From Seattle to Detroit: 10 Lessons for Movement Building on the 10th Anniversary of the WTO Shutdown
By Stephanie Guilloud
Published on: November 28, 2009

An article written for the Project South Fall Newsletter

For five days in 1999, 80,000 people from Seattle and from all over the country stopped the World Trade Organization from meeting. Despite extreme police and state violence, students, organizers, workers, and community members participated in a public uprising using direct actions, marches, rallies, and mass convergences. Longshoremen shut down every port on the West Coast. Global actions of solidarity happened from India to Italy. Trade ministers, heads of state, and corporate hosts were forced to abandon their agenda and declare the Millenium Ministerial a complete failure. We said we would shut it down, and we did.

“The fact is that the Social Forum and Peoples Movement Assembly process actually started in Seattle. The Social Forum took off from the experience of the ‘Battle of Seattle’ when the Brazilian organizing committee formed in 2000 and held the first World Social Forum in 2001. Ten years later, we come back to where this started. What has been accomplished in the last 10 years? How have our social movements developed to build the power towards real social systemic change in the US? How do we map the new forces and what is the power of the social movement assembly?”
– Ruben Solis, Southwest Workers Union, participant in the Seattle shutdown, and one of the founders of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

As one of the founders and leaders of the Direct Action Network and a resident of Olympia, Washington, I offer personal and political reflections on the WTO shutdown as a major turning point in my life as an organizer and in our lives working to build movements in the US. As an organizer with the US Social Forum process and a co-lead to develop the People’s Movement Assembly, I carry these lessons with me on a daily basis. I offer these stories with humility and a sense of responsibility. When I refer to “we” in this brief article, I refer to my community of young people in their early twenties, living in Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and the Bay Area, who, with many others, mobilized, organized, and implemented the direct action strategies we had planned for months.

1)Know your history: Seattle was a turning point

Seattle was a historic turning point in our movements for racial, economic and gender justice for a few reasons. On a global scale, the demonstrations and effective shutdown of the World Trade Organization’s ministerial was historic because of our position and location in the US. Seattle did not mark the beginning of a movement, it marked the beginning of a significant connection between the US and the rest of the world. Global movements had and have been challenging and confronting financial institutions and their systemic effects for decades. The demonstrations – the five days of direct action, the massive and violent state response, and the subsequent alliances – accomplished a few major shifts in historic directions. The demonstrations exposed to the US public the tangible affects of globalization on regular people’s lives. The effectiveness of the actions and stalling of the meetings allowed for delegates from the global South to challenge the policies and procedures of the WTO. And for the first time in history, the decision-making rounds of a global financial institution collapsed.

Seattle also opened a door on a new era for movement in the US. The strengths and weaknesses of our organizing efforts served as a spark for new work, new alliances, new conversations, and a new generational drive. It opened the possibility for a generation of people to understand action, movement, and strategy as effective. It also offered an opportunity to see the strengths of innovation and mass organizing, as well as the weaknesses of underdeveloped leadership and lack of connection to long-term transformative practices.

2)Claim your victories and evaluate your mistakes.

How we organize to win is still a critical question today. Winning is different in any moment given the political context as well as the will and abilities of the people involved. We made a widespread call to Shut Down the WTO without total confidence that we could or would achieve that goal. The call was a way to declare a politic beyond reforming the WTO and towards complete transformation of the economic and social systems in motion. On the first day, we succeeded at exactly what we had said we would do. Shutting down a major financial institution with tens of thousands of people and well-coordinated non-violent action was a victory.

Claiming victory is essential to tactical decisions on the ground as well as understanding the political significance after the fact. After the success of the first day, we re-convened the Spokescouncil easily. We had planned for the possibility of mass numbers being in jail, but I am proud that we saw and rose to the opportunity of victory and understood it as an ongoing process. The next few days demanded different sets of tactics to incorporate the constant influx of new people who had not necessarily gone through the preparations that led up to the November 30th action.

That’s a taste of movement building – How do you move consistently through multiple reactions from the state and opposing forces while constantly mobilizing and expanding your base? How do you shift and re-adjust when met with the possibility of victory? And significantly (because it was lacking on a mass scale following the demonstrations) how do you expand the momentum of victory with strategic, intentional plans to continue what you started? And finally, how do you evaluate the mis-steps and mistakes after such a significant and widespread experience? How do you receive and understand criticism as well as accolade without losing momentum or integrity?

3)Make your enemy known: Mass demonstrations are not spontaneous

Globalization and neoliberalism were not common terms or centers of public debate. The WTO was relatively unknown at the time. Its meetings were secret, the levers of decision making and the connections between nation-states and corporate leaders were blurry and deliberately non-transparent. We believed everyone had a stake in refusing to let them meet quietly, especially in our town. We knew that any major action would not be spontaneous – it would need massive buy-in and involvement from many sectors of the community.

