Today Is Not A Holiday

If you choose to celebrate Indigenous peoples day today that's great, and a respect filled choice. However, to celebrate a legacy of colonization, oppression, and racism by falsely looking at Christopher Columbus as a hero you need a little lesson in history. Columbus "discovered" the "New World?" Please. That's the kind of institutionalized racism I was taught growing up, and it wasn't until much later in life when I realized Indigenous people had already been inhabiting the North American continent for centuries, and I questioned how this explorer could have gotten famous for "discovering" a land mass that has already been lived on for countless generations.

Do yourself a favor a read up on the travesty of this so called holiday, why efforts have been brought about to reclaim the day with the designation of Indigenous People's day, and share your thoughts with your families and community members. A good place for deconstructing your knowledge is here: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/ProdDetails.asp?ID=094296120X

Also, here's a message from Earth Works that speaks to the day in question:

The Western Shoshone have lived in Nevada's Crescent Valley for thousands of years.

And they've regarded the Crescent Valley’s Mt. Tenabo, and its springs, as sacred -- a place of worship -- for all that time.

And yet the U.S. government continues to approve mining operations that would cause great harm to this important place.

As we shared with you during last week's call to action, the federal Bureau of Land Management has permitted Canadian Barrick Gold to mine at the roots of Mt. Tenabo. However, there's one court-ordered caveat: BLM and Barrick must come up with a plan that protects the cultural and spiritual significance of the Mt. Tenabo’s sacred springs.

Last week's action alert was a call to tell BLM that their plan was grossly inadequate -- that it did not protect what made the springs sacred, their sources.

This Indigenous People's Day (in some circles, but certainly not among the Western Shoshone, referred to as Columbus Day), we write to thank you. We asked for letters, and you sent them by the thousands.

And we also wanted to share with you a note from one of the Western Shoshone:

Thank you for your letters. I hope that, this time, the federal government will listen. Many Americans celebrate the "discovery" of Christopher Columbus, but for native people it marks a time of change of our way of life: our lands taken over, religious rights, and practices not accepted. So, it is no celebration for us. Despite this opposition and the poisonous consequences of that arrival we still pray to the Water, Air, Sun and Mother Earth and continue to practice our way of life, in tune with nature's way. Perhaps this time, in at least this one case, the U.S. government will respect our rights.
-- Larson Bill, Western Shoshone, South Fork Tribe

The comment period for public input on BLM's "spring protection plan" has closed. BLM is now considering all comments submitted -- including your letters. When they're done, they will have to submit a revised plan. That could come out in weeks or months. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, know that EARTHWORKS remains committed to fighting for communities and the environment however we can -- whether by challenging plans that violate indigenous people’s rights -- like this one -- or by fighting to reform the antiquated 1872 Mining Law which made it possible in the first place.

Sincerely,
Alan Septoff

Websites and Blogs Move to Carbon Neutrality

Although we know reducing consumption is at the core for lessening the impacts of global climate change, any tool that helps combat carbon footprints should be examined for its useful application.

The Carbon Fund (http://www.carbonfund.org/) is now offering a way for websites and blogs to go carbon neutral. The Internet is a worldwide tool that not only helps us educate ourselves and others to be more responsible global citizens, it also happens to contribute to about 2 percent of global carbon emissions.

Check out Carbon Fund's website to see how you can make your blog and/or website carbon neutral, and help others take the same path. Our Peace, Justice, and Sustainability blog is taking this step because we know we have a footprint, and because we know each of our core themes are supported by lessening our perpetuation of climate change and by taking action to ensure we are all aware of how we can all play a part to combat its drastic effects.

5 Years After Katrina, Combat Operations Stop in Iraq, and the Hate of Glenn Beck

Last Sunday marked the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. While an amazing effort to rebuild New Orleans has taken place, many residents never returned home, and low-income community members continue to face inequitable burdens. Add this to the impacts from the BP Oil spill and the New Orleans/Gulf region needs a great deal or continue support.

