Dear Friends, Please join us to oppose a significant proposal for Condo developments covering 6 lots at 58 W. Hastings in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. We need HUNDREDS of Vancouver RESIDENTS to each write a letter AND sign up to speak at the Development Permit Hearing to make an impact.
It is ESSENTIAL that our letters are in Friday, May 17, in order for the Planning Department to reference them for the report that the Development Permit Board will use to make their decision.
We need your letters of concern to help ensure:
-that development in the DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE works for the people living in the Community Already!
-that Condominium development does not proceed without consultations with the Communities directly concerned
-that the City of Vancouver acknowledge and respect what Vancouver Residents have to say about what’s going on in the City.
Your letters do not have to be long or profound. A few sentences objecting to the development as it stands will do just fine. Add any information that is relevant to you and your reasons for rejecting the proposal; elaborate wherever you feel it is important.
The Concord Pacific development at 58 W. Hastings must be stopped. The rapid gentrification of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is overwhelming the low-income residents of this neighborhood, who make up 75% of its population. The current rate of new development, in which new condos outstrip social housing 3 to 1, is a grave threat to the neighborhood. The feverish planning, approval and construction of market condos is a destructive force accompanied by massive aftershocks to this community.
Rising real estate prices are already resulting in increased rents, conversions and closures of residential hotels (SRO’s), creating a constant flow of displacement and evictions of low-income residents, and consequent homelessness. Condo construction will be accompanied by a flood of upscale amenities catering to the new residents of the area, which will further marginalize the low-income residents who have make this neighborhood home for many years.
Unlike people with significant resources, whose lives are marked by independence and mobility, people living in poverty form communities of interdependence, located in a specific geographical area, and embedded in neighborly networks of support and assistance. The community of low-income residents who currently call the DTES home should not be displaced from their neighborhood and relocated somewhere else for the sake of condo development. This is their home, and they should be able to live here.
Poverty is not grounds for displacement.
Condo construction in the DTES must be halted until a community vision is formulated, planned and implemented. Like putting up a tent in a windstorm, rooting and securing housing for low-income people in a community experiencing the hurricane of condo development and massive gentrification is impossible.
Residents need time to determine their own community vision and support the implementation of that vision, before the green light is given to condo developers. What is at stake is the existence of a vibrant, amazing community of people.
The cessation of condo development for the sake of this community can begin here and now, with the rejection of a development permit to Concord Pacific for the 58 West Hastings site.
We believe there is an opening at City Hall to support our position. On Thursday, May 1 at the Planning and Environment counil meeting, Cameron Gray, Director of the City’s Housing Centre said the surge of condos in the DTES is “like a hurricane and is going twice as fast as predicted…[and] we need to address the rapidity of change in order to stay on track with the Downtown Eastside Housing Plan.” He also said that a strong mechanism to control condo development “could signal to the Province that no market housing will be built and landowners/developers may be off to Victoria to get more housing here.” And he said: “its time to do a community visioning because groups are more united and able to do it and because of the rapidity of change.” At the same meeting, Councilor Anton of the NPA stated “we have the horrendous challenge of 4000 more units” in terms of securing replacement housing in the area and that “as long as the SRO’s are in private hands, they are in jeopardy.” Councilor Anton said she was “very encouraged by the [visioning] work in the DTES.”
Please write your letters by Friday, May 17 to:
Alison.higginson@vancouver.ca
The Chair, Development Permit Board
c/o Alison Higginson, Project Facilitator,
Development Services
453 West 12th Avenue
Vancouver BC
V5Y 1V4
Please bcc your email letter to: wpedersen@look.ca or send us a quick note to let us know that you wrote a letter.
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To sign up to speak at the hearing on Monday June 23, call:
Lorna Harvey
Assistant to the Development Permit Board
Development Services
604. 873-7469
Sincerely,
Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP]
Streams of Justice
====================
Wendy Pedersen
Carnegie Community Action Project
Carnegie Association
604. 839-0379 http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/
INDI, Calif. – Sean Penn spoke at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, urging the young crowd to involve themselves politically.
The Oscar-winning actor, a late addition to the music festival, joking referred to his out-of-place billing among the 125-plus performers.