There had been a successful campaign to pass an ordinance banning the MAI (Mulitlateral Agreement on Investment) in Olympia, and we knew there was a hook into our community on the issues of corporate control and local power. We studied the mechanisms of the WTO in order to describe it and educate about its relationship to our work, our food, our health, our governance, and our economies. I facilitated countless popular education-style workshops in classes, at unions, in prisons, and in the community. A team of us produced the broadsheet that went out that summer to over 25,000 people engaged in environmental, labor, peace, and social justice work. The articles exposed the WTO as an illegitimate and undemocratic institution, and we called for a Shut Down on November 30, 1999.

One of the most significant accomplishments of our organizing was that people knew the enemy – they knew the details, the characteristics, the impact, and the context of the WTO. We worked to make that happen. We studied and applied tactics and strategies from the Spanish Civil War and the anti-nuclear movement. We invented new tactics and strategies based on our knowledge of the terrain. It was a planned, locally-led massive demonstration with global consequence.

4)They came out of the bars: Infrastructure and preparation allows for spontaneous action

On the first day of the demonstrations, there were a few different kinds of folks on the street. There were the organized labor marchers, prepared and routed. There were the Direct Action Network folks who had been preparing for months, organized into affinity groups and clusters with clear, coordinated instructions to hold particular intersections in various formations. And there were folks in Seattle who walked off their shifts and linked elbows in front of glass doors and irate WTO delegates. On the third day of the demonstrations, after two days of cloudy tear gas on Capitol Hill and rubber bullets flying, the confused media reports, and a lot of traumatized people who were either arrested or hurt – the people living in Seattle were the irate ones. We had more people who wanted to get involved, and they hadn’t gone through the trainings.

My affinity group was tasked on the second night of the protests with leading a march the next day on King County Jail where about 600 of our folks were being held and doing jail solidarity. We moved thousands of people from Pike Place Market with the plan to split the march and surround the jail. We were still successfully operating with tactics of surprise. There had been no police or city negotiations for any days past the first. No routes, no advance warning. (And remember that ten years ago there were no cell phones, no tweets and texts, and very little email.) We did it again – Surrounded the jail with 2000 people, made our demands, and got the lawyers in. But the real victory was the mass of people who was not prepared, was not experienced with actions, direct or otherwise, and who completely trusted our leadership and moved collectively.

In order for that trust to emerge, we created a culture. We prepared as best we could, and a culture emerged spontaneously in the moment as well. The way we used call and response was like poetry. We had to make the words meaningful and precise. And it worked – at that time and in that place. The experience, sometimes frustrating and frightening, still moves me to believe in people’s power and creativity.

5)Surprise only works once: Evolve our tactics and strategies

We cannot afford to dismiss the significance and influence of different tactics, strategies, and convergences in different historical moments. We also cannot rely on old models of organizing, simply because they have worked in the past. Mass demonstrations and protest rallies cannot be our default response to all injustice. Two major lessons surface. Surprising the cops in Seattle put us at an advantage at every turn. By the nature of our movements being extremely out-militarized, we are not in a position to repeat the same strategies with the same success. We will have to be smarter, one (or more) steps ahead of the turn, and completely in command of whatever local terrain we occupy.

Another major lesson from post-Seattle demonstrations was that convergence at the expense of local organizing is not effective. The local leadership and knowledge made the demonstrations in Seattle effective. We learn similar lessons in the US Social Forum process. The Forum would be in danger of becoming a big conference if power building in multiple locations (including local, regional, national, and global relationships) is not inherent to the organizing and operational process. What has been powerful in my experience in working in the South and organizing the US Social Forum, a convergence process led by people of color in community-based organizations from multiple sectors, is that we understand that strategic convergence is still extremely necessary and valuable. That the model was developed and refined in the global South through the World Social Forum is critical to its relevance and success. The convergence in Seattle ten years ago was important, but we’re not always coming together to target an oppressive institution or body. We are also coming together to increase the breadth and width of community-led power bases. New tactics and strategies will rise from that convergence.

6)It’s not about a leader. It is about leadership.

There are two major things you learn about inside of an affinity group: 1) Play your position and 2) trust everyone else to play theirs. There is no other option. If you’re locked down to 50 other people, you cannot also get water for everyone or communicate your coordinates. There are distinct and necessary roles. The group process of building trust and skills together over time allows for everyone to play their roles to the utmost efficiency. We were spokespeople, facilitators, planners, logisticians, tacticians, jail support, communication points, and when the time came to make hard decisions about how to move within and through the police violence, while still maintaining our effectiveness in blocking our coordinates, we made them by consensus. With 200 people. You can’t ever tell me, consensus doesn’t work or it takes too long – you’re just not doing it right.