I recently read about the Transform New Orleans Fund, and whether you simply refamiliarize yourself with issues going on this region, or have the ability to contribute, take a look at what this Fund is trying to do for residents of New Orleans:

The organizations benefiting from the Transform New Orleans Fund are fighting every day for regular people. Some of the groups are working to ensure that the government works well, and is accountable to everyone in New Orleans. Others are using arts and culture to advance social change, while still others are on the front lines of the fight against inequity in the justice system. What they all have in common is that they've turned the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina into an opportunity to build a city more equitable and just than the one that preceded it. The groups include:

Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana is a New Orleans-based advocacy organization that aims to reform Louisiana's broken juvenile justice system into one that builds on the strengths of young people, families, and communities to ensure that children have opportunities to thrive. JJPL seeks to reduce the number of youth incarcerated; improve conditions of confinement in youth detention centers; increase support for evidence-based alternatives to incarceration; ensure that all children have access to effective counsel at all stages in the court process; reduce the number of school suspensions and expulsions; end the practice of transferring youth to the adult criminal justice system; and protect the rights of incarcerated LGBT youth and youth living with HIV/AIDS in secure care facilities.


The New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice is dedicated to organizing workers in the Gulf region across race and industry to build the grassroots leadership and civic participation of workers and communities in the Gulf region. Founded in August 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Center has grown into a constituency organization with 10 staff and close to 4,000 workers and residents from immigrant and African American communities who are the driving force behind the Center’s campaigns at local, state, and national levels. (The National Immigration Law Center acts as the fiscal agent for New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice.)


Ashe Cultural Arts Center emerged in 1998 and has served as a community hub of artistic collaboration, local advocacy and dialogue, economic development, and as an overall centralizing and stabilizing community force in post-Katrina upheaval, distress, and displacement. In addition to hosting community planning meetings, lectures and panels, art exhibits and film screenings, the Center partners with churches and cultural and advocacy organizations in their programming. (Efforts of Grace, Inc., acts as the fiscal agent for the Ashe Cultural Arts Center.)
(http://www.colorofchange.org/)

This past Tuesday, President Obama addressed the US from the oval office for only the second time. When troops stormed Iraq back in 2003, allegation of Weapon's of Mass Destruction (WMD's) fueled a fire that was started with the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Like many of Obama's speeches he spoke of a future of peace and long term prosperity in Iraq, and he thanked those who’ve served the US profusely for their service. But we all know there were never any WMD's found in Iraq. Beyond the fact that this means the war was brought upon these nations in an unjustified manner, it also means troops lives were unnecessarily lost and gambled on through an illegal war.

Obama spoke about helping Iraqis to achieve a better future, for Iraq to have control of itself. This sounds good on the surface, but even those of us who wanted this stopped before it started will argue our intervention in this country is due for many more years so long as instability stemming for our illegal invasion exists. What's more Obama spoke of a reallocation of troops to Afghanistan, to defeat terrorism.

In all, Obama;'s message can only be absorbed with mixed reviews. Yes its a "victory" to end combat roles in Iraq, but US involvement here is far from over. And another escalation in Afghanistan to "defeat the terrorists". This rhetoric is nothing peaceful, nothing new, and with the trillions spent on war in the past decade, and million of Americans still hungry, loosing their homes, we must ask when/how can this perpetual cycle of destruction will be stoped?

As always, stay in touch with http://www.democracynow.org/ for up to date information regarding peace, justice, and sustainability. There's coverage on Obama's speech posted today.

Lastly, while this site seeks to respect all orientations of religion and spirituality, I have to post this piece written in response to the blatantly hateful act of Glenn Beck stirring the cauldron of hate from the same location where peace, justice, and sustainability was furthered 47 years prior by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Social Justice Christian

