The GELT house in Highland Park, Michigan

It’s important to venture outside of our comfort zones once in a while to see what the world has to offer away from home. I was grateful for this chance when I traveled far from Global Exchange headquarters in sunny San Francisco to chilly Highland Park, Michigan last month.

My trip was centered on an Open House party that the Global Exchange midwest region Green Economy Leadership Training (GELT) program staff held in Highland Park to celebrate their hard work and accomplishments over the last two years.

GELT is an initiative of Global Exchange that educates, engages and empowers both youth and adults to be active agents of change in building the necessary clean energy, green economy future. The program trains youth and community members in practical skills that will empower them to improve their communities, such as environmental justice, energy conservation, renewable energy, green building technology, water conservation, waste diversion (recycling and composting), urban agriculture and food security and urban forestry.

GELT living room

I attended the GELT party not only as a representative from Global Exchange headquarters but also as a curious observer eager to see for myself what I had only learned about in blogs and news pieces.

I won’t go into great detail about the deep and complex history of Detroit and Highland Park (you can read more about the city’s rise and fall over the last several decades here). Instead I’ll share some of what’s happening in Highland Park now and the vision folks I met in Detroit have for their tomorrow.

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Driving into the small city of Highland Park at night (which is literally a city within a city entirely surrounded by Detroit), I passed by the massive vacant former Ford factory and countless abandoned homes – many of them burned and crumbling. It was particularly dark it was on the side streets. I learned later that the city of Highland Park recently removed the majority of city streetlamps to cut electricity costs. This is one of many examples of the lingering effects of a diminishing economy and a case in point for building up the green economy which Global Exchange is working towards in the area.

GELT headquarters and house in Highland Park

My trip began with a tour of GELT headquarters in Highland Park – a formerly dilapidated mansion built in the early 1900s, which now serves as place for green learning and home to several of the staff of the Green Economy Leadership Training (GELT) program (http://www.globalexchange.org/programs/greeneconomy). The staff worked day and night for weeks to renovate the massive house – now divided into four separate apartment units – in advance of the Open House. The space was glorious and proof that any of the countless old deserted buildings in the area could be turned into a haven for sustainable living and community.

Inside the GELT greenhouse

A few green features of the GELT home:

  • A grey water system installed in one of the bathrooms, which uses recycled water from the sink to power the toilet;
  • The team weatherized windows and doors to keep the heat inside during the cold months;
  • A mammoth greenhouse constructed behind the house this past summer and now has food growing in it year-round. It’s also used as a classroom twice a week for a group of 6th graders from an elementary school across the street who seem hungry to learn about the environment in a fun and educational way. I was lucky enough to witness a Northpointe Academy school assembly during my visit, where animated 6th grade students shared some of their GELT experiences with their entire school of fellow students.

With these green projects under their belt, GELT staffers have countless other big and small plans for the house to become an example of sustainable living and intentional community in Highland Park.

6th grade class at Northpointe Elementary presenting their work with GELT to the rest of the school at an assembly

The highlight of my trip was witnessing the energy and power in the room during the Open House party. Dozens of people gathered together at the GELT headquarters before shifting to the school auditorium to hear presentations by community leaders and staff members about the program successes.

Attendees included Highland Park residents and neighbors, representatives from community organizations, pastors, teachers, elementary school and college students who participated in GELT 9-week summer trainings, and passionate parents and kids. Even the Highland Park Mayor Elect’s mom was there! The excitement about this movement was palpable.

Pastor Bullock addressing the GELT community

We were all inspired by the opening words of Pastor David Bullock – a famous Highland Park leader and partner of the GELT program – who equated the efforts of GELT to bringing Highland Park out of the ashes. Pastor Bullock along with a passionate teacher, a committed 6th grader, and Brandon Knight and Scott Meloeny (the visionaries behind the program) shared stories of the program’s successes over the past two years, and their dreams and plans for the program in the future.

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Thanks to all of the Global Exchange and GELT staff in Michigan who made this incredible event – and this valuable program – possible. I left Michigan looking at the world in a new and improved light.

 

 

 

By Shannon Biggs

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program director Shannon Biggs returns from the UN Climate conference in South Africa where she, along with climate justice advocates including former Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solon, Indigenous leader Tom Goldtooth, South Durban community activist Desmond D’sa and international colleagues from the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature held a series of activities in Durban to advance the Rights of Nature as an alternative framework to the corporate-led agenda of the COP 17 and the global economic system now being called environmental (or climate) apartheid.

Accompanied by a cynical shrug, “Durban-shmurban,” sums up the sentiments of those who have long given up hope that the best and brightest (or the 1% and corrupted) among this league of nations could ever unite to solve the human-induced climate crisis. After all, other than vowing to drive less and become greener consumers, the grand scale and technical scope of reducing atmospheric greenhouse gasses is beyond the rest of us to solve.

