“Refusing to be Enemies”, an exclusive video interview with Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta at the Peoples Social Forum 2014

Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation is an interview-based study that presents the voices of over 100 practitioners and theorists of nonviolence, the vast majority either Palestinian or Israeli. In their own words, these activists share examples of effective nonviolent campaigns and discuss obstacles encountered in their pursuit of a just peace. Attention is also devoted to the special challenges of joint struggle and to hopes and visions for a shared future in the region. OFFICIAL WORDPRESS BLOG

PATHS TO PEACE
by Eduardo Carli de Moraes / Awestruck Wanderer

While the People’s Social Forum was taking place in Ottawa, between August 21 and 24, the bloodbath in Gaza was still raging. Even mass demonstrations and rallies, held in several cities all around the world (London, Cape Town, New York, Toronto, and many others), couldn’t stop Zionism’s genocidal machine, which once again bombed Palestine with total disregard for basic human rights. Many protests were voiced during the Forum against Israel’s regime, which  is backed-up in North America not only by the United States but also by Stephen Harper’s regime in Canada (watch Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines with Avi Lewis).

According to the latest report from UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), dated September 11, 2014, at least “503 Palestinian children are confirmed killed” and  “the cumulative death toll among Palestinians is at least 2,150, including 260 women. It is reported that the cumulative Israeli fatality toll is 71, of whom 66 were soldiers and one civilian fatality was a child.”

The huge disparity between the two sides of this “conflict” makes it almost obscene to call it anything but genocide. Let’s drop the euphemisms: Israel has obviously attacked once again not only military targets or Hamas militants; it has engaged in mass killings of Palestine’s civil population. Gaza, once again, looks like Guernica, but with no Picasso to paint it. Its infrastructure has been blown to smithereens, including hospitals, schools, power plants, universities and thousands of houses. The excuse for all this is, of course, The War On Terror, which seems to permit acts of unspeakable terror as means to attain victory over terrorists…

Anyone who deems justifiable the murder of more than 500 children and 260 women is nothing but a dangerous psychopath, and the doctrine of “collateral damage” is but the lunacy of serial killers which unfortunately hold State power. To put it plainly: these were monstruous war crimes and repeated violations of Human Rights, which the state of Israel can only get away with because of its Western allies:

“Israel’s staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the US government. The US government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every UN resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the US.

What lessons should we draw from this tragic conflict? Is it really impossible for Jewish people who suffered so cruelly themselves — more cruelly perhaps than any other people in history — to understand the vulnerability and the yearning of those whom they have displaced? Does extreme suffering always kindle cruelty? What hope does this leave the human race with?” – ARUNDHATI ROY [Read the full post, including 3 documentaries]

During the Peoples Social Forum, I’ve listened carefully to a highly captivating lecture by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, author of Refusing to Be Enemies, and afterwards she was kind enough to grant this blog an exclusive interview (watch at the end of this post). She is “a Quaker Jew who lived in Jerusalem for seven years and has written widely on Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activism and related topics”.

What’s fascinating about Maxine’s work is how devoted she is to the discovery of paths to peaceful coexistence among Palestinians and Israelis. More than one hundred people were interviewed by her about the whys and hows of their choice for nonviolent resistance. Veronica Cohen, for example, states: “Violence begets more violence. I’m morally and tactically opposed to violence.”

This is a common thread of non-violent activists: they refuse to add more fuel to the fire of violence both because they deem it morally wrong (killing people in order to reach peace: isn’t this a sick interpretation of the doctrine of “the end justifies the means”?) and because it doesn’t work pragmatically (it provides the enemy an excuse for violent retaliation). Nuri el-Okbi, a Bedouin Israeli activist, sums it up beautifully: “One who is right does not need to use violence. Every drop of blood that is spilt is a sad waste.” Similarly, Jean Zaru, Palestinian Quaker, argues: “Violence dehumanizes the powerful and the powerless. Nonviolent resistance is the only way to bring transformation.”

Nonviolent resistance has many faces: civil disobedience, boycotts, demonstrations, hunger strikes, and so on and so forth. Mass media in the West usually depicts Palestinian resistance as relying heavily on terrorism and violence, but Maxine argues that we shouldn’t believe that Hamas-way is the only way: the bulk of the resistance against the systemic Zionist violence and military occupation is a non-violent resistance, including simply refusing to leave. She mentions, for instance, the movements in Gaza and the West Bank who oppose Israel’s invasive policy which aims to grab Palestinian territories, demolish Palestinian homes and build Jewish settlements, in explicit violation of International Law.

During the Second Intifada, in 2000, Maxine jokes that she was “a little bit older to be blocking bulldozers”. She is not alone in feeling that throwing rocks and molotovs against the Israeli’s war tanks will hardly serve the purpose of building lasting peaceful relations in the area. Refusing to Be Enemies attempts to provide various nonviolent ways to fight against Israel’s policies, including non-cooperation with institutions of the occupation and attacks made not against the living bodies of Israelis, but on the separating walls and barbed-wire fences that stink like Apartheid.

While discussing the “rockets” fired by Hamas militants into Israeli territory, which serves as a justification for Israel’s war of aggression against Gaza, Maxine suggested quite a radical approach: “I like the idea of firing rockets at the wall instead of over the wall.” If I understood her well, she means that the walls of Apartheid needs to be brought down and that dialogue and co-existence are the way to go.

