Never has there been a more dire time for defense of the planet. Increase your abilities to defend the Earth through learning the skills of climbing. We will offer a variety of trainings for forest defense and urban actions suitable for all skill levels from beginner to advanced.

Workshops include: Basic Climbing and Anchoring, Traverses, Tree to Tree Transfers, Basic Structure Rigging and Haul Systems, Tripods, Bipods, and Monopods, Advanced Structure Rigging, Large Scale Banner Hanging, and Basic Rescue and Training Set Ups.

To attend the camp contact:

efclimbers@gmail.com

www.efclimbers.net

About the climbers guild

The Earth First! Climbers Guild exists to enable direct action climbing and rigging trainers to communicate with each other to be able to set up training events and continue to produce guides on climbing and rigging as well as standardize the training process to create a safer and more effective environment in EF! direct action situations.

To become a Guild trainer you must be intimately familiar with all aspects of safety and rope work that are presented in the guild guides. Furthermore, to train others under the name of the Earth First! Climbers Guild, the steps as outlined in the guides must be followed. This is to insure a standardization of safe climbing practices.

The Guild will work to maintain a diverse membership and will implement codes of conduct at all events. Guild events will be geared toward the empowerment of all individuals who have a desire to learn.

Guild members will make a commitment to never be under the influence of any drug while training, teaching, or engaging in any climbing activities that are a part of an action or larger campaign. As trainers and skilled climbers, guild members have a responsibility to set the best possible example for those individuals learning from us. It is never acceptable to use any substance that could potentially impair judgment while climbing.

August 18-22 – Western North Carolina

Day of Action August 22, Location TBA

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

People working for justice, peace and a sustainable future in the Southeast are coming together for a long weekend of workshops, trainings, strategizing, and direct action! Our region faces a range of threats from coal mining and nuclear waste and rising sea levels to racist anti-immigrant laws and the military industrial complex. It’s time to come together and reclaim our power.

We will train and build skills to take effective action on social justice and peace as well as energy and climate justice campaigns active in our region. We will work together to hone “tried and true” tactics — and maybe dream up new ones to try! On Monday we will put our new skills into practice with an exciting day of action (location TBA)

The camp will be hosted on a beautiful site with a swimming pond almost on the state line between the Carolinas, a short 40 minutes South of Asheville. Camping at the site or accommodations in town are available. See Housing information here.

Workshops will include: community organizing, anti-oppression, nonviolent direct action 101, debunking false solutions to climate change, blockades, sustainable living systems, action climbing, media, disaster response, street medic training, fighting nukes and coal, and much more.  Program Schedule is under construction — and available here.

ACTION MEDIC TRAINING — A submersion program — participants will be part of camp life, but take a separate “track” of trainings focused expressly on becoming qualified to serve your community as a medic during non-violent direct actions. For more info and to register into this program — please inquire: info@reclaimpowersoutheast.org

All ages and skill levels welcome. Come for renewal — or come for your first activist training and dive in. We welcome both expertise and also new ideas and perspectives to freshen the stream of action. Everyone has something to share that others can learn from!

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

People working for justice, peace and a sustainable future in the Southeast are coming together for a long weekend of workshops, trainings, strategizing, and direct action! Our region faces a range of threats from coal mining, nuclear waste and rising sea levels to racist anti-immigrant laws and the military industrial complex. It’s time to come together and reclaim our power.

We will train and build skills to take effective action on social justice and peace as well as energy and climate justice campaigns active in our region. We will work together to hone “tried and true” tactics — and maybe dream up new ones to try! On Monday we will put our new skills into practice with an exciting day of action (location TBA)

The camp will be hosted on a beautiful site with a swimming pond almost on the state line between the Carolinas, a short 40 minutes South of Asheville. Camping at the site or accommodations in town are available.

Workshops will include: community organizing, anti-oppression, nonviolent direct action 101, debunking false solutions to climate change, blockades, sustainable living systems, action climbing, media, disaster response, street medic training, fighting nukes and coal, and much more.

