On May 31, the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala (”America”) called for a Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and the Peoples from October 12-16, 2009, “against [pollution], the commercialization of life … and the criminalization of indigenous and social movements.”
“We the peoples and our territories are one entity. [We resolve] to reject all forms of land division, privatization, concession, predation and pollution from extractive industries.”
Root Force is supporting this call and encouraging people throughout the Americas and across the world to answer it with actions targeting the infrastructure of global trade. Infrastructure expansion projects such as highways, mines, power plants, pipelines and telecommunications cables form the front lines of the assault on indigenous peoples and the Earth. They are the backbone of the system that is killing our planet and enslaving its people.
For more information about the call to action and why we think infrastructure projects are appropriate targets, see below.
For help planning and publicizing actions, contact Root Force: rootforce [at] riseup [dot] net. You can find direct action, strategy and messaging resources here.
Send action reports to rootforce [at] riseup [dot] net. If you can’t pull together a direct action, consider holding events that promote anti-infrastructure organizing and action.
Background
On May 31, the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala issued a closing declaration resolving, among other things:
“To proclaim that we are witnessing a deep crisis of the Western capitalist civilization — overlapping the environmental, energy and cultural crisis, social exclusion, and famines — as an expression of the failure of Eurocentrism and the colonialist Modernity that was born from ethnocide and which is now carrying all of humanity to its own slaughter.
“To offer an alternative lifestyle against the civilization of death, rescuing our roots in order to project ourselves to our future, with our principles and practices of balance between men, women, Mother Earth, spiritual beings, cultures and peoples, all of which we call Good Living / Living Well. We are a diversity of thousands of civilizations with over 40 thousand years of history, which were invaded and colonized by those who, just five centuries later, are leading us to planetary suicide. …
“To confirm the organization of the … Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and the Peoples, against the commercialization of life (including land, forests, water, sea, agrofuels, external debt), pollution (extractive transnationals, international financial institutions, GMOs, pesticides, toxic consumption), and the criminalization of indigenous and social movements, to be held from October 12 to 16, 2009.”
Read the full declaration here.
Why Infrastructure?
There are three primary reasons to target infrastructure as a way to defend the Earth and support indigenous sovereignty.
1. Infrastructure projects devastate ecologies and communities, whether it’s the massive fish kills caused by dams and oil spills, the stripped land and poisoned air left by highways and mines, or the dislocation of poor, rural and indigenous peoples caused every time a new dam, road, mine or power plant moves in.
2. Infrastructure projects facilitate further exploitation above and beyond their immediate effects: a road brings loggers and missionaries; a power plant brings industry and sprawl.
3. Infrastructure forms the physical basis of the global economic system — a system that is killing our planet and cannot function without the continued dispossession of indigenous land and destruction of Earth-based cultures.
This civilization will not change its genocidal and ecocidal trajectory willingly, and the Earth cannot be saved by half-measures. The system must come down, and its reliance on infrastructure — especially the infrastructure of trade — is one of its greatest weaknesses.
Learn More
The Root Force Strategy (taking down the system by fighting infrastructure expansion)
Infrastructure and Indigenous Sovereignty
Infrastructure and the environment
More infrastructure fact sheets (labor, global warming, etc.)
Take Action!
Join people around the world on October 12-16 to say NO to the commercialization of life and the criminalization of indigenous and social movements, and YES to a world based on respect for all life. Join Root Force in the struggle against the infrastructure of global trade, and help us demolish colonialism at its foundations.
For help planning and publicizing actions, contact Root Force: rootforce [at] riseup [dot] net. You can find direct action, strategy and messaging resources here.
Send action reports to rootforce [at] riseup [dot] net. If you can’t pull together a direct action, consider holding events that promote anti-infrastructure organizing and action.
Posted in Calls To Action, Root Force, Strategy