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#Post#: 1297--------------------------------------------------
How black land became white sand: The racial erosion of the U.S.
coasts
By: AGelbert Date: June 5, 2014, 8:36 pm
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How black land became white sand: The racial erosion of the U.S.
coasts >:(
In 1910, less than 50 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans owned over 15
million acres in the former slave-holding states. Much of that
black-owned property was on the coasts, the geographic margins
of the nation, which at the time were some of the most
undesirable areas for living or leisure.
That was before the Army Corps of Engineers came along to
convert those coastline areas into “flood protection” zones, and
beaches. The Corps dumped over 7 million cubic yards of sand in
Mississippi to create “the longest manmade beach in the world,”
but not for all to enjoy. When the federal government brought
the sand to the beach, and a highway system for city folk to
access it, in came droves of white folks, who then effectively
drove black landowners out of their homes.
What the lauded black scholar W. E. B. Dubois called “the color
problem of summer,” the National Park Service called the
“spectacular acceleration [of] private and commercial
development” of America’s coasts. What DuBois was referencing,
and what the Park Service was ignoring, was the violent pushing
out of former black landowners into segregated, polluted nooks
of the shoreline, if not off the land altogether.
Andrew Kahrl
Harvard University Press
Andrew Kahrl.
University of Virginia history professor Andrew Kahrl calls it
“coastal capitalism” in his book The Land Was Ours: African
American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South, released
somewhat quietly in late 2012. If you’ve been following my blog,
you’ll note that I referenced the book a couple of times,
including in my last post on how black people have been
historically excluded from safe swimming spaces in the U.S.
Kahrl not only details the deleterious impacts of racial
segregation in his book, but also how the white overthrow of
black landholdings — from Maryland shores to Texas — was closely
linked to the pursuit of reckless environmental policies in the
name of profits. Many of the same properties stolen from African
Americans are today threatened by climate-change-fueled
sea-level rise and coastal erosion.
Writes Kahrl:
The shores that African Americans steadily lost over the course
of the second half of the twentieth century … demonstrate the
inextricability of environmental and human exploitation — power
over lands and power over persons — and force us to reassess the
familiar story of America’s triumph over segregation, its
achievement of civil rights, and its slow, painful but
nevertheless inexorable progress toward a more just and
equitable future.
I caught up with Kahrl by phone to further unpack his research
around racial segregation, “coastal capitalism,” and how these
might be reconciled under the wrath of climate change.
Q. The stories in your book are mostly about social “soft”
sciences like race discrimination, but you write quite a bit
about problems like coastal erosion and climate change. Did you
anticipate exploring those harder sciences going in?
A. That wasn’t initially part of the story, but it became an
essential feature of that history the more I worked on it. I
ended up trying to rethink or at least expand the way we
understand environmental racism. We often think of it strictly
as cases of African Americans being disproportionately affected
by the damage done to the environment, from the siting of
polluting industries or what have you. But here we have cases
where whites are doing damage to their own environment while in
the process of carrying out racist policies.
African Americans are victims of being pushed off the land, and
at the same time those same policies are destroying land itself,
and sometimes those two worked hand-in-hand. Like in New Hanover
County, N.C., where you had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
carrying out policies that are literally eroding the foundation
of black coastal landowners, which then ensured that it would be
very difficult to continue to sustain a livelihood there and
results in their eventual displacement.
the land was ours
Q. And this continues today, right?
A. We have, over the last half-century, this steady process of
restricting public access to beach areas in the Northeast. A lot
of it is driven by fears of the civil rights movement spilling
over into what had previously been white enclaves. You started
to see this push towards restricting public access to beaches
oftentimes out of an ostensibly race-neutral policy like
resident-only policies or even by building physical barriers
that restrict the public’s ability to access areas that had long
been upper-class white coastal communities. Well, in the process
of trying to armor themselves against the prospect of hordes of
urban masses flocking to their shores, they were also destroying
the very environment that they were seeking to protect.
Q. Maybe this is unfair, but given what climate change is poised
to do to these coastal communities I couldn’t help but read a
certain sense of karma in these stories.