For those paying attention, including thousands of NGOs who came to South Africa to play a role in preventing the worst outcomes of the COP 17 (or to protest the process itself), it’s been alliteratively billed as the “Durban Disaster,” following previous UNFCCC conferences: 2010’s “Catastrophe in Cancun” and 2009’s  “No-penhagen” in Denmark.

So why should anyone pay attention to what happened at the UN climate talks? The failure of international leaders to come to agreement in Durban South Africa sounds like business as usual, and it is—but make no mistake: officially choosing inaction now is a guaranteed death sentence for millions of people and ecosystems.  If the lesson of Durban is that climate change is the symptom, and not the problem, this may be our game-changing call to action.

First, the bad news

On the final scheduled day of negotiations in Durban, the UNFCCC stunned even seasoned observers with a plan tantamount to genocide. Country emissions targets were dropped far below what science dictates; loopholes for the worst offenders to avoid their commitments, and most critically, most decisions were put off until 2020.

Rights of Nature activists at press conference (L-R Desmond D’Sa, Tom Goldtooth, Shannon Biggs, Natalia Greene, Cormac Cullinan and Pablo Solon

As environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey explained, “Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions. 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%.

Apartheid is the Afrikaans word for “apartness,” and applied to the climate and ecosystems, it begins to get at what is behind the DNA-level failure of the UN’s COP process to achieve its stated goal of reducing greenhouse emissions.  Climate change is merely a byproduct of treating nature as human property (and therefore apart from us), to be destroyed at will. Our global economic system is property-based and driven by a value system of “endless more.”

As Pablo Solon stated at a press conference hosted by Global Exchange: “We can throw our garbage to the air and nothing happens. But we’re all part of one system, and the atmosphere is part of that system.   We have to respect the natural laws of this system. Because we have broken the vital cycle of carbon, its not only a matter of how big immediate reductions are, but how we change our relationship with nature.”

  • Read results of exclusive, closed meetings in Durban here
  • Global Exchange Human Rights Award winner Pablo Solon discusses outcome on DemocracyNow!

Following news of the outcome, credentialed protesters gathered and filled the halls, stairwells and lobby of the ICC (official space).  When UN Security began to remove the activists, Anne Petermann, executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project, sat down. “If meaningful action on climate change is to happen, it will need to happen from the bottom up,” she said. “The action I took today was to remind us all of the power of taking action into our own hands. With the failure of states to provide human leadership, and the corporate capture of the United Nations process, direct action by the ninety-nine percent is the only avenue we have left.” For more, click here.

Redefining the problem is a game changer.

As long as it was accepted that climate change is the problem, it made a lot of sense to turn to international institutions like the UN as the driver for change.  This has tethered much activism to seeking concessions in a rigged game of false solutions, because the UNFCC is based not on the root causes of environmental exploitation—but ‘market fixes’ to the same corporate-led economic model and ‘endless-more’ value system that have driven us to the cliff’s edge.

Like the slow strangulation of a creeping kudzu vine, our activism has been constrained to a smaller and smaller patch of sunlight, options and regulatory schemes that weren’t even of our design. In this sense, the utter failure of Durban can be quite freeing—if we chose it—because it means we can actually address root causes of climate change, chiefly, our cultural and legal traditions of dominating the Earth for profit.

Occupy is the other game changer.

Occupiers and revolutionaries from Egypt to Wall Street and around the world have woken up millions of the disillusioned, and inspired them to find their own voice, their own power. Once awakened, we will seize this moment and shift the system itself that places corporate interests above our shared values of justice, equality, good jobs, healthy resilient vibrant communities and ecosystems.  In Durban, Anne Petermann and others sat down to remind us that we the 99% do have the power to change the rules. We can chose another way if we believe we can.

The Rights of Nature offers a platform for action to challenge the market-based approach that dominates the UN COP process.  “Why bring RON to climate change conference?” Pablo Solon was asked,  “Because if we are going to address climate change, we must address the issue of a new relationship between humans and nature. Its not just a problem with how many particles of CO2 emissions, it’s a problem of why does this happen?”

Where do we go from here? The Good news

A new framework for global action based on the needs of people and the planet already exists. The People’s Accord and the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth are key outcomes of the 2010 People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, hosted by Bolivia and led by Indigenous communities and civil society. For more on this from the perspective of Durban see CJN! media release.

Those of us working on the rights of nature framework are seeking to reconnect humanity with the rest of species. We seek to change human law that can only “see” nature as a thing — separate and apart from us, property to be owned and destroyed at will. We seek to change the law because our own salvation can only come from a cultural mindset that we are a part of nature. Such a fundamental shift will require new laws that enforce and enable those cultural values.

