Though President Obama stridently stated that we can’t go on with business as usual and that “changing the way we use energy is essential to America’s national security”, the stated target for the US reduction of 17% by 2020 seemed somewhat contradictory to the urgency. That level of reduction (which falls short of many projections of what is needed to halt our trajectory towards catastrophic climate change(25-40%) ) means little to the Maldives, Seychelles, coastal Louisiana and coastal Alaska, all who, by some analyses, face submersion within that same timeframe. I’m not blind to the resource constraints, the onerous need to build political will, and the mechanics of transitioning to an alternate energy economy, but are we pushing ourselves enough to rise to the urgent challenge of addressing this global threat? If we were able to address the resource and political will issues in a matter of days/weeks to mount a war, can’t we mount an effective campaign to gain nationwide understanding and buy-in for averting catastrophic climate change? Certainly US commitment to 80% reduction by 2050 is more like it, but by then will it be too late?  Let’s mobilize so that we can get these numbers up higher and sooner.

In regard to President Obama’s observation, about how there are those who think that nations who emit the most should pay the most to clean up the resulting mess, I say, mos def! Wealthy nations who emit the most and have the capacity to contribute the most should bear the greatest responsibility. The mantra coming from the Bolivians for the week, regarding differential contributions to mitigation and adaptation efforts, was taken from our own professed principles of responsibility and accountability in the US, “You break it. You buy it!”  

We, as wealthy nations in the global north have indeed broken the gift and treasure of this planet, and its wonderfully synchronistic and harmonious ecosystem, with our excesses and abuse. We have set the earth on this trajectory which has and will continue to hurt communities of color in the US and countries in the global south first and worst. Several wealthy nations are most responsible and should pony up the lion’s share (excuse the horrid mixed metaphor, but work with me here ) and compensate for the harm we’ve caused.   Some are calling it ecological debt and/or reparations and yes, basically the wealthy nations have been racking up credit at the expense of others within their countries and in the global south and the bill is past due, and there is interest.

In the end, though discussions went late into the night/morning, there was no legally binding agreement. President Obama ‘s leadership ensured that for once the US wasn’t the bad guy/obstruction in the room and instead he actually played the role of pushing countries to do more and to be accountable. However, they basically walked away with a text with no teeth, a few rounds of handshakes and loose “promises” with a range of weak to more aggressive targets, but no mechanisms of true accountability that would be rendered by being legally bound.

A group of us gathered at the end of the day to discuss how we are going to organize towards the US Social Forum in Detroit from June 22-26the 2010 and on to COP 16, which may be in July 2010, but will occur in Mexico City. We agreed that we needed to mobilize our member bases to participate at the US Social Forum in full force so that we are working together to build this movement.  As with the civil rights movement and any other successful social justice movement, it builds from the ground up so we must mobilize!  We need to be in Detroit to work with others on the ground to ensure we are building power and speaking with one voice and we need to be in Mexico City to make sure that there isn’t another COP that is completed without a legally binding agreement while our communities are being displaced by rising sea levels, while our folks are being swept away by storms, while our children are starving from the boroughs of New York to the favelas of Brazil to the hinterland of Africa, while our women are walking for miles to get water in Botswana and being sexually assaulted during Katrina in the US. This must stop. We can do this. Climate Justice NOW!!  Get onboard! ….hope to see you on the train…..   

Fortunately, there were other videographers in the group whose fingers did not turn into excruciating and paralyzed blocks of ice within the first 10 minutes of filming. L So, please find their footage posted here shortly. Also, please excuse the shaking in the above clip. I was trying to rearrange my fingers in my glove in hopes that the cold and pain would be abated, to no avail. J

In the afternoon the side event, on whose panel I was supposed to serve, was moved due to the shut-out of the Bella Center.  So in a darkened pub setting,  in the Bellona Foundation Lounge as opposed to a fluorescently lit conference room, John Grant of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, Bob Gruenig of National Tribal Environmental Council and Jerome Ringo of Apollo Alliance, actress and spokesperson Gloria Reuben, and I, chaired by Joe Mendelson of the National Wildlife Federation, shared our observations, analyses, and calls to action as it relates to climate change and climate justice in the United States.  Gloria spoke of her experience in West Virginia following a local hero who is resisting mountain top removal. Jerome talked about surviving Katrina and spoke of the real life consequences of failure to act. John implored folks to think of ways they can contribute and stated that everyone has a role. I spoke on the intersection of climate, gender and race. A video of the panel will follow shortly. (It hasn’t been uploaded to the Bellona Foundation site yet)

So to start off, I arrived at the demonstration late, but with video camera in hand prepared to capture the images to give readers at home a window into what’s happening among activists rallying for democracy in Copenhagen. I’ll briefly summarize what I saw, because the footage says it all. Demonstrators were chanting, “This is what democracy looks like” “What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!” “When I say climate, you say justice! Climate! Justice! Climate! Justice!”

Then, the energy in the air shifted palpably as the crowd prepared to push through the police and advance towards the Bella Center.  The rally leader began to say. “Okay, everyone come together and PUSH!  PUSH!” At the same time she urged others to “Form a chain around the truck! Don’t let the chain be broken!” In between her alternating refrain directed at the now advancing police was “This is a peaceful demonstration!!”

Then the announcements began to be issued from the police, “By order of the queen, this has been declared an illegal demonstration.” “ Clear the area or you are subject to arrest”  Dressed In full riot gear from head to toe they aggressively advanced on the crowd with tank like trucks and on foot, with swinging batons, spraying tear gas, and barking German Shepherd attack dogs! For all of my years of AIDS activism in different countries I had never seen such a show of force, aggression, and brutality directed at demonstrators…..and I hope I never see something like that again. Many people emerged from the melee in tears, limping, and supported by their friends in the struggle. But the crowd pushed on unrelentingly. Soon there were literally hundreds of policy and they had driven aggressively into the crowd with their trucks and soon formed their own chain surrounding the crowd and by creating this barrier, combined with some intense battering with the batons and administering tear gas, had managed to contain the crowd.

According to some sources, there were about 4,000 demonstrators in attendance.

Meanwhile Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, and Tck, Tck, Tck were refused entry into the Bella Center this morning and weren’t provided with any rationale for being banned. Speculation is that this was part of the crack-down to try to prevent any more actions from being held in the Bella Center.

Also meanwhile delegates on the inside, led by the Indigenous folks, mounted their synchronized action where they marched through the Bella Center to head out and join the rally to “Reclaim Power”. They were restrained by the police in actually exiting and joining the others, again with a show of force. However, they made their voices heard!

Later that afternoon, through an invitation that came to the NAACP I joined the Alliance for Climate Protection Reception featuring Al Gore.  He spoke more stridently and with more passion than I had heard him speak as he encouraged all to pull together and push for advancement of climate legislation in the US. He also pushed for concerted action to make the Mexico City COP16 relevant and productive. He even suggested that we think about holding it in July, the hottest month in the year, for emphasis of what we’re talking about. Gore was also pragmatically concerned that having the COP 2 days after the US midterm elections would not be politically wise. In conclusion, he emphasized that we needed to act in accordance with the urgency of this issue and thought we needed to instill deadlines as the US and globally.

Finally, the best part of my day was meeting at the Greenlandic house that was organized by the Black Women’s Roundtable, led by Felicia Davis,  and included women from India, Cameroon, Kenya, the US, Denmark, Germany and several other countries. People introduced themselves and how they came to this work, with inspiring tales of impact and activism. We reflected on our successes at COP 15 and talked about our plans leading to COP16 in Mexico City.

At the end, I was fortunate to interview Letitia Daniels Jackson from Dothan, Alabama and Anna Pinto from Jaipur, India as they respectively told their stories of how they reached this level of commitment in addressing climate change. Anna spoke of how her mother first noted the change in the taste and smell of food and water and how the insects and agriculture also began to change.  Letitia talked about her work in tobacco and deadly secondary exposure, as well as her observations re wasteful and excessive lifestyles, as well as noting Alabama farmer experiences with changes in bees and how all of this is connected. She ended with a call to action, stating that our very lives hinge on our concerted response.

This morning we started the day in front of the Canadian Embassy demonstrating against the proliferation of tar sands operations. This action was led by the Indigenous Environmental Network. In brief, “Tar Sands” refer to “bitumen”/petroleum heavy sands which are mined to extract oil. These tar sands in Canada are on lands where the indigenous people have not given permission for extraction and furthermore, the process of extraction and transport is one that is hazardous to the environment as well as using copious amounts of water, a precious and diminishing resource. Sharon Lungo of the Ruckus Society and part of the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation, explains more.

On my way to the Canadian Embassy, the metro announcer stated that the metro stop for the Bella Center (where the climate talks are occurring) was closed due to overcrowding and that people would have to get off at the station before and walk.  When I later arrived at the Bella Center I saw why!  The line to get in for accreditation was unbelievable…hundreds of people were standing outside looking grim and frozen. When I got in to where the bag screening occurred, I looked over to the “organizations without badges” area and the line had stopped to such an extent that folks were sitting on the floor working on their laptops. What did that mean for how long the folks were standing outside and how much longer would they be out there??  When I got inside I saw a friend who had made it through and was in the last line before receiving accreditation papers. She and her line mates shared that they had been outside for FOUR AND A HALF HOURS in that line!  I had to put that in caps because last week I was feeling abused after my two hours and had lost feeling in my extremities, and it was warmer then!  I later saw another friend who had been out there for 6 hours. I must frankly say that the situation was inhumane and just wrong.  I’m sympathetic to the notion that they didn’t know how to plan for such a large meeting, but after it went so badly the first day, surely there were some lessons there that they could have used to do some on the spot reform?  To add insult to injury some folks were turned away as registration shut down, after they had been standing in the cold for hours! This isn’t a Rolling Stones Concert…these folks spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars to come here to participate in “democracy” and this is what happened. Simply appalling!

As I entered the building, I did film some demonstrators out front who were raising some noise on the issue of reparations and ecological debt, as well as stating that the World Bank had no role in the proceedings.

In the afternoon we had a meeting of the environmental/climate justice organizations from the US to talk updates and strategy.  There we learned that the G77 nations (developing countries) walked out of the climate talks today in frustration and a sense of powerless due to their perception that there were backdoor deals that were making the real decisions and the COP15 was a façade. Otherwise our group decided to draft a letter to President Obama stating what the EJ/CJ community would like to hear in his time in Copenhagen.

During  that meeting, I had the awesome fortune of sitting next to Reverend Gwendolyn Jenkins of the Imani Group and Building Action for Sustainable Environments.

Later that afternoon I finally caught the infamous “Fossil of the Day Awards”, staged by the Climate Action Network, which happens daily at 6pm in the exhibit hall in the conference center. It is a farcical presentation of “awards” for the worst abusers of fossil fuels.  Watch the video to see who today’s winner was:

We ended the day with a North-South Exchange where people from various countries from the global south and people representing various communities and organizations in the global north gathered. During this sessions there was also some insider information shared from folks who participated in discussions with some of the lead negotiators in COP15. One development was that the language on adaptation and mitigation had been relegated to the preamble which was the non binding section of the agreement.  Secondly another person heard a couple of the negotiators being very dismissive regarding the walk-out of the countries, indicating that the walk out would have no effect because of the lack of ticketing. Otherwise we discussed common struggles and how we might work together to advance common aims. 

Today was brief for me, mostly because the Bella Center was closed, I slept in and then I spent a chunk of the day at the airport! However, I was able to catch a bit of the People’s Assembly at the Klimaforum and had one great interview.

I wish I could say that I had some footage from the People’s Assembly and the various poems, speeches, and films that were shared, but I don’t because my video camera battery was depleted.  However, as footage gets posted, I’ll link to it on this blog.   I did, however, get to show a bit of footage from the Women of Color for Climate Justice Road Tour, which was a gift to be able to show folks a glimpse of how climate change is impacting women of color in the US, who are oft invisible in global climate discussions.

Also, I promised to post footage of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance Press Conference.  The embed link didn’t work but you can find the entire press conference online at : http://www1.cop15.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/cop15/templ/play.php?id_kongressmain=1&theme=cop15&id_kongresssession=2372

Finally, I did a riveting interview with Esmerelda Brown of the United Methodist Women. She provided compelling testimony of how climate change affects her, as a woman of color, her family, and her community. She also shared what United Methodist Women does to address climate change and advance climate justice.

At the Klimaforum, people were engaged with gaining signatures for “System Change, Not Climate Change: A People’s Declaration from Klimaforum 09.” The declaration calls for 1) Complete abandoning of fossil fuels in the next 30 years with 40% reduction in emissions by 2020. 2) Recognition, compensation, and payment of climate debt. 3) Rejection of purely market oriented and technology centered false and dangerous solutions. 4) Real solutions to the climate crisis based on safe, clean, renewable, sustainable use of resources and transition to food, energy, land, and water sovereignty.

Today 100,000 people, with indigenous leaders in the front, took to the streets of Copenhagen and marched 4 miles from the town center to the Bella Center where the conference is being held.  With signs making proclamations such as “There is No Planet B”, “Planet Not Profit”, and “Mother Nature Does Not Compromise”, “Bla, Bla, Bla Climate Justice Now” voices were heard nationally, regionally, and globally as a result of this massive demonstration.

Rewinding, I started the day with a mad-capped run to the DGI Byen University where I participated in a meeting on Gender and Climate change as part of the Development and Climate Days Side Events.  I showed a couple of clips from the video interviews I’ve filmed of women of color speaking on climate change.  Otherwise, the panelists presented studies on gender and climate change revealing a range of differential challenges women face, as well as the distinct roles women already play in mitigation and adaptation.

Perhaps the best clip to show linkages particularly with this last panel and some of the discussions around gender and climate change in the US, would be from the SisterSong National Membership Meeting where Elizabeth Barajas Roman of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College shared her analysis of the challenging framing around the environment and population and impacts on women’s reproductive rights.

Meanwhile civil society was out protesting in the halls, including staging a die-in where one participant feigned a collapse, signifying the death of the Kyoto Protocol.

Today I was at the airport, pleased to begin to receive the early arriving members from the Movement Generation for Change, Right to the City, and Grassroots Global Justice delegation.

Before going to the airport I was able to stop in on the Klimaforum and participate in a half day panel on the intersection of Food and Energy Sovereignty with Climate Change.  One point that was made that was particularly striking was referencing the dynamics around food and agriculture with transnational corporations holding sway, as a “plantation” situation with external corporations mining nations for their natural resources while the inhabitants are engaged as field hands, as opposed to rightful owners to the land and its produce.  Mono-cropping that has begun to proliferate as a direct response to climate change, is exacerbating the situation as well as destroying the biodiversity necessary for a healthy ecosystem.

After traveling for 22 hours, Mari Rose, an arriving delegation member who works with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, was generous enough to allow me to film her story and early thoughts about how she plans to engage here in Copenhagen and represent the interests of her community here.

Finally, each day we’ve tried to tie what’s happening here in Copenhagen with stories of what’s happening at home in the US because the talks here are interconnected with the experiences and interests of our communities, particularly communities of color. So I leave you with a video interview I did with Michelle Macarenhas Swann because it is very relevant to this question of food sovereignty and the principles we want to espouse in terms of community local self reliance.

First thing this morning, a panel of African American and African activists, led by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance,  joined forces to honor President Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace on Human Rights Day, hail President Obama as a native son of Africa, and call on him to show leadership in advancing aggressive targets to address climate change.  Also represented on the panel was the Pan African Parliamentarians Network on Climate Change., Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, and the Black Women’s Roundtable, (video is forthcoming)

In late morning, indigenous rights activists gathered in front of the US embassy to call on President Obama to stop the war waged on native people and lands by the energy industry. They cited tar sands, oil refineries, coal fired power plants, etc. and called for just energy policies and enforcement of regulations.

Later, in the Bella Center Indigenous and Youth Activists gathered and simulated a storm through use of their bodies and vocalizations.  The sound was an impressive representation of what is already occurring and what will increase in terms of severe weather events.  Participants then gave testimony of the threat that increasing climate change has for their lives and what they want to see in the way of change. They called on decision makers to “seal the deal” for the sakes of their lives.

To end out the day I went over to the Klimaforum and listened to a talk on Cuba and Oil that centered on their efforts to maintain sovereign rights over this coveted natural resource. One of the audience members counseled Cuba to consider a model such as that of the Nordic nations who are also oil rich but execute a mixed economy model where they keep a significant portion of their oil for use in the Nordic region. Then they only export what they don’t need.  This is as opposed to many models where countries export all of their natural resources and end up buying their own resource back at a premium after it has been process/refined by an external entity.

I also met a fantastic youth activist from Senegal named Minielle Tall. She can tell her own story, which echoes so much of what we’ve heard in terms of being a cry for justice for the travesty of the suffering of her country and continent due to the lack of willingness by wealthy nations to adjust lifestyle and practices for the good of all. 

With close links to the global south through ancestry, shared experienced around climate change, and through immigration, it is appropriate that our US companion blog of the day features the story of a woman who emigrated from Cameroon to the US, driven by many of the climate related issues expressed by our comrades at this conference.  Please see the story of Elizabeth Ufie Asaha next….