A. It would be poetic justice if it only affected those persons
carrying this [racism] out, but instead it affects all of us,
because it’s our planet. It also affects us in other ways, like
by shifting our priorities as a country, it’s shifting tax
dollars toward the rebuilding of playgrounds for the rich, and
just having a really corrosive effect on the body politic as a
whole. It absolutely reveals the multifaceted damage that racism
does to us as a society and to the planet.
Q. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent Atlantic article laying a case for
reparations for African Americans is told through the lens of a
working class black family from really humble beginnings. But
your book centers a lot on stories of African Americans who
actually had some measures of wealth and land ownership, only to
have it stolen from them. Do you think your book bolsters the
case for reparations for African Americans?
A. Well, I think we need to shift the focus from cash payments
to people of color, which is the stereotypical argument of what
reparations constitutes, and more toward structural reforms that
will address and eliminate the sort of instruments of racism
that have been carried out for generations and continue to
operate and are really in many ways intrinsic to our system of
capitalism — and that’s a conversation that most Americans don’t
want to have.
With regards to these characters (in the book), these are folks
whose wealth was never realized. The one thing about the African
American experience under Jim Crow, when talking about wealth
and the inability to accumulate wealth, the landowners who I
discuss, these are folks who emerged out of a century of Jim
Crow with one asset, which was land. They never got a chance to
realize that wealth. Those lands instead became a source of
wealth for others.
The perfect example is Hilton Head, S.C. That land was once
owned by African Americans, but is now worth hundreds of
millions of dollars and the [color=black] people who
[previously] owned it never got a cent. It’s the same thing
we’re seeing today in these gentrifying neighborhoods where the
land is highly valuable, but the people who lived on it didn’t
get a chance to enjoy the riches that came from it. Coates uses
the word “kleptocracy” to describe this and it’s very powerful
and very accurate in the sense that the state is operating in
ways to facilitate the dispossession of African American assets.
Q. So given all of this, do you see a way for the nation to
reconcile its debt to African Americans while also reconciling a
sustainable future under climate change’s threats?
A. It’s hard to imagine when you have states like North
Carolina, which just passed a law that forbids coastal engineers
and state agencies from even acknowledging the existence of
climate change. But yeah, it’s a tricky issue of how do we begin
to right these past wrongs in ways that are actually meaningful
for people who actually suffered that damage and their
descendents — the people who are living in trailer homes while
the land that their parents owned has now been turned into golf
courses and multimillion dollar mansions. There’s no real easy
answer that doesn’t involve a transfer of assets and wealth in a
way that does compensate those people who had their land stolen
from them by legal means.
Going forward, if there is a realization that [the current]
model of development in these areas is unsustainable, then one
of the ways to address this is to look back to previous models
of living here, when [African Americans] were much more in tune
with living in volatile environments, and ones that are much
more well adapted to living in an age of rising sea level.
So, for instance, I was out in the Sea Islands [off the coast of
South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida] in April, and you drive
through these areas like John’s Island, Wadlamaw and Kiawah
Island, these are areas that used to have large numbers of
independent, self-sufficient black farm families. Today, the
African Americans are still living on these islands but in these
Habitat for Humanity villages. They have no means for actually
living off the land, they have no place in the island economy
other than as low-wage service workers. Their very way of life
was destroyed.
At the same time the islands themselves are being destroyed in
ways that will really become apparent in the future. So what do
we do for these people who are living in these trailer homes,
where their ancestors were living as proud independent farming
families? One way is to look at those older models of living —
not that return to the Earth in any kind of nostalgic way — but
begin to recognize how we can adopt a new model. So learning
from the past and also compensating for past injustices, and
finding a way that those two can be brought together.
Brentin Mock is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who writes
regularly for Grist about environmental justice issues and the
connections between environmental policy, race, and politics.
Follow him on Twitter at @brentinmock.
HTML http://grist.org/living/how-african-americans-lost-the-coasts-and-how-we-could-make-that-right/
#Post#: 1320--------------------------------------------------
Celebrations as last cattle rancher leaves Yanomami territory in
Brazil
By: AGelbert Date: June 7, 2014, 6:35 pm
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Celebrations as last cattle rancher leaves Yanomami territory in
Brazil
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Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa celebrates the
removal of ranchers from his tribe's land © Mario Vilela/FUNAI
A joyous ceremony was held in a Yanomami community in northern
Brazil on 31 May to mark the withdrawal of the last rancher to
occupy the tribe’s land along the notorious ‘Northern Perimeter
Highway’.