As long as Israel isolates itself behind the walls of a bunker state, and refuses to acknowledge the rights of Palestinians to lead normal lives, without being crushed by military occupation and genocidal aggression, the cycle of violence won’t stop. An attitude of openness is needed, then; an ability to respect otherness, to relate healthly with difference. My doubt is, however, if this is possible in a context of religious creeds dogmatically believed in. Perhaps the path to peace lies only in moving away from fundamentalism and fanaticism, and into the realm of a secular democracy which respects and protects multi-culturalism?

“Fears”

Huwaida Arraf (ISM), from the Free Gaza Movement, argues: “If you want to fight Mike Tyson, you’re not going to do it in the boxing ring.” The military power of Israel, with all the aid it receives both in cash and weaponry from the U.S., makes it a Mike Tyson, unbeatable on the boxing ring, and that’s one of the reasons why nonviolent resistance is the chosen path by many activists, who inspire themselves on the examples, practices and theories of Gandhi, Thoreau or Gene Sharp.

Among the Israelis, there are many who refuse to serve the Army, even though they can be jailed for that. Peretz Kidron, one of this refuseniks, explains his choice of refusing to follow the orders of the military authorities: “I will not obey a law who is part of a broader policy and exemplifies it in a nutshell. It’s like Gandhi going down to beach to make his own salt. It was illegal. It wasn’t violent but it was deliberately flouting the law and inviting prosecution.”

A significant number of both Israelis and Palestinians are involved in nonviolent resistance, argues Maxine, and they use their criativity to come up with innovative ways to act, including writing protest songs with satyrical lyrics, refusing to engage in battle (and accepting disagreements to be dealt with through dialogue discussion), or wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag as a sign of solidarity with the independence struggle. The international community can also join this struggle by boycotting corporations whose cumplicity with Israel’s war crimes are proved: a large movement calling for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has gained momentum in 2014 as Gaza was under attack, and mass demonstrations have erupted all around the world, as the streets screamed out their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Global civil society is also a player in this nonviolent resistance movement and we must voice our outrage with all global powers who have blood in their hands.

It’s possible that the World Wide Web is truly helping out in the job of re-shaping international solidarity: while people were been slaughtered in Gaza by the hundreds, the Internet was flooding with reactions. Quickly, protest movements have come to life whose efficacy and immediacy would be unthinkable without the use of social media as tools. Sadly, 2014 is another tragic year for Mankind (we still haven’t managed to give peace a chance), but maybe there’s reason to be hopeful that Marshall McLuhan prophecy about the Global Village is becoming flesh: Gaza doesn’t stand alone. Its suffering is not being ignored. War crimes and Human Rights violations won’t be forgotten. It’s our collective duty to struggle to find paths to peace amidst these endless turmoils of violence. However, the question remains: will those who refuse to be enemies one day outnumber or overpower those who refuse to be friends?

In the following video, Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta provides some of her insights about these matters and how could we built another world by refusing to be enemies:

“I’ve seen the future,” Naomi Klein says, “and it looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina” (Vogue Magazine, August 25 2014)

Noami Klein portrayed by Vogue: “Born in Montreal in 1970, Klein grew up the daughter of left-wing American parents who moved to Canada because of the Vietnam War and continued their progressive politics there: Her mother, Bonnie Sherr Klein, was part of Canada’s first feminist film studio, while her father, Michael Klein, M.D., built innovative public health centers.

Over the last decade, Klein’s research trips—to Indonesia, Poland, Gaza, Sri Lanka, New Orleans after Katrina, et cetera—and her frequent public appearances have often kept her and Lewis in different places, many of which aren’t pleasant. Klein was reporting for Harper’s in Baghdad in 2004, for instance, when the occupation in Iraq descended into terrifying bloodshed. She says it’s the scariest place she’s ever been.

It will be released soon the film of This Changes Everything, a documentary aimed at people who won’t read her book. Both book and film strike a delicate balance between stoking the energizing fear of impending disaster (“I’ve seen the future,” Klein says, “and it looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina”) and offering a glimpse of hope…” – Read it all here

 

5 Crucial Lessons for the Left From Naomi Klein’s New Book

You can’t fight climate change without fighting capitalism, argues Klein in This Changes Everything.

BY ETHAN COREY AND JESSICA CORBETT

In her previous books The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and NO LOGO: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalization and “disaster capitalism,” extensively documenting the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years. But in her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (due in stores September 16), Klein casts her gaze toward the future, arguing that the dangers of climate change demand radical action now to ward off catastrophe. She certainly isn’t alone in pointing out the urgency of the threat, but what sets Klein apart is her argument that it is capitalism—not carbon—that is at the root of climate change, inexorably driving us toward an environmental Armageddon in the pursuit of profit. This Changes Everything is well worth a read (or two) in full, but we’ve distilled some of its key points here.

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.

“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world.

“The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.”

Klein devotes a full chapter of the book to geoengineering: the field of research, championed by a niche group of scientists, funders and media figures, that aims to fight global warming by altering the earth itself—say, by covering deserts with reflective material to send sunlight back to space or even dimming the sun to decrease the amount of heat reaching the planet. However, politicians and much of the global public have raised environmental, health and ethical concerns regarding these proposed science experiments with the planet, and Klein warns of the unknown consequences of creating “a Frankenstein’s world,” with multiple countries launching projects simultaneously. Instead of restoring an environmental equilibrium, Klein argues these “techno-fixes” will only further upset the earth’s balance, each one creating a host of new problems, requiring an endless chain of further “fixes.” She writes, “The earth—our life support system—would itself be put on life support, hooked up to machines 24/7 to prevent it from going full-tilt monster on us.”