Some of the key reasons why Women of Color United is “making all this fuss” about women and climate change couldn’t be better explained than listening to Asaha Elizabeth Ufei’s description of issues affecting the women of her community in the Momo Division of the Northwest Province of Cameroon. The traditional gender roles and expectations of women and girls lay the burdens of home management, childcare, providing food and income on their backs. At the same time, women and girls are often forced into marriages, lose all property rights, endure violence in their homes, have little to no power in their homes and communities unless men permit it, and often have little to no education or resources. 

As the climate conditions worsen, women are finding it harder to provide food and water for their families. The once reliable and nearby water sources are drying up or contaminated; and the crops aren’t producing enough. So we are faced with questions: How many more miles must women have to walk to provide basic life-sources? What other ways can women sustain their families when the traditional agriculture and craft materials are gone? How many women will have to uproot their families and migrate to other places—that may be hostile to immigrants—because they can longer find food and shelter in their communities? How many more women and girls will be pushed into survival sex work because there are fewer economic opportunities?  How many more people who speak up about human rights and organize for change will be severely punished, coerced to leave their countries, or forever silenced?

Elizabeth’s story illuminates the all too common experience of women in the Global South…and on some levels the lives of women of color and women in communities of poverty in the Global North. The mirror she gracefully holds up also shows the desperate conditions we, in the Global North, are increasingly facing as this climate crisis advances unabated.

Today was a day of strategizing with the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance. PACJA plans to hold a press conference tomorrow to congratulate President Obama on his award of the Nobel Peace Prize, embrace him as a native son of Africa, and call on him to advance aggressive targets for cutting emissions and advancing equitable allocation of resources for adaptation.  They have invited us as the US based environmental and climate justice community to link arms in solidarity and joint action.  So we spent a good part of the day organizing press advisories, a letter to President Obama, and talking points for the press conference. More on the press conference tomorrow!

At the end of the day I interviewed Michele Roberts formerly of Delaware, recently of New Orleans, and currently of Washington DC. She told a story of how the situation of her family in one of eight cancer clusters in Delaware led her to where she is now as a strident activist for environmental and climate justice.   Michele now works with Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

Similarly, Kirin Kennedy, with the NAACP Pennsylvania Youth Conference, has come to climate justice out of her lived experience in communities impacted by environmental and climate injustice. Please read on to hear her story.

Take a lifelong fascination with the weather, course loads in geography and climatology, and a compassionate drive for justice and you will then begin to understand environmental activist, Kirin Kennedy. I had the pleasure of talking with the Pennsylvania State University senior about some of her thoughts on climate change, especially during this pivotal time of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

Kirin only has to look fifteen minutes away from where she lives to the neighborhoods along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers in South and Southwest Philadelphia to see the realities of climate change and environmental injustice. Kirin described how those communities are increasingly prone to flooding and there’s a lack of water quality, affordable food or grocery stores. According to Kirin if the flooding trend continues where there is already a serious deficit in jobs, good healthcare, and education, “…that lack of food justice and access will tighten up and more issues of violence will happen. It’ll be like crabs in a barrel.” She also knows that the numerous industrial plants in these communities are contributing toxins to the rivers.

The environmental justice divide continues when Kirin observes how people of color and low-income people lack the resources to adapt or ease the challenges of climate change. Kirin has noticed that the neighborhood where her university is located offers options to residents so that they can switch energy sources, like going from coal to electric, geothermal, or wind. Those energy options aren’t as easily accessible in South and Southwest Philadelphia communities. Kirin, was drawn to the environmental justice movement because she wanted to understand the human side of environmental issues. She says, ”I feel that as we address climate change, we begin to address jobs, food security, and healthcare because they’re all inter-related.”

Kirin isn’t afraid to say that the potent trinity of consumerism, capitalism, and competition are the key causes of climate change. She explains that capitalism and competition have “…taught us to be major consumers and to want more than we need…and it’s failed us. We’ve kind of reached the tipping point, to where there’s nothing left to consume.” Kirin believes if we continue on this path of capitalism, especially with little regulation, we won’t resolve climate change. Kirin also thinks that we can educate people to avoid mass consumption, eat seasonally, and eat locally–which can create more local jobs. She says we have to look at how we are working and living now and develop grassroots solutions that include everyone.

Kirin offers that same message to wealthy nations, like the U.S. :  We should “…take care of countries where we’ve taken their resources, so people aren’t dying from a drought we caused.” The same responsibility belongs to corporations that pollute. They need to pay fines and care for the communities they benefit from.

When asked what she’d love to say to those policymakers meeting in Copenhagen, Kirin simply gives this advice: “Start including people who aren’t typically at the table. Open your minds to real solutions.” For example, she says the cap & trade proposals aren’t truly helping resolve the problem of emissions.  Kirin asks policymakers to make solutions that don’t negatively impact poor communities already suffering (such as damming a waterway that prevents salmon from spawning and cutting off access to those salmon that a community depends on). The solutions should be based on the greater good of everyone.  Kirin additionally urges policymakers to conclude the Copenhagen conference with a binding agreement that reduces emissions much higher than 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

In the meantime, Kirin is going to continue her environmental justice work regardless of the outcome of Copenhagen. She participates in academic climate projects with her professors and has already started an environmental, education program with the Pennsylvania State Youth Conference NAACP, and works to mobilizes youth around just climate solutions with the Energy Justice Network  Lucky for us, it seems this woman is just getting warmed up!

Following the breaking of this news, civil society groups from various African nations took to the halls in angry and strident protests with chants such as “Two Degrees is Suicide” indicating that it will be people in countries in the global south, and Africa in particular, that will face certain death as a result of global warming caused by the excesses of wealthy nations in the north. Regarding the adaptation funding that is to be allocated to the global south, they dismissively shouted that $10 billion is not even enough to buy the coffins that will result from catastrophic climate change.

I was fortunate to be able to interview Anne Maina of Nairobi Kenya who works for the African Biodiversity Network. She gave a good background and framing to the outrage of the African civil society due to misallocation of resources and lack of aggressive targets at the peril of their nations, communities, and families. Yet she ended on a positive note and a call to action.

In the early evening, Jonathan Pershing, the Obama administration’s deputy special climate change envoy, gave a briefing to organizations largely from the US. He was stridently making a case for why it was just as well that there would be no legally binding agreement coming from the UNFCCC as he thought that trying to push for such a treaty would stall talks altogether, whereas if they seek a political agreement, chances of success increase.

Some of the machinations and shenanigans that persist demonstrate that while we must stridently push for justice through advocacy and activism, we must also advance models of community local self reliance, resistance, and resilience. This is why we are featuring today the story of Zandra Chestnut of Washington DC whose life is an excellent example of leadership of her community to ensure that she and her neighbors have the knowledge, skills, and resources to sustain themselves through the coming transition.

As residents of Washington, DC, my husband and I have raised six children and 12 grandchildren in our northeast neighborhood of Hillbrook.  Our community is located in Ward 7 on the east side of the Anacostia River.  Our community has a very abundant canopy of mature trees.   We live minutes away from the shores of the river.  Over the years, we have worked with various groups to clean up the river and the communities that surround it.  These river and park cleanup efforts have collected a dreadful amount of debris and refuse, including items such as grocery carts, tires, plastic bags, car engines, almost the entire contents of an apartment, and an air conditioning unit.

Climate change has a definite impact on the river and our surrounding communities. We understand that the health of the river is directly related to the health of our residents. We also know that the Anacostia is one of the most polluted rivers in this nation, and that we are charged with changing that reality.

We improve our environment by planting trees and other vegetation for shade and water retention, which lowers the temperature on our streets and absorbs potential floodwaters.  We promote growing home gardens to encourage healthier eating and lessen the financial burden on our food budgets. We also use recycled cloth or paper bags for shopping, to keep plastic bags out of our landfills and the river. Furthermore, we supported DC City Council’s recently passed bill to discourage use of plastic bags and encourage recyclable shopping bags. 

On a daily basis we find cost-saving measures to reduce our carbon footprints including paying bills electronically, buying recycled papers for our business cards and stationery and using less plastic containers. We use CFL bulbs in every light fixture in our home to lessen our electric consumption, unplug chargers and other gadgets that are considered “ghosts” and add to our electric consumption.  We use energy saving appliances, cold water washing for our laundry, and cleaning products that are non-toxic to our waterways. We compost our garbage to use in our garden. We participate in our city-recycling program for our regular trash.  We promote using public transportation and bicycles within the city to save gasoline and lower the emissions from our cars.  We collect rainwater in barrels for plant watering and car washes.  We believe that each one of us, working individually at home, can collectively, have a major impact on lowering the carbon footprint we leave on this planet. 

The mission of the Groundwork Anacostia River DC trust is to bring about the sustained regeneration, improvement and management of the physical environment by developing community-based partnerships, which empower people, businesses and organizations to promote environmental, economic and social well-being. We work with local elected officials, agencies, and like-minded partners to advance our philosophy.

I just gave my first Green Jobs workshop to my local branch of the NAACP.  The workshop was held in a beautiful little church in the farm country of southern Ohio.  We are on the border with West Virginia and Kentucky, the gateway to Appalachia. 

This area is filled with contrasts.  There are beautiful rolling hills and a nuclear power plant just outside of Charleston.  There is a Dow Chemical plant just down the road.  It is surrounded by corn fields.  The railroad runs coal along the Ohio River and at night you can see the flaming stacks of the steel mills just across the river.   The number of billboards promoting “clean coal” are only rivaled by advertisements for cancer care!

In this area we are all greatly concerned about our long term job and economic prospects.  First there was the agricultural revolution, then the industrial revolution and now the environmental revolution.  As a result, this area is full of industries that need to change or be replaced.

When we depend on big capital to drive our economies, lots of people can get hurt.  When the profit margin gets too small for coal, Massey Energy can just pack up and go. 

I am hoping that teaching the community about Green Jobs and the Green economy, with its triple bottom line of people, planet and profit, will help us to realize that we can have a say in how our local economies function.  We should not wait for big capital to come or go.  There is work to be done right now in every community in our nation. There is weatherization, green building construction and renovation, recycling and food production.  We should be taking the time now to map our economies and make some choices about what we want.  There are resources and networks available to help communities do this. 

On the one hand my talk was very successful in laying out the path for getting green jobs in our community.  On the other hand it was difficult to explain that the jobs are not just waiting for us.  We are going to have to do some foot work, some collaboration, and advocate for what we want.  My local NAACP chapter works really hard to connect people in the community with available jobs. But like a lot of community groups there are only so many active members and we’re not getting any younger.  Over the last 50 years or so, people have had to work more and more hours just to maintain the same income level.  We have precious little time for volunteering.  Secondly, the electronic age has changed the way we socialize and has indeed broadened the very definition of socializing!  The result is younger folk are just not coming to these meetings.

Every challenge is an opportunity and there are so many opportunities here!  Wow! Some suggestions:

1. Bring in new members by working on a timely project that involves younger working people. 
2. Publicize the NAACP.  Getting our name out there. 
3. Counter mass media and filling the information gap about Green Jobs and the Green Economy.
4. Instill hope and inspiring creativity by providing critical and useful information
5. Do Democracy-  learning and leading

Most important is regaining impact and control over our economies.  We have devolved into a system where a very small percentage of the population owns a highly disproportionate amount of the assets.  The Green Economy and Green Jobs have the potential to change the situation to something more sustainable and supportive to all economic groups. 

Sylvia Arthur started out as an Environmental Studies major with a specialty in Economics in 1977.  Since then she has played an active role in the anti nuclear movement and most recently, low income self advocacy as Chair of the Statewide Poverty Action Network in Seattle, WA.  Her initial reason for moving to Ohio was to be closer to family.  But now we can add that it is also an opportunity for her to fulfill a life long commitment of NOT preaching to the choir.   

My blog for the day will be brief, as the UN Center didn’t open for non-governmental organizations until noon and then I, along with hundreds of others, spent three hours in the cold awaiting our accreditation. Just thinking about it makes my fingers and toes go numb again from the memory of the misery. J

Anyway, I digress.  As per the subject line, the big news of the day was the hacking of the emails of some climate scientists in the United Kingdom. Supposedly some comments were taken out of context and the hackers interpreted the scientists as saying they needed to hide the fact that climate change is actually on the decline.  This was like chum to sharks for the climate change deniers and they are jumping all over the information and using it to say, “See! It’s all a lie!”

Meanwhile whereas before there was a question as to whether binding agreements would come out of this meeting, there has been a significant shift and now countries are coming with various pledges to cap the carbon emissions that are partially responsible for advancing climate change and the feeling is that they are determined to emerge from the UNFCCC with an agreement. President Obama is coming in for the last two days and folks are taking his timing as a good sign that he is intentionally coming when the deals will be sealed and that he plans to participate in that process and proffer US commitments.

So, back to my frigid wait to get into the “Bella Center” where the meeting is being held. The good thing about standing in line for hours on end was that I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a young sister from Flagstaff Arizona, Nikke Alex, who works with the Black Mesa Water Coalition and is a part of the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to this meeting. She graciously allowed me to interview her about her work as an organizer focused on green jobs.  When I asked her about how the Black Mesa Water Coalition is describing “green jobs” she said that she takes each community with whom she works through a process of defining for themselves what they mean by green jobs and what types of enterprises/sources of revenue are most appropriate for their communities. I learned a lot from Nikke in my 3 hours with her and will definitely add her to the list of resource people doing great work. 

Nikke’s work reminded me of the work of NAACP member Sylvia Arthur, whose activism in Ohio is also featured in this blogspot.  Please read about her work with her community in determining how they will take the lead on their community economic development and provide sustainable and safe revenue streams. 

Both Nikke and Sylvia represent the types of strategies that would widely benefit communities of color and low income communities as they are leading in processes of self-determination, resource generation and leadership for our folks so that we aren’t subject to the whims of folks who are more interested in protecting their profit margins than people and those who deny that climate change is even happening (when Katrina, droughts, rising sea levels and other events tell us otherwise).

Some of the situations discussed at this meeting:

v  Sheila Holt-Orstead from Dickson Tennessee shared how her engagement in environmental justice began when she discovered that her father had cancer.  She was subsequently diagnosed herself with Stage 2 breast cancer and learned that other family members had cancer. Investigation revealed that the Dickson County Landfill, adjacent to her family farm, had dumped waste that included tricholoroethelyne, or TCE, a cancer causing chemical that was used as a degreaser. This substance had been seeping into ground water at levels that far exceeded EPA’s safety standards. If this wasn’t horrifying enough, she learned that letters from the state sent to white families warned them of the hazard and placed them on clean drinking water from the municipal supply and letters to black families reassured them that the water was fine and potable. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is representing Sheila’s family in a discrimination case.  Sheila’s summary statement to EPA was “Do your job!”

v  GreenLaw provided testimony on the proposed coal fired power plant, LongLeaf Energy Station, slated to be built in Early, Georgia.  They shared data such as, “while pollution from power plants affects all people, 68% of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal fired power plant.” Coal fired power plants emit particulate matter that is breathed deeply into the lungs, causing respiratory and cardiovascular problems. Asthma is tied to air pollution and African Americans in Georgia are 2-3 times more likely to suffer asthma deaths than white persons and African American children are five times more likely to die from asthma than white children. Given that the EPA has delegated authority to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, GreenLaw called on the EPA to require that the Georgia EPD evaluate possible disparate impacts in issuing air quality permits.

v  Ten thousand tons of coal ash travel from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Super fund site in Kingston, Tennessee to the Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown, Alabama every day!  The TVA. Recently announced that the plan to increase the rate of rail shipments to the landfill by over 20%!   Within 5 miles of the landfill there are 1300 households comprising 3500 people, 69% of whom are African American and 32% of whom are living in poverty.   According to the testimony of Reverend Murdock of Concerned Citizens of Perry County, Alabama has no regulations governing the disposal of waste, even a hazardous substance such as coal ash.  A study published in Environmental Science and Technology “highlights the probability of re-suspension of fine fly ash particulates which could have a severe health impact”. The study goes on to say that “coal ash is a Group I human carcinogen associated with increased risks of skin, lung, and bladder cancers.   Also, analysis of ash sample revealed high levels of arsenic, mercury, and radium which are associated with skin, lung, liver, leukemia, breast, bladder, and bone cancers with chronic ingestion or inhalation.  The Concerned Citizens of Perry County called on the EPA to pay attention to these matters and amend the landfills operating permit, the Administrative Order and Agreement on Consent, to address these threats.

After the responding comments by the EPA official, several folks stood up in umbrage. One person said that a few minutes after he started talking she zoned out as she didn’t hear anything that would respond to the dire situation being faced by her communities. Another person passionately lamented her 19 year old daughter’s severely ill health and stunted development and challenged the EPA to take bold action relative to the neglect of years past. Sheila from Dickson Tennessee stood up and said with significant anger and disdain that the official was speaking to a room of primarily African American persons. Yet, his comments were about remedies/solutions for predominantly white communities in Knoxville and this follows the typical pattern of EPA support. She then declared that she was “done” and left the meeting!

The EPA official, though continuing to try to maintain a brave and stiffly smiling face, was clearly nonplussed and didn’t really have a substantive response. I don’t know where it all goes from there….