The celebrations held in the community of Ajarani were attended
by Yanomami, public prosecutors, NGOs and representatives of the
government’s indigenous affairs department, FUNAI.
In 2013, public prosecutors drew up an agreement with the last
12 ranchers who had occupied the south-eastern tip of Yanomami
land for decades, even though the territory was officially
recognized as belonging to the Yanomami in 1992.
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height=480]
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The celebrations were held in the Yanomami community of Ajarani.
© Mario Vilela/FUNAI
The Yanomami of Ajarani suffered a catastrophic loss of life
when hundreds died from measles and other diseases brought in by
construction workers building the highway in the early 1970s.
Carlo Zacquini, a Catholic missionary who has worked with the
Yanomami since the 1960s treated those he could and recalled,
“We knew that along the Ajarani River alone, there were 15
villages before the road. When the road was completed, not one
of these 15 villages remained. The survivors then formed one new
village along the road. It was really shocking and FUNAI was
totally absent.”
Later the state government gave colonists plots on Yanomami land
along the highway which also gave goldminers easy access to the
Indians’ territory.
In 2007 Hutukara, the Yanomami association, wrote to the
President of Brazil demanding action and stating that, “We, the
Yanomami people, are very angry and worried about the borders of
our land. The region of Ajarani is the point of entry for
invaders, problems and diseases. They continue cutting down our
forest to increase their lands and fatten their cattle, and they
bring in illegal fishermen.”
According to João Catalano, coordinator of FUNAI’s ‘Yanomami
Protection Front’, “The challenge now is to promote the
self-sustainability of the community” in a region where much
forest has been destroyed and degraded by cattle pasture.
HTML http://www.freesmileys.org/emoticons/emoticon-object-106.gif<br
/>Last month, Yanomami shaman and spokesman Davi Kopenawa made a
unique visit to the USA and told the American people that, “We
must fight together to save the Earth.”
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Read this online:
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#Post#: 1387--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: June 15, 2014, 7:48 pm
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Land at last for Indians evicted by
fraudster
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© H Roedel’s Facebook page
Convicted fraudster Heribert Roedel bought up ancestral Enxet
territory in Paraguay – and then evicted the Indians.
Paraguay’s President Horacio Cartes has today signed an historic
bill for the expropriation of 14,400 hectares of land on behalf
of a group of Enxet Indians of northern Paraguay.
The Enxet community of Sawhoyamaxa has been living in squalid
conditions on the side of a highway for two decades after their
land was bought by German conman Heribert Roedel, owner of
cattle company Liebig.
Roedel made his fortune after conning members of the public in
Germany, who believed they were investing in land purchases in
Paraguay.
With the funds he defrauded from German investors, Roedel
himself bought large areas of land in the Paraguayan Chaco, and
evicted the Enxet Indians who had been living there since time
immemorial.
The Enxet have been claiming title to their ancestral territory
since 1991. At least 19 members of the community died while they
waited. Survival International repeatedly lobbied the Paraguayan
government for the Enxet to be allowed to return.
With the help of local organization Tierraviva, the Enxet took
their case to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in 2001.
The Court found the Paraguayan government guilty of violating
the Enxet’s right to their land in 2006, and ordered that 14,400
hectares of it be returned to the Sawhoyamaxa community within
three years.
Eight years later, in June 2014, 150 Enxet Indians arrived in
Paraguay’s capital Asunción to demand the government sign a bill
that would legally enforce the Inter-American Court’s ruling.
Today their wait is over.
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Enxet leader Leonardo González told journalists, “We have
recovered our Mother Earth. Without her, we could not exist, we
could not be free, we could not walk, we could not be happy.”
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Read this online:
HTML http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10283
#Post#: 1389--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: June 15, 2014, 8:08 pm
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Hundreds of thousands of travelers urged to boycott Botswana
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An advertising campaign to highlight the persecution of
Botswana's Bushmen has reached hundreds of thousands of
travelers.
