GVConsulting

by Steve Zeltzer

Where is California Labor? Is anyone home?

At the same time that workers are under attack nationally, the California Democratic governor and the Democratic controlled legislature have passed a budget with massive cutbacks in education and social services. Marty Hittleman, the past president of the California Federation of Teachers, has said that, as a direct result of these fee increases at California Community Colleges, 200,000 working class and poor students will be pushed out of the schools.

In order to address this attack that threatens public education, Professor Peter Mathews at Cypress College in Orange County and his colleagues and students are seeking support for an Oil Extraction Tax ballot initiative that would tax oil in California and raise $3 billion for education at Community Colleges, the State Colleges, the UC system and K-12.

Even Sarah Palin increased the oil extraction tax in Alaska from 22% to 25%; yet California has no tax on oil coming out of the ground in the state. Some of this land is even state land, yet no tax.

Even the corporate controlled Bay Area NBC via spokesperson Suzanne Shaw has endorsed this Oil Extraction Tax initiative to fund public education in it’s editorial: They Profit, We Pay At The Pump.

In fact, every poll in California now shows that the people of California would support a tax on oil companies to make them pay for education and public services. If this gets on the ballot it has a very good chance at passing. People are fed up with the oil companies and their billions of dollars of profits, and they should be.

Yet, if you go to the websites of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), The California Teachers Association (CTA), The California Federation of Labor, and the SEIU, there is no endorsement or even one word about this initiative to make the oil companies pay for the crisis.

Workers and trade unionists have to ask why, when we have the chance in California to tax the oil companies to pay for education, our unions are missing in action. Is it because Jerry Brown and the Democratic Party don’t want to fight the oil companies or because the unions are waiting for November 2012?

What ever the reason is, we can’t afford to wait to make the oil companies pay. 504,000 signatures are needed to get this on the ballot, and support and donations are needed. The deadline is September 30 to get the signatures in.

If you support an oil extraction tax for education, contact your union local and these statewide unions and their officers and ask them to get on board in making the oil companies fund education. We cannot afford to wait for November 2012. You can find out more about this initiative at  www.rescueeducationcalifornia.org.

Fast Ongoing – More Protests Planned

Intercontinental Cry Story

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Alaska – Carl Wassilie 907.382.3403 carlwassilie.acyn@gmail.com
Lower 48 – Gregory Vickrey 202.487.1201 gregory@gregoryvickrey.com

Anchorage, Alaska – On February 8, 2011, Alaska’s Big Village Network (ABVN) affiliate Desa Jacobsson began a fast in protest of the comprehensive violation of subsistence rights and continued de-humanization of Alaskan Natives by Governor Sean Parnell, Calista Corporation, and the Federal Subsistence Board.

Ms. Jacobsson began the fast in order to raise awareness of archaic and repressive policies implemented and contrived under Governor Parnell and Federal program managers, as well as to press for sweeping measures that will formally recognize the inherent right of Alaskan Natives to live as sovereign Nations. Policies dictating the management of fish and game have been particularly onerous in removing Tribal government authority from the role of public trustee and the provisions of customary use of Alaska’s vital subsistence resources.

In a letter hand-delivered on February 17, 2011, to the offices of Governor Parnell, Calista Corporation, Federal Subsistence Board, and Alaska Federation of Natives, Jacobsson stated, “A fast has been initiated in protest of the following: Federal and State subsistence policies and management; Calista Regional Native Corporation’s extraction of toxic mercury at the Donlin Creek Mine; and violation of the United States Constitution by the State of Alaska and Governor Sean Parnell through its ‘Choose Respect’ program.”

Jacobsson continued, “The fast will continue until the following are resolved: tribal members resign from the Federal Subsistence Fisheries Management Advisory Councils and return to strengthening their own federally-recognized tribal governments for the management of fish and game; Calista Corporation ceases extracting mercury at Donlin Creek Mine and reconstitutes mining efforts; and a lawsuit is initiated against the Office of the Governor and the State of Alaska for its failure to provide Constitutional protections for all of its citizens.”

Jacobsson provided several examples of Alaskan Native rights being violated. Of note, Alaska House Bill 405 required Alaskan Natives to complete twelve steps, per species, with the approval of three boards, acting jointly, in order to harvest fish and game. Later, former Governor Tony Knowles introduced a “State/Tribal” plan for subsistence co-management. This “knit one-pearl two” strategy meant the state managed and Alaska Natives cooperated. The plan had the same elements as House Bill 405 and Tribes were limited to act in an advisory capacity to the State of Alaska.