3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding.

“A great many progressives have opted out of the climate change debate in part because they thought that the Big Green groups, flush with philanthropic dollars, had this issue covered. That, it turns out, was a grave mistake.”

Klein strongly critiques partnerships between corporations and major environmental groups, along with attempts by “green billionaires” such as Bill Gates and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson to use capitalism to fighting global warming. When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit. For example, though the Gates Foundation funds many major environmental groups dedicated to combating climate change, as of December 2013, it had at least $1.2 billion invested in BP and ExxonMobil. In addition, when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda. For instance, organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, which have taken millions of dollars from pro-fracking corporate funders, such as Shell, Chevron and JP Morgan, are pitching natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal.

4. We need divestment, and reinvestment.

“The main power of divestment is not that it financially harms Shell and Chevron in the short term but that it erodes the social license of fossil fuel companies and builds pressure on politicians to introduce across-the-board emission reductions.”

Critics of the carbon divestment movement often claim that divestment will have minimal impact on polluters’ bottom lines. But Klein argues that this line of reasoning misses the point, quoting Canadian divestment activist Cameron Fenton’s argument that “No one is thinking we’re going to bankrupt fossil fuel companies. But what we can do is bankrupt their reputations and take away their political power.” More importantly, divestment opens the door for reinvestment. A few million dollars out of the hands of ExxonMobil or BP frees up money that can now be spent developing green infrastructure or empowering communities to localize their economies. And some colleges, charities, pension funds and municipalities have already got the message: Klein reports that 13 U.S. colleges and universities, 25 North American cities, around 40 religious institutions and several major foundations have all made commitments to divest their endowments from fossil fuel stocks and bonds.

5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues.

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.”

In The Shock Doctrine, Klein explained how corporations have exploited crises around the world for profit. In This Changes Everything, she argues that the climate change crisis can serve as a wake-up call for widespread democratic action. For instance, when a 2007 tornado destroyed most of Greensburg, Kansas, the town rejected top-down approaches to recovery in favor of community-based rebuilding efforts that increased democratic participation and created new, environmentally-friendly public buildings. Today, Greensburg is one of the greenest towns in the United States. To Klein, this example illustrates how people can use climate change to come together to build a greener society. It also can, and indeed must, spur a radical transformation of our economy: less consumption, less international trade (part of relocalizing our economies) and less private investment, and a lot more government spending to create the infrastructure we need for a green economy. “Implicit in all of this,” Klein writes, “is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity.”

Reblogged from In These Times

Watch below Naomi at the Peoples Social Forum (Ottawa, 2014)

ANARCHIST MEDIA WORKSHOP – Live from the Peoples Social Forum 2014, Ottawa, #Day 2

Design by Beehive Collective

“Wealthy anarchists are just like unicorns!” Such outbursts of spontaneous poetry, my friends, you are only likely to hear in a Social Forum Anarchist Workshop.

After spending a terrible night of almost no-sleep-at-all at the Jail Hostel, a former prison turned into a gloomy night repose for youngsters, I decided to drop by, early in the morning, to exchange ideas with radical indie-media and gonzo-writers brothers & sisters from all around Canada.

The event was organized by Hallifax anarchists who publish a black-and-white and punk-spirited pamphlet called The Worst of Times. With a high dose of caffeine in my brain, I was about to start my 2nd day at the Peoples Social Forum diving deeper into the “How-and-Why of An Uncompromising Anarchist Broadsheet”.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to be lectured by anarchists, posing as authorities on this subject, but rather to engage in conversation with other freaks, such as myself, who cherish the struggle to build pathways and networks for a journalism who gives voice to the voiceless and speaks truth to power. As Mr. Jello from the Dead Kennedys puts it: “Don’t hate the media, become the media!” 

It was an intense and totally horizontal exchange of ideas and dreams, filled with tiny acts of heroism celebrated with great collective cheering: I got to know those who work in public libraries and secretly “hack” the xerox machines in order to make copies of their home-made anarchist newspapers; those who come up with innovative ways to raise funds on their communities so that they can publish un-censored manifestos and flyers; those who write protest songs with themes taken from left-wing zines (like this guy, Byron, who I saw playing in Sparks Street the previous day with his project Folk The System and then re-met at the workshop).

In the Social Forum’s official program, this gathering was described as “an exploration of the who / what / where / when and, most crucially, the why / how of building an autonomous forum for uncensored raw news, analysis and opinion that does not depend on unions, NGOs or business for financial or moral / ideological support”.

Our debate revolved around such themes: why does corporate media do such a lousy job when it comes to its coverage of marginalized peoples? What skills should an anarchist media organization possess and master, in order to truly be of service to the community, especially those who are victims of racism, sexism, xenophobia and other forms of exclusion?

Everyone of us have its chance to voice an opinion – “prendre la parole”, as our dear Québecois comrades put it – and my humble colaboration to the talk had to do with our recent experience in Brazil. Especially after the mass demonstrations of July 2013, a month in which more than 1 million Brazilians reclaimed the streets of dozens of towns after an increase in public transport fares, our corporate media once again took off its mask and revealed its fascist face.