© Survival International
A worldwide advertising campaign calling for a boycott of
tourism to Botswana, launched by Survival International – the
global movement for tribal peoples’ rights – has reached
hundreds of thousands of travelers.
The ad has been published in international travel and lifestyle
magazines including Wired, Escapism, Departures and Centurion
magazines in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Japan, and the
U.K.
The ad, titled “Discover…the hidden secrets of Botswana” exposes
the Botswana government’s intention to drive the last hunting
Bushmen off their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve,
while promoting the reserve as a tourist destination.
Botswana’s Tourism Organization uses images of hunting Bushmen
in their efforts to attract tourists to the country, while the
Bushmen are literally starved off their land by not being
allowed to hunt for subsistence, and harassed, arrested and
beaten by wildlife scouts if they do.
The ad reads, “The government use glossy and contrived images of
Bushmen to attract tourists – but they are using violence,
torture and intimidation to deport the Bushmen from their
ancestral lands in the country’s largest game reserve… This
could mean the end for the last hunting Bushmen in Africa.”
Botswana’s President Ian Khama sits on the board of U.S.
organization Conservation International and has been widely
praised for his conservation work. But a diamond mine is
operating in the Bushman’s reserve, and the government has
issued permits for diamond and fracking exploration.
>:(
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height=480]
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The Botswana Tourism Organization uses images like this one of
the Bushmen hunting, while in reality they are banned from
hunting and arrested if they do.
© Botswana Tourism/www.botswanatourism.co.bw
Over 8,000 people have so far pledged not to visit Botswana
until the Bushmen are allowed to live on their land in peace,
including celebrities Gillian Anderson, Sir Quentin Blake,
Joanna Lumley, Sophie Okonedo, and Mark Rylance.
Survival supporters have protested at travel fairs in New York,
London, Berlin, Madrid, and Milan and several tourism companies
have also joined the boycott.
Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone recently visited the U.K. to call on
the support of Prince Charles. In a letter delivered to the
Prince, the Bushmen said, “We have survived alongside the
animals of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve since the beginning
of time. We know how to look after them and we hunt them for our
survival, not for entertainment like many tourists from your
country do.”
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “The Botswana
conservation industry promotes tours to supposedly protected
zones. The Bushmen there are persecuted. Anyone thinking of
going on safari should ask themselves whether they really want
to play a part in the destruction of the last hunting Bushmen of
Africa.”
>:(
Read this online:
HTML http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10280
#Post#: 1424--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: June 20, 2014, 8:55 pm
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Peru’s largest mass grave reveals hundreds of murdered Asháninka
Indians
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Bones and Asháninka Indian robes have been uncovered in several
mass graves in Peru.
© Luis Vilcaromero, Ministerio Público Perú/AP
The largest mass grave in Peru has been uncovered by a team of
government investigators, in the ancestral land of Asháninka
Indians in the jungle in central Peru.
The grave contains the remains of around 800 people, the
majority believed to be Asháninka and Matsigenka Indians.
The Indians were decimated in a violent conflict between Maoist
guerrillas known as ‘The Shining Path’, and counter-insurgency
forces in the 1980s.
Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died or disappeared
during the insurgency.
Bodies from several other mass graves in Asháninka territory
are currently being exhumed.
The Asháninka have survived centuries of intense conflict since
their land was first invaded by the Spanish in the 16th century.
In 1742, the Indians successfully defeated the Spanish, in a
revolt which closed off a large part of the Amazon for a
century.
Today, their land is under threat from oil and gas projects,
hydroelectric dams, drug trafficking and deforestation.
A few small groups of Shining Path rebels remain active, mostly
confined to the Ene and Apurimac rivers (which form part of the
Asháninka’s homeland).
Asháninka leader Ruth Buendía was this year presented with the
prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work against the
Pakitzapango Dam.
The dam was one of six hydroelectric projects planned under an
energy agreement between Brazil and Peru, and would have forced
thousands of Asháninka from their homes.
In 2011, Buendía and her organization CARE succeeded in getting
the dam suspended through legal action.
See Survival’s picture gallery of the Asháninka tribe here.