These state and federal policies reduce the dignity of the Elders and minimize the culture, customs and traditions of Alaska’s Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts. To devastating effect, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service take on the role of Elders and Traditional Council, and actual community Elders are forced to become no more than advisers to their families and tribal members.

The situation is untenable and inexcusable.

With delay and a lack of action expected from the notified parties, ABVN and other entities are planning an array of actions meant to raise the call of change and equal rights. Meanwhile, Desa Jacobsson will continue her fast until the assault on Alaskan Natives ceases.

Reporters are encouraged to contact Jacobsson through Carl Wassilie.

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Cindy Sheehan  cindy@cindysheehanssoapbox.com
Gregory Vickrey  202.487.1201  gregory@gregoryvickrey.com

On February 6, 2011, Peace of the Action (POTA) and renowned activist Cindy Sheehan held a planet-wide conference call to begin the process they are calling Re-Creating Revolutionary Communities (RevComs).

The conference included more than 150 participants working to pursue an egalitarian approach for global paradigm shift. The intent of the meeting was to lay out general steps for creating localized community efforts to serve the needs of people, place, and planet outside the parametric status quo of the modern, failing, corporate-controlled state.

During the interactive presentation, Ms. Sheehan stated, “We have raised awareness and we have changed people’s minds (to some degree), but now we need to change the empire. So my vision of revolution is a truly grassroots groundswell of communities, wresting control, money and our children out of the hands of what I call the robber class.”

Sheehan continued, “We can do this by appropriating for ourselves what should already be under our control: community banking, community farming, farmers markets, electing progressive revolutionaries to local school boards and city councils, a barter economy, and every cooperative one can think of.”

Participants submitted questions via email and twitter during the course of the conversation, and many participated in a live chat with Sheehan and other Peace of the Action Board members directly following the conference.

Re-Creating Revolutionary Communities will officially embark down its path the first week in March 2011, when several communities around the United States, Canada and elsewhere will bring people together locally for discussion of decision-making, logistics and next steps. Peace of the Action continues to build appropriate tools for integration of, and connections between, community efforts, and maintains a diverse resource list for strengthening this grassroots effort to overwhelm empire.

Media and activists alike are encouraged to contact Cindy Sheehan and Peace of the Action board member Gregory Vickrey for more information, and to engage.

Cindy Sheehan’s oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since then she has been working to make the world a more peaceful and just world. Sheehan set up Camp Casey outside of George Bush’s Crawford, Tx., ranch in 2005, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that year and ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi in SF in 2008–receiving 50,000 votes. She is currently National Director of Peace of the Action and has her own blog and radio show: Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.

Peace of the Action is dedicated to fostering actions that lead to peaceful revolutionary change.

We are quite honored that this piece has appeared in several venues before publishing here. Please visit each to show them your support, and share this page widely. We are especially grateful to:

United Progressives | CounterCurrents | OpEd News | EcoSocialism | Huntington (WV) News

This piece continues the series being presented by Cory Morningstar and Gregory Vickrey and is part of their anticipated and controversial book and multimedia project due out in 2011.

It is safe to assume that in modern political arenas, an approach to the climate change emergency through conventional directives will not work. Indeed, across every movement, from single payer health care to American wars and occupations abroad, the conventional has failed. And while we are very skilled at making excuses and providing analysis for some aspects of that failure, we are not very good at determining other, alternative mechanisms for change. The climate change movement is no exception to this reality.

Ineffective and otherwise corrupted major political parties in the United States and elsewhere reflect the failure of the masses to control our own political will, expand the solution sets we may desire, and reconstruct the fabric of society at its foundation. Corporate control of those parties, and more directly, elections and political offices, limits our collective effectiveness on the policy-making playgrounds of Washington DC and other capitals. And again, recent history on the global and national stages shows the climate movement no less co-opted by the rapacious institute of corporate control.

Capitalism is a sacrosanct concept for most, even though the modern system of capitalism isn’t pure by any means – in both positive and negative ways. Yet observing the modern capitalistic approach to the global economy through the climate lens demands we become critical of the very system that, to one degree or another, has provided for our lives of comfort in the first world. For instance, any analysis of a modern company like Nike demonstrates that both LeBron James and you and me can wear the hottest kicks as basketball season arrives, but those kicks are manufactured through the modern capitalistic directive of cheap labor – by the exploited hands of men, women, and children in southeast Asia in sweatshops and hell holes – and shipped worldwide via inefficient container ships and trucks wholly dependent upon fossil fuels.

