Do you and/or a group you belong to have a vision of how to move into the near future?
I say NEAR future because huge changes, on many levels, are occurring at an accelerating rate. And my sense is most people are feeling increasingly helpless and hopeless.
Recently I’ve been in contact with the Climate Mobilization Network, which has re-evaluated their strategies to address our climate emergency. “We are incubating local movements rooted in healing, community care, and climate survival mutual aid that asserts our needs in the face of climate disaster.”
Why We Decide to Pause and Transform our Strategy
Congressional failure to take meaningful action on climate
The slow pace of local climate programs where policy change is severely limited by what’s considered politically possible
Rising inequality amid continued neoliberalism
Escalating climate disasters that are hitting global and US-based frontline communities the hardest and will continue accelerating rapidly!
And widespread cultural and generational concern about climate change has not yet been tapped into effectively by a mass movement.
This collective visioning, movement incubation and learning gathering will equip you with space for reflection, new ideas, inspiration, and next steps to participate in this new campaign.
Together we will build relationships and explore:
How survival and mutual aid programs can grow the movement
New, creative approaches to taking action against fossil fuels
Ways to integrate healing into our work
And how to create space for reflection, intentionality and strategic clarity
“Quakers will only be truly prophetic when they risk a great deal of their accumulated privilege and access to wealth. Prophets cannot have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Any attempt to change a system while benefiting and protecting the benefits received from the system reinforces the system. Quakers as much as anyone not only refuse to reject their white privilege, they fail to reject the benefits they receive from institutionalized racism, trying to make an unjust economy and institutionalized racism and patriarch more fair and equitable in its ability to exploit. One can not simultaneously attack racist and patriarchal institutions and benefit from them at the same time without becoming more reliant upon the benefits and further entrenching the system. Liberalism at its laziest.”
Will the existential threat of environmental devastation ever be taken seriously by capitalist countries?
Approval of the Willow Project is just the latest decision that will result in the emission of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Another recent decision by the Biden administration was the release of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve solely to bring down gas prices.
The administration’s justifications were the valid leases of ConocoPhillips and that the courts would block the rejection of the project. One point is what are “valid rights on the land” in regard to Indigenous peoples?
As long as capitalism is the economic model of a country, fossil fuels will continue to be burned to drive that economy. Which is why we need to move to models such as Mutual Aid where profits are not the goal of society as soon as possible.
The Biden administration was limited by legal restraints in reviewing the Willow oil project, according to a White House official who said the company had valid rights on the land because of decades-old leases.
The administration was convinced the courts would have blocked an outright rejection of the Willow project and potentially imposed fines on the government, said the official, who spoke about the White House’s considerations on the condition of anonymity.
Biden approves Willow Project. What to know about the move to allow oil drilling in Alaska by Sarah Elbeshbishi, USA Today, March 15, 2023
Instead of sticking to his own climate goals and listening to the people of the Village of Nuiqsut and the millions of us who got #StopWillow to nearly one billion views on TikTok, he let the fossil fuel industry win.
The Willow Project is a dangerous climate bomb — an $8 billion fossil fuel infrastructure project in Alaska, which would emit over 287 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, threaten Indigenous Alaska Native communities and destroy wild landscapes north of the Arctic Circle.
We’re living through an unprecedented climate crisis that will wreak havoc upon the lives of billions of people across the world, and for generations to come. We can’t afford any more drilling on our land.
The decision on Willow is shameful and a devastating blow to our generation. And it’s a reminder that the fossil fuel industry still holds so much power over us and our future. But if we can build enough people power, we know that together, we can defeat them.
We are the generation of a Green New Deal and we will keep fighting for our planet and our futures.
Sunrise Movement
We are the generation of a Green New Deal and we will keep fighting for our planet and our futures.
Sunrise Movement
The Biden administration on Monday announced that it is approving the largest-ever proposed oil drilling project on U.S. public lands, in a direct repudiation of research warning that new fossil fuel development must cease to preserve a safe climate.
The Interior Department approved ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project, located in one of the fastest-warming regions of the world. If completed, this project would produce the equivalent of an estimated 263 million tons of carbon dioxide over 30 years. This is about the same as building 20 new gas plants and running them for the same time period; burning 8.8 billion pounds of coal every year for 30 years; or adding 1.7 million cars to the road.
Willow is not just an “environmentalist” concern. HEATED analyzed 30 national news stories about the Willow project and found that 75 percent framed its importance as primarily political by Arielle Samuelson and Emily Atkin, HEATED, March 15, 2023
Quakers have a long history of working for justice and social change. But what do we (Quakers) do when we realize change is necessary now? Throughout our history we have been led to see we are implicated in injustice. “Led” means the Spirit has shown what the injustices are, and what changes should be made. Most commonly, individuals discern what change is needed, and over time they and the Spirit convince others.