ACTION MEDIC TRAINING — A submersion program — participants will be part of camp life, but take a separate “track” of trainings focused expressly on becoming qualified to serve your community as a medic during non-violent direct actions. For more info and to register into this program — please inquire: info@reclaimpowersoutheast.org

All ages and skill levels welcome. Come for renewal — or come for your first activist training and dive in. We welcome both expertise and also new ideas and perspectives to freshen the stream of action. Everyone has something to share that others can learn from!

www.reclaimpowersoutheast.org

On May 5 activists with Katuah Earth First! managed to sneak a banner intoDuke Energy’s annual shareholder meeting in Charlotte, NC. Just as the question and comment session was wrapping up, the activists unfurled a large banner reading, “Carbon Free, Nuclear Free” in an act of protest against Duke’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels and nukes.

To the activists surprise, they were not bothered by security and were able to eventually leave the building without arrest, where they joined a crowd of about 50 protesters demanding that Duke rapidly shift to sustainable energy sources.

Duke is apparently suffering some setbacks for both its planned nuclear and coal plants. The nuclear disaster in Japan has helped to derail legislation in NC that would have made it easier for Duke to finance its nuke plants. And in Indiana Duke is facing mounting costs to finish its Edwardsport coal plant. Duke is also being investigated for “undue influence” (ahem, bribery) of politicians in Indiana. The scandal has already cost 3 Duke executives there jobs.

Eco-activists weren’t the only ones out protesting Duke. Protestors with the conservative group FreedomWorks turned out to oppose Duke’s $10 million contribution to host the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in 2012. Well, there is one thing we can agree on with the FreedomWorks folks. We don’t want those spineless, corporate ass-kissing Democrats throwing their party in our state either!

Residents from Gulf Coast, Appalachia and interior West join students and
climate justice activists in calling for more action on extractive industry.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Scott Parkin; on site mobile- 415-235-0596;
Henia Belalia; on site mobile- 510-529-8927
Email— extraction@risingtidenorthamerica.org

Photos available at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

6:40pm (EST) UPDATE: Police are reporting 21 people have been arrested,
including youth and adults from across the country. Residents of Utah,
Wyoming, Texas, Vermont, Georgia, Washington DC and California were among
those arrested while occupying the Department of Interior offices.

Washington D.C.— Over a thousand climate activists marched from Lafayette
Park to the Department of the Interior’s headquarters in Washington D.C.
today. Reclaim Power coincided with the end of Powershift, a mass youth
climate conference, and came only 2 days before the anniversary of the BP
Gulf Oil Disaster. As many as 300 protesters ran inside the headquarters
in a Wisconsin-style occupation calling for the abolition of offshore oil
drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. In an act of civil
disobedience, young and old alike occupied the lobby for over an hour,
smiling and singing protest songs.

The Dept. of Interior has oversight over two agencies, the Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and the Office of
Surface Mining (OSM), which are responsible for the BP Oil Spill,
mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sands oil drilling in southern
Utah. Furthermore, the Dept. of Interior just opened up over 7,000 acres
of land to industry for coal extraction in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

“Our demonstration today is to show that Wyoming might be small in
population but mighty in heart,” said Kevin Uransky, a resident from
Wyoming’s coalfields and member of High Country Rising Tide participating
in the sit-in.  “We don’t want to just stand by and allow big corporations
to destroy our homes, our way of life, and some of last open, beautiful,
and undeveloped terrain left in the United States.  We want to show that
Wyoming has a voice not to be drowned out by those of more represented
states, we have a voice, we have an opinion, and we want to be heard.”

Reclaim Power is being led by residents of residents of the Gulf Coast,
Appalachia and the interior West – regions directly impacted by heinous
oil, gas and coal extractive industries. Participants are calling for the
Obama Administration and the federal agency to phase out harmful mining
and drilling practices and facilitate transitions to sustainable local
energy systems.