We built that same model to scale for the Spokescouncil, and as with many of the lessons from this moment, there is a lot to learn and expand from being able to convene hundreds of people that represent thousands and make tactical decisions. These models are not about a single leader nor the absence of leaders. Leadership is critical to the functionality and direction of these spaces. The collective nature of leadership is not easy, we are not trained to work like that, and we must be intentional and deliberate about our principles as we practice them at higher and higher stakes. Leadership in this case looked like incredibly well-developed plans and structures by multiple people in different positions, while at the same time allowing everyone on the streets to claim and feel true victory in their bodies. What can we learn and share, about this model, and what needs to be further developed?

7)Strategy, please: Action-hopping is not movement building

Most of the demonstrations that followed the Seattle demonstrations over the next two years in the US (specifically the actions around the IMF, World Bank, and political party conventions) did not have the intention, timeline, or local mobilization and support that would allow for 10,000 people to do direct action while having the support and solidarity of upwards of 60-70,000 people in the labor and progressive movements. Though there were different levels of success and effectiveness in different convergences over the next few years, we played to many of our weaknesses rather than move from our strengths and unique positions.

There were opportunities to build with broader, more grounded global movements who felt connected to what we did in Seattle. Part of what’s necessary to do this work effectively is knowing the landscape – literally and politically. In order to organize for global justice in our communities, we need to understand that the forms and functions of international financial institutions and groups change and shift to meet new economic conditions. The exclusive club of primarily colonial powers, the G8 just became the G20. How are we shifting and changing to meet new conditions? How are we building in our communities in ways that are rooted to the local conditions and responding to broad systemic realities?

8)Leadership development, thank you.

Where there were intergenerational relationships there was strength. Where we relied on only ourselves as isolated young people, we stumbled. The impediments were age-old internal and external barriers to serious, strategic organizing. Most of us were young (I was 22) and having participated at the helm of the protests, we held this depth of experience but struggled with what all new leadership struggles with – clear political direction, strategy development, and organizing skills. The generational turning point here cannot be dismissed. I was hired and trained by a seasoned organizer and strategist, and he challenged me, supported me, and connected what was happening to a broader, historical context. That daily training I received laid the foundations for me to develop my skills as an organizer for long-term work. Others in my community also had relationships with key mentors and advisors, but there was not a movement infrastructure for that leadership to enter, learn, and build on the momentum after the demonstrations. I am still wildly cognizant of that immense and specific need on a large scale, and I strive to carve out space and time to give and receive what I can to people who are battling on the frontlines of our communities.

9)Guilt slowed us down: Solidarity is action

Elizabeth Martinez’s article “Where was the Color in Seattle?” sparked debate following the demonstrations about race, leadership, and global justice. Though there were great points to discuss, the debate it sparked is not as relevant as the larger context of how white supremacy and racism manifests in our social movements. The Seattle demonstrations did not represent “white movements” but it did reflect many dynamics – old and painful dynamics around leadership, race, culture, and styles, as well as some new dynamics about the nature of massive convergences from a local base with national reach. The debate and challenge around the roles of white people in leadership was happening within the organizing bodies. We challenged racism where we saw it, we attempted to advance our communities’ understanding and skill through trainings and workshops, and ultimately the affinity group I was working with in Olympia made a decision to resign from the Direct Action Network if we did not examine our broader positions as a leadership body and our roles within that context.

One outcome of the dialogue at that time was a culture embedded in identity rather than experience. This culture had already begun plaguing this new generation but has since ballooned. The critique for critique’s sake nature of anti-oppression work showed a lack of development as well as real misunderstandings of history and race in the US. Instead of emerging from this historical moment to build deeper connections to local and global struggles, young white activists questioned their right to act. Confronting white supremacy is not an existential activity. The lesson here for our US movements is about understanding how to challenge the dynamics of privilege and oppression while also building large, wide, and deep movements that are led by and rooted in the experiences of people who know injustice and exploitation – currently and historically.

10)Know your vision: Learn lessons in order to move forward.

The lessons of that time are with me in my everyday organizing work. I moved back South (I’m from Houston and live in Atlanta now) in 2003 to work with Project South and practice movement building in Southern grassroots communities. After Seattle, I knew I needed more development around strategy, history, and developing long-term organized formations to build instead of react. Project South was one of the primary anchors for the first-ever US Social Forum in 2007, and for me the Forum was a continuation of the momentum we built in Seattle. In an exciting shift and in less than ten years after the demonstrations, the Forum represented more vision, more leadership from frontline communities, and more strategic connection to global struggles.