Back at the National Public Health and Environment Conference I attended a session entitled Rising Temperatures and the Environmental Impact of Climate Change. I walked in and to my chagrin, given the disproportionate impact of these issues on communities of color, was greeted by a panel of four white men and one white woman.   Later, I walked into my second session of the NPHEC, Fire and Ice: Rising Heat, Wild Fires, and Cold Weather and was greeted by a panel of 3 white women and two white men, one of whom was the moderator. Given the differential impact of climate change on communities of color, one would love to see more diversity in the folks who have the stage in talking about it. Along with the many other lofty goals I have for my role within the environmental justice/climate justice movement, I’d love to be a part of ensuring that this picture changes.  Otherwise, the presentations confirmed what we already know about the deadly intersection between climate change and heat. Living in urban areas intensifies heat effects and communities of color are more likely to live in urban areas.  Heart disease and diabetes, two conditions that disproportionately impact African Americans, are the top two risk factors for contracting heat related illness that ends in mortality.   

Among the many other issues that I’ve seen and shared through this blog, what I heard in these sessions and at the Poisoned Communities meeting, have certainly stoked the fire of motivation and urgency for doing this critical work.

Long story short I didn’t actually make it to the dinner/workday because I put the address into the BART (public transportation) address finder system and it dumped me off in the middle of Oakland but with no further directions. A call to Michelle and subsequent calls to everyone else from MG in my address book yielded nothing.  So I dejectedly got back on the train and headed back to my hotel.

Anyway, after my visit to New Mexico and Arizona, I did make it to Berkeley to see Michelle who is originally from India, was raised in L.A. but has lived in the Bay Area for some time now.  My time with her family was a joy as I saw how they were truly walking the talk. When I first met Michelle last year she did a riveting talk at a Movement Generation retreat on food and the cycle of production.  To grossly oversimplify, her presentation centered on the importance of sourcing local produce. 

True to her philosophy, Michelle’s garden was a veritable cornucopia of produce and even included chickens! When her husband served us lunch, which was sourced largely from their garden, I was entranced by the colors and the richness of the meal. Yum!  Michelle also showed me the “graywater system” which, as it turns out, was a very simple system for using the waste water from the shower and from the sink to water the garden.   Lovely!

Michelle also shared about her work with Movement Generation for Change on ecology justice.

I very much appreciated my time with the Mascarenhas-Swan family and left inspired, yet again, by the simple ways that people are living their lives for their own betterment and for greater the benefit of the earth and its inhabitants.

A couple of weeks later, I was in California and plotting my course to Arizona and New Mexico, and I called Elouise and asked if she was willing and able to accommodate a visit and interview where I could profile the struggles of Elouise and her community to inspire, encourage, and be an example to others.

Over the phone Elouise shared her experience with having been harassed since returning from the WC Convergence, including the vandalizing of her car, in retaliation for her leadership in resisting the establishment of the 3^rd coal fired power plant in a 50 mile radius of her community.  Still she welcomed me to come, listen, and uplift her story. I felt honored.

So I set off on the 18 hour drive (yes, hypocritically emitting along the way) with enthusiasm for experiencing the story of the Dooda Desert Rock Initiative. Dooda Desert Rock means “No-Desert Rock”. Desert Rock is the name of the proposed power plant. The community in which Elouise lives is a town called Newcomb, New Mexico which has a population of 387 people and is a primarily Navajo community about 23 miles west of Shiprock, NM.

In nearby Farmington, NM Elouise and I met in a café where she told me that people were following her and she knew this because her car was vandalized not only at her home, but also when she was traveling around. My self-preservation side was covertly looking out the window thinking “Are they following her now?  I’m associated with her now. Why didn’t I take out full coverage on that rental car?”  But I quickly chided myself and berated my wandering thoughts with the mantra “Focus! Focus! Stop thinking about yourself!” and was able to quickly re-engage in the conversation and situation at hand. I promise I didn’t check out for long! J

Elouise shared that not only had they broken into her car, but that they had managed to steal $2700 that she was carrying for a celebration that was occurring the next day!  Putting the theft aside, she described the good news that the Dooda Desert Rock Initiative was enjoying a victory celebration because this very week they had been notified that their action to block the building of the proposed coal fired power plant had been successful!   They prevailed in the face of fierce opposition of the companies advancing the power plant, as well as the President of the Navajo nation, who is a proponent of the power plant because of his belief that it will bring jobs and prosperity to the area.

Thanks to the lobbying of the Dooda Desert Rock Initiative, the Environmental Protection Agency firmly enforced the requirement that the proposed plant meet stringent standards in order to gain the air quality permit necessary to erect the power plant.  Given the very essence of this type of facility and its emissions, Elouise was confident that meeting the required air quality standards will not be possible and that the threat of this project has been effectively eliminated.

Thus, in spite of financial setbacks, harassment, vandalizing, and stress, at the Annual Shiprock Navajo Fair, the Dooda Desert Rock Initiative celebrated this great victory with music, dancing, and joy.

The session to which I was assigned was on macroeconomics and the burden of debt to impoverished countries. We had a robust discussion about the roots of poverty, including extractive industries, rules/laws to perpetuate the advantage of wealthy nations, and the enforcement of odious debt.

Throughout my presentation I emphasized, with examples, the racial aspects of exploitation and oppression, and others mentioned the similar race based patterns of domination. Somehow the scribe for our session (white male) completely neglected to make one mention of race in his otherwise extensive and detailed note taking.  I had to pointedly state the omission to him and request rectification to which he reluctantly submitted, though I admit, I did have a bit of a “tone” in my comment out of beleaguered weariness with an old struggle. Unfortunately, his oversight is reflective of the denial and tendency to be dismissive or resistant when analyses/observations yield racial differentials.

The tribunal was a farcical affair where folks gave testimony about various matters from climate justice to economic justice, to women’s rights. We recorded the testimony on women’s rights and it can be found at www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

Police and other officials were out in what appeared to be full riot gear. Cars were stopped. Folks were detained.   The idea that felt pervasive was that those of us who consider ourselves to be defenders of human rights were, in this context, being perceived as mischief-makers hell bent on baseless destruction. It was quite intense and not at all reflective of the “liberties” on which we as a nation pride ourselves.

With 4000 police and 2000 national guard members, it was the biggest display of military force in PA since the 1892 crackdown on the steelworkers strike.

For more information on G-20 events, visit.

At the IJPES, Deborah and I were fortunate to hear a short testimony from Tamisha Evonne Singletary of Landslide Community Farm, whose life is the embodiment of the type of altruism and community local self reliance that is needed for communities of color to weather the current and coming storms (pun intended)  of the existing and pending shifts in climate

Evonne is an African American woman who lives in a group house which is part of a community of households that live cooperatively. They operate a farm which grows a variety of vegetables, herbs, fruit, and also includes a chicken coop. Not only do they grow food for their own consumption, they also operate a food pantry for community members and provide meals to underprivileged persons weekly.

Because of their profile and perception as activist/hippy types, they have recently faced targeting by the police. For all of their efforts, they have gained the same negative attention human rights defenders worldwide experience. In an almost dragnet operation leading up to the G-20 meetings, they were accosted and questions by the police while dining on their front porch and a police camera was subsequently installed on their street, just two days before our visit.

The theme of persecution of those seeking to advance principles in accordance with human rights persists.

We interviewed Evonne on her farm, and the footage from the interview is on the YouTube Channel, but we hope to return to do an interview where she gives us a tour of the farm.

Two presentations stood out for me, the American Friends Service Committee and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

The AFSC presentation, though not intentionally climate justice related, actually advanced the very model we all need to be moving towards as we make the transition to a world in the throes of a significant shift in the state of the earth. The practices AFSC presented were around localizing economies and local self reliance. In order to reduce movements as well as reduce major industrial operations and the resulting carbon emissions, keep revenue in our communities, contain burden of potential expenditures for our communities, local self reliance is an advantageous strategy for both mitigation and adaptation for climate change.

The talk given by the Indigenous Environmental Network, namely Jihan Gearon who is a shero of mine in this movement, touched on several provocative points. She connected consumerism and corporate greed with desecration of sacred land through extractive industries, ill health of communities impacted by these industries, and forced displacement suffered by indigenous persons. She also gave riveting testimony that debunked proposed “solutions” to the climate crisis such as the fallacy of “clean coal”, the fantasy of re-forestation to soak up excess carbon emissions, etc.  She instead advanced the need for drastic reduction in consumerism and emissions.

The meeting was a space where good dialogue occurred and participants seemed both moved and educated by what was shared.  My hope is that the presenters, participants, and organizations stay connected so that the talk materializes into concrete, progressive, action.

Richmond was a venue of significant because of a recent victory of a number of organizations including Communities for a Better Environment,  Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the West County Toxics Coalition who banded together to file a suit, facilitated by EarthJustice, an ecological law firm, against the City of Richmond in order to gain  an injunction against an oil refinery expansion by Chevron Oil Company.  According to Communities for a Better Environment, “Chevron’s 107-year-old Richmond refinery is the largest industrial polluter in the region, and communities in Richmond, particularly low-income and communities of color, already suffer from industrial pollution-related health problems. This victory represents years of grassroots organizing and building a movement to halt the refining of low-quality and more toxic crude oil that will impact community health. The decision is being hailed as a significant step toward stopping U.S. oil refinery expansions across the country to accommodate heavier, dirtier crude oil.”

I went to the Convergence with excitement to learn about issues facing the West Coast and also to engage and build relationships with activists in the region given WOCU’s role as a national organizer.  Our aims were achieved in that we were able to reconnect and deepen ties with old friends, gain a face to face acquaintance with folks we had only met online, and meet new friends as well as learn about new issues/struggles.

I reconnected with the great folks at Movement Generation for Change whose framing and messaging around ecology justice have served as much of the foundation for WOCU’s engagement on climate justice. They were instrumental in helping to pull this meeting together. I was able to meet more of the folks from organizations I met at the Movement Generation retreat last year such as Communities for a Better Environment, and  also others I had met through subsequent activism, like the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative.  I was able to meet in person Amanda Lee Tan of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives who has done so much as part of MCJ as well as working on issues of incineration and mountain top removal in the Appalachian region, and other struggles, that he is practically an institution into himself, though thoroughly integrated into the movements as a leader and organizer. I was able to hear the testimony of Elouise Brown of the “Dooda Desert Rock” Initiative to block the establishment of the third coal burning power plant within a 50 mile radius of Farmington, NM.

I participated in workshops on disaster preparedness “Surviving the Coming Cataclysm” by the Ruckus Society and Rising Tide, a Climate Justice 101 session, a workshop to prepare and organize in the lead up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, a session on “A True Green Economy—not Green Capitalism which challenges some of the co-opting of “greening”,  and  another on developing a plan of action and timeline for activism in the lead up to the US Social Forum including the G20 meetings, the UNFCCC, and other events. 

However, given the racial diversity in the Bay Area and the disproportionate impact of climate change on communities of color, I was dismayed that there were sessions I attended (2) where I was the only person of color in the room. (judging superficially)  What does this mean for how we are organizing? How is this impacted by how these issues are being framed and messaged?  What are the lingering residual effects of a movement (environmentalism at large, the reputation of which clearly impacts the environmental justice movement) that was previously perceived as being largely comprised of elites and white persons and largely focused on animals/wildlife/land conservation/etc with little regard for people?

As I am at the very start of the road tour, these are some questions to which I hope that we have some answers by the end of our time on the road.

Our participation in this dialogue as a grounding activity for the WOC 4 CJ Initiative as our discussion illuminated the myriad ways that women of color rights are differentially impacted by environmental and reproductive injustices, including exposure to toxins via air, through unregulated personal care/beauty/hygiene product, etc through population control practices, disasters, and other mechanisms.

We talked about the need to differentiate between the environmental justice movement and the traditional environmentalism movement.  We talked about the need to differentiate between women’s rights, pro choice, and other movements and the reproductive justice movement which was founded by black women who found that their interests, framing weren’t being addressed by mainstream movements.

We came up with some action items/next steps for work together on a curriculum for training on integrating EJ and RJ, including developing a calendar of upcoming events for conducting trainings with members of each movement.

Today at one of the many “non-official” G-20 events happening in Pittsburgh I heard Jihan Gearon, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and WOCU’s Jacqueline Patterson speak on a panel at the First Annual International Peace, Justice & Empowerment Summit.

Jacqui had a lot of heads nodding when she pointed out that women of color in the U.S. and abroad are deeply impacted by climate change, yet, virtually invisible in the G-20 Summit conversations. The rise of climate change is displacing communities of color globally and putting women at greater risks for violence.

Jihan simply said indigenous people are being affected by climate change in two typical ways:

1. Things/practices that cause climate change (like coal-fired energy plants)

2. All those “false solutions” out there (like “clean coal” or nuclear energy plants; consumption-oriented offers, for example, to plant a tree if you buy a certain product)

Jihan gave a sobering wake-up call when she said we can’t continue the way we’re living and reduce pollution and that, “You cannot buy your way of climate change.” So, another thing to learn more about are these false solutions.

The journey to being GREEN is much more complicated than I realized. I’ll let you know more of what I find out soon!

We value all earth’s creatures, yet, see a need to expand the picture of climate change from primarily stranded polar bears or melting snow caps to include the woman next door, the cousin who lives down south, and the grandmother who lives out west. They too are the faces of climate change. Women of color are often disproportionately impacted by climate change, yet, underrepresented in the environmental justice movement. We see this tour as a step in the long journey to climate justice.

Learn more about the Women of Color for Climate Justice Road Tour!

24 April 2009

Thank you for coming today. I don’t know whether you take a lunch hour but you’re here more or less lunchtime. And I want to thank you for following this conference so assiduously.

The Durban review Conference is technically not over until later this afternoon. But I know you have deadlines, and unfortunately our deadlines tend to be later than yours. Therefore I changed my schedules to come speak with you.

Because today we have some very good news, I’m jumping the gun. I do not expect any impediment between now and the end of the conference, when the final report should be adopted. It would be extraordinary if there were any impediments, but then many extraordinary things have happened during this conference process, so perhaps I shouldn’t count my chickens before they are hatched. But since I’m not a chicken, I’m telling you that I think everything will go well. There could still be one or two fiery speeches this afternoon, but the key to this conference – the final outcome document – is in the bag. We have it. It is a good document. It cannot be reopened now. And thereby hangs a tale.

Since day one of my new job as High Commissioner, I was committed to the Durban Review Conference. From September 1 when I took office until today, I simply cannot recall how many meetings, phone calls, discussions I have had with my team and with ministers, ambassadors, NGOs, journalists, to explain why this conference was so important and why it should enjoy participation by all.

It was very difficult. I had to face a widespread, and highly organized campaign of disinformation. Many people, including Ministers with whom I spoke, told me that the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which as you know was agreed by 189 states at the original World Conference Against Racism in 2001 was anti-Semitic, and it was clear that either they had not bothered to read what it actually said, or they were putting a cast on it that was, to say the least, decidedly exaggerated.

Many others have labelled the entire Durban process as a “hate fest.” We have had some rough moments in the process, but a “hate fest?” I’m sorry, this is hyperbole. It is a gross exaggeration. But it is everywhere on the Internet. And I’m sorry to say many mainline newspapers who incidentally declined many op-eds that I sent up to them. Because I kept urging States to take part, one of the most vociferous opponents of the conference called me the “dangerous High Commissioner for Human Rights.” So if you see a special look about me, that’s the danger. Another called me the “ludicrous High Commissioner for Human Rights.” That look I have dropped since. I expect these types of personal attacks to continue for the rest of my tenure. But I can live with them because I see this conference as a success and I know that you will judge this process in a valid and fair way.

If people actually read the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, they would have realized that it includes a paragraph which says that “the Holocaust should never be forgotten”. It includes two paragraphs that denounce “anti-Semitism and Islamophobia”, and one paragraph which mentions the suffering of the Palestinians, their right of self-determination and the security of all States, including Israel, and two paragraphs calling for peace. That’s all there is on the Middle East. And I could not get these corrections published in some important newspapers, particularly in the US, who used the word hate fest without checking these paragraphs.

The final document of this conference – the Conference product, if you like – also says the Holocaust must never be forgotten and deplores anti-Semitism along with Islamophobia and all forms of racism, xenophobia, racial discrimination and related intolerance. But already the propaganda machine is starting to wind up to term this conference a failure, a “hate fest and all the rest of it.” This is extraordinary. Yet no one has really written up the true story of this Conference – a strange rough and tumble affair full of smoke and mirrors, I must admit, yet very definitely a success story, with plenty of good will as well as plenty of bad will of the type I have described just now.

I want to say at this point particularly to you that the Geneva press corps has been terrific during the later stages of this process. You have seen through the propaganda, you have read the DDPA and the Review Conference’s outcome document, and you have reported accurately, fairly and professionally. So on behalf of my entire office, I would like to extend you a very warm thank you for that. I believe you have played an exceptionally important role. I know that some of you have had to argue with editors who, like so many others, have succumbed to the mythology.

But because of this campaign that was so determined to kill the conference, some countries decided to boycott it, although a few days earlier, they had actually agreed on what is now the final text. I consider this bizarre. You agree the text on Friday evening, and walk out on Sunday. I think, it was unfortunate that a few states disengaged from the process. Although almost all of them had agreed this text, they are not part of the consensus that adopted it. I do hope they will come back into the process now. They can still add their names to the list of 182 states that have adopted the outcome document. And by the way, Iran is part of that consensus. When the final call came, Iran did not oppose the text.