“The Dept. of Interior has been allowing the killing of my community and
Appalachia’s mountains by the coal industry for decades,” said Junior Walk
from Boone County, West Virginia. “King Coal has poisoned Appalachia with
toxic water, toxic air and toxic waste. It’s time for real action, not
merely political posturing. I commend these fiery activists taking risks
and making change for our communities and the climate.”

“For all practical purposes, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast function as a
third world resource colony within the US.  For a hundred years, our
people and ecosystems have been sacrificed to provide cheap energy and big
profits,” said Devin Martin, a native Cajun from southern Louisiana.  “We
pay for the hidden costs of oil and gas with our health and our lives
through air pollution, oil spills, and a completely corrupted state
government.  We already lose a football field of coastal marsh every 38
minutes, and now rising sea levels from climate change will put my home,
including New Orleans, under water permanently.”

Reclaim Power also seeks to highlight the ruthless manner in which
extractive industries are allowed to treat workers and the communities
they operate in. Obama’s Dept. of Interior allows the fossil fuel industry
to run amok over ecosystems, communities, workers and local economies.
Last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and spilled over
4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The results have
devastated local economies, fisheries and wetlands. Mountaintop removal is
a radical form of coal mining in which up to 800 feet, sometimes more, of
densely forested mountaintops are literally blown up to reach thin coal
seams. Already, over 500 mountains and 2,000 miles of streams have been
lost due to this devastating mining practice. It has been recently
discovered that oil companies in southern Utah greatly expanded the acres
of land to be developed for tar sands extraction from 60 to over 30,000.
The 758 million tons of coal to be extracted from the four competitive
leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin will be the equivalent of 300 new
coal-fired power plants.

Today’s march and sit-in are a preview to Rising Tide North America’s “Day
of Action Against Extraction” happening April 20th, on the anniversary of
the BP Oil Spill. The day of action will feature protests by Gulf Coast
residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop
removal coal mining, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing
natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta,
as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive
industries. Protests are also planned for the UK, New Zealand, and
Australia.

Demands from today’s Reclaim Power action and the April 20th Day of Action
Against Extraction include:

* An immediate phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a just
transition to truly sustainable forms of energy
* Community control over natural resources
* Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous nations and their right to
control resources on their lands.
* Reparations from both state and corporate entities that have
profited from extraction in order to fund ecological restoration, full
health coverage, and sustainable livelihoods in impacted communities.

For more information please visit www.extractionaction.net

####

Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with
over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes
of climate change.

For immediate release

March 21, 2011

Contact: Rae Breaux 818-271-0386

extraction@risingtidenorthamerica.org

www.extractionaction.net

Groups to mark Gulf Oil Spill anniversary with direct action against fossil fuel extraction.

On April 20^th dozens of environmental, climate, and social justice groups will target government and corporate operations with aggressive protests and civil disobedience in an International Day of Direct Action Against Extraction being organized by Rising Tide North America. The protests will commemorate the 1 year anniversary of BP’s Gulf Oil Disaster by demanding an end to the environmental destruction and climate destabilization created by fossil fuel and other extractive industries.

“The Gulf Oil Disaster was the worst manifestation of the disasters that are created by extractive industries on a daily basis.” Said, Rae Breaux of Rising Tide North America. “Communities around the world are terrorized by corporate and state ventures to extract fossil fuels. On top of poisoning our water and polluting our air, extractive industries are at the root of our climate crisis. If we have any hope of averting the worst affects of climate change we must leave fossil fuels in the ground.”

The day of action will feature protests by Gulf Coast residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop removal coal mining, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta, as well as other community groups engaged in fights against extractive industries. Protests are also planned for the UK, New Zealand, and Australia.

The day of action also seeks to highlight the ruthless manner in which extractive industries treat workers and the communities they operate in. “These companies come into our communities to make millions off of our natural resources and leave behind nothing but poverty and deadly working conditions.  Said, Matt Wilkerson of Rising Tide North America. The 11 workers who died on BP’s oil rig and the 29 who perished in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine were killed by the same thing; corporate greed. These deaths are not accidents. They are the direct result of these companies cutting corners in pursuit of profit.”

