How a Small Town Is Standing Up to Fracking

On October 24th, 2012, several agents from Pennsylvania General Energy, an oil-and-gas exploration company, met privately with local officials from the rural western Pennsylvania community of Grant Township. Fracking was booming in Pennsylvania, and PGE had been trucking tens of thousands of gallons of fracking wastewater to faraway injection wells in Ohio. Developing an injection well somewhere in Pennsylvania could save the company around $2 million a year, and Grant Township, a swath of woods and hayfields slightly larger than Manhattan and populated by a mere 741 people, seemed like an especially good spot.

Resisting Trump: What's Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement

After building a fierce grassroots movement and turning out voters in record numbers, immigrant communities have been struck with a mix of panic, anger and confusion as a divided nation prepares for President Donald Trump. Now, advocates are digging in their heels for a hard fight, and both immigrants and their allies are hurrying to make preparations before Trump takes office.

"It's important to note that he's not president yet," said Kamal Essaheb, policy and advocacy director at the National Immigration Law Center.

First Nations resist fuel and mining developments to protect us all

Last June, I spent three days in a Vancouver courtroom watching the Hupacasath First Nation argue their case against the federal government. The Hupacasath came robed, just like the judges and the lawyers. They weren’t wigged-out like the Department of Justice benchmen. They wore cedar woven headbands and hummingbird embroidered regalia (and underneath, comfortable blue jeans).

The Hupacasath were challenging Canada over the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (CC-FIPPA) on the basis that the treaty, with its implications on their sovereignty, should have triggered the duty to consult them under Section 35 of the constitution. Under CC-FIPPA, Canada would be locked into a 31-year deal that would allow Chinese corporations unprecedented access to Canadian resources. The agreement allows Chinese companies to sue Canada for passing laws -- environmental, labour, health or safety -- which impede their profit-making ability.

In These Mexican Towns, Mining Resistance Is Fertile

A steady stream of visitors trickled into Capulálpam de Méndez as dusk fell upon the Sierra Juárez mountains in southern Mexico one cold January evening. Despite the frosty overnight lows, over 400 farmers, indigenous leaders and environmental activists from throughout Latin America had joined roughly 1,400 residents of the Oaxacan mountain town to exchange experiences in the fight against mining companies in their respective communities.

It was no coincidence that Capulálpam was playing host to the "Yes to Life, No to Mining" event, a hemispheric grassroots gathering aimed at sharing lessons learned among mining-affected communities. In 2007, the town succeeded in having the operations of Vancouver-based Continuum Resources' Natividad mine suspended indefinitely, after demonstrating that it was behind both the contamination of a local river by arsenic and lead, and a decline in the local water table that dried up 13 local springs.

Iraq War resister Kim Rivera sent to prison this week for desertion

"Ultimately, the success of the nation depends on the character of its citizens." So said George W. Bush in his speech at the dedication of his presidential library in Texas last week. The library officially opened to the public May 1, the 10th anniversary of his famous "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, anchored just off the coast of San Diego. Bush, in his remarks at the library, along with President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others all failed to mention the word "Iraq."

The high stakes of Indigenous resistance

The blossoming of the Idle No More movement signals the return of Indigenous resistance to the political and social landscape of Canada and Quebec.

With its origins in Saskatchewan in October 2012, this mass movement has taken on the federal government and more specifically the adoption of Bill C-45.[1] Its origins lay not in the work of established organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations (although the AFN supports the initiative), but in a grassroots mobilization that has arisen in several parts of the country. This process echoes other recent citizen mobilizations such as the student carrés rouges in Quebec and the worldwide Occupy movement.

2012 Culture and Resistance with Alice Walker, Randy Weston, Walter Mosley, Gore Vidal and More

Today we look at the nexus of politics and art, airing highlights of our cultural coverage from the past year featuring Alice Walker, Walter Mosley, Tony Kushner, Randy Weston, Steve Earle, Randall Robinson, Toshi Reagon, Tom Morello and others. We pay tribute to the late Adrienne Rich, Gore Vidal and Whitney Houston and mark the centennial of the birth of Woody Guthrie

Original Article
Source: Democracy Now!
Author: --

'Longest running' First Nations blockade continues

First Nations activists were back at the blockade on Monday after celebrating a decade of turning back logging trucks from Grassy Narrows traditional lands.

The road block first went up at Slant Lake, about 600 km northwest of Thunder Bay, on Dec. 2, 2002.

Chicago Teachers, Verizon Workers and Quebec's Students Prove That Resistance Works

Teachers in Chicago, Verizon workers, and students in Quebec recently proved that not only are strikes and general resistance and dissent essential to any democracy, they also work.

Despite ongoing efforts by private education lobbyists and a complacent national media working to smear teachers as being selfish, greedy leeches on society, educators in Chicago secured a major victory for themselves and their students.