From that process and within the context of global dialogues about coordinated actions, we are building the People’s Movement Assembly as an organizing process to prepare for the Forum, to make decisions at the Forum, and to advance new directions after the Forum. We are pulling on all these lessons from 10 years ago to facilitate Movement Assemblies – mass convergence, collective decision-making, political clarity, shared leadership, and trust that we will move forward together. What will we build over the next ten years in order to shift, evolve, and grow our movements to win?

Stephanie Guilloud graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 1999. She was hired that week by history professor and organizer Dan Leahy to organize a conference called Trade, Labor, and the Environment: Analyzing the World Trade Organization. She co-founded the Direct Action Network with other organizers from California, Oregon, and Washington. Her affinity group was made up of queer and trans folks from Olympia and called itself the Small Town Sleazy Cowboys (and Lady) Puppet Rodeo Association. They built a cluster of over 200 people to shut down multiple intersections on the first day, led the action for over 2000 people to shut down King County Jail on the third day, and continued mobilizing actions until the end of the fifth day. Stephanie edited and produced ‘Voices from the WTO,’ an anthology of first-hand accounts from the demonstrations and is a contributor to The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, a short anthology released for the tenth anniversary looking at how that watershed event has been misrepresented and reproducing the original 1999 Shut Down broadsheet.

www.projectsouth.org
Stephanie@projectsouth.org

CANADIANS TAKE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE
Occupy Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice’s office

Go to the Blog: www.canadaclimatejustice.wordpress.com for info and updates

Six people are currently occupying Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice’s office to demand the Canadian Government push for climate justice at the up and coming climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen, to be held this December. Five citizens hail from Prentice’s riding. The sit in began at 10.00am, and is now in its’ fourth hour.

The people occupying the office have refused to leave until the Minister agrees to push for a just, ambitious, and binding climate deal in Copenhagen that listens to the science, and is led by those who are most directly impacted by the climate crisis.

“While our government continues to delay action on climate change, millions of people will die or become displaced due to the climate crisis. Canada’s obstructive approach to the international climate negotiations, and our refusal to recognize the scientific reality of global warming in our own climate policies, tells the world that the Canadian government doesn’t care about the lives of those currently affected by the climate crisis,” said David Wilson, one of the citizens occupying Prentice’s office. Phone calls, letters, rallies… They haven’t done enough to solve the greatest environmental problem facing our generation. We must put more pressure on the Government to act and push for a just, ambitious, and binding deal that reflects the science, and is led by those most directly impacted by the climate crisis.”

Inaction on climate change is already displacing and killing millions the world over, and exacerbating existing problems like global poverty, hunger, disease and armed conflict over resources. The UN estimates there will be over 150 million climate refugees by 2050. In Canada, warmer temperatures have already ravaged BC’s pine forests. Communities in the Canadian Arctic face the complete transformation of their landscape and way of life. Across the country, the increasing severity and frequency of climate caused events like droughts and flooding will impact our food production and livelihoods. Canada’s children face a future where much of our living systems have collapsed, and they will be forced to shoulder a burden of immeasurable injustice.

“For this country with such a proud tradition of protecting the planet to become the global symbol of dirty fuels and unsustainable practices is heart breaking,” asserted University of British Columbia Professor Patrick M. Condon. “At some point citizens have an obligation to say enough is enough. Change can happen, and it must. Apartheid was broken by just such a spirit. Segregation was broken by just such a spirit. We can do no less. With the climate crisis the stakes are even higher.”

JOIN THE ACTIVISTS AND TAKE ACTION FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE

Phone the office and demand that Prentice give into the protesters demands that Canada commit to a just, ambitious and binding climate treaty in Copenhagen that listens to science and is led by those most directly affected by the climate crisis: 403 216-7777 or email Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca

Organize your own direct action at your local elected officials’ office.
Go to the Blog: www.canadaclimatejustice.wordpress.com or email canadaclimatejustice@gmail.com for more information.

Write op eds and letters to the editor about the importance of taking direct action to make sure the Canadian Government solves climate change.

MEDIA COVERAGE SO FAR

Hell No, We Won’t Go – Globe and Mail

Environmentalists occupy minister’s Calgary office – CHQR Newsroom

PHOTOS

Flickr

Did you catch that moment of unity last week in Singapore at the APEC summit? Leaders from across the Earth boldly stood, in their matching shirts, unified in their resolve to “walk back” expectations about the Copenhagen Climate Conference next month?

Sheesh.

But who needs to go summit-hopping over to Denmark when you can stay home and fight the largest and most destructive project on planet Earth? Right here in our very own back yard. That’s right–we’re taking about the Tar Sands. The dirtiest most carbon intensive oil on this here planet.

Check out our latest music video:  The Tar Sands Blow

If you ain’t ready to open up a big old can of Tar Sands Whuppass by the time it’s over, then we don’t deserve to call ourselves Popular Agitators no more.