The day of action will see protests aimed at disrupting business at work sites and offices in order to get the message across. “Our political leaders are those who profit from the status quo, and the only way they will ever stand up to their corporate masters is if we make it absolutely impossible to continue on the path we’re on.  Our job is to force our political leaders into a choice between ending the war against the living or waging it openly by filling the jails with people fighting for a livable future.” Said Tim DeChristopher of Peaceful Uprising who is facing 10 years in jail for disrupting oil and gas auctions in Utah in 2008.

Community groups are encouraged to “join the fray” by organizing an action on April 20. For more information please visit www.extractionaction.net

The day of action demands:

-An immediate phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a just transition to truly sustainable forms of energy

-Community control over natural resources

-Recognizing the sovereignty of indigenous nations and their right to control resources on their lands.

-Reparations from both state and corporate entities that have profited from extraction in order to fund ecological restoration, full health coverage, and sustainable livelihoods in impacted communities.

Rising Tide North America is an all volunteer climate justice network with over 50 chapters and local contacts that works to confront the root causes of climate change.

Take Action for the Earth and our Communities April 20.

1 year anniversary of the BP Oil Spill

Communities around the world are under attack from extractive industries that poison our families, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosystems we cherish. The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s  resources.

Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so  corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.

For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.”  From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries  that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

On April 20th take it to the point of production.  Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice  zone.

For climate justice and a livable planet,

Rising Tide North America

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/extraction

Communities around the world are under attack from extractive industries that poison our families, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosystems we cherish. The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s  resources.

Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so  corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.

For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.”  From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries  that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

On April 20th take it to the point of production.  Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice  zone.

For climate justice and a livable planet,

Rising Tide North America

[click for printable poster]

JOIN THE CHAIN REACTION

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/extraction

While I am not from Maine I felt compelled to lend my solidarity to this action for a number of reasons:

-It is important to make clear that this action was not against ALL wind. It was against corporate run industrial wind projects that impact rural communities and sensitive ecosystems. We are in full support of small scale, community run wind projects.

-The wind power being built in Maine is not replacing any fossil fuel plants. It is all additional capacity, so in reality no emissions are being reduced. We would be far better off reducing consumption and improving efficiency rather than producing more electricity.

-These wind farms are being built in sensitive wild areas that are home to the endangered lynx and migratory birds as well as rare alpine ecosystems. We can’t ignore the impacts that industrial wind has on an ecosystem. We cannot right these impacts off as collateral damage.

-The wind farms are being built by Transcanada, a major player in the Alberta tar sands. These wind farms are not producing electricity for Maine. It is all being sold to other states. Maine residents shouldn’t have to have their wildlands carved up so that an oil company can greenwash its image while turning a profit selling electricity to the grid.

With that said lets get a discussion going on these issues around large scale wind projects.

Here’s the press release from the action:

Stratton, Maine- At about 8 a.m., Tuesday July 6, at least fifty Earth First! activists blockaded Goldbrook Rd, the access point to the Kibby Mountain wind project outside the town of Stratton, halting the construction of 22 industrial wind turbines on the delicate Alpine ecosystems of Maine’s western boundary mountains. The action comes just before the Land Use Regulation Commission’s (LURC) meeting July 7 to consider a proposal for a similar project on neighboring Sisk Mountain, and on the heels of the national Earth First! Round River Rendezvous, hosted this year by Maine Earth First!

TransCanada, the transnational corporation responsible for the devastating practice of tar sands oil extraction in Alberta, Canada, has already built 24 mammoth turbines on Kibby Mountain, and has begun construction of an additional 22 turbines, a process that includes significant road building and wide transmission line corridors. These projects are part of a trend that shifts from forest management to development in Maine, which threatens to permanently change the face of Maine’s North Woods, the largest undeveloped wilderness east of the Mississippi river. Both Sisk and Kibby Mountain projects will reap huge benefits for TransCanada and the landowner Plum Creek.