Now I would like to make some important thank-yous. Perhaps one difference I made was to pick a most extraordinary, indefatigable and – perhaps most importantly – optimistic director, Ibrahim Salama, to head my team working behind the scenes on the text negotiation and all the other legion of issues involved in running a world conference such as this. My Office is really very small, understaffed and under-resourced to run a conference of this magnitude, and many of my staff worked literally day and night for months on end to try to make the conference succeed. This is to whom I owe the success of this conference – to all the staff who volunteered in so many little ways and gave time and energy to all the functions that needed to be carried out.

I needed a man of Ibrahim Salama’s sheer determination, and his refusal to face defeat, to keep spirits from flagging in the face of such vitriolic opposition. This undoubtedly was a major factor in salvaging the text, and therefore the conference. Dr. Salama travelled tirelessly to the Middle East, to New York, around all the capitals in Europe, to narrow the differences, argue, explain, suggest solutions, and remind all states how important it was to build a consensus. I think these are particular qualities of being a former diplomat. A former ambassador helped us here.

Another key player was the Russian chair of the group working on the text. Yuri Boychenko was also very impressive and indefatigable in his efforts to build a consensus. I can tell you that, many times, we were on the brink of failure, but we didn’t give up, we never gave up, and that is why we succeeded. And 30 seconds before the document was adopted in the Preparatory Committee, both Yuri Boychenko and I were surrounded by some representatives who wanted last-minutes changes in that document and I particularly felt for Yuri that it was unfair that he is being put under such pressure in the last minute or so.

With regard to the Assembly Hall on Monday, and of course I was taken aback by the scenes, but I still felt that we could pull it off, settle it down quickly – because, in effect they had already agreed the text. We had really good cooperation from many states and international organizations as well. I would like to thank them all for that. I would also thank other key states on the 20-country bureau of the Preparatory Committee for the role they played

The regional and political groups all made concessions. It’s very important to note that. It was difficult for them. If you take the Arab countries for instance: they accepted that neither Palestine, nor the Middle East is mentioned in the text. Of course they are mentioned in the DDPA and the word “reaffirm” carries those paragraphs into this document, but no specific mention of these paragraphs in this text because of the concessions made by them. That is extremely difficult for them to do politically. The OIC was also very cooperative as we moved towards consensus. The Africans, the Europeans and all the other groups also made concessions to a greater or lesser degree. That’s why we say that no individual state is completely happy with this document but collectively they are all happy with it.

So there we are. That is part of the story of the Durban Review Conference . I’ll leave the rest to you.

Thank you.

So my friend and roommate (for the last couple of days) Kaleema and I went into a café as I was swooning from not having eaten all day. So as we made our purchases the shop proprietor asked us about the conference. We shared a bit, but mostly I just concentrated on staying upright. Then he says, “Me, I don’t really think racism is that bad here or in America.”   Now this was one of those times where, though it was a potential teaching moment, all I could think was where I was going to get my next meal and how soon I could get there.  The café was only my juice place. 

Then he goes on to say that he doesn’t really experience racism here in Switzerland and everything is “pretty okay”.  My internal narrative was “You keep believing that, brother. More power to you. Ignorance is bliss. Plus, for some, perspective becomes reality and it doesn’t really matter what else is going on if you can find peace in your own perception.” Then he went on to say that in the States it must be okay too because “You have Obama and then you have all those stars like Halle Berry and Will Smith, etc.” At this point I could tell that Kaleema was fairly bursting to share a few “home truths” as we say in the vernacular, but she restrained herself as well.  He went on to say, “The real racism is in the Middle East. That’s where racism is really happening.” We just looked on neutrally and vaguely murmured at this last bit saying something benign like, “Yes, the situation there is certainly tough.”  Of course we have recognition of and solidarity with our comrades in the Middle East and we also recognize the futility of comparing oppression. So yes, we both missed the moment of potential deeper sharing and the possibility of deepened mutual understanding to be sure, and for rather base reasons of wanting to get out and find food, but I really wonder what we could have said to turn his mind or at least provoke him to open his eyes a bit more.

Similarly I was going into the place we ended up staying for a couple of days and this person with undoubtedly the strongest southern accent I’ve ever heard strikes up a conversation with me, introducing himself as being from Tennessee. When I told him I was at the racism conference he said,” So how’s that going?” I said, “The conference?” even though I assumed that’s what he meant and was ready to give him a brief review. But then he said, “No, racism. Is that pretty big all over?” I looked at him, cocked my head to the side, and narrowed my eyes (only realizing in retrospect that I did all of that) and then finally said on an exhale, “Well, where do I begin? Race and ethnicity based discrimination is a pandemic of fairly epic proportions so….well, it’s hard to know how to start what’s a pretty big conversation.”  So then he gave a few of the examples like South Africa and then said something about Sudan and asked me what was going on over there. Then he looks rather intently at me and says, “It seems like when it comes to places like that where they need basics like food and water they should just be able to overcome their differences and get along, don’t you think?” To which I responded that “I don’t know all the intricacies, but I think the situation in the Sudan is a bit more complicated” but that I saw where he was going and then I lamely said, “Well yeah, it would be nice if we could all overcome and embrace our differences and focus on the basics, particularly in times of crisis.” 

I come away from these conferences/meetings having accomplished a bit on the macro level and I even do public speaking at smaller venues on racism deftly handling questions from the audience. But then I really need to work on having the conversations in the elevators, at the cafés, and on the street with a bit more ….skill and effectiveness I guess.  

Thanks for listening this week. I will let you know when the videos are posted!!

Speaking of voices I arrived in the UN building to hear two sisters share their testimonies during the special session entitled “VOICES: Everyone affected by racism has a story that should be heard.” I had the blessing of hearing the stories of Doreen Lawrence of the UK and Nusreta Sivac of Bosnia.  

Doreen Lawrence started out by saying “Before the death of my son, I was wearing rose tinted glasses, but since then my eyes are open to the suffering of our black people in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. Divide and rule is what the politicians are trying to do with people in black communities.”

On April 22^nd, 1993, when Doreen returned home from a field trip connected to her studies, she learned that Stephen and his friend had been attacked at a bus stop. From the beginning Doreen saw signs of race based discrimination in how Stephen’s murder was handled, “The racism that we as a family suffered initially took the form of Stephen’s murder not warranting the same urgent investigation in tracking down the killers that would have happened as a matter of course should Stephen have been white. For the first two weeks they police focused their time on investigating us as a family, looking into our background as they believed that we must have been involved in criminal activities and therefore Stephen’s death was related to this, including looking into whether Stephen must have been part of a gang.  Even though info was passed onto the police by witnesses, no arrest was made. Only after a high profile meeting with Nelson Mandela three men were arrested.”    The family went as far as to hire a solicitor (lawyer) to act on their behalf in pursuing justice and making sure the investigation stayed on track because even after the arrests the process was slow and not all bases were covered.” In September of 1995, the covert operation revealed videotaped recordings of the suspects making racists comments about what they would do to black and Asian people, including visuals showing them making stabbing movements with knives.”

However, during the subsequent trial, this information was not allowed to be shown to the jury and the hearing resulted in a not-guilty verdict and “the case collapsed.”

In February 1997 (nearly four years after the crime occurred) the inquest into Stephen’s murder took place and the five suspects were asked about Stephen’s murder.  The suspects refused to answer the questions but the jury eventually came back with a verdict of “unlawful killing”.

An inquiry was ordered by Jack Straw, after he met with Doreen’s legal team. This inquiry, which occurred in March of 1998 and lasted 69 days with 88 witnesses and 1200 pages of transcripts, resulted in a declaration that the police handling of this case was characterized by “institutional racism” and condemned the police officers involved for committing “fundamental errors” in their investigation.

Since the “Stephen Lawrence Inquiry” there have been many changes in the law.  The Race Relation Amendment Ac of 2000 ushered out the Double Jeopardy law which had been in place for 800 years.  Schools now have to record all racist incidents and police have to record all stops and searches they carry out. Police training has changed, including the way they investigate racial murders and how the courts sentence “racially aggravated crimes.”

February of this year marked the tenth anniversary of the publication of the “Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.”   Some ministers are saying that institutional racism in the police forces have ended. Doreen argues that this is not the case” The statistics say that black people are still seven times more likely to be stopped and searched in the UIK. During the time when Stephen was killed, it was six times.  I, like those from the black community, still see the police as institutional racists and the evidence available supports this.”

Nusreta Sivac was from Prijedor, a city in the northwest part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  She shared her experience in a concentration camp in Omarska.  In 1992 the Bosnian Serbs forcibly took power in Prejedor where the majority of the population was Muslim (Bosniak) then Orthodox Christian (Serbs), Catholics (Croats) and other groups. Areas populated by Muslims and Catholics were bombed, plundered, and otherwise destroyed. “’Ciscenje’ or ‘Cleaning’ was the terminology Serbs used for ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats. All the Muslim and Croats were taken to concentration camps.” 

Nureta was a judge in the Municipality Court of Prijedor and she was at work when a group of Serb soldiers came to her with a list of names informing her she no longer worked at the court. She was later taken to the concentration camp where there were 3,500 men and 36 women. (Most women had been sent to the border where they sought protection from the Bosnian army.)  The prisoners were allowed one meal per day, which they had 2-3 minutes to eat or they would be severely beaten.  Every day the detainees were questioned, beaten, and tortured.

“In Omarska, persons were dying mostly due of torture. I have seen once a Serb guard took a knife and made a cross on a women’s face. I saw in front of my eyes how they were torturing my former colleagues, friends, and persons I knew.  The worse feeling I had was that I could not do anything. I felt helpless. I could not help all those who suffered so much.

The women had to work and had to clean and do everything they were asked by the concentration camp guards. Besides all that, the worst were the nights for women in Omarska because the guards would come to the rooms and take us somewhere in the camp and rape. That happened on a regular basis. I was regularly raped and beaten.

I today live in the same city, Prijedor and see some of the perpetrators and some of those that came already out from the Hague. Now, 99% of the people that live there are Serbs. I am surrounded in a society that does not recognize what happened, which I find very difficult.  I have been called to witness in the Hague and I have seen the man who was regularly raping and beating me and the other women. I know that many of the women did not about their experiences because it is extremely difficult to thank and talk about it, even for me today. But I have to be strong and to let my voice be heard.

Lastly I would like to remind us that this is Europe where we thought that concentration camps belonged in the past and would never happen again. Unfortunately, the concentration camps in Bosnia are something very rarely spoken about, which is dangerous. We should not close our eyes to what happened. We should condemn it and never allow it to happen again.”

Leaving the UN, I was able to witness (and film for your imminent viewing) the gathering of the Tamil Tigers. Three thousand Tamil Tiger supporters were expected to gather in the plaza in front of the UN to raise their voices and demands for justice in the persecution of the Tamil Tigers. Both on the plaza and lining Rue de Lausanne one saw the throngs of protesters waving shiny red flags adorned with the yellow image symbolizing the Tamil Tigers.  They were shouting in English for the media to take heed. My footage is a bit shaky, I must admit because I was walking and filming at the same time. Plus I was across the street and vehicles and pedestrians kept walking in front of me. I’m still a bit of a shy videographer in all situations and tend not to get too close, as you’ll note in some of my other filming….sorry. L

Ejim Dike, Urban Justice Center moderated the panel. She began by talking about some of the racial disparities in the United States. She talked about the differential penalties for black men and others for drug crimes. She then focused on the economic situation, “Now that we are in crisis because unemployment rates have reached 8%. For black men, 8% is the lowest that the unemployment rate has been. People of color have been in crisis, but the crisis doesn’t start to be acknowledged until it affects certain people.” She then posed the question to the group, “How can we make the Durban Programme of Action address these disparities?”  As the moderator, Ejim acknowledged that the panel is focused on the global crisis, but speakers are all from the US but added that the bulk of the session would be the group discussion, which will bring in the perspectives of all in attendance.

Khali Akuno, National Organizer for Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. “There is the old adage,
When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold. Well, the US has a cold and I’m assuming much of the world has pneumonia.  How do we define crisis? Black communities have been in an acute state of depression and displaced from economically productive activities that been accelerating with reconsolidating in the auto production and other manufacturing industries, that have been disappearing rapidly in the past 15 years. In the past 2.5 years, almost three, we’ve been feeling it in a very acute form. Some with Hurricane Katrina have been the first and deepest to feel brunt of foreclosure. This period had been a time of the greatest dispossession of accumulated wealth in history, with the only other period coming close being in 1930s with vast dispossession of landownership in the South.   The financial speculation that most of the US economy has been built on is collapsing. It’s taking place on the backs of blacks and Latinos in the US. Greater concentration of wealth taking place under the stimulus package will deepen the wealth disparities for generations, not just in the short term, but for years to come. What this situation provides for us in the US is an opportunity to introduce a human rights framework into the whole notion around how states are to regulate economies. The rights to housing, education, health care have to be guaranteed. Given how vilified, economic, social and cultural rights have been, especially with cold world rivalry, economic disparities weren’t considered real and efforts to address gaps were deemed as communist propaganda.  It is time to put this back on the agenda.   Compounded with ecological crisis we really have to organize to address these issues.”

Jaribu Hill, Mississippi Worker’s Center, described the roots of this crisis. “There was a time when people like me were capital, counted like furniture or cattle. Our empire was built based on this as overhead for 400 years.  Imagine a corporation where I tell all my friends you can work for 5 years, I won’t pay you and I’ll build my wealth. That’s what happened for 4 centuries and it was called racism. This is the root cause for the decaying system we call capitalism. The by-product of capitalism is racism and extreme poverty.  Both of which are needed to maintain capitalism.

Schools with highest dropout rates are in 10 cities that are populated by minorities and poor people. The combination of race and poverty is the order of the day in these communities.  With disasters, under a capitalist system, there is no surefire way that everyone who is a victim will be taken care of. There were 60 Jamaican women who had to be brought to work every day by employer because they didn’t have a vehicle and they were forgotten during Katrina and buried alive.

For capitalism to continue there must be large sections of the population who are impoverished, illiterate, and discriminated against in one way or another. The kinds of work places that are the most  hazardous, the most dangerous are dominated by people of color who then end up experiencing higher rates of work related accidents, cancers, etc.  One only has to go to Mexico to see the connection, the maquilladores have massive birth defects, infant mortality rates that are sky high, and same types of injuries to children before they are even born are happening all over the world.

We are seeing the rampant strangling of Africans by banking institutions. Who gets bailed out? These are victims of remnants and vestiges of a system that is recovering from slavery because they will never have it so good where the economy is built on a system where people aren’t paid. The question of how much they are paid is another story. Wherever there is racism, poverty exists right besides it. There are always people of color/minorities that are living in poverty.” 

Ramona Ortega, US Human Rights Network. “A system of labor in the US that used the labor of black and indigenous people has been substituted by a system that capitalized on the labor of immigrants. There has been a shift from slave labor to immigrant labor. They have manipulated us to be pitted against each other in terms of the myth of immigrants taking jobs from Americans.  These are dangerous jobs, jobs that no one else in the US should or would take. People live in camps and produce goods that are then shipped out.  Political organizations are coming together to make the alignment in terms of black and brown communities working together. This is not a new crisis for people of color. The poverty level for people of color has been double for decades.

One in four WOC in New York live in poverty and have some of the lowest human development indices in the world.  There are areas in the Bronx where AA and Latinos have a lower human development index than many “underdeveloped” countries. Many women of color do domestic work that is the backbone of the country. 13% of children in the US live in poverty, many of whom are children of color.  Black and immigrant labor is used to create wealth of the nation.   This is one of the riches countries, but also has some of the lowest human development indices in several areas and POC are particularly affected.

Poverty is not illegal. It’s absolutely acceptable, which is why they create policies that are neutral on their face, but are detrimental to communities. Under CERD [Convention on the Elimination of Racism] there are places to raise issues of disparate impacts. This is the only place for us to go to bring this issue to the table.[ because it’s one of the few human rights treaties the US has ratified] We need to be on top of the economic stimulus packages. Obama has not focused on closing these disparate gaps. I would like to see a national action plan on racial justice. Hope that out of this conference and out of the energy folks have put into it, we can go back and ask for national plan.

In the pursuit of profit capitalist systems have had to exploit labor/workers and have done this through racism–people of African descent, migrant workers, undocumented works, people deemed to be not as deserving of fair labor standards.

Not only is poverty racialized but it is also feminized.  If you further disaggregate, you see that not only POC but WOC are especially impoverished.  Many women are hidden workers either through being undocumented or women working in the home. These women aren’t represented in any data and their work doesn’t go into calculating the GNP [Gross National Product]. They are a painfully absent when talking about who is bearing brunt of economic crisis. Poverty is primarily cut along lines of race and gender, and other identities, such as having a disability.   We call on our governments to identify that there is a link and that it’s an institutionalized problem.”