Most of our mainstream TV networks (such as Globo, that has been for 21 years a friend of our Military Dictatorship [1964-1985]) and weekly magazines (such as shitty crappy Veja, who deserves only to be used as toilet paper) treated this massive outburst of democratic participation from Brazilian civil society with utter jornalistic incompetence.

Corporate media, in Brazil, portrayed activists only as potencial terrorists, threats to public safety; the media of big bosses sided with the reppression forces, and applauded police brutality and tear-gas bombing; these wealthy media corporations focused on relatively tiny episodes of violence and vandalism by Black Bloc groups (and maybe des agent provocateurs), who were breaking glasses of junk-food stores or trashing ATM machines and banks; but mainly this mainstream media showed an absolute incapacity to understand the social causes of this phenomenon.

What I perceive to be lacking in corporate media, I told my comrades, is empathy and in-depth understanding for those who are behind the gas masks or the Black Blac “costumes”; what is lacking is simply the hability to portray the human beings who participate with large-scale social movements in Brazil such as MST (Landless Workers Movements) and Passe Livre (Free Pass Movement); what is lacking, of course, is a media that instead of sucking the cocks of wealthy advertisers, serves the true needs of the national community – especially those who need the most to have their voices heard and amplified by the media apparatus.

June 2013 also had some good news: the upsurge of Ninja Media and A Nova Democracia (The New Democracy), for example, truly independent projects of mass-communication which did an excellent job during the demonstrations; they broadcasted live from the streets and filmed great documentaries about the social movements efervescence in Brazil; they denounced the State’s repressive forces as disproportionate and authoritarian, defended the human rights of protesting citizens, shouted truth to power in their increasingly popular social media (Ninja has reached more than 300.000 fans in its Facebook page, for example).

Unfortunately, most of the Brazilian population is still under the spell of the brainwashing machine called Mass Media. Our indigenous peoples, for example, are suffering terribly from the construction of big dams; from massive deforestation at the behest of cattle ranchers and agribusiness corporations; from the onslaught of the bulldozers courtesy of the doctrine of Development and Economic Growth.

In the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso – which one of Brazil’s most influential anthropologists, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, deems our own Gaza Strip – the indigenous populations are being treated like trash, to be swept to the slums (or simply out of existence). They have been kicked out of their ancient and cherished lands in order for money to be made in complete disregard to environmental destruction. Nowadays, one of the hugest suicide rates in Latin America is among Mato Grosso’s native populations. The corporate media, in general, is an accomplice to this genocide.

Many people had lots of interesting things to say about their own experiences as publishers of alternative media experiments. One problem that seems to plague us all is this: we try to write in order to give voice to the voiceless, provide visibility to the invisible, speak truth to power, and so forth and so on. I love this ideas and ideals. But the problem is: if you’re tiny anarchist newspaper who gives voice to voiceless is only read by 100 readers, isn’t this newspaper itself voiceless? Isn’t it devoid of broad social impact?

So, the main focus of our discussion ended up being this: how can we break the confines of a small reading audience? How can we reach a wider audience for our messages which are so dissonant in comparison with mass media crap? How to avoid falling into the trap of “preaching to the converted”? Can an anarchist media experiment go beyond the “inner communication” amongst the tribe of anarchists and socialists and sympathizers, and actually get its messages across to all society? And, last but not least, how can we use most effectively the high-tech tools – WWW and Social Media – in order to transcend the individual medias isolation and create big networks of resistance?

* * * * *

TO BE CONTINUED….

Blogged from the Peoples Social Forum’s Media Center, 24/08/14.
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Read part 1 and part 2 of this Awestruck Wanderer’s special coverage.

LIVE FROM THE SOCIAL FORUM 2014 (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) – #DAY 01: March to Parliament, Naomi Klein’s lecture & the Cowspiracy doc

“Another world is possible” – that’s a catchword I’ve been hearing  for more than a decade, and it still sounds catchy and urgent, broad enough for a huge diversity of people and movements to gather under its motherly umbrella. In 2003, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the first World Social Forum was held, as the project of a global movement to create an alternative to the mainstream trend of globalization was gaining momentum. Rising up to confront the global dominance of corporate capitalism (always coupled with “shock and awe” politics), people all around the globe starting to voice their discontent with a system that generates vast accumulation of capital in few hands (the 1% denounced by the Occupy Movement), while causing massive empoverishment, debt and environmental destruction.

The Seattle No-WTO protests in 1999, and then Québec City’s demonstrations in 2001, and then Porto Alegre’s Forum in 2003 – this sequence of events, and the ones that followed, have shown that multitudes are willing to confront imperialism in its new encarnation as “neo-liberalism” – also known as “Free Market”, usually exported abroad by bombings and military coups (never forget: it took a Pinochet to enforce it in Chile, 1973). People are fed up of mercenary politicians, willing to sell all the public services to private interest. At the twilight of the 20th Century (an “Age of Extremes”, to quote Eric Hobsbawn’s excellent expression), and at the dawn of the 21st Century, we experienced some massive demonstrations against a world order ruled by the IMF, the World Bank, the OMC, and so on and so forth. It goes on. It’s going on right now.