“In the face of the Gulf Oil Disaster, and massively destructive coal mining, we recognize the value of developing alternative energy systems,” said Meg Gilmartin of Maine Earth First! “But these projects are a perfect example of how corporations and investors are taking advantage of the climate and energy crises to make profits while avoiding accountability. We don’t view projects on this industrial scale as being the solution to our problems.”

“If we really want to look at how the North Woods can mitigate climate change, we should restore our forest and protect sensitive ecosystems, like those on Sisk and Kibby Mountain,” said Ryan Clark of Maine Earth First! “These unique high altitude areas are breeding grounds for the endangered Bicknell Thrush, nesting sites for the federally protected Golden Eagle and critical habitat for endangered Canadian Lynx.” The project is also being protested for moving forward without public hearings.

Maine Earth First! is the local component of the national environmental group
Earth First!, a network of activists that focuses on grassroots organizing and direct
actions in defense of the earth’s natural systems, and maintains a no-compromise stance.

Declaration from the US Social Forum’s Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly

As participants from diverse social movements throughout North America responding to the ecological, economic and social crisis created by corporate-controlled industrial production and exploitation of land, water, soil, air, work and life; we honor the struggles and are inspired by the resiliency of the people of Detroit. Detroit has epitomized the inevitable boom and bust cycles and class, race and gender oppression that Capitalism inflicts on communities; however this city has also come to represent a beacon of hope for communities across the US.

Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life.

In standing with the people of Detroit today, we stand in solidarity with other frontline communities around North America and the World. As we gather here at this US Social Forum, in solidarity with protestors at the G20 summit in Toronto, estimates of the oil gushing from a gaping wound inflicted on the Earth’s sea floor by BP in the Gulf of Mexico continue to escalate—now possibly over 1 million gallons per day. Gulf Coast communities are forced to survive the fossil fuel economy’s devastating effects. From Indigenous communities on the frontlines of tar sands oil extraction in Canada to Laotian, Latino and African American communities fighting Chevron’s refineries in Richmond, California to poor White communities in Appalachia fighting mountaintop removal coal mining and others fighting hydro-fracking for natural gas extraction – we stand in solidarity with the people of the Gulf Coast in reclaiming control over our land, air, water, and livelihoods.

We call for an end to all climate pollution and false corporate solutions! And we call for the rights of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina to return, to reconstruction of communities, and to restoration of healthy wetlands. So many of us, migrants – old and new – were stolen or forcibly displaced by socio-economic forces, ecological impacts, or imperialist wars to leave our homelands and migrate to North America while the Indigenous Peoples of this land were systematically massacred. Immigrant communities are facing increasing criminalization as manifested by SB 1070 in Arizona, police-ICE collaboration around the U.S., and increased border militarization, as well as exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Immigrant communities are frontline communities, both in our home countries and in the US and Canada, who face devastating ecological adversities from historic and future effects of climate destabilization.

We reaffirm the outcomes of the 2010 People’s World Conference on Climate Change’s Climate Migrants Work Group, especially the demand to the right to free movement, the right to home, and the right to not be displaced by force. We condemn legislation that further criminalizes immigrants without addressing the root causes of climate change, as well as anti-immigrant forces who attempt to “green the hate” through racism and fear. We demand legislation and government action that redresses the injustices against displaced communities and addresses the ecological conditions faced by immigrants.

We support the process, conclusions and the call for North American based social movements to embrace the Cochabamba People’s Accord and the Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth reached by social movements, indigenous peoples and international civil society at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010. We join the global people’s movement for Mother Earth demanding that North American federal governments and the United Nations climate change negotiations be inclusive, transparent, and equitable, and incorporate the proposals presented by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in order to find real solutions to the climate crisis and to save humanity and our Mother Earth, as we know it.