Crank your speakers to 11 and click here:  The Tar Sands Blow

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE

(be the R2D2 you want to see in the world)

by Gopal Dayaneni

The Mess We Are In

Most readers are probably familiar with the 1977 science fiction blockbuster movie, Star Wars. Remember the trash compactor scene? That scene provides a nice metaphor for the state of global economic and ecological crisis. We are all trapped in a global trash compactor. The walls are closing in. On one side, we have climate chaos with all its myriad consequences. On the other, we have the wall of racial, gender, economic and environmental injustice also closing in on us. In the middle, we have us – everyone. And as the walls begin closing in, what is the first thing you do? You try to push back. Many people concerned over the past 30-plus years with the rapidly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been pushing against the wall of climate chaos. Armed with the best science, they have been demanding, and sometimes taking real action to slow the release of carbon into the atmosphere and/or get carbon out of the atmosphere.

Up against the other wall are the communities attempting to push back against the advance of ever increasing inequity, poverty, violence and injustice. Those folks (for the sake of the metaphor, we’ll call them the rebels) are primarily peoples in the global South and indigenous peoples worldwide and poor communities and communities of colour in the North. These are the people who have been the victims of colonisation, environmental racism, destructive development and economic impoverishment in the name of progress. The North (and elites in the South), instead of pushing back, are running to the centre, staying as far away from the walls closing in as they can, buying themselves some time, but only time and not very much of it. As they crowd the centre space, more and more folks are forced up against the walls, allowing those in the centre to ignore both the walls closing in and the folks getting crushed. But we are now at a place in which the walls are so close they can no longer be ignored. So what do we do?

We grab some big piece of metal and try to jam it up there, thinking that a system designed specifically to crush that stuff might be thwarted by it. Let’s call these the false solutions. They are everything from the techno-fixes such as biofuels, ‘clean coal’ and geo-engineering, to the kinds of market-based climate policies that we know won’t work, but might, at best, slow the rate of collapse. Slowing down the collapse – that is the best we can hope for from these false solutions. And the best evidence we have right now says that those false solutions will make the situation worse – accelerating both the ecological collapse and the inequity, thereby making mitigation and adaptation that much harder for the most vulnerable and least responsible.

So what do we do? We need to do exactly what they do in Star Wars. Shut the system down. We need to go R2D2 on a systemic level and address the root causes of the problem. That is what climate justice is about. As David Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park of the University of Minnesota write:

People of color, indigenous communities, and global South nations bear the brunt of climate disruption in terms of ecological, economic, and health burdens. In addition, climate change infers a naturally occurring process rather than a disruption created by specific human activity. For these reasons, activists and scholars have developed the concept of climate justice, which recognizes that the struggle for racial and economic justice is inseparable from any effort to combat climate change. Climate justice begins with an acknowledgement of climate injustice and views this problem not as an unfortunate byproduct of climate disruption, but as one of its core elements, and one that must be confronted if climate disruption is to be reversed.ⁱ

But what is the R2D2 of climate justice? Here is where the metaphor breaks down. Our solutions will not come from folks on the outside of the crisis, but from coordination of forces within the climate justice movement – where we recognise that we have multiple strategic points of leverage and that we must align these approaches. Currently, the term ‘climate justice’ is used in many ways, but without some level of strategic alignment in interventions, we will not achieve the level of impact necessary to lead us towards the real solutions we need. While there is some alignment, and the different approaches to climate justice are in no way mutually exclusive, greater alignment is critical. Let’s explore these different takes on climate justice.

A Rights-Based Approach to Policy

As we approach Copenhagen, the question of what kind of global policy on the climate crisis can emerge has very much dominated the political imagination, and in this context climate justice refers to a rights-based/justice-based approach to climate policy. Organisations that take positions that are broadly in line with declarations and statements in the international context on climate justice such as the Bali Principles (2007), the Belem Declaration (2009) and others, are within the climate justice fold. Additionally, a key theme is the subordination of climate policy to UN rights declarations and conventions, such as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Policy initiatives emerging from this approach include broad opposition to a markets-based approach to carbon (carbon trading), and even more adamantly, opposition to exotic market instruments, namely, offsets; ramp-down to low-carbon economies; a phase-out of fossil fuels; and, probably most importantly, an ecological debt-based mechanism for financing and technology transfer from the North to the South. In this category we include a broad range of groups who share positions, who work domestically and/or internationally and who employ diverse strategies, including research, international solidarity, analysis, public education, advocacy and organising. This approach to climate justice is also present in US climate policy.

