Jade Begay and Ayşe Gürsöz at Common Dreams write—Why Defending Indigenous Rights Is Integral to Fighting Climate Change:
Even as the Trump administration rolls back regulations meant to protect Americans from pollution, the EPA recently released a report that finds that people of color are much more likely to breathe toxic air than their white counterparts. The study’s basic findings—that non-whites bear a higher burden in terms of pollution that leads to a range of poor health outcomes—is supported by other similar studies, and underpins the issue of environmental injustice that impacts many politically marginalized communities.
It’s these communities that are hardest hit by the climate crisis––even though they are the least responsible for causing it. In addition, these communities, by design, are most imperiled by environmentally devastating extractive industries like coal mining, tar sands, fracked gas, and more. Let’s be clear: Climate change isn’t just a scientific issue—it’s an issue of racial inequity, economic inequity and cultural genocide.
Indigenous peoples around the world are quickly becoming the generation that can no longer swim in their own waters, fish in their rivers, hunt their traditional foods or pick their traditional medicines. The climate isn’t just changing the landscape—it’s hurting the culture, sovereignty, health, economies and lifeways of Indigenous peoples around the world. Yet despite the immense impacts climate change and fossil fuel industries have on Indigenous cultures and ways of life, Indigenous communities are tremendously resilient.
This was strikingly clear at the 17th Protecting Mother Earth conference, where tribal leadership and environmental activists called for a unified front to help find solutions. Hosted by the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Nisqually Indian Tribe and Indigenous Climate Action, the conference provided a space for hundreds to come together to share lessons, celebrate victories, and build stronger alliances to defend and protect land, water, the climate, and Indigenous rights.
“We Native people will always be here, standing up to protect the land and water,” said Nisqually Tribal Councilman Hanford McCloud during the conference’s opening ceremony. “We will always be the voice of those on the frontlines who continue to fight against the violation of Indigenous treaty rights, self-determination, environmental justice, and climate change.” [...]
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“A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.”
~~Robert Reich, 2011
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2002—A war resolution all of Congress can support:
The administration briefed some members of Congresss on the Iraqi situation, but apparently offered no new information. […]
[H]ere's a resolution that everyone can support, and will ensure we don't go to war:
We, the Congress of the United States, authorize force to effect 'Regime Change' in Iraq, provided the following conditions are met:
- The Administration certifies that Iraq is manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, and provides evidence of such;
- The Administration, working alongside the U.N. Security Council, makes a bona fide and concerted effort to reintroduce UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, in accordance to previous Security Council resolutions; and
- The Administration secures new authorization to effect 'regime change' from the U.N. Security Council.
You know they'll never be able to get Security Council authorization. Oh, we can have lots of fun with this resolution -- we can add requirements that the US have binding commitments from other nations for Iraq's rebuilding, or requirements that the US enter battle alongside a broad international coalition of more than just UK.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Where to start the morning after The Op-Ed? Greg Dworkin makes a go of it. Then, on to Kavanaugh, with Armando. Kav's been talking to somebody about Trump-Russia. And stealing emails—yes, emails!—since his days in W’s White House.
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