Wearing a T-shirt and jeans and smoking a cigarette while he sat on a stool, Penn said he unfortunately couldn’t perform his “a cappella Celine Dion cover act” since he had “compromised his upper register.”
Instead, Penn urged festival-goers to join him on his “Dirty Hands Caravan,” a biodiesel cross-country bus trip he plans to launch Monday, arriving in New Orleans on May 4. The purpose of the trip, which he hopes 300 will join, is to encourage young people to be more politically and environmentally involved.
“The government can’t do it,” Penn said. “They can’t save this thing.”
Penn said that while younger generations were smarter and more technologically savvy than any before it, they were separating themselves through technology.
He also criticized the war in Iraq.
“For the 3,000 people we lost on 9/11, we’ve lost 4,000 in this war, and that’s just American soldiers,” Penn said.
“And why did we let it happen?” he added. “It’s simple: We let it happen.”
The “most powerful third party is you and me,” Penn said.
Penn was one of the few participants to discuss politics at the Southern California festival, where dancing and music were far more prevalent.
If you’d like to learn more about the Downtown Eastside issue, check out the link to the official web page that provides details of the ‘No Place Like Home’ complaint that will be sent to the United Nations today. You can view the actual complaint in PDF format from the website.
Three people protesting China’s human rights record and the impending arrival of the Olympic torch climbed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Monday and tied a Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. (Paul Sakuma/Associated Press)
Three pro-Tibet protesters climbed the suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday to protest the coming arrival of the Beijing Olympics torch relay in San Francisco.
The protesters, tethered together on the suspension cables halfway up the bridge, unfurled two giant banners reading “One World, One Dream” and “Free Tibet ‘O8″ — a play on the official slogan of the Beijing Games. One of the climbers also displayed a Tibetan flag.
The climbers spent about three hours suspended more than 25 metres above traffic before descending around 1:15 p.m. PT to be taken into police custody, the CBC’s Chris Brown reported from the city.
The climbers are all American citizens and supporters of Students for a Free Tibet, said Tsering Lama, a spokeswoman for the activist group.
Four other members, including a Canadian student who attends the University of British Columbia, were arrested at the site, Lama told CBC News.
All seven face charges related to trespassing, conspiracy and causing a public nuisance, CNN reported.
The torch is due to arrive Wednesday in San Francisco, its only North American stop on a tour that has been marked by protests against China’s policies toward Tibet and Sudan.
The highly visible protest has forced San Francisco officials to make some changes to the torch procession, and police said they were taking “extraordinary precautions,” the CBC’s Brown said.
“All in all, it’s going to be a very sizable police presence,” he said.
Last leg of Olympic torch run cancelled in Paris
Meanwhile Monday, the last segment of the Olympic torch run through Paris was cancelled after thousands of anti-China protesters repeatedly prompted officials to stop the procession, extinguish the flame and put the torch aboard a bus.
Despite beefed-up security, the relay had to be suspended at least five times as demonstrators threatened the torch. A vehicle carried the Olympic flame for the last part of the route but a runner was allowed to carry the torch for the final five metres into a sports stadium in the south of Paris.
At least 28 people were arrested during the relay as thousands of people including demonstrators lined the torch’s route through the city streets.
The protesters, tethered together on the suspension cables halfway up the bridge, unfurled two giant banners reading “One World, One Dream” and “Free Tibet ‘O8″ — a play on the official slogan of the Beijing Games. One of the climbers also displayed a Tibetan flag.
The climbers spent about three hours suspended more than 25 metres above traffic before descending around 1:15 p.m. PT to be taken into police custody, the CBC’s Chris Brown reported from the city.
The climbers are all American citizens and supporters of Students for a Free Tibet, said Tsering Lama, a spokeswoman for the activist group.
Four other members, including a Canadian student who attends the University of British Columbia, were arrested at the site, Lama told CBC News.
All seven face charges related to trespassing, conspiracy and causing a public nuisance, CNN reported.
The torch is due to arrive Wednesday in San Francisco, its only North American stop on a tour that has been marked by protests against China’s policies toward Tibet and Sudan.