The main difference I perceive between the mass demonstrations against the dominant model of capitalist globalization, on one side, and the social forums held by les altermondialistes, on the other, is this: in the first case, the focus is on protesting against the global elite (G8s and G20s, for example) and its un-democratic business decisions, made in military bunkers, surroundered by walls and riot police (we live in an age of epidemic tear-gas bombing of citizens); in the latter case, the focus is on a collective engagement to build a viable, effective alternative to our global elite’s mad ecocidal plans. That it is absolutely urgent to dethrone the New Emperor and its new clothes is nowhere stated better than in the global environmental crisis we are now confronting, and that menaces to wipe out entire ecosystems. If you are an apocalyptic freak or a nihilist, who wishes thousands of species to be extinct, all you need to do is this: nothing. Do nothing, and you’ll be siding with those who stabbing Gaia – and all living things within it, ourselves included – in her heart.

Arundhati Roy, speaking at the event held in Porto Alegre, stated that this “alter-world” wasn’t only a possibility, confined to the realm of potentialities, which may or may not come to life: “I can hear her breathing.” A Social Forum is a place where we gather to hear the Another World already breathing. And quite an interesting choice of worlds, Mrs Arundathi! To refer to the world-we-wish-to-build as a SHE sounds to my ears as an interesting concept, which suggests that too much testosterone and male-domineering-militarist culture is one of the most destructive trends in our world. This one that we need to subvert and revolutionize if Gaia, with the whole Web of Life in her bosom, is to survive this huge menace.

I believe in the fecundity of thinking about the alter-world as a she, which means a reawakening of respect for the Earth and its limites. And maybe mythology isn’t an innefective allie in our struggles if we regard our current crisis through the mythological lens of the goddess Gaia, symbol of interdependent and interelated Life, coexisting in a connected network of balanced, sustainable organisms that know themselves to be like instruments in the same symphony. She – alas! poor Gaia! – is currently ravaged by capitalism’s greedy extractivist & productivist húbris. So what we hear mostly, all around, is dissonance. A Social Forum is a place where we try, collectively, to bring back Melody and Harmony to our Civilization’s song.

Some may despise as corny and kitsch this sort of talk about “respecting Mother Nature”, but think about this: if we treat her like an exploitable whore, instead of a nurturing mother, we’ll pay a heavy price. We are already in the midst of a massive global crisis, and the prospect is that it will keep worsening as global warming produces brand-new draughts, floods, hurricanes, displacements, “climate refugees”, and so on and so forth. Here in Ottawa, 2014, the Social Forum provides its participants with hope that people coming together can join forces in order to save Gaia from this agony which she’s currently going through. Just regard her wounds and how much they’re bleeding!

* * * * *

Naomi Klein’s lecture was one of the main attractions of the Social Forum’s first day, August 21. When I got at the University of Ottawa to listen to one of the contemporary journalists that I admire the most, the place was packed-full and there were no chairs left. I had to resign myself to listen to her standing on my tired legs, as if I was in a rock concert regarding a far-away stage.

In her home country, Naomi is certainly a very well-known and respected writer, pride and joy of Canada’s intellectual landscape. As the author of the quintessencial “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” – it’s safe to say it’s one of the greatest non-fiction books published in our century so far – she has earned recognition as one of the world’s leading thinkers about neo-liberal capitalism and the way it really works. She can count as some of her attentive readers and interlocutors some highly significant figures such as Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek and Arundhati Roy.

Even though she’s Canadian, Naomi Klein doesn’t deal in the cheap merchandise of demagogic patriotism. She’s clearly no fan of Mr. Stephen Harper’s policies and doesn’t fall for his jive (she’s too smart for that). “In this country, he are in the midst of an extraction frenzy”, she denounced, exposing Canada’s current practices of tar sands oil extraction, pipeline construction, high-scale fracking and mining.

She describes the “logic that sacrifices life in the altar of money” with two peculiar adjectives: “supremacist” and “psychotic”. When her new book comes out in September, “This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate” – we’ll see to what extent Naomi Klein has ventured into the diagnosis of our collective neurosis. In her Social Forum talk, she showed no signs of optimism: if we don’t change this system, she suspects, our future will be one in which “serial climate disasters will be dealt with dystopian barbarism”.

To explain what she means by “dystopian barbarism”, she mentions one of the greatest sci-fi movies produced in the last few years, “Snowpiercer” (by Korean director Joon-ho Bong). The Apocalypse on Wheels that the film portrays is one of the most poignant representations of what our Earthship may look like if we let business as usual proceed with its Earth-wrecking practises. “What we do in the next 10 years will define the fate of generations to come”, said Klein, underlining unequivocally that the doctrine of economic growth, when it disregards environmental sustainability, is a “suicidal path”.

* * * * *

People’s Social Forum march throught Ottawa’s streets. August 21, 2014.

After Naomi’s thought-provoking contribution had kick-started the Forum’s multiple discussions and dialogues, it was time for us to take the streets. At least a dozen yellow school buses, packed with noisy bands of joyful and excited activists, were deployed for the transportation of the people from the University of Ottawa to the Canadian Museum of War. While police officers riding bikes stood by, just witnessing this strange gathering of colourful flags and shouting-and-cheering humans, a series of speakers adressed the crowd before the start of the march (videos coming soon!). Mr. Harper was treated as a punchbag, and the audience loved it. Leaders of labour unions, civil rights activists, defenders of First Nations (indegenous populations), all had their chance to voice their perspectives and to spark in the crowd the fires of enthusiastic democratic participation.