Read this online:
HTML http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10302
#Post#: 1572--------------------------------------------------
"Violent attacks" caused uncontacted Indians to emerge
By: AGelbert Date: July 21, 2014, 3:27 pm
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"Violent attacks" caused uncontacted Indians to
emerge
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21 July 2014
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Seven uncontacted Indians made contact with a settled Ashaninka
community near the Brazil-Peru border in June. Authorities have
treated them after an outbreak of flu.
© FUNAI
Highly vulnerable uncontacted Indians who recently emerged in
the Brazil-Peru border region have said that they were fleeing
violent attacks in Peru.
FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, has announced that
the group of uncontacted Indians has returned once more to their
forest home. Seven Indians made peaceful contact with a settled
indigenous Ashaninka community near the Envira River in the
western Acre state, Brazil, three weeks ago.
A government health team was dispatched and has treated seven
Indians for flu. FUNAI has announced it will reopen a monitoring
post on the Envira River which it closed in 2011 when it was
overrun by drug traffickers.
The emerging news has been condemned as “extremely worrying” by
Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’
rights, as epidemics of flu, to which uncontacted Indians lack
immunity, have wiped out entire tribes in the past.
Brazilian experts believe that the Indians, who belong to the
Panoan linguistic group, crossed over the border from Peru into
Brazil due to pressures from illegal loggers and drug
traffickers on their land.
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Uncontacted Indians face pressures on their land due to illegal
logging, drug trafficking and oil and gas exploration (picture
taken in 2010).
© Gleison Miranda/FUNAI/Survival
Nixiwaka Yawanawá, an Indian from Acre state, said, “This news
proves that my uncontacted relatives are threatened by violence
and infectious diseases. We already know what can happen if the
authorities don’t take action to protect them, they will simply
disappear. They need time and space to decide when they want to
make contact and their choices must be respected. They are
heroes!”
Uncontacted Indians in Peru suffer multiple threats to their
survival as the government has carved up 70 percent of the
Amazon rainforest for oil and gas exploration, including the
lands of uncontacted tribes.
Plans to expand the notorious Camisea gas project, located in
the heart of the Nahua-Nanti reserve for uncontacted Indians,
recently received the government’s go-ahead, and
Canadian-Colombian oil giant Pacific Rubiales is carrying out
exploration on land inhabited by the Matsés tribe and their
uncontacted neighbors.
Both projects will bring hundreds of oil and gas workers into
the lands of uncontacted tribes, introducing the risk of deadly
diseases and violent encounters, and scaring away the animals
the Indians hunt for their survival.
Survival has launched an urgent petition to the Brazilian and
Peruvian governments to protect the land of uncontacted Indians,
and called on the authorities to honor their commitments of
cross-border cooperation.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “This news could hardly
be more worrying – not only have these people confirmed they
suffered violent attacks from outsiders in Peru, but they have
apparently already caught flu. The nightmare scenario is that
they return to their former villages carrying flu with them.
It’s a real test of Brazil’s ability to protect these vulnerable
groups. Unless a proper and sustained medical program is
immediately put in place, the result could be a humanitarian
catastrophe.”
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#Post#: 1630--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: July 30, 2014, 10:11 pm
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Brazil: Gunmen threaten to assassinate leading Amazon shaman
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Yanomami shaman and spokesperson Davi Kopenawa, who has led the
struggle for the protection of their land, has received a series
of death threats by armed men.
© Fiona Watson/Survival
Davi Kopenawa, shaman and internationally renowned spokesman for
the Yanomami tribe in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, has demanded
urgent police protection following a series of death threats by
armed thugs reportedly hired by goldminers operating illegally
on Yanomami land.
In June 2014, armed men on motorbikes raided the Boa Vista
office of Brazilian organization ISA, which works closely with
the Yanomami, asking for Davi. The men threatened ISA’s staff
with guns and stole computers and other equipment. After the
assault, one of the men was arrested and reported that he had
been hired by goldminers.
In May, Yanomami Association Hutukara – headed by Davi –
received a message from goldminers that Davi would not be alive
by the end of the year.
Davi said, “They want to kill me. I don’t do what the white
people do, who go after someone to kill them. I don’t get in the
way of their work. But they are getting in the way of our work
and our fight. I’ll continue to fight and to work for my people.
Because defending the Yanomami people and their land is my
work.”