After this session, I managed to catch a piece of the session, “People of African Descent: Assessing the Progress Made Since Durban and the Way Forward” hosted by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and moderated by Joe Frans, Chairperson of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent . The presentation I heard was by  Gay McDougal, Independent Expert on Minority Issues (who, incidentally, was also the person who organized the aforementioned “VOICES  sessions” which occurred every day and featured testimonies by individuals impacted by racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance) Gay McDougal’s comments were as follows:

“Afro-descendent people are at the bottom of the barrel in every situation. Yet the MDGs don’t have anything that addresses race/afro-descendent people. Once again, afro-descendent people are invisible.

There has been a resurgence of hate speech and hate crimes. Racial discrimination is embedded in all institutions that govern our lives.  Discrimination serves to mask its own very existence.

Recently there was a situation where the Supreme Court was examining the firefighters’ test in New York City. It was found that all the black people fail the test. No black firefighters died on September 11^th because there are no black firefighters in New York City.

Afro-descendant people are in Inferior schools and often segregated. Even when not facing hostile environments, particularly black boys who are subjected to disproportionate discipline. Minority schools have teachers who are poorly trained and poorly supported with high percentages of dropouts.”

Marianella Carbajal Diaz then spoke: “We have to have the discussions on what ‘human’ means and what ‘rights’ mean. Many movements create their own limits. When we talk about race we mean physical features, color of skin, hair, shape of our hips. Racism is defined as “one group being superior to another.”

We use race to exclude and separate people, for example in colonialism. Racism is an ideology that has guided many political movements despite the fact that it is being said that race isn’t a scientific fact but based on arbitrary values. This type of separation is also being taken up in terms of gender with certain features creating hierarchy of unequal distribution of power. 

Cultural racism covers a specific territory. There is this new idea involving the invasion of immigrants and certain people considering this to be a problem. African influence in the Dominican Republic resulted in building of identity based on mix of various native and African groups. Slaves in 16^th century resulted in ethnic and cultural mix that created classes when the Spanish came in to colonize. Then as the Haitian groups came we started to idealize the Spanish Identity. 

Historic and ideological reality in the country has led a movement of African descendents to emerge. In Durban, we discussed immigration of Haitian to the Dominican Republic but we didn’t discuss the lesbian and gay community because there is no recognition because we are totally invisible, yet I have problems with customs officials with my own partner. 

The State is monopolizing the discussion and deciding on what we should discuss and it’s clear in this conference. In talking about afro-descendents, we are not only aware of being African, but also aware of belonging to group of gays and lesbians, beyond race. Youth may assume their African descent identity, but may not assume LGBT identity. The African movement in the DR that is discussing human rights is attempting to discuss ethnic groups but not all of mankind, not LGBT, and does not recognize them as individuals. When we talk about human rights, it is only mankind and slavery but it does not bear in mind that gender is part of this.

Feminists have focused on improving women’s positions regarding reproductive rights, legal rights, etc. and have had a great impact and made important changes in the position of women. Feminism demands equality in relation to the state and in relation to men. Heterosexuality is considered to be obligatory. In the DR we have tried to mobilize groups in terms of gender identity and join to feminist movement, but discussion is always based on the binary discussion of men and women. When we talk about gender that is different from the two that have been adopted by society this leads to violence. We are trying to include this idea of gender violence as something the state should take up.

There has been no participation by LGBT in political movements and now we have to join up and unite our efforts. Barriers that certain black communities have are not included.   Different groups must be able to defend their interests. The LGBT movement is seeking recognition. When Hegel is quoted she says that we have to be recognizable and this must be included in our human condition. This is an ideological tool that must be used in the context of human rights for the LGBT movement.

Deaths caused by gender and identity based violence must be discussed. The Movement requires changes in definition of sexual gender and we have to negotiate for different sexual norms in order to exist as a movement. We have recognized sexual and reproductive rights but we are also looking for recognition as individuals outside of definitions given by feminist movement. We must strive to have Durban talk about our sense of identity and how the idea of sexual identity must change and must not only be considered in terms of human rights, but also individual and personal identities.

The moderator, Akim, concluded the panel by noting that “the fact that we are sitting here as a panel of racialized queers is a step forward.”

I arrived in time to hear Lindiwe Nkutha speak about the epidemic murders of black lesbians in South Africa. She described the situation with the same women I described in an October blog post.  She also referenced violence against women in general and mentioned the rape trial where “the man who is soon to become President of South Africa was acquitted.”  Ms. Nkutha ended by sharing this moving poem she composed: 

Today I woke up in a place that said to me be free
so long as I kept my mouth shut and made no
demands that my freedom actually be taken seriouslyI woke up in a place that said be what you want to be
so long as what I wanted to be did not include
me being a woman who wears a kanga,
has a history of mental illness
is prone to forgetting
or has in the past been raped

I woke up to a dream, and I realised that I am stronger than I was yesterday
but this dream rapidly turned into a nightmare
right in front of my eyes as I began to see
that I had in fact been rendered much weaker than I was,
just yesterday

I woke up in a place where it’s the size of your heart that counts not your fists
and realised that no matter how big my heart was,
these fists would continue to find a landing pad on my face
and that if I am to survive, I needed to pack a punch in mine.

Because yesterday I was digging for gold, and today I am wearing it
on my wrists, around my ankles, across my heart
it shackles my every step,
because now it is expected that I wear my chains with pride,
in line with the dictates of my culture
Yesterday I was burning with frustration; today I am growing big business
and this business of growing ever more sick and tired fuels my anxiety

I woke up and realised that I don’t need a gun to make you listen
because the one that hangs from your crotch
isbhamu somdoko as you call it, is more potent
and if that does not make me listen, what else will?

And even if I have nothing, this place can give me everything
on condition that I give it in return every inch of my entire being,
until I am left in the end with much less than what I had when I started.

All I need do is believe
in nothing, because nothing much is worth believing in anymore
not the comfort in the knowledge that my elders will not hurt me
not the comfort in the fact that if they do the law will protect me
just the ugly reality, that depending on how its spun
every sexual act I am forced to engage in,
no matter how many times I say no
will be construed as having being consensual

Today I woke up in a place whose cheering can be heard on the other side of the world
but whose screams land on deaf ears inside my home
A place where my brother is my brother no matter what
and my sister is someone who does not matter, no matter what

Today I woke up in a place that flows with courage
but drowns under showers of cowardice
That laughs,
at me often
that’s cried
sometimes with me, (well only a handful)
that says it’s okay
go ahead do to her what you please
we will find something in her history
to make her allegations sound like a fairy tale

Today I woke up in a place that sings with hope to the rest of the world
but mutters despair to itself
And I smiled because
well because this morning left me a tad haggard,
and smile to stave off my tears is all I can do sometimes
when I’m feeling like this, besides I hear,
South Africans are creating a new dawn everyday
oh how I wish this dawn would cast its rays my direction too.

Today I woke up in South Africa
and so help me I am never ever going back to sleep
lest those who relish in plotting against me should
devise more schemes while I slumber
lest I miss in my sleep a chance to be part of a legion
that will create for myself, my sisters, my aunts, my mothers, my daughters
a solid string of incandescent dawns that are truly
Alive with possibility
Unlike the one I woke up to today
that seems to me to be languishing in a state of atrophy

So you see why this full stop I am about to write has to be my last, from now on I am holding inside me everything I otherwise would have shared with you, so long.

* Lindiwe Nkutha is an author and a woman in the world

(Since this is a bit long, I’m splitting up the sections a bit. Next panelist will be in the following post)

I started off the day attending a session entitled “Communities Empowered to Resist Racism and Discrimination” organized by the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism and the Lutheran World Federation.

Mr. Kenzo Tomonaga spoke about the Buraku Liberation Movement. He talked about people compiling lists of Buraku neighborhoods and targeting folks for vandalism, harassment, and hate crimes.   He spoke about the rampant dissemination of hateful messages calling for the murder of Buraku persons via text messages, emails, internet, leaflets, etc.

In an interlude between speakers, there was a moving sharing of culture work by “Steven” in the form of a song about the struggles and quest for liberation of Dalit persons.  He was wearing a t-shirt that read:  “260 Million Reasons to Include Dalits in the Durban Review Conference.”(indicating the number of Dalits, in case that wasn’t clear) I did videotape his wonderful song, but afterwards we were warned that we may be compromising the safety of activists if they are doing their activism in stealth. So I’m going to write to the organization he represented and ask if it is okay for me to post the video.

Burnad Fatima Nateson of the Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED), in Chennai, India  (they don’t actually have a website, so scroll down in the link for an org profile) gave a presentation entitled “Women’s Movement for Just Society from Tamil Nadu, India.” She spoke about the plight of Dalit women and families. She described the lives of brick kiln workers who are living in small huts and how the entire family, including children work for less than $1 per day as a unit and their quota is that they have to make a thousand bricks in a day. 

She described how Dalit females are raped regardless of age, “whether they’re 13 years old, 3 years old, or 70 year sold” and that “these crimes are perpetrated with impunity. No action is taken unless activists bring the cases to the public through demonstration.” When men who were allies demanded justice, they were murdered. She showed some very disturbing photos of “men who were killed while resisting the atrocities that were visited upon Dalit women in the community.”  She stated that the aim is to make the state responsible for what’s happening to Dalit women.  

She also described struggles for food sovereignty and talked about how even their seeds taken away.  They are mobilizing women against genetically modified food with the campaign, “Our Land, Our Rice.”

Ms. Nateson talked about their work on environmental justice giving the example of the Tsunami where thousands of women were not listed in beneficiary list which instead primarily listed males. The women organized and demonstrated for inclusion.  They have also been organizing about the health problems (skin diseases, deteriorated eyesight, etc) resulting from women working in the polluted (effluent contaminated) backwaters where the women are responsible for fishing.

At the end of the panel a gentleman (apologies I didn’t catch his name) came in from the Lutheran World Federation to speak briefly.  He stated, “I have read the outcome document and there is nothing in it that could possibly offend anyone, which is a rather scathing indictment. I can’t imagine the outcome document can be at all encouraging to those most affected by racism.”

He went on to say that though the mechanisms are weak, he was glad that the document affirmed the need for urgent action and early warning mechanisms. He was disappointed that the mechanisms didn’t include an inquiry procedure nor does it address the collectivity of available mechanisms.

He closed by saying that it was striking that “the single largest excluded group received no mention except in the very vaguest sense”  and pointed out the urgent need to address situation of a quarter of a billion people who are excluded on the basis of caste.

The second session I attended was “Reparations for African People and the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action” Organized by the International Association Against Torture and the December Twelfth Movement International Secretariat.  (apologies, I could not find websites for either organization)

This session consisted primarily of viewing a documentary film of the views and activities of the “Durban 400” during the WCAR 2001.

For my last session of the day I went to a session entitled “HIV Related Discrimination: Restrictions on the Entry, Stay, and Residence of People Living with HIV” organized by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. Panelists included:  Gracia Violeta Ross, National Chair of the  Bolivian Network of People Living with HIV, Gisela Thater, Legal Officer of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Maria Lourdes Marin, Director of the Action for Health Initiative, Susan Timberlake, Senior Human Rights and Law Adviser of UNAIDS, Marcia V.J. Kran, Director of the Research and Right to Development Division of OHCHR and the always phenomenal Jurema Werneck, General Coordinator of CRIOLA and Official Delegate of Brazil to the Durban Review Conference.

Unfortunately, even though HIV&AIDS is one of my primary foci of organizing, I didn’t take many notes because I was multi-tasking pretty heavily during the session putting the final touches on the “Change As WE See It” report we needed to circulate to the leadership of WOCU for final approval before the Friday release on the eve of the Administration’s 100^th day in office.) Thus, my notes are scanty at best.

Some of the notable issues raised by this panel were as follows:

• Through Gracia’s testimony of contracting HIV through sexual assault we are reminded of the key issue of the intersection of violence against women and girls, and HIV&AIDS.
• Linkages between HIV vulnerability and other vulnerabilities are increasing.  Similar circumstances that make one vulnerable to HIV also increase vulnerability to violence. These issues include migration, race, disability, and other forms of discrimination.
• Undocumented migrant workers/domestic workers are refused HIV&AIDS care and treatmen. Those in power are using immigration status situation as new tool to discriminate.
• Homophobia is an important challenge we must face as well. In Brazil they are starting a national campaign against homophobia.
• LGBTQ persons have a much higher likelihood of becoming HIV positive, so this is important to discuss.
• At this conference, with the exception of this session, gender is outside of the official discourse.  

I wanted to raise a question to the panel about a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago that continues to disturb me. In a team discussion I mentioned the importance of having a racial justice frame in our HIV&AIDS organizing and one of my colleague’s response was basically, “well that’s all well and good theoretically, but it’s not actionable” meaning that there is no policy agenda that we could push that makes a racial justice framing particularly useful.  Though that argument struck me as fundamentally wrong, I didn’t have an immediate response. I wanted to ask this panel about there perspectives on this issue, but realized that as much as the panel was about HIV&AIDS and it was at a racism conference, the panelists didn’t really talk that much about race per se. They mentioned the impact of race in terms of multiple forms of discrimination, but not really so much as part of an integrated advocacy strategy. I wish I had asked anyway. L

Finally, as I left for the day there was another large rally in front of the UN building of over 200 people waving scores of Israeli flags while speakers lamented about what they viewed as the anti-semitic proceedings that were occurring in the UN. One fellow who was a professor from the United States proudly proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and encouraged all to wear that badge proudly and then he led the crowd in a chant, “I am a Zionist! I am a Zionist! I am a Zionist……” He also indicated that they should “borrow from the anti-oppression organizing strategies of brothers and sisters in the black and brown movements as well as the feminist movement.” I did get video coverage of this rally and will post it when I get back to the US, if not before.

Just as this press conference was about to commence, the room received the news that the Durban Review Conference 2009 Outcome Statement (the link is to an earlier version…will update)had been adopted.  To explain, the Outcome Statement is the very document around which this conference was organized. The idea is that the Outcome Statement would affirm the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and add any updates or emphases that are relevant and pressing as determined through the multiple sessions during the course of the conference, as well as through lobbying of civil society for inclusion of key language. The adoption of the Outcome Statement so early in the conference basically cut short the opportunity for civil society to bring its hard work and preparation to bear on influencing the language of the Outcome Statement, thus leaving folks with a sense of bemusement, disillusionment, and wasted time and money.

In spite of the malaise caused by that announcement, the group pressed on with the press conference. Speakers were Ejim Dike, Adamu Baraka, Jaribu Hill, and Khali Akuno. I videotaped the entire press conference, but my connection speed is so slow that I haven’t been able to upload any of my footage yet. However, I will do so ASAP.

Speaking of footage, I signed off abruptly earlier on Tuesday because I heard noises of a protest in the hallway. That turned out to be a rather large group of people continuing to protest the speech by President Ahmadinejad, as well as what is perceived by this group as an anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic emphasis in this conference.  I did get a bit of footage of this protest, which I’ll post, but it was pretty chaotic, so one can hardly make out what’s going on.

Tuesday evening there was also a very large event in front of the UN of at least 200-300 people who seemed to be holding a Jewish service with prayers and singing…it felt almost like a vigil. I did not film this event.

http://www.un. org/durbanreview 2009/

http://un.org/ webcast/durbanre view/#<http://un.org/ webcast/durbanre view/>

http://un.org/ webcast/durbanre view/archive. asp

http://un.org/ webcast/durbanre view/archive. asp?go=090420

Screening of the video
“Voices: everyone affected by racism has a story that should be heard”

[ English<http://webcast. un.org/ramgen/ ondemand/ conferences/ DurbanConference /2009/durban0904 20voices. rm> ] 7 minutes

Gay McDougall
Independent Expert on Minority Issues and Moderator of the side event series Voices: “Everyone affected by racism has a story that should be heard”

[ English<http://webcast. un.org/ramgen/ ondemand/ conferences/ DurbanConference /2009/durban0904 20am1-eng. rm?start= 00:30:25& end=00:40: 22> ] 10 minutes

I don’t think I need to go into what all happened with President Ahmadinejad’s speech since it’s all over the news. In short, he was supposed to speak for 7 minutes, ended up speaking for over an hour (interrupting a head of state is not done at these meetings)  and it was pretty much exclusively focused on his exposition of Zionism,  what he described as Israel’s genocidal racism against Palestine, etc. Folks knew it was going to be controversial, but it was more dramatic than anyone expected.

Though many felt quite vindicated by Ahmadinejad’s filibustering and applause was abundant, even some of his supporters thought it was a bit over the top in terms of taking a lot of time and space for one set of, albeit critical, current, and grave issues.

Otherwise, Britain and other European nations walked out en masse during his speech. Protesters yelled names and other comments at him such as “shame” and “racist”. People wore clown wigs and one of them threw a clown nose at Ahmadinejad at the beginning of his speech. The scene approached pandemonium.

Not just in reference to the speech, but more broadly speaking, one Palestinian gentleman with whom we spoke said he felt used in some respect by the level of focus because he felt the Palestinian struggle was being used to express anger and foment controversy by those who had other axes to grind and felt that it was unfair that other issues were being sidelined meanwhile. 