The highly visible protest has forced San Francisco officials to make some changes to the torch procession, and police said they were taking “extraordinary precautions,” the CBC’s Brown said.
“All in all, it’s going to be a very sizable police presence,” he said.
The Fungus is doing a project on homelessness in Vancouver…. and here’s your chance to help out some good ol’ fashioned grass roots democracy! Our mission requires us to sift through some data – You Tube video clips and old media archives will help us convey the story of the Downtown Eastside – and we have a request! We would like concerned citizens to contribute stories, video footage, media archive reports/articles, and anything else, directly to us at TheFungus. Please send your material (or a link to access it) to us via a submitted comment to this post.
A work colleague said it me with respect to the current state of Corp-ocracy:
“Think of yourself as a Jew in Nazi Germany in 1932. Get out! Some people thought it would never happen… they had jobs… their kids were in school… they didn’t get out…”
There is still an opportunity for the people to take back what’s rightfully theirs and stop this from happening. Nobody would have to go anywhere… except of course for the demons trying to pull this shit off who would go straight to hell. All we need is a collective awareness. If you end up being wrong about these suspicions towards the government that has never given a fuck about you then you’ve lost nothing… but if your right!
Think outside the box they have manufactured you into… it’s a conspiracy theory only b/c you’re inside the box.
~Nims
Wikipedia
Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of massive civil unrest or national emergency. Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen periodically.[1] Plans for roundups of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era. For example, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.[2]
According to scholar Diana Reynolds:
The Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan), [otherwise known as a continuity of government plan], indicates that FEMA in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies conducted a civil readiness exercise during April 5-13, 1984. It was conducted in coordination and simultaneously with a Joint Chiefs exercise, Night Train 84, a worldwide military command post exercise (including Continental U.S. Forces or CONUS) based on multi-emergency scenarios operating both abroad and at home. In the combined exercise, Rex-84 Bravo, FEMA and DOD led the other federal agencies and departments, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Veterans Administration through a gaming exercise to test military assistance in civil defense.
The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial rule.[3]
Existence of a master military contingency plan, “Garden Plot” and a similar earlier exercise, “Lantern Spike” were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in “Garden Plot and the New Action Army.”[4]
Rex 84 was mentioned during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and subsequently reported on by the Miami Herald on July 5th, 1987. [5]A number of websites and alternative publications that span the political spectrum have hypothesized upon the basic material about Rex 84, and in many cases hyperbolized it into a form of urban legend or conspiracy theory. Rex 84 is sometimes cited as an extension of the King Alfred Plan, a strategy to detain African Americans. Nonetheless, the basic facts about Rex 84 and other contingency planning readiness exercises–and the potential threat they pose to civil liberties if fully implemented in a real operation–are taken seriously by scholars and civil liberties activists.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84
AboveTopSecret.com
There over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States.
The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a mass exodus of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
UBC’s federal electoral riding, Vancouver Quadra, is having a by-election on March 17th. And if you live on campus, you can vote in it.
Come check out the candidates speak, ask them questions, etc. on March 3, from 7pm – 9:30pm at St. Philips Church (3737 West 27th Avenue).
Quadra is one of the wealthiest and best educated ridings in the country. It contains most of Vancouver’s West side, including UBC. This by-election race has many so UBC connections that make it an great opportunity to get UBC issues out into the community. Lets count the connections: the Quadra riding was vacated by incumbent Liberal MP (and former cabinet minister) Stephen Owen last year. He left politics to join UBC’s executive as VP External, a post he resumed last August. One of the candidates in this by-election is actually a current UBC student. The NDP’s Rebbecca Coad is a political science student. The Green Party’s Dan Grice is a recent UBC grad, in Classical Studies and Archeology, and a former AMS councilor for Arts. The Conservative party candidate, Deborah Meredith, is a UBC professor of commercial law in the Sauder School of business. The Liberal party candidate, Joyce Murray, lacks an obvious UBC connection, but she’s a former BC cabinet minister and co-founder of Brinkman Reforestation Ltd, which some of you tree-planters have probably worked for.
By-elections typically have lower voter turnout than general elections, which makes them a bit unpredictable. Owen, who won the riding three times with big margins with the Liberal Party, was definitely a popular MP. But with him gone, and strong local connections for all the candidates, it’s quite an interesting race.