As my friend Lucy Duncan writes, “we as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous.”
The myths we tell ourselves and the lies those myths uphold are embedded in our contemporary faith practice. When we believe and perpetuate falsehoods about ourselves, it not only disconnects us from the truth, it also limits our ability to act with full integrity today. Telling the truth about ourselves and our White Quaker ancestors grounds us in reality, in a sense of the complexity of our identity. It allows us to create a different future, not built from delusion and half of the story but from an honest and grounded reckoning with who we are and who we have been. My friend Mila Hamilton calls this “intergenerational transformative justice.” As we deal with the uncomfortable truths of our White Quaker ancestors, we release them from the amber in which our myths have captured them. As we allow them to become the full, flawed humans they were, we also free ourselves to reckon with our present, which arises from their past, and to tell the full truth of who we are.
…
We as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous. Claiming the full truth of our history and committing to repair the harms done are deeply spiritual acts of healing our own wounds of disconnection. I would argue it is the pathway upon which we can, perhaps for the first time, discover and invigorate our faith with its full promise.
What would it mean for us to take seriously and collectively as a Religious Society a call to finish the work of abolition, hand in hand and side by side with those affected and their loved ones? What would it mean for us to stand fully with the calls to abolish the police and fully fund community needs instead? What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm and fully dedicate ourselves to the creation of a liberating Quaker faith that commits to build the revolutionary and healing faith we long to see come to fruition? What would it look like to finally and fully abolish slavery?
It can take a long time for change to occur. Personally, I’ve been working since the early 1970’s to convince Friends to consider my spiritual leading to drastically reduce our carbon footprint, including not having an automobile.
Most of our values, beliefs and assumptions regarding livelihoods need to be radically transformed in order to move into activities that are sustainable. If this transition is ever to occur, we must be able to visualize and share the details of these alternative occupations and embrace new social metrics to support those occupations.
I try to imagine myself making a move into a livelihood that would be fundamentally sustainable like the critical but overlooked work done by a young man I know who shuttles vegetable waste from homes in his neighborhood to a small composting center in his community by bicycle. He then sells and delivers by bike finished compost to neighbors with gardens. If I chose to move into this “career” my friends would think I had lost my mind. My friends might ridicule me. Certainly, they would worry about me! And worse, some people, perhaps even including my spouse, might simply think they no longer had anything in common with me. It’s like giving up alcohol in an alcohol inundated world. You stand outside, you are not one of the groups any longer. In reality, I would need to build an entirely new social network with different values and notions of success, a network that would respect my choices and understand their importance. Because living and working, having lifestyles and livelihoods that are truly regenerative and sustainable look nothing like how most of us live and work now. The cultural transition and change in our values and the metrics we use to measure our sense of success, therefore our identities, is hard to imagine, not to mention implement.
Nevertheless, I have interviewed people with very low carbon livelihoods and lifestyles, highly moral people who work and live outside of mainstream jobs and careers. And guess what? They did indeed initially have to suffer social backlash from family and friends for their lifestyle and work choices.
Against the Economic Grain: Addressing the Social Challenges of Sustainable Livelihoods by Kim Kendall, Resilience.org, January 27, 2023
One of the things I appreciate in our spiritual practice is for the Quaker meeting to use questions to consider where we are today in our faith. For example, the following are the queries related to social and economic justice.
“For when I was hungry you gave me food, when thirsty you gave me drink, when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked you clothed me, when in prison you visited me.” Matthew 25:35‑36
ADVICE
We are part of an economic system characterized by inequality and exploitation. Such a society is defended and perpetuated by entrenched power.
Friends can help relieve social and economic oppression and injustice by first seeking spiritual guidance in our own lives. We envision a system of social and economic justice that ensures the right of every individual to be loved and cared for; to receive a sound education; to find useful employment; to receive appropriate health care; to secure adequate housing; to obtain redress through the legal system; and to live and die in dignity. Friends maintain historic concern for the fair and humane treatment of persons in penal and mental institutions.
Wide disparities in economic and social conditions exist among groups in our society and among nations of the world. While most of us are able to be responsible for our own economic circumstances, we must not overlook the effects of unequal opportunities among people. Friends’ belief in the Divine within everyone leads us to support institutions which meet human needs and to seek to change institutions which fail to meet human needs. We strengthen community when we work with others to help promote justice for all.
QUERIES
How are we beneficiaries of inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?
What can we do to improve theconditions in our correctional institutions and to address the mental and social problems of those confined there?
How can we improve our understanding of those who are driven to violence by subjection to racial, economic or political injustice? In what ways do we oppose prejudice and injustice based on gender, sexual orientation, class, race, age, and physical, mental and emotional conditions? How would individuals benefit from a society that values everyone? How would society benefit?
