just a small taste of some of its power.

But before we go to specifics, Mandolin at Alas! A Blog has done some remarkable work to give us a glimpse of this movement's breadth. There's really no way to summarize this piece, just go take a look and thank Mandolin for the amazing amount of time and love it took to do this.

By now I hope you're seeing that the theme for this week is the diversity in the feminist blogosphere. So I'd like to start with a story that was widely covered this week by women of color, but not so much by the MSM and progressive blogs. Donna, over at "The Silence of Our Friends" talks about it in her piece Virgins, Whores, and the Sliding Scale of Our Humanity. In a nutshell, a Philadelphia judge, Teresa Carr Deni, threw out rape charges in a case she recently adjudicated because the victim is a prostitute, and instead called it "theft of property." Donna has some wonderful commentary on this story and the price women pay for their sexuality.

I'd like to visit "elle, phd" again this week to take a look at her diary Waiting.... Elle lives in Louisiana about 100 miles from Jena. She relays several stories about situations going on in her area that leave her saying this:

It occurs to me that I am cataloguing, watching, and waiting for shit to explode in my little corner of the world.

Something is going on here in my home region, something created by the nature of race, gender, and class relations here. Everyone is whispering, but no one is talking.

At "Rachel's Tavern" atlasien has a diary titled White Guilt, White Resentment that gives us a picture of the psychological development of racism. This is one powerful piece, so I hope you'll go take a look.

One of my favorite finds this week is a blog called "Black Looks." They are taking a comprehensive look at the struggle of black people around the globe with a special focus on women. You'll find interesting, off beat stories like this one titled Umoja: A community of women in Kenya. The post inlcudes a short video that is introduced this way:

The women of Umoja are survivors of rape and women who have been ostracised by their families and communities. In Umoja they have come together to form their own community, working for themselves making crafts and on the land. Their choice to stand independently of men has resulted in further abuse and threats but the women are determined to stay and make their community work.

It was at "Black Looks" that I learned about Black./Womyn:Conversations a.film.by: tiona.m. This full-length documentary explores a range of Black lesbian experiences from activism, racism, gender roles, coming out, marriage, and patriarchy. You can see lots of clips from this beautiful and courageous film at the blog linked above.

If you'd like to hear from one of the young women who is part of this movement, visit "Tigera Consciente" and check out the short film she posts in The Power of Independent Youth Media: Girls Like Me. This film, which was produced long before Imus made his racist/sexist comments, interviews young black women about the unique pressures they feel. But perhaps the most powerful part of this video is when the young women making it re-create the 50 year old experiments of Dr. Kenneth Clark during Brown vs. Board of Education where young children were asked what color of doll they preferred. The result...well, just go check it out.

Finally, Aaminah Hernández at "Writeous Sister Speaks" asks all of us to just Listen!. Here's how she introduces what she wants to say:

I am really struggling right now with trying to navigate the delicate balance between educating non-Muslims and others about my culture and beliefs etc. and not wanting to be forced to be a spokesperson. While I constantly recommend that if you want to know about a group of people, you need to go to the source with your questions, I also find myself tired of the questions.

As my Shaykh says (granted, in relation to deeper matters, but this is broadly true), “if you come to me with your cup full I can give you nothing; come to me with your cup empty so I can fill it up”. When someone decides to engage a Muslim (or other group) in dialogue, claiming to want to learn and understand, it is necessary to come empty and ready to accept what you hear.

I hope this little tour around some of the blogs written by women of color has been as enlightening for you as it has been for me. As always, we just scratched the surface. I'm hoping to continue listening and learning more from these wonderful sisters.

If you'd like to learn more about the blogs shown in the video above, here are the links:

Fabulosa Mujer
A Womyn's Ecdysis
Broken Beautiful Press
Having read the fine print...
Hermana Resist
The Silence of Our Friends
los anjalis
No Snow Here
UBUNTU!
The Primary Contradiction
This Is Not My Country
Feline Formal Shorts
She Who Stumbles
Tigera Consciente
Vox ex Machina
Taking Steps
Brownfemipower

Now front-paged at Docudharma

Multipolarity: An End to US Hegemony??

I posted this a few months ago at Everybody Comes from Somewhere. Lately I've been thinking it sums up the only place I see much hope these days.

A few months ago I ran across this quote from Glen Ford on The Black Agenda Report:

There's a term going around in the corporate media called, "multi-polarity." It's really a euphemism, designed to describe the death of white supremacy over the planet. It's been a long time coming - more than five centuries, since the European invasion of the rest of the continents began, resulting in the death of untold millions of people. Whole civilizations were wiped away, to make way for a northern European global sphere of influence. Now that era is coming to an end.<...>

China, India, Brazil and South Africa have joined in a political and economic compact to resist the domination of the United States and Europe. The political-economy of capitalism dictates that these nations must be dealt with. The social realities of the United States dictate that it cannot raise a military force sufficient to suppress the dark masses. Europe learned this lesson a generation ago. Now it is time for the white supremacist Americans to learn the same lesson: they cannot rule the world.

This sounds interesting. I wanted to learn more about "multi-polarity," so I did just a little bit of research. Turns out it is actually a concept that was developed by Jacques Chirac several years ago. Here's how wikipedia defines it:

Multipolarity in international politics describes a distribution of power in which more than two nation-states have nearly equal amounts of military, cultural, and economic influence.