Nitty Gritty:
if you’re a student living in the Quadra riding, you can register to vote in this by-election in two ways: going to the Elections Canada Quadra office (suite #218 5511 West Blvd.), or registering on the day by bringing two documents with your name and adress on them, like phone bills, or your housing contract, or some other official mail. You can call them for information at 1866 564 6466.
Come to the candidate debate this Monday the 25th at UBC. The four main party candidates will face off in the Meekison Arts Student Space in Buchanan D (room 140) at 2:00-3:30.
Get a feel for the candidates: campaign websites and facebook groups are up.
Good news from Pakistan — opposition parties pledged to restore civilian democracy won the elections for which we campaigned.1 But outrageously, President Musharraf has hinted he may try to “get rid of” the new government if it challenges him.2 After imposing martial law last year and dismissing the judiciary to lock in his power, his survival in the presidency now rests on backing from Western powers like the US and the UK, along with Pakistan’s army.
As the horse-trading begins, tensions are high — and Musharraf has not yet convened Parliament. The Pakistani people have cast an undeniable vote for change and they must not be betrayed. Let’s give them our own vote of global support with big advertisements in Pakistan’s The News, a respected broadsheet read by politicians, ambassadors and generals alike, calling on all parties- the US and the UK in particular- to support not undermine the people’s vote. We need to raise $10,632 for this — so click here to view and endorse the ad, then please give a donation if you can:
Already last year, over 83,000 of us called on the international community to condemn General Musharraf’s crackdown and press for constitutional rule and free and fair elections. Avaaz campaigners delivered that message privately to high-level contacts in the US Congress and the British government, key supporters of the General who have since begun to shift. The election and polls suggest that 75% of the population want President Musharraf to go3 — but the Bush administration and other elements are still propping him up.
This is a golden moment, in which Pakistan’s voters have overcome widespread vote-rigging to set a course for civilian democracy. Now opposition leaders face the challenge of reinstating the free media and independent judiciary, undoing martial laws, and building the institutions and legitimacy that are essential for any lasting security in Pakistan.
Pakistan needs the international community to pledge greater help for this democratic effort, not to bully and meddle. So let’s send a ringing global message to the leaders, generals and ambassadors now politicking in Islamabad, and make sure they don’t bungle the transition that citizens of Pakistan, and of the world, demand. View the ad and give it your support at this link:
The question of whether humanity has a predilection toward the good is preceded by the question whether there exists an event that can be explained in no other way than by that moral disposition. An event such as revolution. Kant says that this phenomenon [of revolution] can no longer be ignored in human history because it has revealed the existence in human nature of a disposition and a faculty toward the good, which until now no politics has ever discovered in the course of events.-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The people of Gaza are being squeezed to death. This week’s blackouts have finally reached the attention of the world — and the international community could help end the blockade. Our obligation is clear. This isn’t about Israel vs Palestine or Hamas vs Fatah: this is about 1.5 million human beings locked up in the biggest prison on earth. The siege of Gaza is a collective punishment violating international law, and far from ensuring Israel’s security, it is only stoking rage and desperation.
Incredibly, the UN, European Union and Arab League have so far failed to act. We must seize this moment with an emergency campaign: demanding that the international community step in to end this blockade, ensure the free flow of supplies, and help broker the ceasefire which civilians on all sides desperately need. Please click below to sign the emergency petition — we’ll deliver it to the UN, EU and Arab League when we reach 100,000 signatures, so sign and tell everyone you know:
Right now, a major UN summit in Bali has just a few days left to hammer out an agreement on stopping catastrophic climate change. But instead of helping out, Canada is actually sabotaging the UN talks! On Saturday, experts gave us the global “fossil” award for being the worst country in the world on climate change.
There’s still a few days left to save Canada’s reputation — and the climate — but we need a massive democratic roar to remind our Prime Minister what Canada is all about, and stop him from blocking the world at Bali. Click below to sign the petition and we’ll advertize the number of signatures we get in an ad campaign across Canada this week. Our goal is to get 25,000 people to sign in just 3 days before the ads run. Click below, then forward this email to all your friends and family right away:
Enough is enough. Prime Minister Harper’s short-sighted, undemocratic and big oil-driven policy on climate change is damaging the world and destroying our image as a good country. We’re supposed to be the nice guys, who try to do the right thing in the world.