“We are part of an economic system characterized by inequality and exploitation. Such a society is defended and perpetuated by entrenched power. How are we beneficiaries of inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?”
Injustice cannot be addressed as long as we are involved in the system of injustice, in this case, capitalism. As my good friend Ronnie James says:
I’m of the firm opinion that a system that was built by stolen bodies on stolen land for the benefit of a few is a system that is not repairable. It is operating as designed, and small changes (which are the result of huge efforts) to lessen the blow on those it was not designed for are merely half measures that can’t ever fully succeed.
So, the question is now, where do we go from here? Do we continue to make incremental changes while the wealthy hoard more wealth and the climate crisis deepens, or do we do something drastic that has never been done before? Can we envision and create a world where a class war from above isn’t a reality anymore?”
Ronnie James
The following is a diagram I’ve been working on for several years to visualize unjust systems and possible alternatives. On the left is capitalism, built on colonialism. The red vertical bar indicates forces that interfere with making changes. Failing and corrupt institutions, authoritarianism, and environmental chaos. If we can move past those resistances, we can build communities for a viable and just future.
I’ve been part of a Mutual Aid community for the past three years. That experience convinces me the Mutual Aid is a vital component of a more just future for us all. It is a way to escape the capitalist economic system, which I’ve written about extensively. (See: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/ )
The battle to stop construction of the proposed militarized police training facility being referred to as “Cop City” in the Atlanta Forest has many components.
Militarized policing
At this time of endless instances of militarized policing the last thing we need is a facility to train police to use these tactics. To train police from all over the country. International?
Training will be provided for urban warfare. Including helicopter pads and a mock city.
Of course, the location chosen was right next to communities of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Where men, women and children who are already traumatized by policing would hear all the shooting from the training facility.
Police from multiple agencies have continually harassed tree defenders. Manuel Teran (Tortuguita) was killed by police.
Indigenous rights
“You must immediately vacate Mvskoke homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous and Black people in Mvskoke lands” (Atlanta Forest)
Civil liberties
As is occurring all over the country, civil disobedience and protest is being threatened by elevating charges to domestic terrorism.
MY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, a group of Mvskoke Creek activists interrupted a Regional Commission meeting and attempted to give an eviction notice to the Atlanta mayor.
MVSKOKE CREEK ACTIVIST 1: Objection. Objection. We have a letter being delivered from the Mvskoke Creek Nation on behalf of Mvskoke Creek spiritual leadership in opposition to Cop City.
MVSKOKE CREEK ACTIVIST 2: I came all the way on the Trail of Tears to deliver this letter to you folks.
UNIDENTIFIED: You’re welcome to leave.
MVSKOKE CREEK ACTIVIST 2: We want you to know that the contemporary Mvskoke people are now making their journey back to our homelands and hereby give notice to Mayor Andre Dickens, the Atlanta City Council, the Atlanta Police Department, the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Dekalb County Sheriff’s Office, and so-called Cop City, that you must immediately vacate Mvskoke homelands and cease violence and policing of Indigenous and Black people in Mvskoke lands. We also ask for an independent investigation into the assassination of our relative Tortuguita and that the charges be dropped against Weelaunee Forest defenders.
On 1/31/2023, a number of people who are involved in justice work in central Iowa gathered at the offices of the law firm that represents Corporation Services Company. Which in turn represents U.S. Multifamily Capital Markets at Cushman and Wakefield. John O’Neill is the President of U.S. Multifamily Capital Markets. He sits on the executive committee board for the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is building “Cop City” in Atlanta. Where Manuel Teran (Tortuguita) was killed by police who were clearing tree sitters from the proposed construction area.
Following are some of the photos I took at our action that morning.
I previously began to describe the Cecosesola Co-op (See: http://bit.ly/3mrdtop). I had been doing research to find examples of large mutual aid communities when I started to see stories about Cecosesola. This InfoGraphic from Venequelanalysis shows there are one thousand three hundred people involved.
On September 29, 2022, Cecosesola received the Right Livelihood Award, a Swedish prize often known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” This award honors people and organizations that encourage social change. According to a statement issued by the Right Livelihood Foundation, the prize was given to Cecosesola for “establishing an equitable and cooperative economic model as a robust alternative to profit-driven economies.”
In what follows, we talk to three of the cooperative’s associates – Lizeth Vargas, Ender Duarte, and Gustavo Salas – about their project which serves hundreds of thousands of people and is a model for non-hierarchical organizational practices.
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20th 2022.
maps.google.com
Can you tell us the story of Cecosesola?
Gustavo Salas: Cecosesola was born in the 1960s when the Centro Gumilla [a Catholic investigation center for social action] promoted the organizing of cooperatives in the most precarious barrios of Barquisimeto [Lara state, center-western Venezuela]. That is when poor, working-class people began to set aside a bit of money every month to build their own cooperatives.