I must confess that I’m a sort of march-junkie – it’s one of my favorite drugs. My feelings of powerlessness get crushed when I’m embarked in the flow of a marching human stream. It almost brings tears of excitement to my face when my senses immerge in such a sea of human collective effort. It was my first day in Canada’s capital and I was about to participate in a massive take-over of Parliament Hill. Wow! Trust me, my friends: there’s no Hollywood thriller that can be provide thrills such as these. The avant-garde of this massive river-of-people – I would estimate that 10.000 people were marching – was composed of drumming and chanting First Nations representatives. Several different organizations were there adding their voices to the choir – a rainbow of diversity ranging from moderate and kitschy Nature Loving hippie-talk, to more radical, punkish and anarchist “smash the State!”  utterings.

I must also confess that Ottawa’s establishment, its status quo, its machinery of power, its main public spaces, gave me a distasteful impression of too-much-militarism. By that I mean that military deeds seem to be celebrated much more than I think it should. It leaves in my tongue a somewhat bitter flavour to see plazas filled with statues of colonels and generals. I have also a difficult relationship with Ottawa’s monuments devoted to those who died in the battlefields – World War II or Korea, for example. Quoting from Virgil’s Aeneid, these military heroes are celebrated in Ottawa’s streets as men (they are all male!) “whose names will never be erased from History”. Methinks we should oppose the culture of militarism with the same fierceness with which we fight and despise the culture of rape, racism, patriarchy or xenophobia.

The first thing I did in the morning, for instance, was to attend to a ritual considered to be a delightul spectacle for tourists: the changing of the Guard in Parliament. Quite a boring show, if you ask me, and I couldn’t help but secretly despise those tourists who were admiringly watching this display of traditional military ritualization. In exactly the same place, in the afternoon, I could experience something much sweeter to my taste: the Social Forum’s multitude claiming its right to occupy the Parliament. After a beautiful, noisy, exciting march through Ottawa’s streets, the people gathered there to exchange ideas, to make plans for action, to chant and drum – and even to sing protest songs against the very people who work in the surrounding buildings and who are supposed to represent the people.

“Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets!” This call-and-response massive outcry is still ringing in my ears, still fresh in my memory, and to have experienced this has a already become so dear to my heart that I’ll carry it through life until my dying day.

This, my friends, is what democracy looks like.

A multitude of Social Forum participants take-over Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa (click to enlarge)

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TO BE CONTINUED…
Next chapter: my remarks on Cowspiracy, one of the greatest docs I ever saw.

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This was blogged by Awestruck Wanderer
from the Social Forum’s Media Center,
Ottawa, Ontario – 22/08/2014.

Another world is possible! >>> Peoples Social Forum 2014 / Ottawa, Canada / August 21 – 24

Peoples Social Forum: Ottawa, August 21-24, 2014

Build together, win together!  The Future is Ours!

* * * * *

Forum social des peuples: Ottawa 21 au 24 aout 2014

Ensemble pour gagner, l’avenir est à nous!

* * * * *

Official site: http://www.peoplessocialforum.org
Facebook

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM (ENGLISH OR FRENCH)

“Another world is not only possible, she’s on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.”

ARUNDHATI ROY. From a speech entitled Confronting Empire given at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 28 January 2003.

For the next few days, I’ll be in Canada’s capital, Ottawa (Ontario), for the Peoples Social Forum. I’ll try to blog “live” from the independent media center to tell Awestruck Wanderer’s readers what’s going on there. I also plan to film a short-film documenting the event, to be released here (and on my Vimeo cyberspace) as soon as I can find some time to edit it.  This journey starts tomorrow, August 21, with a talk by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, who is about to release her new book This Changes Everything – Capitalism Vs. The Climate. Canadians everywhere, if you’re interested in helping out in building another future, if you wanna meet active and critical people who are joining together, if you wanna to protest some of Mr. Harper’s ecocidal policies (Oil Sands in Alberta, for instance), if you wish to get yourself acquainted with all sorts of activists and freedom fighters, artists and scholars… don’t lose this! Hey ho… let’s go!

Here are the main themes of the Forum:

1- Climate:

 justice – responsibility – action

What are we doing to stop the largest threat to human survival? Who’s responsible for climate change? Who is disproportionately affected by the impacts? Does the West owe a climate debt to the Global South? Where are key points of intervention to stop climate change? Which companies, foundations, and individuals are promoting climate change denial? What are some ways to adapt to increasingly chaotic weather? How is climate change pushing people out of their homes, and who is benefiting? Can we move to post-carbon or carbon-neutral societies? Will we wait until it’s too late to develop the political will to act? What’s holding back effective action? How is climate change being used to further colonial and corporate ends?What is the relationship between climate change, environmental racism, and energy extraction on Indigenous lands? Why and how are Indigenous Peoples taking a lead in the fight against climate change?What must we do as individuals, communities, movements, and society to save the climate?

2- Communication:

media – language – arts

Who owns the media? Who controls the airwaves? What is media literacy? How concentrated is the media in Canada and Quebec? How can progressive and radical journalists subvert dominant narratives? How can we use social media more effectively? How can we use our art for social change? How can cultural and artistic workers organize in ways that don’t stunt their craft? Whose interests do copyrights serve? What language do we speak and why? Is Canada bilingual? How do we promote the survival of the French language? How do we revive Indigenous languages? How do we work with migrant communities that don’t operate in English? How do we communicate the need for serious change to millions of people?