The vast majority of Canadians are hopping mad on this issue — we can win this. We just need to show Harper how serious we are that he change course. Sign up now and forward this email to everyone you know – we’ve got just 3 days to hit 25,000 signatures!
With much respect and hope,
Ricken Patel,
Avaaz.org
PS – Here are links to some more info on this:
David Suzuki (the Nature of Things) calls the government’s spin on climate change “humiliating” and “ludicrous”
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/283829
The former editor-in-chief of CBC news discusses the damage done by Canada’s climate policy to our international reputation:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_burman/2007/12/canada_flounders_on_issue_of_c.html
The Fossil of the Day Award site:
http://www.avaaz.org/fossils
A lecture by Naomie Wolf, author of “End of America, A letter of Warning for a Young Patriot” at the University of Washington. She has carefully studied the political and social environments that led to the ‘installment’ of totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century (Stalin, Mussollini, Polpot, Hitler and numerous other ’smaller’ dictators) and concludes that there is a blue print of 10 characteristics that each of these regimes has followed. All 10 of these characteristics were present in the lead up to all of the totalitarian regimes, and all 10 are currently present in America right now… YOU are NEEDED to save democracy in America. Action needs to be taken immediately.
The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It’s a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law: Philip Giraldi at the Huffington Post, Declan McCullagh at CNET’s News.com, Kathryn Smith at OpEdNews.com, and of course Alex Jones at PrisonPlanet.com Read the rest of this entry »
The committee of Brazilian organizations that conceived of and organized the first World Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results of that Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of Principles to guide the continued pursuit of that initiative. While the principles contained in this Charter – to be respected by all those, who wish to take part in the process and to organize new editions of the World Social Forum – are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those decisions and define orientations that flow from their logic.
1) The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Mankind and between it and the Earth.
2) The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that “Another World Is Possible”, it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it.
3) The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.
4) The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens – men and women – of all nations and the environment and will rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.
5) The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil society from all the countries in the world, but intends neither to be a body representing world civil society.
6) The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a body. No one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for interrelation and action by the organizations and movements that participate in it.
7) Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forum’s meetings must be assured the right, during such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchizing, censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of the organizations or groups of organizations that made the decisions.
The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.
9) The World Social Forum will always be a forum open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities and ways of engaging of the organizations and movements that decide to participate in it, as well as the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles. Neither party representations nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures who accept the commitments of this Charter may be invited to participate in a personal capacity.
10) The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the State. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.
11) As a forum for debate the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and the transparent circulation of the results of that reflection, on the mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, on means and actions to resist and overcome that domination, and on the alternatives proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.
12) As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages understanding and mutual recognition amongst its participant organizations and movements, and places special value on the exchange among them, particularly on all that society is building to center economic activity and political action on meeting the needs of people and respecting nature, in the present and for future generations.
13) As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society, that, in both public and private life, will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of de-humanization the world is undergoing and to the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations.
14) The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements to situate their actions, from the local level to the national level and seeking active participation in international contexts, as issues of planetary citizenship, and to introduce onto the global agenda the change-inducing practices that they are experimenting in building a new world in solidarity.
Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum Organizing Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum International Council on June 10, 2001.
From the Zapatist uprising in 1995 and the Seattle demonstrations in 1999, appeared a worldwide alliance of movements against neo-liberal globalisation, war, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and environmental disasters.
In first phase, this movement focused on big international mobilisations, such as Genoa against the G8 or Cancun against the WTO. The huge demonstrations against the war on Iraq, February 15th 2003 was the apogee of this phase.
During the last years the movements grew enormously,and was rooted in national struggles and local realities. Everywhere in the world, mobilisations appeared in different fields:student movements, workers issues, poverty and violence against the women, environment and climate change, indigenous people and migrants’ rights, etc.
The main challenge for all of us, today, is to link those locals and national struggles with the worldwide goals, to give more strengths to our struggles, alternatives and campaigns,to enlarge our alliances.
That’s the purpose of the 2008 Global Day of Action: act locally to change globally! Give visibility to our local struggles through a common day of action!
Why now, and why January 26th?
The idea of a global day of action is not new. In the last years, several attempts tried to set up a day of action which could become a reference for this new “movement of movements” in analogy with May 1st for the Labour movement or March 8th for Women’s day.
Since 2001, the Wold Social Forum has become the main space in which one all those movements meet and build alliances.
The World Social Forum is not an event. It is a process,which lives in the local, national, regional and thematic Forums, in the many and plural struggles, campaigns, alternatives for another world which are developing all over the planet.
The decision to hold the next WSF event in 2009,two years after the last one in Nairobi,helped the idea of a global worldwide mobilisation to emerge.
The date of 26th of January comes from the choice to organise the Global Day of Action in the same period of the Davos summit, to maintain the confrontation with this important neo-liberal gathering of the elites and let live the spirit of WSF which always took place at the end of January.
After the Global Day of Action 2008, an evaluation will be done in order to decide if we move the date for further mobilizations and events.
American finds hope in NDP MP Libby Davies’ lobbying efforts
Andy Ivens
The Province
Monday, December 03, 2007
CREDIT: Nick Procaylo, The Province
American soldier Brad McCall, 20, arrived in Vancouver in early October as a conscientious objector.
Uncle Sam wants Brad McCall.
The U.S. Army wants the AWOL private from Kentucky to go to Iraq to fight George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” but McCall’s conscience won’t allow it.
He applied to be a conscientious objector, but as his date to ship out approached, McCall realized that, like many other “COs,” he’d be in the war zone before a decision came down.
So, in early October, the six-foot-two GI followed the route of an estimated 50,000 previous American war resisters to Vancouver and applied for refugee status, which at least delays his possible extradition to the U.S., where he’d likely be tried for desertion.
“I don’t want to go to Iraq because I don’t want to be a war criminal,” McCall, 20, said yesterday.
“Any participation in the war in Iraq can be punishable as a war crime. The war is a criminal act, in my opinion and many countries’ opinion.”
McCall thinks the army recruiters who convinced him to sign up last year stretched the truth.
“We were told we probably wouldn’t be going to Iraq because [the war] was ending,” he said.
While posted at Fort Carson, Colo., “I heard the atrocities being committed on innocent people and soldiers laughing about that.”
That prompted him to apply for conscientious-objector status.
“They just laughed at me,” he said. “So I took the necessary steps and took off.”
His family has virtually disowned him, but he has found an esprit de corps in Vancouver.
“My parents and I don’t really communicate much,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of people here who have given me a lot of support.”
He’s been put up in the east Vancouver home of Colleen Fuller.
“I called the War Resisters Support Campaign [www.resisters.ca] and she volunteered her house for [an AWOL] soldier. I’ve been here ever since,” he said.
If he returned to the U.S., McCall figures he’d face a court martial and be ordered to serve “a few years” in the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Asked what he would like the Canadian government to do with the growing number of war resisters in Canada, McCall said: “Take us in. Do what Canada used to do in ’70s. Be a haven from militarism.”
Last month, the first two American military deserters to ask Canadian courts to allow them to stay in this country — Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey — received bad news from the Supreme Court of Canada.
The high court declined them leave to appeal a decision by the Federal Court of Appeal on their application for refugee status.
One crucial difference between the deserters who fled north during the Vietnam War and today’s resisters appears to be the evolution of the U.S. Army from a conscript force to today’s all-volunteer service, the court noted in its reasons.
“I was shocked,” said McCall, who remains “optimistic” that Canadians will convince their federal politicians to amend the refugee provisions of the law.
He has Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies in his corner.
“With their legal avenues pretty well exhausted, that’s absolutely the right direction to take — lobbying for change to the law to allow resisters to apply for landed-
immigrant status,” said Davies.
“We [New Democrat MPs] have a motion right now before the Citizenship and Immigration Committee that, if approved, would create a special category for war resisters that would allow them to stay in Canada.”
The motion — “to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members . . . who have refused or left military service related to the war in Iraq, to apply to remain and work in Canada and be eligible for permanent resident status” — will go before the committee later this week.
If the committee endorses the motion, said Davies, “we would then get that into the House [of Commons] and get the House to adopt it. There are many, many well-known Canadians who have made amazing contributions to this country who came here as war resisters.”
She suggested people write Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finlay, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and their own MPs to voice support for the motion.
Colleen Fuller urged others to join the war-resisters campaign.
“The [Hinzman and Hughey] decision is bad for anybody, not just Americans,” she said. “Normally, Canada goes by the United Nations. That’s why we didn’t go to Iraq — because the UN didn’t see that as a legal way to go.”
The U.S. Pentagon refused to comment on McCall’s case.
In the new issue of Rolling Stone, under the heading “Inspiration,” Bruce Springsteen says: “Howard Zinn’sA People’s History of the United States had an enormous impact on me. It set me down in a place that I recognized and felt I had a claim to. It made me feel that I was a player in this moment in history, as we all are, and that this moment in history was mine, somehow, to do with whatever I could. It gave me a sense of myself in the context of this huge American experience and empowered me to feel that in my small way. I had something to say, I could do something. It made me feel a part of history, and gave me life as a participant.”
“Civil disobedience arises when a significant number of citizens have become convinced either that the normal channels of change no longer function, and grievances will not be heard or acted upon, or that, on the contrary, the government is about to change and has embarked upon and persists in modes of action whose legality and constitutionality are open to grave doubt”
“The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All. And this latter is never possible without instruments.”
“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of the individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together…Power needs no justification, being inherent in the very existence of political communities; what it does need is legitimacy. The common treatment of these words as synonyms is no less misleading and confusing than the current equation of obedience and support. Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert, but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting together rather than from any action that then may follow. Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but never will be legitimate. Its justification loses in plausibility the farther its intended end recedes into the future.
Strength unequivocally designates something in the singular, an individual entity; it is the property inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character, which may prove itself in relation to other things or persons, but is essentially independent of them…
Force, which we often use in daily speech as a synonym for violence, especially if violence serves as a means of coercion, should be reserved, in terminological language, for the ‘forces of nature’ or the ‘force of circumstances’, that is, to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements…
Violence, finally, as I have said, is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically, it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for that purpose of multiplying natural strength until, in the last stage of their development, they can substitute for it.
It is not superfluous to add that these distinctions, though by no means arbitrary, hardly ever correspond to watertight compartments in the real world, from which nevertheless they are drawn.
I’ll try and kick it off…(Just woke up 5 mins ago, giving some stream of consciousness a shot here…)
Listening to some Ben Harper from Lifeline–Younger than Today & Fight outta you
“I would rather take a punch, then not give you a shot…I’d rather find out who you are, then who you’re not…Don’t let it take the fight outta you” BH
Last meeting, we talked about Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s introductory essay from the Socialist Register, can’t remember the exact title right now, but it is from the 2004 edition on the Imperialism of Our Time.
The whole book is basically about reintroducing the word Imperialism into discourses, conversations, thoughts about Amercian power, American Hegemony, American Exceptionalism–whatever you might’ve (or are) calling it according to Panitch and Gindin actually refers to the Imperialism nexus of the present, that grows out from the past era of inter-imperial rivalry upto WWI.
Summaries aside, the importance of this article is that it helps the FUNGUS name the powers it wishes to speak truth to, or even more correct–it helps having a historical, conceptual, theoretical analysis of what we like to call the MACHINE.
Aside–the Machine, or evil?, just think Morpheus in the Matrix giving you the choice–blue pill or red pill–depending on what you choose, you’ll know what we’re talking about when we speak of the machine–a system, a structure, ways of organizing life that put the living species and ecosystems of earth in the slavery of the interests of a very small few elites, maybe their fucked up aliens? I don’t know, but it damn near time for our generations to really start fucking them up…sand in the wheels of the machine–to put those damn grinding gears to halt!
Ok, back to the Socialist Register–we read little more than half the article, and will finish today. After which I’ll put up a better analysis, with some questions for online folks to answer…
BUY NOTHING DAY
2nd outing of action in the name of the Fungus, and well, we had a great day of action. Spreading the good word, if sometimes problematic, of the busters, downtown.
I consider it like giving people a little shock, nothing taser deadly, but maybe like putting a fork in socket or something. And you could see it, sometimes, jolting people out of there zombie shopping states–double takes, stares, looking(but not looking), scowls, some smiles too!
We’re (I’m) not saying that buying nothing for a day will solve everything, we’re just trying to show folks (including ourselves) it doesn’t have to be like this, it shouldn’t–consuming more than you need, trying to fill some void (that emptiness inside you that most aren’t sure what to call) at the expense of others, on the backs of others. Maybe that’s one of the problems, that we see them as others…those whose slave-like service for the production of goods for our gross overconsumption.
Forget about what Jesus would do…think about What your gonna do differently from this day forward about your consumption and act on it muthafucka!
Myself included…I speak to myself on this as much as I do the readers of this thing.
Instead of the centralized events of past editions, WSF 2008 will have thousands of activities organized by social movements, unions, groups, networks and other organisations in their own regions. This will cover a one-week period, culminating in a Global Day of Action on January 26th. The global mobilization will be directly linked to the local agendas of social actors, making the week full of debates, cultural and artistic activities, demonstrations, protests, direct actions, meetings and many other ways of showing that another world is possible.
Fungus.co.uk? Starting up a UK fungal node–care package to get them started?
Podcast–musical score
To Do’s:
start working on podcast
fix up website/blog
format for the next few meetings–articles, projects, art, thoughts anyone?
insert more here if I missed any…
Quote of the Day:“African-Amercian orator, Frederick Douglass, a militant abolitionist and himself an escaped slave, who wrote”:
Those who profess freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful wrath of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demands–it never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-from Taiaiake Alfred’s Wasase: Indigenous pathways of action and freedom
November 24th, 2:00 pm, at the art gallery downtown…. bring a mug for tea, bring a chair for chillin’, bring some warm clothes cause it’s rain or shine baby….
we’ll set up an environment where strangers can break down the barriers that keep us apart, where strangers feel comfortable chillin’ and socializing and participating in fun and free activities (ie chess, checkers, a game of soccer, maybe a game of street hockey, cards, listening to some tunes on the geetar, maybe people could give away books that they’ve already read for free, free back massages are always a possibility….. come down and join the fun…..
As much of ‘the machine’ requires our unrelenting, unquestioning habit of consuming to exist, I thought we could align ourselves with an adbusters initiative…. that of ‘buy nothing day’…. perhaps we could take some time at our next workshop to brainstorm some ways in which our time could be better spent than mindlessly consuming crap we don’t need. Maybe we could come up with a poster idea, find a way to mass produce it, and spread the word around the streets of vancouver…. Here’s a starter list of free (or cheap) activities that give me a greater sense of satisfaction and happiness:-reading (mainly non fiction, but every now and then a fictional story is good for the imagination)-playing foosball, tennis, ping pong (craigslist has cheap used stuff that works great)-going for a walk or a run or a bike ride in the forest-playing my guitar-socializing/philosophizing with friends-playing drop in ice hockey ($5.50)-doing yoga in my bedroom-writing my thoughts down in a journal-playing hacky sack-volunteering time at a daycare-indoor rock climbing (approx. $10)-playing ‘bump set spike’ with a couple of friends
2 pm, Rally at Vancouver Art Gallery (300 W. Georgia
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Bring the troops home!
October 27th will be a continent-wide Day of Action against war, with a series of regional mass demonstrations across the United States. In Canada, the Canadian Peace Alliance, Echec a la Guerre and other groups are calling for demonstrations in as many cities and towns as possible to demand Canada outof Afghanistan.
Malalai Joya will be the featured speaker at the Vancouver rally. In the spring, Joya was unjustly suspended from the Afghan parliament because she has been a vocal opponent of the warlords and criminals in the Karzai puppet government. Malalai Joya has emerged as a courageous voice for women’s rights and self-determination for Afghanistan. She will also be a speaker at the November 2-4 Teach-In hosted by BC Labour Against War.
All events organized or endorsed by StopWar.ca, a broad-based coalitionwith over 160 endorsing organizations and prominent individuals.
The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.