Since the attack, a climate of fear has surrounded the offices
of Hutukara and ISA, as men on motorbikes intimidate the staff
and repeatedly ask for Davi’s whereabouts.
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Illegal goldminers >:( operating on Yanomami land pollute the
environment on which the Yanomami depend for their survival.
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© Colin Jones/Survival
In collaboration with Hutukara, Brazil’s government launched a
major operation to evict hundreds of illegal miners and to
destroy mining infrastructure in February 2014.
Davi, who has been called the “Dalai Lama of the Rainforest”,
has been at the forefront of the struggle for the protection of
Yanomami land for over 30 years. Survival International, the
global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, supported the
Yanomami’s successful fight for the demarcation of the Yanomami
territory in Brazil, after an invasion of thousands of illegal
goldminers in the 1980s decimated the tribe.
Davi has traveled abroad on many occasions to raise awareness of
the urgent need to protect the Amazon rainforest from
destruction. He has spoken at the United Nations and received
the Global 500 award, among others, for his contribution to the
battle of environmental preservation.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “The rule of law
means nothing on the Amazon frontier, which is as wild and
violent as the American West used to be. Anyone standing in the
way of this aggressive colonization risks being killed in cold
blood. These are not empty threats – indigenous activists are
frequently assassinated for resisting the destruction of their
land. Davi Yanomami’s life is in danger. Those behind the
threats and this latest attack must be brought to justice – the
authorities need to act now to prevent the murder of another
innocent man.”
Notes to editors:
- Brazilian NGO CIMI reported in July 2014 that over 600
indigenous people have been assassinated in Brazil over the last
11 years, and Global Witness reported that nearly half of all
assassinations of environmental defenders in 36 countries
recorded between 2002-2013 occurred in Brazil.
- Download Hutukara’s statement (pdf, 98KB, Portuguese)
- Contact Survival for pictures and video material of Davi
Kopenawa Yanomami, who visited Survival’s San Francisco office
in April 2014.
- Davi is scheduled to speak about his new book “The Falling
Sky” at a Literary Festival in Brazil on Friday, and in London
in September 2014. Please get in touch for interview requests in
London.
HTML http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10367
#Post#: 1653--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: August 4, 2014, 7:27 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
See a Cocoa Bean Farmer Try His First Bite of Chocolate
HTML http://www.coh2.org/images/Smileys/huhsign.gif
by Kevin Mathews
Even if you resist the temptation to eat chocolate every day,
it’s probably rare for you to go more than a week without
consuming some of that sweet goodness, right? We take chocolate
for granted as a common dessert in America, but it turns out
that in other parts of the world, many aren’t even familiar with
chocolate. Specifically, that includes the Ivory Coast, a West
African country responsible for producing a full third of the
world’s cocoa beans.
How is it that the people most responsible for chocolate haven’t
tried chocolate before? Fascinated by this bizarre scenario,
Selay Kouassi, an international journalist, visited cocoa bean
farmers in the Ivory Coast to give them their first bite of
chocolate. The video shows that touching moment:
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0&feature=player_embedded
The first man Kouassi meets with, N’Da Alphonse, admits that he
doesn’t know why people pay him for this crop in the first
place. “Frankly, I do not know what one makes from cocoa beans.
I’m just trying to earn a living with growing cocoa.” Upon
discovering the sweet taste for the first time, he declares, “I
did not know that cocoa was so yummy.” Considering that cocoa
beans are bitter until blended with butter and sugar, Alphonse’s
reaction is understandable.
Afterwards, Alphonse takes Kouassi to meet fellow farmers who
are also unaware of what happens to the beans they harvest. One
of the growers is under the mistaken impression that cocoa beans
are primarily cultivated to make wine. “We complain because
growing cocoa is hard work,” said one farmer upon trying
chocolate for the first time. “Now we enjoy the result. What a
privilege to taste it.”
Not having tasted chocolate is possibly the least of these
exploited workers’ worries. The cocoa bean industry is flooded
with claims of human trafficking and child slave labor.
In truth, there is a limited amount of chocolate available in
parts of the Ivory Coast, but it retails for an unattainable
$2.69. Considering that Alphonse makes just $9.40 per day and
uses it to support 19 people, chocolate is a luxury that he
could never realistically afford.