This coming Saturday, August 28 will mark the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech." Glenn Beck has chosen this day to deliver his own speech from the steps of the Lincoln memorial.
On that same morning I will be speaking at the dedication ceremony of a work of public art that commemorates the words and legacy of King. It is not a protest. Rather, it is an opportunity to reflect on what this great American had to say and is still saying to our country today. Whenever we take the time to collectively consider what that dream was, we all benefit.
My picture has graced the Glenn Beck blackboard a number of times over the past year. I am quite sure that if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would have been on Glenn Beck's blackboard long before I would have ever been considered. That is because Martin Luther King Jr. was clearly a Social Justice Christian -- the term and people that Beck constantly derides. If the Christians of King's era had listened to Glenn Beck, they would have been forced to walk out on MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. If they were to heed his advice to turn in social justice pastors to the church authorities, they all would have had to turn in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On December 18, 1963, at Western Michigan University, King gave a speech whose topic was "social justice and the emerging new age." If Glenn Beck had been there, I don't doubt that he would have gotten up and walked out as he has told his viewers to do if they hear "social justice" from their pastors. It might be foolish, but I hope that as Glenn Beck prepares for his rally on Saturday, he takes the time to read this speech and think about what it says. In it King explained why for justice to be just it can not only be individual, but must also be social:
"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."
This is why in the Old Testament, God commands his people to be charitable but also to work for justice. The people of God are to give offerings of their own free will, but there are also laws that show the government has a legitimate role to play. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus changes people's hearts and lives, and that is something that government policy can never compete with. But, I also believe that personal charity does not do the work of justice. Here is how King put it in that same speech:
"Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you've got to change the heart and you can't change the heart through legislation. You can't legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there's half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government."
King recognized misunderstandings like this as obstacles to social justice. But, ultimately he was hopeful:
"I think with all of these challenges being met and with all of the work, and determination going on, we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice."
Yes, King named social justice as the goal of the new age. This is why so many Christians were willing to turn themselves in to Glenn Beck as Social Justice Christians. It was not difficult for them to choose between King's interpretation of the gospel and Beck's interpretation that I know some in his own Mormon church are not comfortable with Did King believe that the role of government was only to eliminate discrimination? No. As he wrote in "Showdown for Nonviolence" in 1968, it played a role in ending poverty too:
"We will place the problems of the poor at the seat of government of the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind. If that power refuses to acknowledge its debt to the poor, it would have failed to live up to its promise to insure 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to its citizens.'" (From A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.)
Now, Beck and I do have one area of significant agreement. When he spoke about the civil rights movement in context of the debate around health care he said, "Who were the civil rights marchers? They were people with profound belief in God." This is true. Both Beck and I would probably agree that the most powerful social movements are rooted in deep faith. But he finished that thought saying, "They were trying to set things right. They weren't crying for social justice, they were crying out for equal justice." Beck's mistake is to somehow think that the two can be separated. Beck has lied again and again about me and so many others; it saddens me to hear him now try to rewrite the legacy of Martin Luther King. When you do the work of social justice there are always criticisms, detractors, and those who will slander and lie. But, in the words of Dr. King in 1961 to the AFL-CIO:
"Yes, before the victory is won, some will be misunderstood. Some will be called Reds and Communists merely because they believe in economic justice and the brotherhood of man. But we shall overcome."
Glenn Beck has continually called me, Sojourners, and many others "communists, socialists, and Marxists" because we call for "economic and social justice." If he were an honest man, he would have to include Dr. King as well. But King must have been thinking about the Glenn Becks of his time when he concluded his speech at Western Michigan University:
"In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality. I am convinced of this because I believe Carlyle is right: 'No lie can live forever.' I am convinced of this because I believe William Cullen Bryant is right: 'Truth pressed to earth will rise again.' I am convinced of this because I think James Russell Lowell is right: 'Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own.' Somehow with this faith, we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new life into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This will be a great day. This will be the day when all of God's children, black [people] and white [people], Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!'"

(http://www.sojo.net/)

The 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington is just days away

A message from the NAACP. Let them, and everyone else know how the Dr.'s words have inspired you:

Thanks to stories from men and women all across the country, the NAACP social media history campaign to remember that historic day has been an incredible success.

Each story we receive stands as a reminder of the challenges we have overcome and our perseverance to carry on. And although each story was unique, they were all powered by the same four words: I have a dream.

Do not miss out on this opportunity to be a part of history. Tell the NAACP how Dr. King's epic speech inspired you:

http://action.naacp.org/yourstory

Last week, to commemorate Dr. King, a woman named Gloria wrote in to tell us her story. Her words really inspired me:


"On August 28, 1963, I was sitting in my all black class room with my fellow students glued to the TV. I was feeling very important that day not just because of my turning twelve years old, which was a big thing for me, but also because I was experiencing something that I was to carry with me for the rest of my life.

"When Dr. King's time to speak finally came I was hooked, I knew that my place and my purpose was to hear and to experience the soul of a Dream. That fateful day would not only define the struggle of a people, my people, it would forever create in me the proud Black person, woman, wife, mother, and grandmother that I am today. I will always remember the day August 28,1963 as the day I vowed to always make my people's struggle mine. Thank You Dr. King for helping us strive for the Reality."

When you shared your thoughts you proved something that I have always felt: that the dream is still alive and we are all a part of it.