A Multi-Sectoral Movement Building Agenda

In the US, the environmental justice movement has given rise to a climate justice movement that has simultaneously fought to raise the voices of those communities least responsible for and most severely impacted by climate change, namely poor people of colour and indigenous peoples, and demanded that climate policy does not further exacerbate existing economic and environmental inequality, but redress it. According to Nia Robinson, director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, “[T]he successful creation of climate policy can not happen without the input of communities that have suffered as a result of the US fossil fuel addiction. Our government must begin to recognize these communities as experts or run the risk of creating policies that will do as much harm if not more than climate change itself.”ⁱⁱ Just as the environmental justice movement transformed the environmental movement by repositioning human communities and equity at the centre of environmentalism and brought a racial and economic justice lens to that work, the climate justice movement has pushed the climate movement in the US. Through the movement’s orientation embodied in this use of the term ‘climate justice’, we see emerging a ‘popular movement of movements’, led from the grassroots. A key issue for the climate justice/environmental justice movement in the US is articulating that even within the North, there is a South; that this ‘South in the North’ is owed the same ecological debt (to indigenous peoples, to African Americans for the legacy of slavery and others); and that there are communities disproportionately impacted due to race and class.

Grassroots Resistance to Root Causes of Climate Change

In recent years, also stemming from the environmental justice and environmental health movements, the use of climate justice has emerged as referring to the grassroots struggles of communities in the US and Canada who are fighting against the root causes of climate change in their own backyards/front yards. Put another way, Fence-line and Frontline communities fighting oil, coal, gas, tar sands, incineration, deforestation, etc. Only more recently have these folks emerged on the scene as part of the ‘climate’ issue. For example, communities fighting refineries and power plants across the country as environmental justice struggles against point-source pollution have focused on health, poverty and environmental racism as the core themes of their struggles. Now, confronting the root causes of climate change has emerged as a critical, unifying theme. This started in the late 1990s, and really took hold after the 2nd People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington DC in 2002 (10 years after the 1992 Environmental Justice Leadership Summit). Examples are the struggle against ‘mountain top removal’ in Appalachia (the practice of blowing off entire mountaintops to reach underlying mineral deposits), coal mining on indigenous lands and tar sands development in Canada. These struggles have long been fought locally and are now flashpoints of climate justice as local fights to address the root causes of climate change, while fighting for concrete improvements in the daily lives of communities. There is a strong focus here on accountability to communities and on communities speaking for themselves, while there has been less emphasis, until recently, on the questions of climate policy.

Climate Action for Climate Justice

Also developing more in recent years is the conflation of climate justice with climate action. Some of this is emerging from mainstream environmental organisations and some from the youth climate movement. While we see lots of young people holding posters that say ‘Climate Justice’, we do not always see a clear articulation of a justice/rights-based agenda on climate. In fact, many groups that are driving the youth climate movement support policies that run counter to the established principles of climate justice. We are seeing more and more of this use of the term by a broad range of groups who are now using direct action in some form or other to address climate change. There is, again, overlap. Many groups that are engaging in creative direct action or civil disobedience as part of their strategy are also advancing a rights-based framework, are supporting the leadership of those most directly impacted and are attacking the root causes of climate change. But many are not, and differentiating between the two becomes critical. One way to think of this is that climate action is not always action for climate justice. Depending on the theory of change and strategies you are employing, the action must either, and ideally in combination advance a rights-based agenda consistent with the frameworks established collectively by the international climate justice movement; take leadership from and be accountable to those most directly impacted and least responsible; or engage in community struggles at the root causes of climate change.

The strongest movement for climate justice coming out of the US will be one where we have strategic alignment between these groups, and there are many organisations and networks that represent this alignment, particularly the Mobilization for Climate Justice, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, among others. We need a rights-based approach to climate policy led by directly impacted communities and grassroots organising that takes direct action in support of and with leadership from communities on the frontlines of the chain of production of climate change. As Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network observes:

In the US and across the globe, the movement for Climate Justice has been steadily growing, not simply demanding action on climate, but demanding rights-based and justice-based action on climate that confronts false solutions, root causes of climate change and amplifies the voices of those least responsible and most directly impacted. Not only are we the front-line of impacts, we are the front line of survival. As Indigenous Peoples, all of humanity is dependent on our traditional, sacred, evolved knowledge of Mother Earth.ⁱⁱⁱ

If we can create a people-powered, inside-outside approach both in the US and internationally, we have a chance for a just transition to a sustainable future.

The Power of Nonviolent Action in Honduras

The massive nonviolent movement that put pressure on the coup government may be only the first chapter of an important and prolonged struggle for justice in one of Latin America’s poorest and most inequitable countries.

by Stephen Zunes

yes! Magazine

The decision by Honduran coup leader Roberto Micheletti to renege on his October 30 agreement to allow democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya to return to power was a severe blow to pro-democracy forces who have been struggling against the illegitimate regime since it seized power four months ago. The disappointment has been compounded by the Obama administration’s apparent willingness—in a break with Latin American leaders and much of the rest of the international community—to recognize the forthcoming presidential elections being held under the de facto government’s repressive rule.