The video serves as a good reminder of the privileges American
society has access to that people in other parts of the world
can’t even comprehend – despite being a part of the labor force
that creates these products. Can you imagine working day in and
day out to produce something that you don’t even understand? ???
Americans typically at least have a sense of what the end goal
is at their jobs, but these cocoa bean farmers aren’t even in a
position to ask what people in other parts of the world do with
their products. >:(
Cocoa bean workers aren’t alone in being clueless toward the end
result of their labor. CNN has a video of an anonymous teenage
Foxconn employee who spends extended hours each day constructing
screens for iPads but had never seen the finished product
before. After trying it out, she said she liked the gadget and
hoped she could afford one one day — something that wouldn’t be
possible on her current sweatshop wages. :(
Read more:
HTML http://www.care2.com/causes/see-a-cocoa-bean-farmer-try-his-first-bite-of-chocolate.html#ixzz39TM5bAC5
#Post#: 1696--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mechanisms of Prejudice: Hidden and Not Hidden
By: AGelbert Date: August 14, 2014, 4:59 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
'Stand Your Ground' Laws Linked to Rise in Homicides, Extreme
Racial Bias: Study
HTML http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/14/stand-your-ground-laws-linked-rise-homicides-extreme-racial-bias-study
Published on
Thursday, August 14, 2014
by Common Dreams
Task force co-chair: "][T]he more you look at them, the more
problems you find."
by
Nadia Prupis, staff writer
#Post#: 1711--------------------------------------------------
Reagan Began the Exponential Growth of the Prison Industrial Com
plex
By: AGelbert Date: August 19, 2014, 1:37 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The Imprisoning of MOSTLY minorities for NON-violent drug
offenses for Corporate Profit (PIC- Prison Industrial Complex)
It was planned. It's not a "conspiracy'" theory. The plan was
hatched in the Reagan Administration (although the ideology is
as old as Jim Crow, this new plan had a neo-con fascist profit
scam 'spin') to obtain some very specific objectives:
1) Provide a publicly funded profit stream (Prison Industrial
Complex).
2) Keep minorities, especially blacks, from better job
opportunities due to tainted 'history' (arrest and prison
record) while claiming it's "their own fault" when it is the
direct consequence of police frequent stops and harassment from
preteen school age on.
3) Set up a channel from the Pentagon to the police disguised as
"war on drugs" that we-the-people pay for to increasingly
militarize and alienate the police from the public while using
code speech to convince the white population it is just
happening in 'bad' neighborhoods (the old "good German" trick!)
until it is too late for the poor and middle class to avoid a
police state that protects the rich and is FUNDED by the poor
and middle class. SUCH A DEAL!
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp
Most average Americans do not want to go there but THIS WAS
PLANNED!
White Americans' Support for Prison-Industrial Complex Grows
With Knowledge That It's Harder on Blacks
Elizabeth Nolan Brown Aug. 7, 2014 12:15 pm
One of the rallying cries of the criminal justice reform crowd,
including us here at Reason, is that American policing policies
disproportionately harm blacks and other minorities. These days
even mainstream politicians like Rand Paul have been sounding
this alarm—he recently told a Rotary Club crowd in Shelbyville,
Kentucky, that "the war on drugs has had a disproportionate
racial outcome." The ostensible purpose of pointing to these
disparities is to showcase how unfair and subjective our law
enforcement can be. But according to a new study published in
Psychological Science, this may not be what the average white
person takes away.
Being made aware of the racial composition of America's prisons
actually bolsters white Americans' support for intrusive
policing and harsh sentencing policies, according to Stanford
University researchers Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt.
In one of their experiments, 62 white Californians watched a
video showing mug shots of male prison inmates. Some saw a video
in which only a quarter of the men were black; in another video,
45 percent were. Afterward, participants were given the
opportunity to sign a real petition to amend California's severe
three-strike sentencing statute, which currently mandates
25-years to life in prison upon a third felony offense with no
exceptions.
The results: More than half of participants who saw the video
with less black men signed the petition. But only 27 percent of
those who saw the video with more black inmates signed.
