The Lesson from Standing Rock: Organizing and Resistance Can Win

Written on December 8th, 2016 in politics Comments Off

Published on ZNet, by Naomi Klein, Dec 6, 2016.

… Less than two hours earlier, news came that the Army Corps of Engineers had turned down the permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built under the Missouri River. The company will have to find an alternate route and undergo a lengthy environmental assessment … //

… Everyone here is aware that the fight is not over. The company will challenge the decision. Trump will try to reverse it. “The legal path is not yet clear, and the need to put financial pressure on the banks invested in the pipeline is more crucial than ever,” says Chase Iron Eyes, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe attorney and member (and a recent congressional candidate).

Nor does today’s victory erase the need for justice and restitution for the string of shocking human-rights violations against the mainly Indigenous water protectors—the water cannons, the dog attacks, the hundreds arrested, the grave injuries inflicted by supposedly non-lethal weapons.

Still, there is more physical and psychic relief in this room than I have witnessed in my life. As Cody’s father, Don Two Bears, says when he arrives at the house, “It’s not over, but it’s a good day.”

For his son, what today means is that the real work can begin: building living and inspiring alternatives to water-polluting and climate-destabilizing fossil fuels. Leaning back on his leather chair, dressed in a red sweatshirt with the word “Warrior” emblazoned in black letters, Cody Two Bears reflects on the start of colonization, when his ancestors taught the Europeans to survive in a harsh and unfamiliar climate.

“We taught them how to grow food, keep warm, build longhouses.” But the taking never ended, from the Earth and from Indigenous people. And now, Two Bears says, “things are getting worse. So the first people of this land have to teach this country how to live again. By going green, by going renewable, by using the blessings the creator has given us: the sun and the wind.

“We are going to start in Native country. And we’re going to show the rest of the country how to live.”

(full text).

Links:

Trump vows to end overseas ‘intervention & chaos,’ rebuild ‘depleted’ US military, on RT, Dec 7, 2016: Donald Trump has laid out a military policy which he says is aimed at ending “intervention and chaos” overseas. He promised to build up the “depleted” military, but said it would be done with prevention in mind, rather than aggression …;

When a White Supremacist Group Recruits on Campus, on The Progressive.org, by Lisa Beringer, Dec 6, 2016;

Fake News About “Fake News”, the Media Performance Pyramid, on Dissident Voice, by Media Lens, Dec 5, 2016: in the wake of Brexit and Trump, “mainstream” media have done the formerly unthinkable by focusing on media bias. The intensity of focus has been such that the Oxford Dictionaries have announced that ‘post-truth’ is their ‘Word of the Year 2016’ …;

Nachtcafé: Recht und Gerechtigkeit – mit Thomas Fischer, Bundesrichter, und vielen anderen, 89.30 min, von Freie Propaganda 2.0, am 2. Dez 2016;

NWO is (was) Meeting In America, 6.31 min, uploaded by Truth Channel News, Nov 25, 2016 … and no Mainsream Media Covering;

about Trump – John Pilger, 27.14 min, uploaded by Itsnotme itsyouhonest, Nov 10, 2016;

Der muslimische Frauenschleier, auf Mein privater Garten, 28. Juli 2005;

The American West, uploaded by Timelines.tv:

… and this:

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