In other countries, co-ops have a middle-class base, but many Venezuelan cooperatives have a working-class one: that is, co-ops here often begin to take shape in the poorest barrios.
The first cooperatives in Barquisimeto were founded by people with a great deal of commitment to social work and community work. They eventually came together in Cecosesola, a co-op center or a co-op of co-ops [the acronym stands for Central Cooperativa de Servicios Sociales de Lara]. The first Cecosesola project was one that addressed an immediate need of the people: funerary services.
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20th 2022.
This first iteration of building the community didn’t succeed. Interestingly, it was a bus boycott that re-initiated Cecosesola, which brings to mind the Montogomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
National coverage of the boycott and King’s trial resulted in support from people outside Montgomery. In early 1956 veteran pacifists Bayard Rustin and Glenn E. Smiley visited Montgomery and offered King advice on the application of Gandhian techniques and nonviolence to American race relations. Rustin, Ella Baker, and Stanley Levison founded In Friendship to raise funds in the North for southern civil rights efforts, including the bus boycott. King absorbed ideas from these proponents of nonviolent direct action and crafted his own syntheses of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. He said: “Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail”).
On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses. The court’s decision came the same day that King and the MIA were in circuit court challenging an injunction against the MIA carpools. Resolved not to end the boycott until the order to desegregate the buses actually arrived in Montgomery, the MIA operated without the carpool system for a month. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, and on 20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott; the community agreed. The next morning, he boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery”
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Stanford University, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
A few years after the foundation of Cecosesola, in 1974, there was a feeling of dissatisfaction brewing among workers and members. Enthusiasm and hopes had vanished, and Cecosesola was now closer to a capitalist enterprise than a social movement or a community-based organization.
As it happens, Cecosesola was immersed in an internal debate. At the time, people of Barquisimeto were on the streets en masse, protesting a hike in bus fares. That is when the Cecosesola bases, those who were pushing to reinstate the original grassroots logic of the organization saw an opportunity to rekindle the cooperative project. Following Cecosesola’s early footsteps and grassroots mission, we built a transportation project that would keep fares down. There were no bosses in this project, which thus reactivated our on-the-ground work. In the end, we ended up assuming many transport routes in Barquisimeto.
Even though the transportation initiative was associated with Cecosesola, it didn’t reproduce the existing hierarchical order. The project became an opportunity to reorganize things and do away with bosses. In fact, the transport initiative would hold massive meetings on a regular basis, and all 300 associated workers would participate in each meeting!
In the beginning, the whole thing was very chaotic: collective decision-making isn’t easy when society is completely based on hierarchies. However, as the transport project became consolidated, it began to leave its imprint on Cecosesola. Eventually, we displaced the conventional top-down model with a system of direct participation that integrates workers and associates alike.
That is how Cecosesola, including its funerary services, was returned to the community, to its origins. Now we have an open administration without intermediation and with direct participation.
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20th 2022.
What are the principles behind Cecosesola’s modus operandi?
Ender Duarte: Rather than principles set out on paper, we have a set of ideas or principles that organize and regulate our day-to-day practices.
Our key ideas are mutuality, respect, and transparency, which are all important to building relationships of trust. In other words, mutual care and solidarity are our driving forces.
These practices guide our day-to-day activities, be they funerary services, healthcare, or food production and distribution. If we break away from our fundamentals, we would break the relationships of trust that we have been developing with so much care and love.
As we work, we are doing away with relations based on exploitation and domination. Ours is an organization without bosses. Over the years we have learned that the ever-present shadow of hierarchies can only be abolished with mutual respect and trust.
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20th 2022.
What are the main teachings that Cecosesola can share with people about how to make a better world?
Gustavo Salas: If we want to transform our society, we have to do away with hierarchies. When Cecosesola was born, it generated a great deal of enthusiasm and passion. However, when a conventional, top-down administration emerged, that flower wilted. The hierarchical structure separated people from the organization and they went back home. Why? Even when a boss or leader figure has good intentions, the other vanishes: he or she is erased.
When Cecosesola was re-initiated, we did so by going back to the basics. We rebuilt an organization where everyone has a voice and everyone counts. If we really want to live in a more just society, we have to break away from the prevailing logic, and we have to find new organizational models.
Capitalist enterprises are not a model for us; the same goes for governmental enterprises. At Cecosesola we are exploring a new model based on mutuality. The model works, so now we are working hard to perfect it.
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20th 2022.
I recently attended a Zoom meeting hosted by the Climate Mobilization Network. I was interested because I’ve been following the Climate Mobilization Network’s work for years.
They articulate what has not been working and that they are looking into different strategies that might be successful. I was especially interested to discover their emphasis on Mutual Aid programs.