3- Community:

race – access – place

How are we organizing in our neighbourhoods? How can we fundraise for grassroots community initiatives? Who’s included in “the community”? In what ways are our communities divided by race and class? What can be done about gentrification? How can we design public space in the most accessible way? How does our race affect our access to community, and belonging? How can we honour Indigenous sovereignty while also becoming attached to a place and putting down roots? What type of multi-culturalism is promoted by the government? How has white supremacy adapted to the 21st century? How can various Indigenous and racialized communities organize in solidarity with each other? How can we fight horizontal racism? How well do we understand the history of racism and colonialism, including linguistic, cultural and national oppression, in Canada? Has the word “racism” become a taboo? How does racism intersect with other forms of oppression? How do we support the rights of the homeless? Where is their place in our community? How are people with disabilities excluded from community? How can able-bodied people support movements for disability rights? Do you have to stand up to fight back? Why is the adoption of an anti-oppression framework in our activism work soimportant? How do we ensure access to decent housing as a right? How are our communities bought and sold from under us? How do we take back public space? Whose streets? What are inspiring examples of sustainable and intentional community?

4- Control:

criminalization – surveillance – prisons

Who’s controlling society and through what forceful mechanisms is our obedience ensured? Why is dissent being increasingly criminalized? What is the prison industrial complex and its relation to racism and capitalism? How can we counter police violence and racism on the ground? Are we creeping into an Orwellian world of total surveillance and censorship? What can we do to stop the spread of cameras in public space and defend our privacy rights? Why are governments increasingly scared of hackers and whistle-blowers? Why are new prisons built while crime rates are dropping? Why are Indigenous peoples, youth of colour, and migrants disproportionately incarcerated? How does immigration detention serve to keep people of colour living in fear? How have police, prisons, border officials, and intelligence agencies historically and presently been used to further colonial aims? Can we abolish prison? What are alternative models for defending ourselves, our communities, and resolving conflicts?

5- Earth:

land – air – water

What is our relationship to the earth and all it’s non-human inhabitants? How has our relationship to land shifted from one of responsibility and communal care to one of individual ownership and speculation? Why is the Harper government attacking and defunding Environmental NGO’s and silencing scientists? What are inspiring ways people are defending the natural world from pollution, degradation, and devastation? How are we defending the commons (air, land, water) from predatory mining, fracking, logging, drilling, bombing, dumping, spraying, damming, and sprawling? How can environmental activists, people of colour and Indigenous people’s work together as allies in defense of mother earth? What are examples of environmental racism, and environmental justice work in Canada and Quebec? How do we connect environmental justice, anti-racism and reproductive justice work? What is Canada’s role in trashing the planet on an international scale? Why is it important that water be made a human right? How can we join others in making the “Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth” law? What can we do to help heal the earth and live sustainably?

6- Economy

capitalism-crisis-alternatives

In what ways has the current economic model failed us? Can we overcome global inequality? Is capitalism doomed? What are other economic models that have been tried and failed? How can we reverse the trends we’ve been seeing of increased social inequality, the multiplication of economic crises, and the commodification of everything including human life? Are we heading back into feudalism? Should the very concept of growth be questioned? How is our economy propped up by slavery and colonialism, both historically and presently? What can we do to support calls for reparations for slavery and debt jubilees coming from the global south? Where are there inspiring examples of modes of production and life outside the logic of capitalism? What economic alternatives can we seek? Can we democratize the economy? What economic models have the best chance of replacing capitalism in our lifetime? How can the economy serve the people so that we can live in a world that is just, equitable, respectful of human beings and the environment?

7- Food:

sovereignty – access – production

Who grows our food? Who harvests it? Who gets access to healthy food? Whose neighbourhoods are food deserts? What is the state of food insecurity in Canada? How are Canadian corporations affecting food sovereignty abroad? Does Canada ensure food a human right? Where are there good examples of permaculture, urban farming, community gardens, CSA’s, and food co-ops that we can learn from? How does the local-food, food justice movement include migrant workers that grow the food, and the racialized people that work in the food industry? Why are family farmers losing their land to large agribusiness? How is Canada infringing on Indigenous food sovereignty both here and abroad? What foods should we avoid for ethical and environmental reasons? What is peak soil? What are new inventive ways for urban food production? How do we fight the growing collusion of government and agribusiness? What’s being done by various levels of government that affects food sovereignty? Why doesn’t Canada have a federal food policy? How does structural racism manifest itself in our food system? What are inspiring examples of resistance to GMO’s, monocrops, over-fishing, and factory farming? What would it mean to decolonize our diets and develop sustainable and sovereign food systems?

8- Gender:

sexuality – patriarchy – socialization

How can queers and trans-folks bash back against ongoing discrimination and hatred? How can we subvert heteronormativity? What does patriarchy and feminism look like in the 21st century? How is poverty gendered? What is patriarchy’s relationship to displacement, colonization, war, and capitalism? How do we unlearn and dismantle rape culture? How does our gender socialization reproduce oppressive power dynamics? How can we stop gender policing in queer and trans communities? What can we do to stop the wave of murders and disappearances of Indigenous women? How can we stop all sexual violence, slut-shaming, and gender oppression?