This movement is so much bigger than one person or one speech. It is the culmination of centuries of struggle triumphing over oppression, forging the path toward equality. And every story brings us one step closer to achieving that dream.

Share your story with the NAACP today:

http://action.naacp.org/yourstory

My deepest thanks,

Ben Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP


P.S. -- This Saturday I will be walking the streets of DC with the National Action Network for "Reclaiming the Dream." The event will commemorate the anniversary of the March on Washington with proper respect. If you're in the DC area, please join us:

http://action.naacp.org/reclaimevent

10/10/10 will be a day of work parties for our climate all over the world

Think about organizing an event, or getting involved if you can:

Friends of the Earth is partnering with 350.org and other allied groups to organize a global work party on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10).

Congress has failed to act aggressively to solve to the climate crisis, and we've decided that we're not waiting for them any longer. On Oct. 10, on every corner of the globe, we will implement climate solutions: from solar panels to community gardens, wind turbines to bike workshops. We'll tell leaders: “We're getting to work--what about you?”

These actions will demonstrate to Washington the broad public support that exists for climate solutions, and can help shame politicians into siding with people and the planet instead of corporate polluters.

Please use the form below to sign up to host an Oct. 10 action.

It's still early, so it's okay if you don't yet know all the details of your local work party. There's a list of work-party ideas at www.350.org/workparty-ideas to get things moving, but don't worry if you don't have a game plan just yet.

If you register now, we'll follow up and provide you with resources and support that can help you out along the way. We'll also try to connect you with supporters in your area who might be able to lend a hand.

http://www.foe.org/organize101010

Prop 8 Repealed!

On this Sunday, take a moment to contemplate the present victory for justice, peace and equality in California. In a historic ruling, one that will for surely see greater dialogue in the coming months, marriage was ruled a basic civil right no matter if it's between a woman and man, a man and man, or a woman and woman. Clearly the message that if two people love each other their gender should not marginalize their commitment was honored, and we should hope this ruling stands as an example for righting wrongs of the past that are rooted in unsustainable hate.

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/one_issue_three_rallies_marriage_equality_2008-2010

http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_15696960?nclick_check=1

http://www.examiner.com/x-61222-Oklahoma-City-Democrat-Examiner~y2010m8d5-Prop-8-Blocked-in-California

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/04/MNBA1EP23K.DTL

July 24, 2010 is Animal Freedom Day

Celebrate Animal freedom Day with educating yourself and others regarding the many overlaps in lessons on peace, justice and sustainability the comes from recognizing the right for all walks of life to be be treated with respect. The issues of environmental health, human health, and conscious living are intricately intertwined with the efforts of this celebration.

Here's some words from organizer and activist Nadia Masoudi:


Dear Friends:

Animal Freedom Day is fast approaching and will be taking place this Saturday July 24th!

We hope that you are looking forward to this day as much as we are.

We want to thank everyone for all of your support with Animal Freedom Day. Not only have you helped to make this event worth while but we have also been receiving amazing responses from many. A special thanks goes to those who have organized their own events around the world for Animal Freedom Day.

I would like to remind you and invite everyone you know (including your family, friends, co-workers, network, etc.) to watch us online on July 24th.
In addition, I also encourage you to sign up and take the "Veg Pledge" - "Be a veggie for one day."

Find out how you can help the environment, your health, the animals and world hunger by being a vegan for one day.

Be a part of Animal Freedom Day and speak to us live via Skype. Share your thoughts, feelings and your efforts. Our Skype account name is animalfreedomday.

Make sure to watch us live online at www.animalfreedomday.com

Animal Freedom Day has been making a lot of buzz these days. Please visit AFD's Media Page and have a look.

With your participation in Animal Freedom Day you will be included as part of the climactic moment of the film Don't Eat Me. You will be able to view never before seen footage from Don't Eat Me on Animal Freedom Day during our program. Don't Eat Me is planned to be released in summer 2011.<>

With your contribution Animal Freedom Day has become an international celebration.

Once again thank you for your support and love of animals.

Let's make every day an Animal Freedom Day.

Happy Animal Freedom Day!
Best,
Nadia Masoudi

Filmmaker/Activist
(905) 540-3804 ext: 470
Direct E-mail: nadia@animalfreedomday.com
www.donteatme.ca
www.animalfreedomday.com