We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Interview: Indigenous Occupy

Click here if you wish to access article and and source of 4:59m RT video interview with Andrew Gavin Marshall from his blog. 

The article offers more background on the Idle No More fightback that originated among Canadian aboriginals and includes some excerpts from the interview and a few additional comments. 

“Bill C-45 is not just about a budget, it is a direct attack on First Nations lands and on the bodies of water we all share from across this country,”


The indigenous populations across North American have always had to fight back whenever the dominant European ruling class saw that their lands contained valuable resources. Thus, they have always been shunted off onto reservation lands where elites saw little of value. With new technologies come opportunities for corporate exploitation of resources in many of these lands, and Prime Minister Harper's promotion of Bill C-45 is just the latest assault. They are fighting back to not only preserve their habitat; but being much more conscious of the ongoing devastating assaults on nature by corporations obsessed with short-term profits, they feel that they must take the lead in a last stand to protect all of our homelands on planet Earth.

This is happening everywhere in the world: most aggressively in Central and South America, and Africa. See this, this, and this.