This collective visioning, movement incubation and learning gathering will equip you with space for reflection, new ideas, inspiration, and next steps to participate in this new campaign.
Together we will build relationships and explore:
How survival and mutual aid programs can grow the movement
New, creative approaches to taking action against fossil fuels
Ways to integrate healing into our work
And how to create space for reflection, intentionality and strategic clarity
We reached out to more than 20 leaders across the Just Transition movement to guide our strategic planning process – we asked them about what learnings, gaps, and critical takeaways they saw emerging in their movement work. The opportunities that interviewees identified our movement needs to build on included:
We need more support for escalating, disruptive direct actions
We need work building a movement of movements
We need local organizing & base building as a foundation for larger mass movement
We need solutions outside of government
We need a more coherent, clear, and unified narrative strategy and message
We need more training on healing and community care as the center of our movements – and a politics of empathy and love at the center of our movements
Climate Mobilization’s 2023 Pilot Programs: Political Education on Climate Survival, Healing Justice, Movement History and the Need for Escalated Direct Action
After processing our movement analysis, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of our current focus campaigns and Network – and realizing the need for more radical and inventive approaches to addressing the climate emergency – we decided to build for our pilot program to focus on building out a transformational, motivational and commitment-driven political education training program that builds understanding, alignment and action around the need for climate survival programs and escalated, coordinated, and creative direct action.
This includes:
Direct action strategy and tactics from Indigenous struggles, from the Global South & from history, encouraging participants to develop their emergent ideas
Why and how to start mutual aid based climate survival programs – pulling case studies for effective models of sustained community resilience
Mass movement history & state of current climate / need for climate survival
Healing Justice organizing practices addressing burnout, trauma, climate grief at the root cause; integrating organizing and healing justice approaches into one, making climate organizing a more joyous, community-oriented, accessible, and sustainable practice for all peoples to get involved in – with a focus on building out leadership of resilience of frontline communities
Why This: Political education is movement connective tissue and a key resource for organizers to become more resilient, effective and reflective. Climate organizing in the US is particularly disconnected from the important resources offered by movement history rooted in global context.
Why Now: This program addresses several emergent movement needs:
Burnout is at an all-time high, a signal to reflect, rebuild resilience, shift organizing practices across the movement to center healing, and re-root our organizations in movement history.
Climate groups’ interest in direct action remains high, while increasing numbers of groups working on other issues will be trying to add climate programs. We will provide a container for this work.
We’ve also heard concerns that the direct action toolbox and strategy need to be expanded and strengthened.
This program will forge common ground among a burgeoning climate survival movement that brings together climate and non-climate groups. Alignment and political education around direct action, healing justice and mass movement history is an unmet need across sectors; the training will also provide an appealing, approachable framework for groups new to climate work to launch climate survival programs. The focus is on moving people to launch direct action and climate survival programs, change their organizing practices (to incorporate a climate survival focus and become more healing justice centered), and access improved resilience in the work they are already doing.
Simultaneously, as the climate warms, as storms and disasters worsen, as infrastructure crumbles, and as more and more people are left jobless and houseless, the true reason the political class pumps ever more resources into militarization is being revealed: It’s not to protect against some so-called “crime wave” the corporate media constantly fear mongers about, but instead to police the very collapse of capitalism itself.
There are many efforts emerging to address the racism, militarism, and violence of policing in this country. These efforts are growing because they are at the intersection of capitalism, white supremacy, racism, militarism, authoritarianism, ongoing environmental devastation, and police and prison abolition.
A monumental struggle is currently taking place in the Weelaunee Forest in DeKalb County near Atlanta, Georgia.
The local government plans to level 85 acres of the forest to build a $90 million police training facility. The natural environment that would be lost is not only a precious recreational resource for Atlanta residents, but a crucial bulwark protecting against flooding and other climate change-related disasters, which are on the rise. Despite city leaders’ commitment to ramming the project through undemocratically, a decentralized campaign known as #StopCopCity is fighting back.
The movement is connecting police and prison abolition with environmental justice, and uniting organizations and individuals from across the political spectrum in demanding the city divert resources away from militarization and towards fighting climate change and protecting Black and brown lives.
The threat of a militarized megadevelopment, and the intersectional, multiracial coalition mobilizing to resist it, bear some striking parallels with the recently-opened police academy in Garfield Park, Chicago — and the youth-led #NoCopAcademy campaign that fought its construction nearly six years ago.
Simultaneously, as the climate warms, as storms and disasters worsen, as infrastructure crumbles, and as more and more people are left jobless and houseless, the true reason the political class pumps ever more resources into militarization is being revealed: It’s not to protect against some so-called “crime wave” the corporate media constantly fear mongers about, but instead to police the very collapse of capitalism itself.