Still, there are reasons to hope that democracy can be restored to this Central American nation.

The primary reason the de facto government was willing to negotiate at all was the ongoing nonviolent resistance campaign by Honduran pro-democracy forces. The role of popular nonviolent action has not been as massive, dramatic, or strategically sophisticated as the movements that have overthrown some other autocratic regimes in recent decades. There were no scenes of hundreds of thousands of people filling the streets and completely shutting down state functions, as there were in the people power movements that brought down Marcos in the Philippines or Milosevic in Serbia.

Nevertheless, the nonviolent struggle has been of critical importance.

The sustained nonviolent resistance movement has prevented the provisional government, which was formed after the June 28 coup, from establishing a sense of normalcy. What the movement has lacked in well-organized, strategic focus, has been made up for with feisty and determined acts of resistance that have forced the provisional government into clumsy but ultimately futile efforts at repression—exposing the pretense of the junta’s supposed good intentions.

Sometimes a resistance movement just has to stay alive to make its point. Day after day, thousands of Hondurans from all walks of life have gathered in the streets of Tegucigalpa and elsewhere, demanding the restoration of their democratically-elected government. Every day they have been met by tear gas and truncheons. Over a dozen pro-democracy activists were murdered, but rather than let these assassinations frighten people into submission, the opposition turned the martyrs’ funerals into political rallies. Their persistence gradually has torn away the outlaw regime’s claims of legitimacy. Rather than establishing themselves as a legitimate government, de facto president Micheletti and his allied military officers have been made to look like little more than a gang of thugs who took over an Old West town and threw out the sheriff.

Since the return of the exiled President Zelaya to Tegucigalpa (he successfully sought refuge in the Brazilian embassy), the pro-democracy movement has surged. Micheletti and his henchman initially panicked—suspending basic civil liberties, shutting down opposition radio and television stations, and declaring a 24-hour curfew. This disruption caused the business community’s support for the de facto government to wane; the Obama State Department, which had been somewhat timid in pressing the junta up to that point, began to push harder for a deal.

It has been a great credit to the pro-democracy forces that, save for occasional small-scale rioting, the movement has largely maintained its nonviolent discipline. It would have been easy to launch a guerrilla war. Much of Honduras consists of farming and ranching country where many people own guns. The neighboring countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua have experienced bloody revolutionary struggles in recent decades. Yet, despite serious provocations by police and soldiers loyal to the provisional government, the movement has recognized that armed resistance would have been utterly futile and counter-productive. Indeed, they recognize that their greatest strength is in maintaining their commitment to nonviolence.

Those who have engaged in these courageous acts of resistance will feel betrayed, however, if the Obama administration is indeed ready to defy the international community by allowing Micheletti to stay in office and to recognize the results of an election held under such repressive conditions. The United States does have the power to force the illegitimate regime out and to facilitate the return of the country’s democratically-elected president to power if the Obama administration chose to use it. Indeed, there are few countries in the world as dependent on trade with the United States as Honduras.

As for those of us in the United States, it is not enough to cheer from the sidelines at courageous acts of nonviolent action by the people of Honduras. We must be willing to challenge our own government—through engaging in nonviolent direct action ourselves, if necessary—to support democracy in Honduras.

However, even if the Obama administration refuses to take a more responsible position and the coup is allowed to stand, the struggle will not have been for naught.

The Honduran opposition movement consists of a hodgepodge of trade unionists, campensinos from the countryside, Afro-Hondurans, teachers, feminists, students, and others who, along with insisting on the right of their elected president to return to office, are determined to build a more just society. Prior to the coup this summer, there had never been a national mobilization in Honduras lasting for more than a week, much less four months. The protracted struggle against Micheletti may have served as a vaccination: Popular forces may now have developed the antibodies to engage in a sustained struggle for social justice, deepening the capacity for radical change in a society that has a rather weak tradition of social movements relative to much of the rest of Latin America.

Regardless of who occupies the Honduran presidential palace, there is a critical need to replace the old constitution, imposed by the outgoing military junta in 1981, which minimizes the participation of ordinary citizens in political decisions and effectively suppresses popular social movements. It must be replaced by one in which members of the country’s poor majority will have more of a say in determining their future. It was the movement for a popular, non-binding referendum to gauge support for a Constitutional convention that prompted the coup last June.

This struggle may be only the first chapter of an important and prolonged struggle for justice in one of Latin America’s poorest and most inequitable countries. It is important that the people of North America become engaged as active allies.