Our shoes and sense of fashion, like nearly everything else in life, are intimately connected to the carbon economy.

Given that those in the climate change movement stand to piss off multi-national corporate conglomerates, the politicians they control, and LeBron James with any sort of meaningful approach, most have gone the way of standardized emails, sanitized campaigns, and symbolic actions.

NRDC was a lead author of the worthless bills peddled in the US Congress in 2010 that would have continued to subsidize fossil fuels and nuclear power, enriched the corporations behind their largest funders, and sacrificed future generations.

350.org wasted time, money, and activists organizing symbolic parties around the globe in the hopes that some leader somewhere would do something sometime, while selling a bunch of tshirts (guess where most are made) and propelling big oil (350 funders are dripping in it) back to the top of the greenwashing list.

The Nature Conservancy continues its close “win-win” partnership with BP.

Win-win?

All three, and plenty more, would like to keep us convinced that if only we green our consumptive way of life, we can keep it, with little or no sacrifice.

They are wrong.

And that means we are wrong.

Realistically, we know at best we have until 2020 to fully enact the changes necessary to overcome the fossil fuel economy and all if its derivatives. There is nothing comfortable about that reality, but it is the only opportunity we have to stem the tide of the global climate emergency. No part of the current economic and political systems has the flexibility to bring appropriate leadership, action plans, and strength of will to the fore. To quote your favorite American Democrat, Barack Obama: “It took a hundred years for health care (d)reform.” The psychology of entrenchment alone prevents significant movement from happening within 10 years; further, the fossil fuel aspect of the economy is the engine that drives the thing, controlling or having a powerful hand in nearly every facet of life, as well as policy. Knowing that, what makes anyone one of us believe the powers-that-be will wake up early enough in the 10 year period to acknowledge the need for removal of the carbon economy and the corporations that drive it, implement that removal, and maintain civil society as it currently is all at the same time? For argument’s sake, if a person is put in power to dismantle it against the will of the fossil fuel stasi, what sort of civil unrest will the fossil fuel economy create in order to stall the mechanics of change and sustain themselves?

Critical reflection should quickly allow us to answer these questions.

We no longer can afford to be afraid to read the truth. We no longer can afford to be afraid to reflect on our failure. We no longer can afford to avoid answering. We no longer can afford to avoid challenging the system for what it is.

Manufacturing discontent is an important method for the climate movement to employ in order to implement sound reasoning for moving away from modern capitalism and its predatory effects to something of the people. It is probably the most important component, because learning the truth about corporate control of our lives inherently leads to discontent amongst all but the richest in society. In order to spread the truth, the movement must create the mechanisms to deliver it in light of the greenwashing, debtwashing, status quo delivery of commercial policy and politics. Yet the calculus for creation isn’t difficult. Most people are burdened to the point of despair by debt, disease, and disaster. The discontent rests uneasily beneath the surface.

We simply need to set it free.

It is a scary notion to think about enacting. Few things are scarier than recognizing the system that allows us our creature comforts will fail – whether we control it via transition or not. Knowing that we probably have 10 years to implement the change required is frightening. Afraid as we are, however, an alternative is coming, and the question remains as to whether or not that alternative way of life will be one we collectively design. Climate reality is forcing the decision upon us. The system is preventing any semblance of action designed to preserve life. The responsibility is ours.

Positive systemic change as a goal can profoundly effect our ability to salvage what we can under the climate emergency, and alter other despotic modern conditions besides, from resource wars to global poverty to individual health. Implementation of that change beyond the impacts of our collective dissent will require a new brand of strategy and tactics, employed under the banner of humanity.

Discontent will drive components of change from beginning to end, perpetuating failure or manufacturing success.

One significant baseline where discontent rages and appears ready to be shaped lies within the constructs of the modern financial system, and there are reasons to believe allies across the political spectrum can unite in common purpose – overwhelming the status quo. Those engaged in climate activism – and most types of activism geared towards the collective – tend to lose these potential allies from the start, typically because the issue in hand has been given false AKA’s or due to the general perception of the movement itself.

Take five minutes now to silently consider the peace movement over the last few years. Your judgment at the end of those moments will likely be sound and profound.

Now look around the globe, and observe France, Portugal, the UK, Greece…

Do you see what can be seen?

When the opportunity to do what is right presents itself, as well as the means, we need to rise up and grasp it; for when it comes, there are only two ends: prevail or fail.

Up next in the series: Streets and Policies – Actions and Enactions for Everyone, From Darfur to DC.