Yesterday evening a number of us who represented US organizations met together to discuss strategy. I’ll share here some of the public elements of our strategy.  Our jointly decided upon talking points include issues we plan to uplift and emphasize as we lobby various delegations for inclusion of language that was in the original/2001 Programme of Action from the Durban Conference, but are not explicitly raised in the Durban Review Conference Outcome Document, which instead references upholding all that is in the 2001 document.   Examples are:

• Reasssertion that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is a Crime Against Humanity
• Explicit language on addressing the situation in Darfur
• Reform of policies and practices related to internally displaced persons(IDPs) (reference to Katrina)**
• Addressing the issue of foreign intervention and military occupation
• Acknowledgement that women face multiple discrimination and are therefore at least doubly disadvantaged on many issues
• Raising the issue of reparations

I should note that regarding Katrina, I plan to lobby for a broader framing that is inclusive of policies and practices around IDPs, but also incorporates climate justice, as well as disaster preparedness, response, relief, recovery, and reconstruction.

During the NGO briefing, Sister Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers Center did a phenomenal job of speaking up in support and solidarity with the Dalit Community of Nepal after the concerns of an earlier Nepali speaker had not be adequately addressed by the panel. The response from the panel to the concern raised was that there wasn’t need for more specificity in the outcome document as it relates to the Dalit community. Jaribu stated that if there wasn’t a need for specificity around various issues we could just use the Universal Human Rights Declaration instead of having the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination or any of the other treaty bodies. She then said “we could just do as we do in the United States and while everyone turns a blind eye, we sing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ and call it a day.” Go Jaribu! You tell ‘em sis!

A gentleman with a lovely Jamaican accent from the Global Afrikan Congress spoke about the nations that have elected not to come to this conference. He stated that to call their action “boycotting” gives their actions an air of respectability. He said that these nations need to be held accountable for their failure to attend and went on to state that “they aren’t here because they aren’t doing anything to address racism.” He said it was analogous to “when you don’t do your work and you don’t show up for school. You get a “zero” or an “F” to denote failure and that’s what these nations deserve.”   He also spoke of the prison industrial complex in the United States and opined that “if a black country was holding a bunch of white people in prison we’d be dropping bombs on them to liberate those folks!”

Today in a session on women facing multiple discrimination, amidst all that was said, I thought it was important to note that one person stated that as a person of “minority sexual identity” he felt like his issues/population was marginalized/ignored at this conference.

Well, that’s all for now. More soon……I hear some protests outside and I think I’m going to grab my camera and head out and try to get you all some footage and, depending on what they’re talking about, may join the revolt!!!

Anyway, Daniel is from Angola and has spent many years brokering peace in post conflict situations.  So we had a robust conversation about various political matters.  One question he asked is what the people of the US think about the administration’s boycotting of this conference. My reply was, ‘First off I would say between 85-90% of Americans likely have no idea that this conference is happening at all!’  He was initially shocked, and then upon further contemplation, not as surprised. He went on to remark that this time, if no other, would seem like it begs for US engagement in a discussion on racism. Of course, I agreed.

Then today I saw on CNN their first coverage (beyond the ticker)  of the conference where they were profiling President of Iran, Ahmadinejad and worrying over what he was going to say in his remarks. They spoke of how the US, the Netherlands, and israel were all boycotting and how the content and tenor of Ahmadinejad’s comments would determine who remains at the conference for the rest of the week.

Today, on the way to the United Nations, my struggles with the tram (public transportation) ticket purchasing machine resulted in meeting a group of English speakers. With the revelation of my intended destination, it sparked a whole slew of questions and commentary. One remark was made about how the US’s boycotting was based on politically based fears of losing votes of Jewish people who would be offended by perceived anti-Israel slant of the conference.   Another person argued that the conference isn’t anti-Israel, it’s anti-Zionism and anti-human rights oppression of Palestinians.

Yet another person commented that if the black people had mobilized and put pressure for the US to participate, Obama would be here. To which I added my refrain from yesterday.  Unfortunately, probably 90% of black people didn’t even know this conference was happening, such is the extent of our disengagement as a country on a whole, and most definitely as commuities of color, in the international human rights dialogue and the UN processes specifically.

This leads me back to my previous post.  As WOCU, we are trying hard to make sure the communities of color know how to use the UN space as a place to seek justice for the disparities that we face daily and also see the value in engaging with our global sisters who face so many similar challenges and oppressed by similar US policies that are replicated globally.

Stay tuned to this site for a report on our first meeting “Engaging Women of Color in International Spaces” and upcoming guidance documents on easy ways that we as communities of color can engage internationally, and specifically with the United Nations human rights instruments and advocacy mechanisms.

We discussed barriers impeding engagement. Some stated that barriers were because of schisms between what is defined as “domestic” and what is defined as “International.”  Lourdes Rivera of the Ford Foundation observed, “There is a deep and basic barrier. There is domestic and there is international work. Never the two shall meet.”  She went on to add that when time and attention are limited, questions of relevancy and effectiveness of engaging in international spaces arise. The question then becomes “Why spend time in this international space when they are stretched thin working on issues in our communities?” Further to this point, Naina Khanna of the US Positive Women’s Network stated, “Being positive women we are dealing with our everyday struggles and we need to focus on something that will affect the lives and policies affecting positive women.  We need to question spending 10 hours per week learning about international processes when we are not sure of the outcome.” Others stated that there was a lack of resources available for US women of color to engage in these spaces, as compared to our global sisters. According to Elmira Nazombe of the Racial Justice Office of the United Methodist Office at the UN, ”People pay to bring people from other countries to come to the Commission on the Status of Women. There is never a penny for US women to come to the door.” Both Elmira and Naina noted a tension in wanting to form relationships with our sisters across the globe, but also not wanting to be viewed as trying to take more space than is our due given our position of relative access and privilege.

The group brainstormed several ideas to address these barriers and to begin to insert our issues and voices into the discourse. Margo Kaplan of the Center for HIV Law and Policy mentioned that even lawyers and policy makers don’t use a human rights framework and she suggested that change needs to happen from the grassroots. One suggestion by Elmira was to challenge mainstream women’s organizations to devote more than a passing mention to the intersection of race, class, and gender. Elmira also shared Kensington Welfare Rights Union’s strategy of holding tribunals which raise awareness and help local people see instantly how their struggles fit into a human rights frame that is applied globally.

Several speakers introduced UN Processes of relevance to the groups gathered: a. Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination; b. Durban Review; c. UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS; d. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; e. Commission on the Status of Women; e. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and f. Financing for Development.

Existing initiatives, that have provided leadership in the area of engaging WOC in international spaces and with a human rights frame, are the US Human Rights Network and WILD for Human Rights.  SisterSong and Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice have also facilitated training of women of color organizations around use of a human rights frame in organizing and advocacy.

As we wrapped up, Krishanti Dharmaraj of WILD offered three potential areas of focus for this initiative: 1) The Durban Review; 2) The Ratification of CEDAW; and 3) Climate Change. The group concluded with a decision to form a listserv and steering committee to guide our work going forward.

Why were the US based women of color led and focused initiatives largely missing?  My opinion is that there were several factors at play, each of which holds equal significance.  One is that the perception of AWID is that it is a white feminist led/dominated space. Two is that, in international forums, women of color in the global north and our issues are often invisible/ignored, even when we are present. Three is the reality of financial constraints for most women of color led organizations in the global north and the dearth of opportunities for sponsorship to participate, compared to those offered to our sistren from the global south.

With regard to points #2 and #3, one tough dynamic is the question of how much space should we be taking up?  With our relatively high rates of poverty, high disease burden, exposure to environmental hazards, etc we have much in common with our sisters in the global south as our struggles are similar. However, for many, the perception is that, generally speaking, compared to our sisters in the global south, we have more opportunities and freedoms. Thus there is a both a conscious and unconscious tendency to sideline our struggles in these global spaces. How do we address this?

1)      We need to identify more opportunities (not that it’s not already going on to some extent) to have exchanges with our sisters in the global south.

2)      We should start submitting abstracts, seeking funding, and presenting at some of these national conferences/gatherings to raise awareness of our struggles and use these as opportunities to build solidarity with our sisters in the global south.

3)      Our organizations need to register with the UN and gain ECOSOC status. Then we need to begin attending UN meetings in New York and view this as a space where we can use the UN system to try to US before a jury of its peers for the failure of the administration to address our concerns.

4)      We should seek opportunities to work in solidarity and joint action with our sisters in the global south to advocate for responsive domestic and foreign policy on behalf of ourselves and our sisters.

The good news is that I have lots of great video to share. Here at the Association of Women’s Rights in Development conference, all are abuzz about the US elections and folk have a lot to say so I’ll be uploading all when I’m back in the US on the 20th.  I have interviews of women from Cambodia, Senegal, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, Uruguay, and more. All are speaking of their views on the outcomes of the elections and what this means for the issues they care about specifically and world affairs generally.

From here my writings won’t be daily, but only as I have updates to share. I completed the final 10 hours of the drive from New Orleans on Friday, arrived home at 1:30am Friday night/Sat morn and then left at 6:30am for South Africa after unpacking, packing again, doing laundry, and catching a couple of winks. J  I arrived in Johannesburg at 10pm on Sunday.

I’ll be attending the Women Won’t Wait coalition planning meeting www.womenwontwait.org and the Association of Women’s Rights in Development meeting. www.awid.org. Between these two meetings I plan to get the perspective of many women from around the world on the elections, US foreign policy impact in their lives, and how they see our new administration impacting world affairs generally and women’s rights specifically.  So stay tuned here and the WOCU You Tube Channel!

Anyway, Barbara is a native of New Orleans. She survived Katrina and has since rebuilt in New Orleans. Barbara served as ED of St. Thomas Health Clinic, a model community run facility, for 12 years.  Appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin, Ms. Major recently served as Co-Chair of the Mayor of New Orleans’ Bring Back New Orleans Commission. She is a core trainer for The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. She is also a co-founder and Executive Vice President/community engagement specialist for Citizens United for Economic Equity, an organization founded by New Orleanians to ensure equitable African American community participation in the rebuilding of New Orleans

The two times I’ve met with Barbara I’ve emerged from our time together feeling enriched and inspired. I was so grateful for the opportunity to experience her again.  Please visit our WOCU Channel soon to watch the video interview of Barbara.  www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited  (I’m still working on the backlog of uploads but the connection speeds here are a bit challenging.)

(As a caveat, I’m thinking that positive comments about the confirmed next administration are allowed for this non-partisan blog spot for this campaign because I’m not lobbying for one candidate or another, I’m talking about our nation’s President-Elect, right?)

As I continued with my 12 hour journey there was a sense of community with almost everyone with whom I interacted. There was the African American woman at the rest stop coffee shop from whom I bought my biscotti. As she was processing my change, she glanced around quickly to make sure she was far enough from her colleague, leaned forward, and softly chanted, OBAMA! OBAMA!.  I smiled and nodded vigorously and softly replied, “Yes, we can!”  One tollbooth operator in Northern Florida was sporting a Caribbean style shirt and beaming smile. I asked him how he was doing and he replied in a Caribbean accent (maybe my native Jamaican, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.), “This is the day that the Lord hath made. I shall rejoice and be glad in Him!” and it was very clear, from his expression of affinity and joint celebration, to what he was referring. J Finally, at yet another tollbooth on the Florida turnpike a Latino brother greeted me and I asked him how he was doing.  He cheerily replied, “I’m good! Very, very good! Yes! We! Can!”

It has been wonderful day to experience such a keen since of unity within diversity.

Immediately after poll closing, I followed the Miami Workers Center folks back to their offices for their Election Watch Party which was lively indeed. On the street there were MWC volunteers celebrating and encouraging drivers on the streets by yelling and waving Obama signs.  The party itself was full of energy and eager anticipation. The large screen TV was tuned to CNN and all were watching avidly. At one point a little girl, who was around 6 years old, was watching the very early returns when Obama had about 5 electoral votes and McCain had 13. Her little face crumpled in horror and sadness and she wailed, “McCain is winning!!!”  Her parents had to surround her and explain what was going on and it took a long time to talk her out of the depths of her despair. Besides the anecdotal references of friends, this was a live demonstration of how consumed whole families have become by hope and investment in this election.

As the streets of Miami continued to liven up and the party wore on, I contemplated my 12 hour drive to New Orleans planned for the next day and decided to take myself back to my hotel.  I watched the returns as the tallies grew and continued with emails and video uploads until around 10:30pm. Next thing you know I woke up at 11:52pm and CNN was announcing that we were awaiting Obama to come out on stage at Grant Park to give his acceptance speech. I blearily looked at the screen and tried to assimilate what I was hearing and then my eyes went down the page to the electoral college tally, and I thought, “Whuh?”  Given that I slept through the big moment, eight minutes later my day technically ended as anticlimactically as it started, as I was still in a fog. 

Subsequently as the congratulatory and celebratory text messages and emails started coming in, literally from around the world (South Africa, India, Nepal, London to name a few) and I scrolled from channel to channel on TV, I finally fully woke up and understood, “Obama won?” to “Obama won! OBAMA WON!!!”  J

I’ll end here by sharing one of the more poignant messages I received at 1:37am from Sister Yaz in California in response to an update message I sent out about the road tour:

“This day, I find words so hard to articulate the excitement I feel, and the rescinding of a 50 year old pledge to not call myself an American. This night I claim the nation of my birth.

This night my 15 year old granddaughter said she will stop obstinately saying, “I seen”. This summer, I asked my 15 year old, (AP English student) granddaughter why she insists on saying ‘I seen’ despite writing ‘I have seen’? She said, because she refuses to allow America to demean every aspect of what affords her cultural comfort.  

My grown sons cried like babies, my ex-husband and I cried and remembered the sit-ins of the sixties where we were spat upon and had hot coffee poured on us for the sins of wanting to integrate a restaurant, or gain admittance to a labour union, or wanting to register voters. My 91 year old father trembles, saying he never thought he would live to see this kind of border crossing change in this country.

This day, I know we can change the fabric of violence in our homes and hearts too.

In peace and tenderness,”

Yaz

Before the interviews started, Heather Vega, an intern at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers(CIW), shared a bit of the background of the town and of the Coalition. Housing conditions are that most of the men live in trailers that sleep between 10 and 12 people.

Immokalee is an agricultural town which is built around the industries of tomatoes and citrus. Immokalee has a population of 20,000 during the off-season and 40,000 when tomatoes are harvested, between late Oct/Early Nov and May. . The population is primarily from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti and is mostly male. (approximately 85-90%)

Some of the social issues that plague the community are poverty, alcoholism as well as domestic violence. In fact, according to Heather, on the previous Monday, a local shelter had led a march through town to protest the level of domestic violence. Another issue in the community is trafficking/forced labor that happens within the agricultural issue. To some extent there is also some concern about sex trade issues as there is a significant level of sex work that happens in the town.

People in the community who work on the farms have a fairly harsh existence. The work day starts finding the farm workers in parking lots at 4am awaiting buses from the tomato grower companies. The buses come and folks in the lots are selected (or not) and those selected take a drive that lasts up to two hours. Others return home and hope to be selected the next day.  The buses return in the evening at around 7am and less than eight hours later, folks are up again getting ready to go to the lot to hope for selection.  It leaves very little in the way of family life or any other existence besides working and sleeping.

 In 1993, workers on the Immokalee tomato farms started to convene and talk about the need to organize themselves. In 1996, CIW was established as a non-profit organization. www.ciw-online.org  CIW now has 4,000 members and 10 staff members. Since its inception Immokalee has been operating the “Campaign for Fair Food” which targeted Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Whole Foods, and more recently Chipotle and Subway. The campaign has 3 central demands: 1) Increase the amount that these companies pay for tomatoes to $.01 per pound. 2) Establish a code of conduct where the companies would sever the contracts of growers found guilty of abuses. 3) Ensure that CIW participates in the dialogue about policies and practices between purchasers and tomato companies.

CIW has also been engaged in dealing with the issue of modern day slavery.  In the past 10 years, the work of CIW has resulted in 7 convictions for trafficking.

After visiting Immokalee, Congressional Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont made the grim statement, “In Immokalee exploitation and poverty are the norm and slavery is the extreme.”

I asked Heather what kind of voter outreach was happening in Immokalee. She stated that the only voter outreach that has been done in Immokalee ever was occurring presently and being led by the Obama campaign.  I spoke to Jonathan next door who was operating the campaign out of the Lutheran Church and he confirmed that there had never been any voter outreach there and that he had found a situation of significant disenfranchisement of this community. His work was daunting but in the time there their office managed to register thousands of new voters. One woman was 96 years old and had never voted in her life after having witnessed a lynching of a person who tried to vote.  After multiple visits and reassurance they managed to convince this woman to register and vote early.

I had good conversations with Sylvia Perez, Nelly Rodriguez, and Heather Vega. Their comments can be found on the WOCU You Tube Channel, www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

In Hilton Head, South Carolina, I visited with Donna Williams, who was operating a phone banking initiative as part of the Obama campaign. Donna described being a part of the legacy from her grandmother who was part of the suffrage movement and who literally risked life and limb on behalf of the movement to secure the rights of women to vote. Throughout her life she has carried on the family tradition of activism and community involvement.

Both interviews can be found on the WOCU channel at www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

Between interactions with voters, Gail, one of the volunteers, gave me a bit of background on the community. She said that it is a working class area. She also stated that it was fairly racially segregated.  One illustration was a gentleman who came up and we offered him an “I’m A Woman of Color and I VOTE” button and said he could give it to his wife, whom he said was in line. Then, as he walked away, I said, “Well, I guess I can’t assume his wife is a woman of color”.  Her reply was, “In Harnett County, yes, you can.”