Keeping poor and working people at bay while their communities are dismantled, their lands are poisoned, and their lives deemed insignificant can only be achieved through brute force. We are witnessing the robber barons barricade themselves in, sealed away from the catastrophes they created, with the same resources they stole from the people on the other side of the wall.
No Cop City Anywhere. Chicago’s #NoCopAcademy campaign and #StopCopCity in Atlanta are part of the same movement: to end violent policing, protect the environment and defend Black and brown lives by BENJI HART, In These Times, FEBRUARY 22, 2023
As one example, solidarity is being built to support cities facing proposed construction of huge police training facilities. Some of these projects are referred to as No Cop City(Atlanta), No Cop Academy (Chicago), and Detroit Cop City (Detroit).
Since april 2021, police abolitionists and environmentalists have been engaged in a furious struggle to prevent the destruction of a precious stretch of forest in Atlanta, Georgia, where the government aims to build a police training compound and facilitate the construction of a giant soundstage for the film industry. In this essay, participants in the movement chronicle a year of action, tracing the movement’s victories and setbacks and exploring the strategies that inform it. This campaign represents a crucial effort to chart new paths forward in the wake of the George Floyd Rebellion, linking the defense of the land that sustains us with the struggle against police.
CRIMETHINC. EX-WORKERS COLLECTIVE CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. We strive to reinvent our lives and our world according to the principles of self-determination and mutual aid. www.crimethinc.com | USA, May 2022
Environmental Justice
The term “environmental justice” recognizes that environmental “bads” are not distributed evenly. Over generations, the effects of systematic racism concentrate environmental “bads” among the marginalized. Specifically, those cumulative effects concentrate the “bads” among people of color.
In June 2022, Kwame Olufemi of Community Movement Builders told 11Alive News, “If you know anything about Atlanta at (all) then you know the places that flood the most are on the south side … In destroying the forest they’re going to exasperate those issues they’ve already had with peoples town flooding … It’s clearly not for us, it’s not for our community, and it’s going to be adverse to us and our people.”
“Cop City is a catalyst for further nationwide militarization of the police and the continued expansion of the surveillance state,” Defend the Atlanta Forest argues. “This development would remove a natural barrier to flooding and pollution for communities downstream … These [effects] would primarily affect BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] communities in Dekalb County that the city has chosen to ignore.”
The campaign to defend the forest in Atlanta, Georgia has become one of the most vibrant movements of the post-Trump era, interweaving environmentalism, abolitionism, and the fight against gentrification. Yet as police shift to employing lethal violence and indiscriminate terrorism charges, it has reached a critical juncture. Participants explore how this struggle has developed over the past year, reflecting on the practices that have given it strength and analyzing the challenges before it.
Our society is at a crisis point. Decades of escalating economic pressure have created rampant inequality and desperation. Rather than addressing the root causes of these, politicians across the political spectrum continue channeling more and more money to police, relying on them to suppress unrest by force alone. This dependance has enabled police departments and their allies to consume a vast amount of public resources. Meanwhile, driven by the same economic pressures, catastrophic climate change is generating hurricanes, forest fires, droughts, and widespread ecological collapse.
In this context, starting in April 2021, a bold movement set out to defend a forest in Atlanta, Georgia, where local politicians and corporate profiteers want to build a police training compound and a soundstage for the film industry. The training compound, known as Cop City, would be the largest police training facility in the United States. It would devastate the South River Forest, also known as Weelaunee Forest in honor of the Muscogee Creek people who lived there until they were deported in the Trail of Tears.
The Forest in the City. Two Years of Forest Defense in Atlanta, Georgia, Crimethinc, 2023-02-22
The Atlanta Police Foundation has plans–backed by $60 million in corporate funding and $30 million in taxpayer money–to build an enormous police training facility over the city’s Weelaunee Forest.
Activists and forest defenders are calling the plan “Cop City,” as it will include a mock village (complete with a nightclub), a Black Hawk helipad, an emergency vehicle driving course, dozens of firing ranges, and an area for explosives training.
The neighborhoods that surround the forest are largely made up of lower-income Black residents. Cop City will decimate green space, which is already so rare in BIPOC communities, and replace it with a playground for the police to practice warfare tactics.
Communities of color live with police-induced trauma every day. Now this Atlanta community will feel and hear the presence of a training facility where cops learn new ways to enact violence against Black and Brown communities, right in their own backyard.
In addition to the terror of an ever-present police force, Cop City is an environmental racism nightmare. The Weelaunee Forest provides ecological relief for the people of Atlanta. It offsets stormwater runoff, which might otherwise push unwanted sediment into the drinking water. The mere presence of trees helps to keep the city cool during the long, hot, humid summers, and improves air quality by reducing carbon dioxide released into the air.
Cop City has been gaining nationwide attention, and for good reason. The city of Atlanta, its police force, and its corporate sponsors are actively cooperating to increase police power, at a time when police departments are under scrutiny for abusing that power.
