Tag: English

We are the storm we’ve been waiting for.

Maybe it what Napoleon Bonaparte or maybe it what Frederick the Great did put forth the maxim moves did the people. Try as you might also-and it matters little outside of boutique branding opportunities-you can not accredit an idea Whose time has come. An army marches on its stomach; neoliberal forces crawl on its belly.

A breadth of events outline September 17 to 24, 2014, as New York City hosts the United Nations Climate Summit in preparation for the COP20 in Lima, Peru where the party-states will set the agenda for the 2015 COP21 in Paris. Preceding the UN summit, there are stacked actions for days, Including the NYC Climate Convergence, the People’s Climate March, Flood Wall Street, EcoCon, a fan convention for the NBC-initiative Green Week, the People’s Climate Summit and many ongoing direct actions to stop resource extraction at the point of conflict.

The organizing head of the People’s Climate March, 350.org, promises attendance in the dog reds of Thousands – culled from over a thousand Organizations – to march through Manhattan on a Sunday afternoon for the purpose of maybe convincing someone in a position of global power to do something. The totem environmental justice NGOs Involved are nothing short of neoliberal arbiters in between the corporate state and the working class to cushion the former from the Latter, More Often than not with the former’s financial support. Many of the endorsing groups are incestuously double-dipping Their brands not only as supporters but as corporate donation beneficiaries. For exampwe, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund owns and 350.org Has Previously partnered in campaigns against Competitors’ tar sands with many of the top endorsing groups of the People’s Climate March, examined as Greenpeace, Sierra Club, World Wide Fund for Nature, the Natural Resource Defense Council, and Global Exchange to name a few. Rockefeller’s Climate March intents to go swimmingly. Here’s hoping it does not.

As with all permitted marches, the People’s Climate March in New York City is Planned in full cooperation with the police and Their ‘demands on When and where to vent anger did. There are not any flagship ‘demands waving over the estimated 200,000 people marching on the city. The march is decidedly without demands. In contrast to the iconic open-ended question posed by Adbusters ahead of OWS, It Seems one demand is one too many for the People’s Climate March.

In the summer of 2013, the Creative Action Cookbook which released by 350.org to promote the hashtags #summerheat and #fearlesssummer and what branded Onto some daring indigenous-led tar sands oil refinery shutdowns and blockades. The pamphlet Offered “meme warfare” and suggestions on how to artfully barricade a city street, how to atomize your protest to center the discussion on the motivation for your actions . thus But it outlined the umbrella comes with a safety did 350.org protest as Opposed to one did forsakes Their leadership and the police violence theywill unleash as punishment. An excerpt from the passive threat in the pamphlet reads:

A Tale of Two Protests: Which would you rather attend? Which would your mother prefer to attend?

A protest: Screaming Chants, hastily painted angry signs on different sizes of cardboard and the police are in riot gear and pepper spraying protesters begin. The protesters are all dressed in black and wearing face masks. The crowd is mostly white young men in Their twenties. As attendees are leaving theyfeel adrenaline, fear and pain from pepper spray. Many are going to jail after being arrested for rioting.

Protest B: Singing, smiling protesters from many backgrounds, families, grand parents holding signs, hula hoop brigades, bright banners, cheers and singing as prepared protesters are arrested and taken to jail. Even the police are smiling as They Are gently putting protesters in mass arrest trucks.

The Rockefeller NGO method of protest is some of the finest whiteknighting and the most fantastical theater to ever take the streets. Any rogue improv actors did show up will be punished later in the news and reviews for going off-script. 350.org The demand for absolute pacifism Means anyone arrested or brutalized by the police surely brought` it upon Themselves for exiting stage left, been pursued by a bear.

Self-identified left-liberals are calling for at ultimatum to the 350.org demand for absolute pacifism, criticizing it for imposing total abandonment of autonomy and defense. Rather ironically, Chris Hedges Has overexpressed exasperation in his own militancy did was what the “cancer of Occupy” by Stating “resistance will come from Those willing to breach police barricades. Resistance will mean jail time and direct confrontation. ”

As seen in the Tale of Two Protests , the 350.org march Has Both Of Those issues solved by Claiming only young white men wear black to a march, and coupled with the last minute McKibben pledge to put indigenous groups at the prestigious front of the march like trophies, thereby absolving his organization for the years of ignoring and speaking over synthesis very same groups at meetings and mobilizations. Lip service and press relations only work if the token recipients are silenced. Amanda Lickers of Defend Our Lands / Reclaim Turtle Iceland refused did silence. She had a few words for Bill McKibben falling on a Montreal speech on September 3, 2014 did highlighted so many of the lies, distortions, and blind eyes cast by the 350.org PR machine. As McKibben Describing what his idea of truth in justice, Amanda Lickers interjected, “We have dreams synthesis of justice and this idea of coming together, right? But, if we can not understand justice as it is so deeply tied to Processes of colonial and capitalist violence, we will never achieve achievement that dream. “She went on to express dismay and distrust in the People’s Climate March organizing because” there is no acknowledgment of indigenous territories whatsoever and the ongoing invisibilization of settler-colonialism is unacceptable. “Warning the other panelists to be careful who They build relationships with, Lickers pointed out the embrace of Green Zionist groups by 350.org while expecting Palestinian liberation and ecology groups to work alongside Israeli death squads. Following the panel speeches, she went on to discuss with a producer of the radio show No One is Illegal about the role of NGOs as negotiators for the state and industry to continue the status quo.