In a second experiment, 164 white New Yorkers were given
statistics about prison populations. Some heard about how
blacks—who make up 12 percent of the U.S. population
total—account for 40 percent of those in American prisons, with
white Americans accounting for 32 percent. Others heard the New
York City incarceration stats, where blacks make up 60 percent
of those incarcerated and whites just under 12 percent.
Participants were then asked if they wanted to sign a petition
to end New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. About a third (33
percent) of participants who heard the national statistic were
willing to sign the petition, while only 12 percent of those who
heard the New York City stat would do so. The second group was
more likely to say concern over crime made them hesitant to
support ending stop-and-frisk policies.
"Many legal advocates and social activists seem to assume that
bombarding the public with images, statistics, and other
evidence of racial disparities will motivate people to join the
cause and fight inequality," said Hetey. "But we found that,
ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the
public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the
severity of policies that help maintain those disparities."
A good reminder to heed the work of British sociologist Stuart
Hall and similar communication scholars: Never assume your
audience will take away what you intend for them to take away.
Between the producing ("encoding" in Hall-speak) and the
receiving ("decoding") of a message, there's a lot of space for
conscious or unconscious fears and prejudices to meander in.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a staff editor at Reason.com.
HTML http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/07/othering-the-prison-population
HTML http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/07/othering-the-prison-population
White Americans are BEING SUCKERED into being the MILK COW by
having their PREJUDICE AGAINST MINORITIES used against them by
the corporatocracy! It's also what the astroturf Tea Party IS
ALL ABOUT!
[quote]A significant influx of women prisoners were reported in
the 1980s and 1990s. It is argued that this was due to three
related factors: 1) The change in the role of the state due to
neo-liberalization 2) The PIC is made up of an interweaving of
penal institutions, profit-driven companies, and politicians 3)
The war on drugs. These factors lead to the “super exploitation”
of black men AND women. That is to say, black men and women
provide the industry with a means to grow. The prison industrial
complex is seen as mechanism of rehabilitation; however, it has
also been viewed as a means of repression. Racism and poverty
largely determines who is repressed. Placing these people behind
bars (many of which are non-violent offenders) means that there
will be more jobs available in certain regions and huge gains
for private companies invested in the PIC. It seems that the
role of race and gender within the PIC is intimately linked with
an economically driven and politically charged system.[/quote]
HTML http://prezi.com/ohrpvkofqne7/prison-industrial-complex/
HTML http://prezi.com/ohrpvkofqne7/prison-industrial-complex/
Here's the book that explains, with references, laws, rigged
plea bargain (minorities=prison whites=optional prison and clean
record tool for the D.A. - Federal versus State applied
selectively to shaft minorities and/or help mostly whites),
regs and Congressional ducks lined up for this cruel gravy train
that goosed the police militarization STEP by STEP.
Capitalist Punishment
Christian Parenti (Contributor); Rodney Neufeld (Editor); Alison
Campbell (Editor); Andrew Coyle (Editor);Elizabeth Alexander
(Author)
[quote]
Over 100,000 people in the U.S. are incarcerated in prisons
owned and operated by private corporations--a booming business.
But how are the human rights of prisoners and prison employees
affected when prisons are run for profit? This anthology of
leading experts examines the historical, political and economic
context of private prisons, and how privatization is connected
to the war on drugs, the criminalization of poverty and 'tough
on crime' politics. It offers a glimpse into the transnational
spread of privatized incarceration, creating important links
between neo-liberal policies locally and their effects globally.
[/quote]
Your local library has this book. Read it and any other writings
from [font=times new roman]Elizabeth Alexander [/font][/I]
[img width=40
height=40]
HTML http://www.clker.com/cliparts/c/8/f/8/11949865511933397169thumbs_up_nathan_eady_01.svg.hi.png[/img].<br
/>This lady lawyer crosses ALL the "T"s and dots ALL the "I"s. I
t
was PLANNED as a TWO-FER - make MONEY from the white suckers by
scaring the shit out of them that there is a 'war' on drugs and
the blackies and brownies can be 'taken care of' by winken,
blinken and nod police that's just helping keep the streets safe
for white America [i](while they turn the USA into a police
state for EVERYBODY that isn't in the elite).
And the 1% laugh all the way to the bank!
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp
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