During my time there I was fortunate to be able to interview one of the women who came out to vote, Reverend Patricia Hurley, as well as Antoinette Fitzpatrick, a veteran activist who is serving with the Democratic Party. Videos of the interviewees can be found at www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

One interesting bit of drama that happened while I was there…there was a fellow who had been working hard from the time I arrived on going through the line, handing out voter guides and sample ballots to those waiting to vote.  Another person staffing the booth came back from an errand and found him in line handing out materials to everyone. She rebuked him saying that he should only be giving the materials to the black people in line! Well, this caused quite a stir indeed as most felt that yes, the materials should go to all but her feeling was that there is a clear racial divide which says that the white people are likely republican so why should time and materials be ‘wasted’ on them. Where as everyone else felt that a) there are white democrats, even in Harnett County and b) regardless, it looks bad for the Democratic Party and is bad for race relations in general for the outreach efforts to be viewed as discriminatory. A very interesting exchange.

Sadly, during the course of our time there (about 3 hours for me) there were many who went home because they didn’t have the time in their day or the time off of work to be in line for 3 hours.  I noted that of those that left, the majority (maybe 75%), were people of color. One African American fellow in a security guard’s outfit said, “Work starts in an hour and my boss won’t let me be late, even to vote.”

All three women gave insightful and riveting presentation of the dynamics of the lives of African American women, with a focus on the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. I concluded the panel with a brief presentation on the importance of coalition building to have a multi-faceted approach in addressing these complex dynamics, to maximize synergies, and achieve policy change.

I videotaped the presentations (except mine) and will upload them to the You Tube channel on www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

I’ve already uploaded interviews with Dr. Fairfax as well as Dr. Denise Davis Maye, who is also a professor at Alabama A&M as well as a farmer in rural Alabama. www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

Then I met Jaunese Harris of Prince Georges County for a lunch interview. Jaunese is a soror (sorority sister) of a WOCU member, Tricia Bent Goodley. Tricia recommended Jaunese as a good person to be interviewed because of her community activism.

Lunch with Jaunese was both a culinary treat (we ate at my favorite Thai spot) and a though provoking experience. I learned about Jaunese’s background as an IT professional who specializes in system security and works for the patents office in Alexandria, VA. Jaunese came to the Washington DC area from Petersburg VA to go to school and decided to stay.

Though she has no aspirations/ambitions for political office or a career in activism, she does believe that everyone has a role to play in making the political system work for them. She is a rare case of speaking from a position of comfort and commitment in terms of how the system has served her. However, Jaunese is committed to remaining involved to ensure that the system and its power wielders and decision maker are accountable to her and the needs of her community.

After lunch I had to go into downtown DC to pick up on of the 41 Million Strong roving video cameras so that I could upload Traci Griffith’s interview. Thus, I ended up leaving the city so late that it took me 4 hours to make the 2 hour journey to Philadelphia. I was due to meet Efia King, my next interviewee at 5pm but ended up meeting her at 8pm instead! Thank you to Efia for hanging in there to meet with me.

I had a great chat with Efia who is a 16 year old high school student who has become so inspired by the elections that she has gotten involved in doing voter outreach. She shared about issues that impact her and her community, as well as the importance of youth engagement. Please find her interview at www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited

Fortunately for me, from her sick bed Kris graciously recommended that I speak to Ashara Ekundayo, member of the Colorado Women’s Voters’ Circle initiative www.womensvotingcircles.com  and she shared Ashara’s number. I immediately called Ashara and was delighted by her flexibility and willingness to link up pretty much instantaneously because I needed to be in Colorado Springs to catch my flight  by 12:30pm and we spoke on the phone at around 10am. I was able to meet her by 11am in the historic Five Points area of Denver.

It is hard to put to words the vibrant spirit, character, and passion Ashara exuded as she spoke of the issues about which she cares– education and reproductive choice, her chosen path for civic engagement, and how she intertwines her culture work, her connection with youth and her justice lens. One really has to watch the footage of her interview to even begin to have a sense of Ashara.  Please visit the WOCU You Tube Channel to hear the wisdom and feel the energy. J www.youtube.com/womenofcolorunited  Also, please check out Ashara’s website at www.panafricanarts.org.

I started out meeting with three Latina sisters at Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada www.planevada.org  First I met with Cinthia, Grassroots Outreach Coordinator, who shared a bit about the background of PLAN and her own motivation for being involved.  Then I met with two PLAN canvassers, who happened to be biological sisters.  Sandra and Maria shared about their work on voter education and getting out the vote and the importance of civic participation in their communities that are struggling to maintain identity and culture, as well as advance and excel in the US system. Watch their videos via the PLAN playlist on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

Then I connected with an African American sister named Toshia Shaw Lacy.  She had just done her civic duty and voted that morning. In her interview she talked about the plethora of issues that prevail in Las Vegas including homelessness, trafficking, and economic decline. She cited the fact that Las Vegas is approximately #5 in the top cities for foreclosure in the United States. She also lamented the lack of resource for mitigation, specifically mentioning the utter dearth of social services, the thoroughly flawed education system,  and how corruption makes politicians and law enforcement turn a blind eye to the exploitation women experience in particular in sex work, both voluntary and involuntary through trafficking.  Toshia’s interview is on the WOCU You Tube Channel and her blogspot can be found at http://www.compulsivewriterdisorder.blogspot.com/

After starting the day a bit low, the Sisters of Fire Luncheon gave me the energy, strength and inspiration I needed to make the 9 hour journey to Las Vegas, arriving safely at about 11pm.

 Ms. Griffith graciously agreed to meet with me in her “humble” office prior to the start of her afternoon class.  Our meeting was brief, but meaningful.  She spoke of the rich culture of Vermont.  I must admit that I was skeptical that Vermont had any cultural offerings for people of color, but Ms. Griffith shared information related to the African refugee population clustered in certain parts of the region.  She offered contacts to link with that population as well as a number of upwardly mobile people of color who were making a difference in the community.  I was pleasantly surprised that Vermont had more to offer than delicious maple syrup and the finest apple orchards in the region. 

 Ms. Griffith stated that her students are energized about the political process and have done some advocacy work in the area with an emphasis on bordering New Hampshire .  She spoke of Vermont ’s small town dynamics and that some political leaders have routine town hall meetings where citizens have an opportunity to voice their concerns.  Ms. Griffith feels this is what is missing from most political machines: the ability to connect with the constituents on a personal level. 

Traci Griffith remains connected to her community and network of legal and political people of color who are passionate about preserving the values near and dear to most Americans.  She spoke fondly about the great time she had at the recent Congressional Black Caucus sessions in Washington, DC and that simply attending this annual event renews her spirit and motivation to continue the fight.  Traci Griffith is amongst the modest group of educated, professional African-American women who have not lost sight of the struggles that many people of color experience on a daily basis.  She ops to use her professional and social network as well as her role in the lives of young students as weapons in the plight of oppression.  This warrior will not be stifled. 

Click below to view Traci’s interview:

We were trained by an energetic young man named Kijani who did a great job of getting us ready to go out and educate community members on the ballot measures.  I was paired with him on the role play and he complimented me on being “a quick study” which I found inordinately gratifying. J I’m so easy.  Footage of our training (specifically a role play between Vivian and Abel) can be found on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

For canvassing I was paired with Vivian of APEN and we were given our marching orders to visit 200+ voters in the surrounding community. Vivian unwisely entrusted me with navigating with the map, but we somehow made it through our list.

Early on one sad observation that jumped out of us was the succession of foreclosed homes on the streets we were canvassing.  There was one short dead-end block where out of the 9 homes on the block, 6 were foreclosed.  I also grimly noted two homes where there were notices on the door from the water company informing residents of the number to call to get their water reconnected.  I was later told by one of the Just Cause advocates that the banks are actually working with the utility companies  and the cut off of utilities is one of the tactics used to get people out of their homes when they are being foreclosed.

The first home I visited, I was a bit intimidated going up the walk because there was music playing and much revelry going on in side. I felt quite intimidated about interrupting to talk about propositions! Anyway I knocked on the door nonetheless and a young man came to the door. He was all tatted up with a variety of tattoos all over his arms, neck, and bare chest. Distracting to say the least!  So I launched into my impassioned talk about the Propositions and he was very engaged in the discussion, and then some of the other young men started to crowd in the doorway. He ardently agreed to vote no on Props 6 and 9 and yes on Measure VV. I asked him to make sure everyone else in the household did the same. Much to my delight, as I walked away I heard the young gentleman giving his own twist in explaining the Propositions to the other occupants of the house. I honestly thought I was going to start weeping (yes, I’m an easy touch) at the power of grassroots approaches to spreading the word and educating folks about the policies that will affected communities. I looked at that young man and thought about how many in our society fear would fear him or at least dismiss him as not having anything to contribute and then listened to his passion as he was empowered with information to share with his peers. So inspiring.

At another home we visited there was a young man who stated that he was not eligible to vote because he was “a felon” but he stated that he was 8 month clean and would have his charges discharged in 80 days.  Meanwhile he wanted to volunteer as he was very inspired by the content of Propositions 6 and 9 and wanted to use his comparative advantage in being able to reach the ex-offender population in a way that works effectively with them and educate his peers to make policies and society works better for them.  This fellow’s sister, who is a registered voter, asked me if I had any more of my “I’m a Woman of Color and I VOTE” buttons. I said no, but gave her mind. She was excited and proudly stated that she would wear it every day so that the people at work and on the BART (public transportation system in Oakland and San Francisco) can see it.

An elderly woman actually approached me in a low income apartment complex and asked what I was doing. When I explained about the propositions she launched into a passionate monologue about how they are taking the money to build bigger prisons and put “our babies in there and never let them out” when what they need to be doing is giving kids a better education so they have the opportunities they need to keep them out of trouble.

I interviewed Amber and Jennifer, who talked about the work of APEN, the issues encountered by the Chinese Community, and the importance of increasing API civic engagement. Those interviews can be found on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

Over dinner, I also interviewed Darlena, who was originally born in India, but now lives in Berkeley.  She talked as a layperson about her participation in civic engagement and the issues that drive her involvement.

On the way to Oakland I was listening to public radio. There was a woman from Oakland talking about Proposition 8 which is on the ballot and proposes to overturn the California Supreme Court Ruling that found that discrimination based on sexual orientation was unconstitutional.  Ms. Anderson was married right after the recent legislation passed allowing for same sex unions. Her wedding was officiated by Mayor Ron Dellums and witnessed by Congresswoman Barbara Lee. She spoke about how she and her partner of many years had lived through the civil rights era she, as an African American woman, had to fight just to have her very humanity acknowledged so that she can achieve equal rights. Now, regarding Proposition 8, she is fighting another battle to be able to be afforded the same rights in being in a loving committed relationship with a same sex partner as persons in heterosexual relationships.

I also heard on the radio and saw on TV several times a commercial where “a Massachusetts couple”  talked about how their child had been taught about same sex marriages. On the TV commercial, they show the couple holding a book that says, “King and King” and depicts two men on the front cover. They couples testimony ends with them saying in outrage and lamentation, “Our son is in second grade!!” This is how they are spinning Proposition 8. In the commercials they are saying that Proposition 8 is about teaching children about “homosexuality” in schools.

Good thing is that contrary to the situation in Arizona with well financed anti-same sex marriage as well as amply financed campaigns to perpetuate predatory lending, I learned that California has a well financed opposition to those who want to ban equal rights for same sex couples.  Each side of the argument has raised $60 million dollars.

Otherwise, it was a beautiful drive and I arrived in Oakland safely.

Of their many programs, I was especially enthused to learn of their Young Women’s Leadership (a.k.a “Yellow”) program which engages high school students in civic participation. As they are looking for a project for 2009, it was suggested that they may be able to work with WOCU on a violence against women and/or HIV&AIDS related initiative, which was exciting. Learn more about their programs by listening to the interview where their programs are described on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

I interviewed Tanzila Ahmed and Usma Men about their own motivation for being involved in this work as well as their overviews of the work of OCAPICA including information on their outreach materials and methods, as well data that they have collected and analyzed on the effectiveness of their approach.  I was also fortunate to be able to observe OCAPICA’s multilingual phone banking. As a clear illustration of the importance of the work of OCAPICA, while I was there one of the high school student volunteers from Vietnam was on the phone for a long time with an 83 year old gentleman who had a mailer on voting in front of him and didn’t know what to do with it. He said it was telling him to pay $30 to vote.  Tanzila helped out with the student’s conversation and they determined that it was likely that the document wasn’t his mail-in ballot as he seemed to think and instead was likely a utility bill with a courtesy reminder to vote enclosed. So they helped him through actually determining how to get his ballot and vote.  Footage of the interviews as well as the exchange with the elderly voter can be found on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

Re the subject line of this post, one of the innovative programs of OCAPICA is their MOTIVATE Program with youth. Through this program they had a contest to design a t-shirt for their campaign. One creative Vietnamese youth came up with a design that had a bear going to a polling station with her/his ballot in hand. As the official turned her/him away, they showed the bear going off in the distance and then showed a person walking up. The slogan on the shirt is “Bears Can’t Vote, But You Should!” and it’s written in English and Vietnamese. When I was there the shipment of t-shirts arrived to the excitement of all who were present. You can see the t-shirt in the footage on the You Tube Channel.

After my time at OCAPICA, I went to a late dinner with Jasmine Burnett of the Black AIDS Institute. In an interview she shared her perspectives on issues that are important to her as a woman of color, as well as on the importance of civic participation. Her interview is posted on the You Tube Channel.

Meeting with Alejandro and Armando was good as they described the basic work of Mi Familia Vota. I appreciated one aspect in particular where Alejandro spoke of an 83 year old woman who was homebound and discovered through canvassing. When she expressed enthusiasm for the work but was skeptical about what her role could be in promoting civic participation, they said there is still much she could do. In the end, they organized for a local TV station to come and feature her voice in calling on her community to get involved and vote!  That was a warming story which illustrates that we all can and should have a role.

Armando specifically spoke about his work on engaging youth through having started a handball club through the generosity of a community member who built a handball court for this purpose and provides funding for the teams activities, including traveling.  During the course of this discussion I asked about women who are involved in the handball club. In a humorous response they pointed out how the handball is “hard” and how the girls have to be careful of their nails. J  The conversation ended soon after. J

Then I went out with Gina and Carla and we canvassed a neighborhood and apartment complex and informed residents about early voting options, including the mail-in voting option, and also got residents to complete a commitment card. In addition they shared about a “Payday Loan Reform Proposition” which, in actuality is a bit of legislation being advanced by predatory lenders that contrary to actually proposing real reform, suggests lowering the rates from 400% to 397%, according to Gina. What activists are demanding is a lowering to 38%.

The team was able to help out one woman who didn’t know how to do mail-in voting and Carla and Gina were able to provide her the forms which she and her mother filled out for them to mail in order for them to get their packages.

We also encountered a fellow, “Alex” who said he votes yearly. He pressed us to declare our candidate preferences which we didn’t do. He then stated that he’s a registered Democrat but hasn’t voted democrat since Kennedy and Johnson.  He said the reason he hadn’t voted Democrat was because of the abortion issue.  After some time and quite a bit of religious fervor, Gina finally said that she believes that women should have the right to make their own choices. Of course this doomed us to another 15 minutes of moralizing. J  Comments included, “If someone came along with a gun and decided to shoot and kill us all while we stand here innocently, is that right? It’s the same with abortion. Those babies are innocent and they never have a chance.”  In my observer status I didn’t feel like I could say anything, Carla was new to the work, and Gina certainly tried to assert herself but was also conscious of the rules around non-partisanship. At one point in the conversation “Alex” stated with reference to Gina’s comment re women’s right to choose, “Women are weak” to which I was finally forced to say, “Well, now we are DEFINITELY treading a slippery slope” to which he backpedaled a bit saying, “I didn’t mean it like that” to which I gave him a look that said, “Like what?” but then desisted from saying anything further.  When it was finally over and “Alex” invited us to come back around Christmas when his tangerines would be ready for harvest to get a few baskets full.  When we were out of earshot Gina said, “Wow….I could tell you were about to explode.” And we all laughed. As we were debriefing I shared about my earlier exchange around the handball club and said that “Alex”, Armando and Alejandro could maybe start a machismo club. J Gina said they get into a lot of those kinds of conversations.  To see video of Carla and Gina in action and talking about their work, visit the WOCU You Tube Channel. In her interview Gina stated that if Latinas don’t vote, the system won’t work for them because elected officials won’t see themselves as accountable to them.

When we got back to the office I did an interview with Abigail about Mi Familia Vota and what brings her to this work. This interview is available in English and Spanish on the WOCU You Tube channel.

The folks at Mi Familia Vota recommended that I speak to Adorian, an amazing student activist they had encountered and fortunately I was able to find her between classes and willing to talk! So I met her near the library at Arizona State University and we sat on a bench and talked. She had an interesting history of having been born in Anchorage, Alaska to an African American mother and a Japanese American father.  She moved to Arizona when she was four years old. She is the founder and President of the student multicultural association, MOSAIC. Having experienced life with a constant challenge and blessing of blending cultures and endeavoring to integrate, Adorian has considerable sensitivity around cross-cultural issues and thus felt a calling to be engaged with the work of Mi Familia Vota.  In her interview, which can be found on the WOCU web channel, she describes her path and her volunteer work with Mi Familia Vota, as well as some of the issues that she considers to be important to her and her community.