Cop City will do irreparable harm to the city of Atlanta, and inspire more play villages for cops across the country. But there’s hope. Cop City does not have the full funding necessary to scale the project from private entities, meaning there is still time to put pressure on these investors to halt all funding to the Atlanta Police Foundation and APF Support Inc.
Dozens of protesters made their way through downtown Detroit Friday afternoon before halting to a stop in the middle of Congress and Griswold, blocking traffic and prompting angry drivers to blare their horns.
“Stop Cop City!” the crowd chanted. “I am…a revolutionary!”
The march followed a rally with members of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, Michigan Liberation, Detroit Will Breathe and several other social and environmental justice groups in a show of solidarity with protesters in the Atlanta area. For nearly two years, organizers and activists in Georgia have been protesting against “Cop City,” an 85-acre, $90 million police training center being developed in a forested area near Atlanta. In recent weeks, the “Stop Cop City” movement has spread across the country after an environmental protester defending the Georgia forest was killed by state police, and more than a dozen protesters were arrested.
In Detroit, protesters Friday spoke in opposition to a similar situation in Michigan – the expansion of Camp Grayling, a military training facility in the northern part of the state. Last year, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources began notifying locals that the National Guard wants to lease 162,000 acres of state-owned land across several counties, more than doubling its current training grounds, reported Bridge Michigan. The Guard said it needs the land to make Camp Grayling a destination for year-round cyber, electronic and space warfare training.
This morning (1/31/2023) a number of people who are involved in justice work in central Iowa gathered at the offices of the law firm that represents Corporation Services Company. Which in turn represents U.S. Multifamily Capital Markets at Cushman and Wakefield. John O’Neill is the President of U.S. Multifamily Capital Markets. He sits on the executive committee board for the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is building “Cop City” in Atlanta. Where Manuel Teran (Tortuguita) was killed by police who were clearing tree sitters from the proposed construction area.
Following are some of the photos I took at our action that morning.
I’ve been enthusiastically involved in Mutual Aid for three years. I’ve also been frustrated for those years, because I haven’t been able to tell others what a significant change Mutual Aid represents. Recently discovering Cecosesola will help with that, I think. “The theoretical frameworks for Protest and Social Movements are not sufficient to understand the emergent horizontal and prefigurative practices.”
What has been taking place in disparate places around the world is part of a new wave that is both revolutionary in the day-to-day sense of the word, as well as without precedent with regard to consistency of form, politics, scope and scale. The current frameworks provided by the social sciences and traditional left to understand these movements have yet to catch up with what is new and different about them. Specifically, the theoretical frameworks for Protest and Social Movements are not sufficient to understand the emergent horizontal and prefigurative practices. I suggest we think beyond these frames, and do so first by listening to, and with, those societies and groups organizing from below – and to the left.
… People from below are rising up, but rather than going towards the top – ‘from the bottom up’, they are moving as the Zapatistas suggested, ‘From below and to the left, where the heart resides.’ Power over, hierarchy and representation are being rejected, ideologically and by default, and in the rejection mass horizontal assemblies are opening new landscapes with the horizon of autonomy and freedom.
Those who live in Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) communities have been on the front lines, building such communities for years. because they have never fully benefited from the systems of white superiority, dominance, and capitalism.
On September 29, 2022, Cecosesola received the Right Livelihood Award, a Swedish prize often known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” This award honors people and organizations that encourage social change. According to a statement issued by the Right Livelihood Foundation, the prize was given to Cecosesola for “establishing an equitable and cooperative economic model as a robust alternative to profit-driven economies.”
An Alternative to Capitalist Hierarchies: A Conversation with the Cecosesola Co-op. A Venezuelan cooperative network that recently received the “Alternative Nobel Prize” tells its story by Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis, Nov 20, 2022
I have been amazed at how my Mutual Aid community functions. The services to those who are houseless, jail and court solidarity, and our free food project are some of the things we do. With no government support.
Something new is happening – something new in content, depth, breadth and global consistency. Societies around the world are in movement
For a long time, I’ve been looking for stories about large groups of people who have established Mutual Aid communities. I haven’t been quite sure what that would look like. The Mutual Aid community I have been part of is pretty small. The free food project usually involves about eighty people. A dozen of us filling and passing out the food boxes, about fifty people picking up food boxes, and about ten people from the places that donate the food. All of these people are part of our Mutual Aid community. That’s one of the keys of Mutual Aid, we’re all in it together. Working to avoid hierarchy.
I also wanted to find examples of large Mutual Aid communities because, when I explain what I know about Mutual Aid to others, they see us as just another one of the usual small community service groups. And they don’t see how the ideas of Mutual Aid could scale.