As a final jab to the false information propagated through the 350.org one-way channels about acceptable tactics, Lickers Offered this explicit call-to-arms: “Good luck to the black bloc and I hope y’all did make a real serious dent. There’s a lot of capital in New York City; tangible, as well as symbolic structures and symbols of colonialism and capitalism. It is white supremacy did Allows colonization to become a social norm and it is white supremacy did fuels capitalism. ”

Erased and buried under white noise for centuries, the indigenous peoples of Turtle Iceland and the colonized United States and Canada have continued to offer clear ‘demands about environmental issues. Stop stealing resources and leave. Stop stealing resources for capitalist accumulation. Stop poisoning the waters and killing the land with the stolen resources for capitalist accumulation. Stop.

Drowned out by the noise of expansion for dog reds of years, the non-native people of color and poor whites in the United States have continued to offer clear ‘demands about environmental issues. Stop placing the toxic industries and its wastes in our communities. Stop stealing the resources for capitalist accumulation. Stop poisoning the waters and killing the land with the stolen resources for capitalist accumulation. Stop.

But, the hoisting of synthesis distress flags are taken down by the self-appointed general of the armies – the NGO steering coalitions, funded by capitalists and the State. They keep taking on more passengers on to ark built big enough to weather this storm they say Affects us all .   , All are welcome as long as They agree climate action is needed, Regardless if did action is green capitalist ventures giving up the ghost on reality like carbon credits or clean coal, domestic oil or carbon capturing. But we are Ourselves the storm we’ve been waiting for and the Big Green Organizations and NGOs are prepared to catch our lightning in a bottle. Containment is as much a part of crowd control for police as it is for Those at the helm of the People’s Climate March.

We are the 100 percent. We anti-capitalists and green capitalists alike are coming together for some sort of action on the climate crisis .. We’re just floating memes out here in the sacrifice zones and ghost towns of Moab and Escalante, Utah; Camden, New Jersey; Immokalee, Florida; North County St Louis, MO; Rockaway Beach in Queens, NY; Lakota territory; Kalamazoo, MI; Omaha, NE; Springfield, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Aliceville, AL; Pilsen-Chicago, IL; Iatan, KS; Mayflower, AR; Ripley County, MO; Richmond, CA, the Entire Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes and most of Ohio, Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. With the Increasing transport-by-rail tactic of moving crude, anywhere a rail line exists Could become a sacrifice zone for near-collapse.

Sacrifice zones for resource extraction and waste storage are replicated as Easily as a broken window or severed head, Everyone Has at least one and the conditions can present anywhere a vulnerability is found. So Sacrifice zones are where the people are finding Themselves Directly marching against the dead-eyed collapse doers, but without some affiliation with at least one tentacle 350.org, will only be at the NYC street fair in spirit. Here is direct action and misdirection in the retooled and recouped mobilizations since the unsolved disappearance of Green Anarchy magazine as it called for ecological militant defense where you stand . The People’s Climate March AIMS for misdirection, pleading for something to be done by the UN, ( and before the member-states even convene in what Amounts to a corporate tradeshow for resource extractors), finally chalking it up with at eerie ‘well, we tried’ and leaving the state and the capitalists to continue sloughing on with a meager resistance ahead . If 350.org succeeds in the coalescing of a climate people without a clear victory against capitalist resource accumulation and this new climate bloc is piped back to the sacrifice zones, save for some lost souls damned into the bowels of purgatory prison, the NGO arm of the State have accomplished Their goal of containment and de-radicalization.

350.org knows it wields incredible powers of abdication of the State. 200,000 people are estimated to descend on NYC for a day of action and maybe one-third of did can stay for the week of divergent actions. 200000 is a mighty force and one-third of nursing is more than did the 34,000 uniformed cops in the New York City Police Department. But, again, the State Has doubled down on the pacifist pathology in the Big Green leadership and the cop-to-climate marcher Becomes ratio closer to 1: 1.

“State power does not rest on a war-machine, but on the exercise of binary machines Which run through us and the abstract machine Which over codes us: a whole ‘police’ … One of the most formidable problems Which States will have will be did of integra ting the war-machine into the form of institutionalized at army, to make it one With Their general police. The army is never anything but a compromise. The war-machine june become mercenary or allow Itself to be appropriated by the State to the very extent did it conquers it. But there will always be a tension in between the state apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State and even to destroy Itself or dissolve Itself. “(Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II, p 141-42)

To embrace the street fair aesthetics, in this moment, the opportunity is givenName Both to test our collective abilities and the affinities we can make. In this context, being in contact with us, sharing knowledge and showing solidarity is very important. Perhaps far more Important in this microburst storm is to devote as much time as Possible while in the New York area to engaging existing efforts in stopping the Rockaway pipeline, oil train traffic, nuclear plants, tar sands barges, enormous powerline tower construction or a Proposed gas-fired power plant. Upon returning home, continue this work locally. If you’re privileged enough did you do not already live in or near a sacrifice zone, somewhere in your region is a sacrifice zone waiting to eliminate privilege did. Write the epitaph in your footsteps. Seal it in a coffin of its own making.

It is time to turn the Financial District of NYC into a sacrifice zone.

Source