In the course of Adorian’s interview she mentioned that, as a corrections officer, she works under the office of Sheriff Arapaio. I had learned earlier, during my many conversations with Arizonians, that Sherriff is a fairly controversial figure due to his aggressive approach to law enforcement in general and curbing undocumented immigration particularly. Some of his tactics include forcing inmates to wear pink underwear, sleep in tents, and eat green food.  He is also being accused of racial profiling and lengthy detaining of people while their status is verified. As the elections approach he has a significantly comfortable lead over his opponent but immigrants rights advocates fear what a win will mean for their constituents.

For the remainder of the day I made the drive to L.A. which as complicated by the fact that in the middle of the trip, for about an hour, I was completely fighting nodding off slightly afraid to pull off to the side of the road. I did pull off at one point just to be responsible in terms of not risking the safety of others, but I was so nervous I couldn’t nap. Fortunately I got my second wind through sheer force of will and managed to revive myself for the rest of the journey. J  So all is well here in my hotel room in L.A.

Anyway, that evening, I was supposed to meet with two women (African American and Latina) who had traveled from California to Get Out the Vote in Arizona and whom I was going to shadow while they did their door knocking as part of SEIU for Obama’s GOTV campaign. I arrived at the appointed address, called both of their cell phones, texted both of them, and called both of their cell phones again another few times.  After an hour I never heard from them, which was very disappointing. I was also a bit worried about them because it was pitch black in this community in which they were supposed to be canvassing and I had just gotten confirmation an hour earlier that they were waiting for me. I left a message with the folks at SEIU about what happened.  Then I gave up and drove to Phoenix. I just hope they are okay.

Another word to the wise, in terms of matching ability to activity, if you have any type of dog related phobias, canvassing is not the avenue of civic engagement for you. J

When we returned to the Tom Udall office to report on our canvassing and return materials, I interviewed Caren Howard, who was originally from Maryland but ended up working for the Tom Udall campaign as an organizer. She tells her story on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

After interviewing Caren I departed for the 7+hour drive to Tucson.

Ana also shared with me about a canvassing project they do on the weekends which focuses on engaging non-voting youth both so that they influence their family members to vote, as well as to appeal to them early so that they subsequently become voting community members.  More on this can be found on the WOCU You Tube Channel.

I realized today that I should set aside my fears that I’m developing narcolepsy and come to terms with the fact that I returned from Guatemala sick and besides that I’m a bit exhausted from the intensity of being on the road. J So I’m taking it a bit easy on myself. J

I also got a great ticket to Denver for $175, even though I’m leaving tomorrow!

As I was working on materials for the website, I was trying to fill in voter participation stats for Native American/American Indian women and spent a good hour and a half chasing in conclusive ribbons of hope by trolling countless websites and documents. Finally, recognizing the limitations of relying on the web for everything as I tend to do, I decided to go to the source and called Native Vote www.nativevote.org and spoke with Loren Birdrattler. I needed to speak with the folks at Native Vote anyway to get a blurb from them for our website featuring the civic engagement work of communities of color and also wanted to touch base with them about our Western States visits. What a gift to find him and his desk and willing to talk!  He proceeded to tell me that, sad to say, the reason I wasn’t finding the information on Native American/American Indian women is because it’s not available! The census doesn’t collect this information because “the population is too small” even though the Native vote accounts for 3-20% of voters in various western states! Loren Birdrattler was also gracious enough to send me a document which is a guide on protocol for outsiders entering Indian nations as preparation for my upcoming visits in the western states. Thank you, Loren!

As the day draws to a close I have no voice.  Since around 4pm my voice began to fade to such an extent that my own mother didn’t understand what I was saying when I called her. She thought I was crying!  Anyway, I hope it becomes properly operational again tomorrow as I head to Denver.

Because I have a sticker on my laptop with our campaign slogan “I’m a Woman of Color and I VOTE” I end up getting into a lot of conversations about the elections. One fellow from North Carolina happened to be in the lobby of our hotel and began to also comment on the elections. His preference was clear, he assumed mine was the same, and then he proceeded to extol vigorously about he was confounded by how the nation can even consider any alternative. J

Today we said farewell to our Nicaraguan sisters who are returning home to unknown circumstances. We are keeping in touch with them to hear what happens and what support they may need from us.  I’ll send out an action alert via the WOCU listserv and will also mention in subsequent blogging, as needed.

My day ended with inspiring interviews with two of the Petateras, Cristobal and Alejandra, both of whom are Chicanas (Mexican) and live in the United States. I was fortunate to hear their impassioned perspectives on the elections.  Alejandra spoke of issues of environmental justice and talked about the need for civic engagement in various ways, including being involved in public office such as the city council. Cristal spoke about the need for immigration reform, increased economic opportunities (including funding for artist initiatives) and also her desire to see an end to the war. Return here to see the video from these interviews.

We ended the day and our time at the Americas Social Forum with another march. This time, the women gathered at the women’s tent, got ourselves organized, and then marched through the grounds with our usual chants from the first day, ending by taking over the stage of the day’s closing ceremony on the main stage.  Marchers had signs from the Women Won’t Wait Campaign reading “Las Mujeres No Esperamos. Acabemos Violencia Contra Mujeres y VIH/SIDA YA!” (Women Won’t Wait. End Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS NOW!) On the main stage women continued the justice chant as well as shared some musical performances. Then, the Feminist Manifesto, which had been compiled from contributions of many, was read to the throng of Social Forum participants.  It was in Spanish, so I picked up words and phrases here and there that I understood “sexual and reproductive rights,” “racism”, “against the war”, “violence against women,” “HIV&AIDS” “capitalism”, “patriarchy” etc. However, I promise to get an electronic copy of the manifesto and post it for all to read.

That evening as I enjoyed a rare moment online, on my homepage (New York Times) I was greeted with the image of the leaders of the G7 countries who were attending the IMF meetings and met to discuss how to work together to address the global financial crisis.  As I sat there staring at the photos of these 6 white men and one white woman, multiple thoughts were swirling in my head simultaneously. One, that it reminded me of a similarly demographically constructed image I had seen just a couple of weeks ago as US leaders gathered in the oval office of the White House (remarked upon by WOCU Member Tonya Perry and quoted in our road tour press release) to discuss the bailout of major US corporations. I thought of how the US situation is a microcosm of a larger dynamic where people of color/nations of color bear the brunt of bad policies and practices via climate change and the resulting disasters and other ramifications, the food crisis, global poverty, contagion (health related pandemics) and now the global financial crisis, all of which are very much interconnected. Whereas for many of the peers of the folks in the pictures, the economic downturn may mean taking one less family vacation, downsizing from a Hummer to an Accord paying a higher interest rate on the home that they own, for disproportionately many people and nations of color, the ramifications are much more severe. Whether it is the African American man with the family of five who just last week killed himself and his family because he couldn’t bear to go on anymore after having lost his job and was unable to care for his family, whether it’s the thousands who died in the 2004 Tsunami or the hundreds who dies in Hurricane Katrina, the millions who are dying of preventable diseases such as diarrhea, malaria, HIV&AIDS, and TB, or it’s the hundreds who are slowly dying bit by bit every day from being exposed to poisonous toxins every day in the western United States. These are the people who are not represented, but are instead subject to the determinations made by those in the pictures, in their small meetings, whose lives (and this is a bit of a generalization, I know) are scarcely touched by the realities of the throngs who suffer under their myopic decision making. It overwhelms me, fills me with despair, but also strengthens me to keep linking arms and continue weaving.

Jill is from San Antonio and is with the Southwest Worker’s Union working in economic and environmental justice.  Jihan is with the Indigenous Environmental Network in Fort Defiance Arizona.

Chelsea is from Arizona and is Navajo.  The Black Mesa where she resides has a land base that is larger than Rhode Island and the land touches both Navajo and Hopi reservations. In the 70s, the US government relocated hundreds of indigenous people because they wanted the land they inhabited. Chelsea’s father had 100 horses, 100 sheep, and 100 cows and was forced to leave his land and all of his possessions.  He was given money to build a house elsewhere. However, even that was problematic because in their new community some were given money and others weren’t, which resulted in resentment and divisions amongst the community members.  Yet another of many examples of government policies and practices driving wedges in communities.

Chelsea also spoke of the work that many on the reservations do in the coal and uranium mines. Many of the men who work in the uranium mines contaminate their families with radiation they bring home from the work sites.

Kandy, who is from a North Dakota reservation, shared her experience in having cancer at the age of 20, which is all too common in her community.  She spoke of the toxic emissions from the factories to which the high rates of cancer are attributed. Kandy also spoke of the contamination of water from oil refineries, gasification plants, etc. and she shared the resulting damaging effects of these industries on the health of the community members. Additionally, many of the men on the reservation take jobs on the oil rigs as they are enticed by high pay of $25/hour compared to minimum wage work for unskilled labor. However, the oil rig positions offer no health or other benefits. Given the negative health impacts of working on oil rigs, the combination of having no health benefits to deal with the effects of contact with toxins, is literally a deadly one.

She also spoke of how tar sands are taken from the land of native people in Canada and piped to the land of native people North Dakota to be refined and then the energy is shipped off to be used elsewhere.  This extractive abuse of native lands is a pattern that is repeated time and time again.  People come in with damaging practices and their extractive industries take from the land, and then they return with waste to be dumped in landfills. All of this occurs disproportionately in communities of color including indigenous lands.

Kandy also noted that there is enough wind (ie clean energy) in North Dakota to power the entire United States.  However, people are unwilling to change their practices and systems of profit to utilize this natural resource which would be a safe and clean alternative to currently expensive, toxic and climate damaging methods of producing energy.  She noted that neither Presidential candidate has been bold enough to propose a dramatic shift in energy sources to truly clean energy.

One participant, from the Third World Coalition shared some of the intergenerational work that is taking place in communities of color in the US.  He observed that technology is taking us from our roots and our relationship with the earth even in very basic ways such as how kids are staying indoors more instead of experiencing nature and playing outside. 

He also spoke of the need to shift how we live and the perception of well-being because one of the damaging aspects of society is the quest for the poor to live like the rich and what “the rich” is emulating are negative practices that are being perpetuated. With the US as the icon of “rich” which, for better or worse, others are trying to replicate, we are setting a very poor example indeed.

According to the workshop organizers, there are simple things we can do to improve the environment,   like reduce waste generation and recycle, as well as engaging in more involved approaches like nonviolent direct action, driving a hybrid vehicle, etc. For more information on steps we can take, one can visit www.ienearth.org or www.climatechallenge.org

At the conclusion of the session I had the great fortune to interview the four presenters as part of the 41 Million Strong Campaign. To my great delight, all were involved in galvanizing civic participation in their communities, so they had rich perspectives to share, both on why civic engagement is critical as well as on how they have participated in encouraging civic participation. To hear what they have to say, please return to this space to look for the video upload.

As part of my role in the “Observatorio” (a process by which Las Petateras were gathering views from folks attending the conference on how feminist/women’s rights issues perspectives were included) I interviewed Kim, a woman who was from Grandbeat, Connecticut, but who has been working for almost 2 years in El Salvador. Our conversation ran the gambit but I’ll try to summarize here because her observations and perspective were important.

Kim went to a session organized by Allianza Nacionale Communidades Latino Americanas y Caribenas where they were examining the 2008 elections and speculating on its impact on immigration policy.  They spoke about how, between the Republicans and the Democrats, there was not much difference in their platforms because neither party is bold enough to put forth an agenda for progressive immigration reform. The reforms that are on the table focus on increasing border control, surveillance, and increasing funding for detention.  The proposed “guest worker program” cannot be characterize as progress because it would result in a situation where workers would have no rights to unionize or organize. 

The session talked about the importance of the Latino bloc of voters.  They provided statistics saying that 70% of Latinos are citizens and spoke of how by 2030 1/3 of the population will be Latino. They also spoke of the healthy fear of this specter by the dominant population.  Currently there are 26 million Latinos living in the United States, which totals about 15% of the population. 18.2 million Latinos are of voting age. 12 million are registered to vote and it is estimated that 10 million will vote.    Particularly in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Florida, Latinos are a critical voting bloc that could swing the vote as many Latinos are neither particularly right, nor left, in their politics.

Otherwise, we spoke of how for Kim, the Americas Social Forum is a continuation of her learning about the region and the impact of US foreign policy and practices here. She spoke specifically massacres that had occurred in El Salvador and elsewhere as a result of US intervention. As an example, she described her first hand experience accompanying a community in El Salvador.  On the anniversary of one of the massacres, they exhumed the bodies of 22 people and had the funeral those loved ones never had, decades later.  Approximately 75,000 people died during that massacre and most people in the United States have no idea of what travesty their tax dollars were funding.  Kim spoke of how much she learned not only about what’s happening abroad but that her experience overseas opened her eyes to what is happening right Northern Connecticut in communities of color as the patterns of systematic oppression are so similar, as are the results. She realized how blind and insulated members of the white middle class can be from the rest of reality and is committed to doing her part to bring about enlightenment and change, if only in Grandbeat!  I very much appreciated the opportunity to chat with Kim and we plan to keep in touch.

Las Petateras ended the day with a reception hosted by the United States Social Forum organizers. www.2007ussf.orgFolks were there from the Grassroots Global Justice Delegation including Project South, Domestic Workers United, and others.  I distributed “I’m a Woman of Color and I VOTE” buttons which, to my delight, were received with eagerness.  After a long day, we didn’t stay long, but I did have the fortune of a good chat with a woman from the Audre Lorde Project on LGBTQQI rights for women of color www.alp.org and I look forward to following up with her.

In this group discussion, we focused on how to build linkages between justice work in the US (so the title was a bit of a misnomer, but again, this it’s all about interpretation) and in the global south. There was acknowledgement of existing linkages through the immigrant communities, as well as through organizations who have intentionally built relationships through exchanges and joint work.  Thanks to the presence of AFSC, there was discussion about work which particularly occurs in communities of color given common experiences of communities of color in the US and nations of color globally. There was also discussion of how those of us in the belly of the beast have a role to play in exerting whatever influence we have in shifting US domestic and foreign policies and advancing a justice agenda.  We had a bit of discussion as well about the pros and cons of single issue organizing.

In the afternoon, the Petateras had another truth telling circle. A vast diversity of women shared experiences once again. As happens more often than not when we share our stories, there was an abundance of tears. One sister and her friend told the heartbreaking tale of the disappearance of their fathers on the basis of their social justice work. They each wore around their necks pictures of their fathers and spoke of the trauma and loss experienced by their families and especially lamented the loss of their youth and the care free days they are supposed to be experiencing as young adults. Instead their existence is shrouded in fear and grief. What struck me is that I had dined at the neighboring table at a café with these women just the day before. As we chatted and commiserated about slow service, there was no indication of the layers and depth of pain they were managing behind the smiles and the rolling of eyes over our delayed lunch. It just shows what many of us carry that is not apparent until we have the opportunity to share our stories. 

Through the truth circle women shared stories of violence, stories of denied sexual and reproductive rights, stories of maternal mortality and HIV&AIDS, and stories of struggles around LGBTQQI rights, among others.  Again, these stories were parallel to the struggles of my sisters in the US (high infant and maternal mortality rates within communities of color, HIV&AIDS is the leading cause of mortality for black women, high rates of street violence and domestic violence in our communities, etc)

I did a radio interview today to speak both about the 41 Million Strong Campaign and to share reflections on the Americas Social Forum. The interview was on Radio Feminista–FIRE (Feminist Radio International Endeavor) www.fire.or.cr with Maria Suarez, famously fierce feminist who is originally from Puerto Rico, but has lived in Costa Rica for the past 28 years.  Preceding me on the radio show was Jocelyn Gill Campbell of Domestic Workers United, www.domesticworkersunited.org  a US based union for nannies, housekeepers, and other domestic workers.  I was inspired by the account of these women who have come together to organize for their right to fair labor standards and respect for their profession.

Later in the day we had a conversation that was structured similarly to the Truth Circles of which WOCU sister Mehret often speaks.  Women from El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Honduras, the United States, and elsewhere came together to share experiences and struggles. We gathered, not with any preconceived expectations of “measurable outcomes”. We convened instead to share, hear other perspectives, receive compassion and support, and to plan the seeds for some, and fertilize the blooms of other, linkages of struggles.

I shared about Women of Color United and how we came together around the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS globally, but also how those pandemics are intersectional with so many dynamics that we find ourselves also working on issues of economic justice, racial justice, sexual and reproductive rights, housing rights, environmental justice, disability rights, and a variety of concerns. I shared the challenge of organizing across racial, ethnic, and indigenous groups in the US, as well as across borders and that one aim of our time here as WOCU is to deepen our links with our global sistren, particularly as so many WOCU members have roots in the Americas region.

As an illustration of some of the challenges of movement building that we also experience at home, during a lengthy period of this shared space, there was open tension and animosity between several women from Nicaragua. Some of the women who stated that they were feminists were pro-government and spoke