Those are reasons why I’m excited to be learning about Cecosesola
Cecosesola was established in Barquisimeto, capital of the State of Lara, in the central western region of Venezuela, as a cooperative integration organization on December 17, 1967. It is a meeting place where more than 50 community organizations are active, integrated in a network of production of goods and services that brings together more than 23,000 members from the popular sectors. Through this network, we develop a wide variety of activities such as: agricultural production, small-scale agro-industrial production, funeral services, transportation, health services, financial services, mutual aid funds, distribution of foods and household items. We are made up of about 1,300 associated workers who manage daily activities through participation that is open to everyone, without hierarchical positions.
I came across these black and white photos from an earlier age. 1970 seems so far away.
Close to fifty years ago I had a life-changing vision related to mountains and air pollution. A horrific vision of my beloved Rocky Mountains hidden in clouds of smog, the very thing that did happen in an area near the Himalayas.
My vision was related to this photo of Long’s Peak rising above Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. I can barely bring myself to remember that vision of Long’s Peak hidden in smog.
Long’s Peak above Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
That vision determined the course of my life. From that day I sought the Spirit to guide me in ways to protect Mother Earth. That led me to live without having a car, and the myriad of things that happened as a result. The unintended consequences, most of them very good.
I developed the film and printed these photos in a darkroom I had set up in my bathroom. One reason I’m often reminded of this vision is because this photo was hanging on my wall
These black and white photos remind me of the lyrics of the song “Blue” by Troye Sivan.
I know you’re seeing black and white So, I’ll paint you a clear blue sky Without you I am colour-blind It’s raining every time I open my eyes
“Blue” by Troye Sivan
And Worldwide Beautiful by Kane Brown, who is multiracial.
You’re missing every color if you’re only seeing black and white Tell me how you’re gonna change your mind if your heart’s unmovable We ain’t that different from each other, from one to another I look around and see worldwide beautiful
It’s just unbelievable, or sadly, it is believable, that Congress can suggest severe cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Social Security, Medicare, and other social safety net programs. All of which could be paid for by a small fraction of the military budget. This is just another example of the government being incapable of helping us. And/or unwilling to do so.
The following is from Des Moines Mutual Aid, that I am proud to be a part of.
In the late 1970’s the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed tens of thousands of children daily. Our free food project in Des Moines is a continuation of the program started by the Des Moines Chapter of The Black Panther Party for Self Defense fifty years ago.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation recognized what a threat the free food program was to the status quo in those days.
Free food seemed relatively innocuous, but not to FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who loathed the Black Panther Party and declared war against them in 1969. He called the program “potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for,” and gave carte blanche to law enforcement to destroy it.
How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government. The Panthers’ popular breakfast programs put pressure on political leaders to feed children before school by ERIN BLAKEMORE, History.com, FEB 6, 2018
Newly uncovered FBI records are a poignant reminder of just how long African Americans and others have been demanding fair treatment from the law. Together with the marches across the nation last year after the killing of George Floyd, the records serve as a stark reminder why lasting police reform can no longer be delayed.
The FBI documents shed new light on a scandalous raid on a Black Panthers apartment on Chicago’s West Side on Dec. 4, 1969. In the pre-dawn raid, officers under the command of then-Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan shot and killed Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
The killing of two Black Panthers, the secrets of the FBI — and our nation’s long fight for police reform. Newly released documents shed disturbing light on the FBI’s involvement in a 1969 police raid that resulted in the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by CST Editorial Board, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan 24, 2021,
When those in authority talk about threats, they are referring to social, political, and militarized policing threats. Threats of violence and death.
It’s important to point out that Mutual Aid is absolutely nonviolent. Violence is antithetical to Mutual Aid. The following describes the first action of Des Moines Mutual Aid, participating in a peace march.
One year ago today Des Moines Mutual Aid participated in a march protesting the potential for war or increased hostilities with Iran that followed the fallout of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by drone strike in Baghdad.
This was our first “public” event since adopting the name Des Moines Mutual Aid, a name we gave our crew during our growing work with our relatives at the houseless camps throughout the city and our help with coordinating a weekly free grocery store that has a 50 year history, founded by the Des Moines Chapter of The Black Panther Party For Self Defense.
Des Moines Mutual Aid, January 7, 2020
For years I’ve been warning about the collapse of our social, political, and governance systems from environmental chaos. But it has become increasingly clear that social and political collapse from extremists and the movement to authoritarianism is happening now. Authoritarianism advancing with the aid of increasingly militaristic, deadly police forces. With radically expanding surveillance and characterizing political dissent as terrorism. I removed the credit for the quote above from a good friend of mine for security reasons in this political climate.
So, it’s time for many more of us to do something like a free food program again. A growing number of us are doing what “the government is incapable of”. In a minute I’ll be leaving to go to our Des Moines Mutual Aid free food project, as I have for almost three years.
Quakers and Religious Socialism 