We condemn and reject the US and Canadian governments’ moves to undermine and threaten the international climate negotiation process including the Copenhagen Accord that would allow a global temperature rise of 2 degrees or more and endanger all living species. We support the conclusion that only by “living well,” in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than “living better,” based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive.

Therefore, in alignment with the international Climate Justice movement, and all peoples’ struggles for freedom, self-determination, and dignity, we demand and will fight for:

1) Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground. We call for a moratorium on all new oil, gas, coal and tar sands exploration as a first step in the phase out of fossil fuels. No drilling, digging, damming, chopping, burning, on bombing. We must phase out fossil fuels, mining, mega-dams, agro-fuels, waste incineration, and nuclear energy. All these resource-intensive energy systems compromise the life-support systems of communities and Mother Earth herself. Furthermore, we – both frontline communities and workers – will guide the just transition towards dismantling climate polluting industries and ending the corporate control of our economies.

2) An End to False Solutions. No more business as usual— no commodification of atmospheric space or people’s rights through carbon markets, carbon offsets, or offsets associated with the protection of Indigenous People’s lands, agriculture and forests such as REDD program. We reject “clean” coal, natural gas, nuclear power, biomass and waste incineration, landfill gas to energy, geo-engineering, industrial agro-fuels, and all other corporate techno-fixes which fail to address the root causes and deepen existing inequalities and environmental problems.

3) Real and Effective Solutions. Our communities will win back control of our land, food, water, labor, energy, and decision-making. We will fight for sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples. We demand investment in infrastructure for participatory budgeting, public transportation, local food systems, local watershed and wetlands management, worker cooperative business development, and local economies that take care of the places we live in.

4. Rapid Reductions and Reparations for Ecological Debt. We shall hold responsible the governments of all industrialized “developed” nations and the corporations that control them. We demand that North American federal governments move towards a zero emission economy by 2050 and honor its responsibility for both local and global climate and ecological debt.

5) Respect the Cochabamba Protocol and the Rights of Mother Earth. We call on the North American federal governments and all governments engaged in the UN to incorporate proposals from the Cochabamba Protocol and to adopt and implement the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.

6) Transformation, not Criminalization and Militarization. We reject government responses that criminalize Black, Arab, immigrant, and other communities in North American and around the world as manifested through SB 1070 in Arizona, police-ICE collaboration and raids, increased border militarization, Fortress Europe, the E.U. Directive and many other such inhumane and unjust policies. We demand full employment in the roles we need to transform our communities—healers, counselors, mediators, facilitators, organizers, bus drivers, bike mechanics, deconstruction and reconstruction workers, (zero) waste workers, and more.

Today, we call on our North American social movements unite with clarity that the root causes of joblessness and the housing crisis in our cities; the toxic contamination of our air, water, soil and climate, and ecosystems; and the displacement and criminalization of our communities are the same. These root causes—capitalism, imperialism, and the systems of oppression that uphold them– are the same root causes that put the earth’s ability to sustain human life in peril. We are forging a new movement of movements in which grassroots groups in frontline communities provide key leadership for a just resolve to our global crisis, working in concert with environmentalists, policy advocates, artists, healers, and more.

We call our movements to action on the following:

- Stand with the people of Detroit for the Saturday action at the Covanta Waste Incinerator and ongoing actions against local polluting corporations such as Marathon and DTE.

– Stand with the people of Arizona against SB1070, the militarization of the borders, and other repressive enforcement measures, on July 29th as we mobilize for Cancun.

- Coordinated actions in solidarity with Gulf Coast residents on August 29th in commemoration of the 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

• Demand federal recognition of sovereignty of United Houma Nation.
• Creative actions around the country in protest of BP, Chevron and other dirty fuels industries.
• Demand the protection and restoration of wetlands, rights of return and reconstruction for Gulf Coast residents.

- Support Appalachia Rising, a mass mobilization to abolish mountaintop removal and all strip mining on September 27 in Washington, DC

- Strategize and mobilize locally across North America to bring our power to bear on the UNFCCC’s COP 16 in Cancun November 29 – December 10.