9- Governance & Democracy:

representation – organization – decolonization

In what ways could we politically govern ourselves better than the current system? How do we address anti-democratic trends in our current government? How do we formally reject the Doctrine of Discovery and concept of Terra Nullius? Can we make democracy more direct, more empowering, more participatory? Can we govern without leaders? Can we vote ourselves in to a better society? Can we empower our communities on localized levels such as neighbourhoods, bioregions, and watersheds? How about workplace democracy and worker-control of workplaces? How do free trade agreements lead to corporate dictatorship? What Free Trade Agreements must we fight presently? How can we empower those who are not allowed, or choose not, to vote? What future for the Quebec nation? What strategies are successful for defending Indigenous sovereignty? How does Canada continue to violate Indigenous sovereignty and traditional governance? How can all peoples work towards decolonization and a respect of treaty rights and responsibilities?

10- Impoverishment:

austerity – cuts – privatization

What does austerity mean for average people?  How do we fight back against the age of austerity?  How are governments impoverishing us through budget cuts and legislation?  How do the cuts impact poor, people of colour and indigenous people differently What new struggles can be waged in the austerity era to win concrete gains like higher minimum wages, access to social housing, and health benefits?  Can we reverse impoverishment through campaigns such as guaranteed income, affordable housing, community and worker co-operatives?  How can folks fighting against their own impoverishment work in solidarity with communities who’ve been systematically impoverished and excluded for centuries as part of colonization and racism? How do we fight to stop the cuts and expand services at the same time?

11- International:

solidarity – peace – justice

What role does Canada play in global capitalism and neo-colonialism on the international scene? What are some examples of international injustices caused by Canadian interests? How do we hold those Canadian interests accountable? How do we respond to global crisis? What can we learn from the alter/anti-globalization movement? How can we be more effective in resisting war and militarization? What is Canadian Imperialism? How can we act in solidarity internationally to counteract and stop global capitalism, colonial aggression, and empire building? What can be done here to apply pressure in support of occupied and oppressed populations internationally? Can the whole world be decolonized?

12- Knowledge:

education – access – alternatives

Can we ensure access to education as a basic right for all? How do we stop the increasing privatization and corporatization on campuses? How can students fight back against increasing debts and tuitions? How are students and youth fighting back both here and internationally against the neo-liberal agenda on campus? What are lessons and challenges we can learn from the historic Quebec Student Strike? How has “education” been used to further colonization and the erasure of Indigenous and diverse people of colour’s ways and knowledge, and how does this persist today? How do we ensure that all children have access to the same educational opportunities no matter what neighbourhood they live in? What are popular educational alternatives to institutional learning? What can we learn from Indigenous and international models of education? How do we stop school from getting in the way of education?

13- Migration:

mobility – borders – displacement

Why do we move? Who gets to move? Who gets to stay? Why is Canada, and most of the world, moving towards a system of temporary immigration? What does migrant justice look like? How can people with immigration status support their undocumented and precarious status neighbours? How does migrant justice include honoring Indigenous sovereignty? Does Canada have a responsibility to refugees? How are Canadian interests complicit in forcing communities into migration through displacement and dispossession? Who benefits from current immigration policies and at whose expense? What are the different forms of racism mobilized against migrants? What could a world without borders look like?

14- Movements:

intersectionality – alliances – solidarity

How do we build effective and sustainable movements for social justice? What are some strategies to build alliances across traditional divides of race, class, gender, ability, age, and sexuality? How do we foster a spirit of solidarity and respect within pluralistic and diverse movements? Who are unlikely allies we can work with? How do movements succeed or fail? What will it take to dismantle corporate power?

15- Public services

quality – universality – access

Why are right wing governments across Canada and around the world attacking public services? Why are they deregulating and privatizing public services and public space? How does this impact on workers, communities and the public in general? How can we stop deregulation and cuts to public services? What are other countries doing to push back against the corporate agenda? How can we defend our public services, postal service, and healthcare from cuts and privatization? Who benefits from quality public services? How can we build strong public services that will strengthen the economy and social justice and pull communities together?

16- Spirit:

ceremony – traditions – identity

How does spirituality intersect with activism? How can people of different faiths work together to end religious-based conflict? How do we foster respect for each other in multi-faith societies? What are our peoples’ and movement’s ceremonies and traditions? How do faith communities serve the most excluded? How do we work through trauma? What can be done to heal our spiritual connection to each other and to the earth? How has religion been used to further colonialism and what can be done to reverse this? How were Indigenous people’s ceremonies, traditions, and identities targeted for extermination and how are they being revived today? How can we spread a spirit of empowerment, mutual aid, and revolution?

17- Work:

precarity – deindustrialization – scarcity

Who’s hiring? Who’s firing? Who’s working more than ever? Who is promoting and benefiting from low-wages? Who can’t find stable employment? Do careers exist anymore? Why is the manufacturing sector being hollowed out? How can organized labour adapt to the shifting world of work? How can workers, particularly migrant, Indigenous and citizen workers, avoid being pitted against each other? How do we honour all work, including domestic, care and sex work? Why do Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and people of colour have the highest unemployment rates? How can we support Unions, and how can Unions include everyone? What ways are people finding to survive at the margins of the economy? Can workers take-over the companies that employ them? How do we build alliances between workers in resource-extractive industries and those opposing environmentally-destructive resource extraction? Can we develop a solidarity economy and produce and distribute what we need without capitalism? What are some alternatives to capitalism that we can start exploring and building?

Lots of political ART will also add fuel to the fire of CHANGE: