Earth Skills Training #1 – Restoring Health, Childbirth & Independence from Industrial Medicine
Saturday March 24 | 10am-5pm |  Location TBA

In order for our communities to be truly resilient, self-sufficient and able to weather the impact of scare resources (money, services, etc.), being able to access ‘health care’ in the basic & broad sense and not depend on the medical industrial complex is crucial.
In this training we will highlight the importance of natural healing. We will talk specifically about restoring the role of Women in facilitating health, and look at the invaluable work of Midwifery and birth as a clear example of one of the most fundamental human experiences that has been co-opted and highly industrialized as part of the capitalist/dominant-culture way of life.

We are proud to bring you Sara Flores – Certified Nurse Midwife, Nurse Practitioner in Woman’s and Queer Health, Registered Nurse and founder of the ReCLAIM Collective of healers (Resisting Colonial Legacy & Its Impact on Medicine), Atava Garcia-Swiecicki – founder of Ancestral Apothecary, herbalist, flower essence, acupressure, massage and dream-work practitioner, as well as other amazing midwives and healers!

Participants will learn practical healing and techniques from first-aid to making plant- medicine.

Earth Skills Training #2 – Bee Keeping
June (date TBA) | 10am-4pm  | Tassafaronga Community Garden: 975 – 85^th Ave, Oakland 94621

Collecting honey from wild bee colonies is one of the most ancient human activities and is still practiced all over the world today. Bee Keeping is the practice and art of maintaining bee colonies in hives in order to collect honey and other valuable materials produced by bees that have been used for health and healing for many centuries.

In this training we will consider the importance of bees and other pollinators at a time when biological diversity is collapsing at the fastest pace humans have ever experienced. We will learn about what it takes to maintain a bee colony, how to harvest honey and other products of the hive, as well as how this practice can strengthen our local community of pollinators.

This training will be hosted by Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project at the Tassaforanga Recreation Center in East Oakland.

Earth Skills Training #3 – Gleaning in the City
August (date TBA) | 10am-4pm | Location TBA

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Recently gleaning has become part of an overall urban sustainability strategy, with overgrown fruit trees in residential neighborhoods being a major source.

In this workshop we’ll come to understand just how to establish a gleaning operation, that can not only meet community nutrition and economic needs, but also fosters building neighborhood relationships and networks that provide security and support.

Earth Skills Training #4 – Rainwater Harvesting: Installing Rainwater Catchment Systems
November (date TBA) | 10am-4pm | Location TBA

Given the critical nature of securing water in a future of water scarcity, we are excited to offer this training in 2012, after a hugely successful Rainwater Harvesting training this past fall at the People’s Grocery Garden & Greenhouse in West Oakland.

“Water is Life” is a globally used slogan that captures the critical necessity all living things have for this precious element. And yet, it has been turned into a profit-making commodity that prevents numerous communities from accessing clean water for their health and survival.

In this training we will learn about one step we can take towards becoming stewards of our own water supply again.  We will install a simple and effective system to capture & store rainwater that falls on our roofs. This system is low-cost, low-tech and easy to duplicate in many urban settings!

Sign up for Movement Generation’s email newsletter, for up-to-date announcements as we develop details for each training.

Bemidji, Minnesota - Tribal leaders and Native organizations from the United States and Canada are standing together today pleased that President Barack Obama is acknowledging his pledge to listen to the voices of this countries’ original people, by rejecting the Transcanada Keystone XL pipeline. Recent months have brought tribal leaders to Washington DC requesting Obama to reject the pipeline. “Tribal governmental leaders from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the Sac and Fox Nation met with President Obama and his administration in Washington DC in early December to deliver a message to reject the Keystone XL pipeline in defense of Mother Earth,“ says Tom B.K. Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

“I say miigwetch, thank you, to the Creator for giving President Obama and the U.S. Department of State the courage, strength and wisdom to deny the presidential permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Lifting up this issue as a Native rights issue bringing our tribal grassroots and governmental leaders together with environmentalist and private land owners of the prairie lands sent a message loud and clear that this was the right thing to do,” said Marty Cobenais, lead pipeline organizer with IEN.

Debra White Plume, a grandmother of the Oglala Lakota Oyate who was arrested in the Washington DC protest of the pipeline says, “Rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a reason to celebrate! At least that source of contamination that was a threat of our drinking water sources, the Missouri River, and the Ogallala Aquifer has been removed. Now we just have to stop the uranium mining that is poisoning the aquifer every day.”

“President Obama and the State Department deserve our thanks for having the foresight and courage to reject the permit application for the pipeline.  The stated number of jobs on the project was so inflated that it started to outweigh the health, environmental and climate impacts being experienced by the Cree, Dene and Métis communities living downstream from the tar sands in Canada. In any of these carbon intense fossil fuel developments, and its pipeline infrastructures, economic externality costs have to be thoroughly assessed,” said Pat Spears, President of Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, based in South Dakota. “In the Northern Plains our tribes have alternatives for clean renewable energy.”

“This is one battle won for our Mother Earth,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller, campaign coordinator with IEN Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign. “Other pipeline battles linked to the Canadian tar sands continue. We remain vigilant in our work with First Nations in Canada and grassroots leaders to halt the tar sands. We are working with activists in British Columbia to stop the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, and other pipelines throughout Canada.”

Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans (HOBAK) will be hosting the Bay Area premiere screening of short films by independent filmmakers about people’s struggles against the construction of a military base on Jeju Island.

On the island of Jeju, off the tip of South Korea, the South Korean government has been trying to build a huge naval base in Gangjeong Village that will not only host the Korean military, but also US naval warships and destroyers. From the beginning, the villagers have been resisting the construction of this base, but they have been brutally suppressed by the police and mainland military, as well as heavily fined for the “obstruction of governmental affairs.” This naval base threatens not only the ecosystem and the livelihoods of the villagers here, but the geopolitical balance in the region. Join HOBAK at Eastside Arts Alliance’s Final Fridays film screening to learn more about the incredible story of Jeju’s resistance against the naval base! Along with a full program and other solidarity activities:

INTERVIEWS — AnakBayan, Palestinian Youth Movement, and other allies will be interviewing each other about links between the many fronts against US imperialism around the world.

SONGS — performance by Dohee and Adria of Jeju Warrior.

VALENTINES GRAMS — send messages of love and resistance to people in Jeju.

Friday, January 20th
San Francisco Financial District
Orientations all day at Justin Herman Plaza 

Occupy Wall St West is calling a day of mass action centered in the SF Financial District to “occupy” banks & corporations attacking our communities, homes,
education, environment, livelihood and democracy.

General mass mobilization times are at 6AM, Noon and 5PM. There are many actions happening throughout the day, but here is a list of highlighted actions initiated by labor and community groups.

Wells Fargo HQ Action
8:00am @California and Montgomery
Contact:  Sasha Wright, Pride at Work, sasha4justicia@gmail.com

Bank of America Actions
8:00am @Justin Herman Plaza
Contact: Grace Martinez, ACCE, grace@calorganize.org

Occupy CPMC/Healthcare and Jobs for the 99% Action
11:00am @Van Ness and Geary
Contact: Pilar Schiavo, California Nurses Association, pschiavo@calnurses.org

Fannie Mae/Wells Fargo/ICE Action March
12:00pm @meet at Justin Herman Plaza
Contact:  Robbie Clark, Causa Justa, robbie@cjjc.org

Stop Wage Theft Action with Progressive Workers Alliance
3:00pm @Church and Market
Contact:  Mario Demira, Progressive Workers Alliance, mario@filipinocc.org

Occupy Hyatt Picket and Action with Unite Here Local 2
4:15pm @Grand Hyatt Union Square, Stockton and Sutter
Contact:  Gordon Mar, Jobs with Justice, gordon@jwjsf.org

Closing Unity March, Rally & Celebration
5:00pm @start from Grand Hyatt Union Square or Justin Herman Plaza for convergence in the Financial District
Contact:  Jaron Browne, POWER, jaron@peopleorganized.org

You can visit www.occupywallstwest.org for a more detailed list of all J20 actions.

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The Other Kind of Barrel Man

By Aileen Suzara
Re-posted from Kitchen Kwento

Back to barrel basics. BarrelManApps and Movement Generation.

If you haven’t yet seen the barrel man in real life, don’t let me spoil it. Let me just say that both the iconic wooden figurine and its hidden “surprise,” and the concept of saving rainwater in barrels, are familiar to many Filipinos.

But being a Filipina raised in the States means there are things I’ve had to relearn that would have been second nature to my grandparents. I enrolled in Tagalog 101 as a 20-year-old and struggled to wrap my tongue around conjugations. I worked my way through Filipino cookbooks with the help of a dog-eared English-Tagalog dictionary. I tried my feet at sipa and made my mom look like a World Cup champion of our native hackeysack. Last weekend was another experience of getting back to the basics, this time with water. I went to learn rainwater harvesting 101 through a workshop organized by Movement Generation.

Walking in, I wondered what other 20-something Filipino/Americans would think of this workshop. While my parents raised my sister and I to be resource-conscious as a practical matter, saving rain to wash clothes or irrigate plants was not a part of our daily lives in the US. It was only when I first visited the Philippines that I saw ordinary folks catch rain on an everyday basis. It was not unusual to experience brownouts, those times when the water was cut off and the tap ran dry. In preparation for days like these my uncles and aunties stored many heavy, colorful barrels of water in backrooms.

I adored taking cold tabo showers and how my skin felt to bathe in rainwater. But while it seemed like a novelty to my American-born self, it was normal survival mode for those who understood water would not always come from a faucet.

Barrel women. Ellen of MG and Laura of Greywater Action

The workshop was full of educators, community, and gardeners intent on applying these skills to their daily work and lives. We started from the beginning, refreshing on the water cycle and our place in the watershed. Brock Dolman, one of the facilitators, framed the water crisis as something even more immediate than food security. If we or our crops are thirsty and we cannot access clean water, how can we survive?

Participants took part in the hands-on work to install a system to channel water from the roof into a series of interconnected barrels. We drilled holes, hoisted barrels into place, and installed a gutter. I was struck not just by how accessible it all was, but just how absurd that a most fundamental right to water has been privatized, polluted, and taken out of reach for so many. It’s that crazy. As we closed the workshop it felt right on time when a light rain began to sprinkle and the first sheen of water slicked the roof.

In leaving the workshop I felt not only more skilled to adapt water saving skills in my urban environment, but even more fired up to steward the water we all depend on…becoming another kind of barrel (wo)man.

At the California Hotel, art blooms, plants flourish, and rainwater is saved.

More:

Movement Generation’s earth skills trainings

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, one of the trainers

Greywater Action, another trainer

A Single Drop for Safe Water, a Pinay-founded organization for clean water stewardship

Video by Rebecca Sommers covering the Climate Justice Now! press conference, and protests that happened at the end of COP17.

Durban, S. Africa, 11 December, 2011 – Decisions resulting from the UN COP17 climate summit in Durban constitute a crime against humanity, according to Climate Justice Now! a broad coalition of social movements and civil society. Here in South Africa, where the world was inspired by the liberation struggle of the country’s black majority, the richest nations have cynically created a new regime of climate apartheid.

“Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions,” said Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International. “An increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, Small Island States, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.”

According to Pablo Solón, former lead negotiator for the Plurinational State of Bolivia, “It is false to say that a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been adopted in Durban. The actual decision has merely been postponed to the next COP, with no commitments for emission reductions from rich countries. This means that the Kyoto Protocol will be on life support until it is replaced by a new agreement that will be even weaker.”

The world’s polluters have blocked real action and have once again chosen to bail out investors and banks by expanding the now-crashing carbon markets – which like all financial market activities these days, appear to mainly enrich a select few.

“What some see as inaction is in fact a demonstration of the palpable failure of our current economic system to address economic, social or environmental crises,” said Janet Redman, of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. “Banks that caused the financial crisis are now making bonanza profits speculating on our planet’s future. The financial sector, driven into a corner, is seeking a way out by developing ever newer commodities to prop up a failing system.”

Despite talk of a “roadmap” offered up by the EU, the failure in Durban shows that this is a cul-de-sac,  a road to nowhere. Spokespeople for Climate Justice Now! call on the world community to remember that a real climate program, based on planetary needs identified by scientists as well as by a mandate of popular movements, emerged at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth in Bolivia in 2010. The Cochabamba People’s Agreement, brought before the UN but erased from the negotiating text, offers a just and effective way forward that is desperately needed.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

On technology

“The technology discussions have been hijacked by industrialized countries speaking on behalf of their transnational corporations,” said Silvia Ribeiro from the international organization ETC Group.

Critique of monopoly patents on technologies, and the environmental, social and cultural evaluation of technologies have been taken out of the Durban outcome. Without addressing these fundamental concerns, the new technology mechanism will merely be a global marketing arm to increase the profit of transnational corporations by selling dangerous technologies to countries of the South, such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology or geoengineering technologies.

On agriculture

“The only way forward for agriculture is to support agro-ecological solutions, and to keep agriculture out of the carbon market,” said Alberto Gomez, North American Coordinator for La Via Campesina, the world’s largest movement of peasant farmers.

“Corporate Agribusiness, through its social, economic, and cultural model of production, is one of the principal causes of climate change and increased hunger. We therefore reject Free Trade Agreements, Association Agreements, and all forms of the application of Intellectual Property Rights to life, current technological packages (agrochemicals, genetic modification) and those that offer false solutions (biofuels, nanotechnology, and climate smart agriculture) that only exacerbate the current crisis.”

On REDD + and forest carbon projects
“REDD+ threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities. Mounting evidence shows that Indigenous Peoples are being subjected to violations of their rights as a result of the implementation of REDD+-type programs and policies,” declared The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD and for Life.

Their statement, released during the first week of COP17, declares that “REDD+ and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) promote the privatization and commodification of forests, trees and air through carbon markets and offsets from forests, soils, agriculture and could even include the oceans. We denounce carbon markets as a hypocrisy that will not stop global warming.”

On the World Bank and the Global Climate Fund

“The World Bank is a villain of the failed neoliberal economy,” says Teresa Almaguer of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance in the U.S.

“We need a climate fund managed by participatory governance, not by an anti-democratic institution that is responsible for much of the climate disruption and poverty in the world.” “The Green Climate Fund has been turned into the Greedy Corporate Fund,” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund has been hijacked by the rich countries, on their terms, and set up to provide more profits to the private sector”

On the Green Economy

“We need a climate fund that provides finance for peoples of developing countries that is fully independent from undemocratic institutions like the World Bank. The Bank has a long track record of financing projects that exacerbate climate disruption and poverty” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund is being hijacked by the rich countries, setting up the World Bank as interim trustee and providing direct access to money meant for developing countries to the private sector.  It should be called the Greedy Corporate Fund!”

Climate policy is making a radical shift towards the so-called “green economy,” dangerously reducing ethical commitments and historical responsibility to an economic calculation on cost-effectiveness, trade and investment opportunities. Mitigation and adaption should not be treated as a business nor have its financing conditioned by private sector and profit-oriented logic. Life is not for sale.

On climate debt

“Industrialized northern countries are morally and legally obligated to repay their climate debt,” said Janet Redman, Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies. “Developed countries grew rich at the expense of the planet and the future all people by exploiting cheap coal and oil. They must pay for the resulting loss and damages, dramatically reduce emissions now, and financially support developing countries to shift to clean energy pathways.”

Developed countries, in assuming their historical responsibility, must honor their climate debt in all its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution. The focus must not be only on financial compensation, but also on restorative justice, understood as the restitution of integrity to our Mother Earth and all its beings. We call on developed countries to commit themselves to action. Only this could perhaps rebuild the trust that has been broken and enable the process to move forward.

On real solutions

“The only real solution to climate change is to leave the oil in the soil, coal in the hole and tar sands in the land.” Ivonne Yanez, Acción Ecologica, Ecuador

For more information, contact:

Mike Dorsey – mkdorsey@professordorsey.com, or call+27 (0)79 863 8756 or +1-734-945-6424

Nick Buxton – nick@tni.org or call +27(0)81 589 8564 or +1 530 902 3772

From toddlers to high school students to elders, we worked, made art, shared food, and played together. We shared messages from communities fighting dirty energy from the Philipines to Durban.

As part of our efforts to connect movements, Occupy Oakland issued a statement of solidarity with the social movements in Durban exposing the Conference of Polluters and the communities who are building the real solutions to climate disruption.

We are organizing together!

Special shout out to FACES (Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity) – they held a fun paper lantern (“parol”) making table, and to the Castlemont High School Green Pioneers, who shared with us their final projects and their infinite wisdom.

Here are some inspiring words from Nile Malloy, Regional Director of Communities for  Better Environment – NorCal:

“Thank you all so much for blessing the space this past Saturday in East Oakland and building out the 10 raised beds.  With less than a week to put this together, we all just took action and THREW DOWN!

It was a beautiful day with beautiful people getting our hands dirty, building together, enjoying the December sun, building our food justice movement, strengthening our intergenerational with families and youth with around 100 folks that came thru to participate throughout the day.

Let’s keep planting seeds of action for our future harvest of having more access to more vacant, public, private, and idle land for local food.”

You can also read Acta Non Verba’s “Open Letter of Thanks”, from Director Kelly Carlisle, HERE.

Click on each image to download:

Design by Ellen Choy. For higher resolution versions, contact ellen@movementgeneration.org.