LIVING FOR CHANGE
Organizing In The Age Of Obama
By Grace Lee Boggs

(originally printed in The Michigan Citizen)

Are bigger rallies what we need in this period when industrial society is collapsing and global warming threatens all Life on Earth? Or are alternative forms of organizing necessary and possible?

I raised this question in my recent column about the thousands of rallies on Saturday, October 24, demanding that world leaders at the Copenhagen Summit take more drastic actions to slow down global warming.

In response to the column, veteran peace activist Stefa Shafer offers civil disobedience as an alternative. She writes:

“I participated passionately in the anti-Iraq invasion protest rallies from January 2003 to February 15, 2003.

“After the tremendously significant international turnout for the February 15 rally, I independently went to Iraq to join a collective of human shields from around the world who went to sit on UN-identified bomb sites to help fortify the anti-invasion initiatives going on seemingly everywhere.

“After the meticulously-organized and massively-resourced war effort out-maneuvered humanity’s call for justice and peace, I stayed in Amman, Jordan, at a small hotel used by human shields and independent journalists coming from and going to Baghdad. There I met many human shields who had sat it out in Baghdad through the month and a half of heavy bombing until the war was declared officially over.

“Having met and listened to most of the human shields who left Baghdad, I became convinced that direct action, like sitting on bomb sites, is a powerful method of protest. The shields, mostly from North America and Europe, sat at sites that would be normally bombed at the beginning of a war: electricity grids, food silos, oil refineries and communications centers. While the electricity grid was bombed immediately in Basra, where there were no human shields, they were not bombed in Baghdad. The lack of electricity shut down the water supply and cholera broke out in Basra at a time when it was very difficult, if not impossible, to get medical help.

“The White House, Pentagon,10 Downing Street and the UK Ministry of Defence had been sent maps of the human shield sites. Although intense bombing went on all around the sites, where shields were present none were hit. One French shield told me after the war that his spine still tingled when he recalled being so close to bombs around the sites that he felt his arm would be blown off if he moved it. At one communication centre, they were down to one remaining shield so a delegation went over to escort her to a site where there were more people. Within hours after there were no shields left at the center it was bombed. This kind of civil disobedience works but the numbers have to be built up.

“I went ahead to Baghdad during the occupation and co-created a peace group with some Iraqis.

“I could write a book on what I’ve learned about protest activism and the carnage of war. I gave up on marching for peace when it became clear to me that governments are only emboldened by seeing in action how polite and powerless we, the public, are. We’ll still vote and still accept the governments’ decisions in spite of the fact that what we believe to be just, legal and decent is violated by the government. The well-known case of the US official torture program is the best example. Even though people are in theory against torture, it still goes on.

“What baffles me is that our protests of the invasion and occupation of Iraq were powerful before the invasion and dwindled as the carnage and atrocities mounted, including the government’s well publicized, defiant use of torture. That’s the opposite of how it unfolded in the Vietnam anti-war movement which got stronger as images of carnage reached the public. Have we as a culture been turned inside out or upside down in the last 40 years?

“Marches backfire. I’m available for unrelenting civil disobedience if the numbers are strong enough to get to the finish line.”

Boggs Center Website

Cross posted from Grist

African negotiators at the U.N. climate talks in Barcelona just refused to continue formal discussions about all other issues until wealthy countries live up to their legal and moral responsibility to commit to deep emissions reductions. Rich countries (also called “Annex 1 countries”) have ground negotiations to a halt by failing to agree their new targets under the Kyoto Protocol (KP), driving developing countries to put their feet down. This walkout is significant and opens up political space – it means many of the countries in Africa just stopped one half of the UN climate negotiation process until rich countries say how much they will reduce their carbon.

We’re down to the wire: just four negotiating days left before the big agreement in Copenhagen is supposed to go down. Its day one, and we saw just a taste of the breakdowns to come. While rich countries continue to undermine commitments for the Kyoto Protocol (one of two negotiating tracks for Copenhagen which is supposed to be renewed for a second commitment period of Annex 1 targets), the spin has already taken hold: they’re blaming Africa for their own delay-mongering. Oy vey.

In response, movement and civil society organizations held a demonstration at the U.N. building in support of African delegates’ insistence that developed countries commit to new, strong binding targets. Delegates and observers were invited to join a human shield against the killing of Kyoto targets (complete with an Annex 1 grim reaper) and instead urged to promote at least 40% emission reductions with no offsets by 2020.

Kamese Geoffrey of NAPE/ Friends of the Earth Uganda warned, “Rich countries are attempting to dodge their legal and moral responsibilities to reduce emissions. Developing countries and communities have historically had practically no fault in the creation of climate change, yet they will be the first to face the devastating impacts of climate change.”

Many of us have longstanding criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly its market mechanisms. But here’s why Kyoto is important:

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