  •  Watch our Durban rights of nature press conference here
  • Read our Durban Press release for rights of nature here

A People’s call to action, local national and global

While we take from nature the strength of diversity, we can remain diverse while uniting around the rules set forth by Mother Earth. We have in the past found solace strength and cohesion in broad strokes alignment with peasant farmers, landless workers, unions, Indigenous and non-indigenous communities.  That’s not going to be easy, but there is a lot of common ground.  For example, on the issue of rights of nature versus Indigenous rights, there are many different opinions among native traditions.  But there is tremendous Indigenous support for changing the dominant culture, and the fossil fuel economy that UNFCC is based on.

Shannon Biggs with Tom Goldtooth at the Global Day of Action in Durban

As Indigenous leader Tom Goldtooth says, “Our earth is our Mother, creator of everything, including two-legged people. Life as we know it is changing, we can no longer ignore the evidence, and it is our responsibility to be caretakers, guardians of our Mother. New economies need to be governed by the absolute carrying capacity of Mother Earth. More equitable, self-sustaining communities, with rights and respect.”

The United Nations is not going anywhere, but our messaging to the UNFCCC might change (though it is worth saying that next year’s conference has been scheduled in the zero-tolerance-for-protesting capitol of Qatar).

From Pablo Solon: “Well, if there is no pressure from civil society, there won’t be the possibility to have any kind of agreement that is in some makes a difference. If you want to change the system, there has to be a huge movement developed outside of the main structures. We must open the discussion. We have a mandate that the Rights of Nature must be part of the discussion in climate negotiations.”

At the national level, in addition to Ecuador and Bolivia who have passed laws recognizing rights of nature, as many as half a dozen countries are working with the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature and are seriously considering rights of nature laws, and how Constitutional provisions, like Ecuador’s could be transformational and provide new ways to protect ecosystems. Some of those concersations were moved forward in Durban.  They tell us that creating a vibrant global civil society movement of campesinos, workers, unions, Indigenous and non Indigenous communities, women’s movements, peace, climate and social justice activists can support their efforts at changing laws to reflect a new relationship with the Earth.

At the community level, campaigning around climate change and even climate justice is often hard. After all, we cannot feel the burden of atmosphere weighted by carbon storage or truly know where in the world accumulations of CO2 were manufactured.  But we can feel the burden of society’s inventions that leave polluted rivers, cancer clusters, poverty, and tons of carbon emissions in their wake.

From the oil refinery fence line in South Durban, the gathering of international experts offers no solutions on the ground. Desmond D’Sa lives and works in Durban South Africa, the dirtiest city in South Africa, and ironically, host city to the COP 17. There, he is the director of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), an environmental justice network. Over 300 toxic industrial plants — including two oil refineries — operate in and around the city, particularly concentrated in the neighborhoods of south Durban, an area particularly disadvantaged by the legacy of apartheid. Explosions, accidents, spills, and other toxic exposures are part of daily life there, and the reason why Desmond has begun to introduce the idea of rights for nature and residents in South Durban.

As a rights-based organizer in California, I, along with my legal and organizing partners at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) assist communities to pass groundbreaking new laws that place the rights of residents and nature above the interests of corporations.

We’ve often heard the takeaway from the COP processes in Copenhagen and Cancun is that the same corporate-led system that created climate change cannot be part of the solution. From Durban, we add that a relationship of apartness with the system governing our wellbeing cannot continue. The lessons from Cochabamba and Occupy Everywhere are that we have an alterntative vision, and we have the power to make it real.  To change the course of humanity, we must be bold enough to believe we are capable, and strategic enough to know how to use the ecological principle of unity of diversity to work in solidarity in myriad ways.

Download the report: Does Nature have rights? Transforming grassroots organizing to protect people and the planet. This report calls for action from the community-level to the U.N., and offers case studies of legal changes already underway in favor the Rights of Nature.

By Ted Lewis and Manuel Pérez Rocha

In the last year, an unprecedented number of Mexicans have received international recognition for their courageous work on behalf of migrants, workers, and the millions of victims of the country’s spiraling violence, institutional decomposition and appalling inequality. Just today, Mexican poet, Javier Sicilia, received a nod in this year’s TIME Magazine Person of the Year issue.

Below, we profile some of these movement leaders, artists, grass roots organizers, labor leaders, and clergy people working in the front trenches of the struggle for human rights. Through them we can hear the voices of millions more Mexicans crying out for justice and for the very soul of their nation.

They urge us to respond to the frightening militarization of Mexico, the hyper-exploitation of the poor, indigenous, and working classes; and the infuriating impunity enjoyed by well-connected and ruling-class criminals. They embody the struggle to end the profound injustice — both economic and legal — at the root of the murderous crime wave sweeping the country.

These eight distinguished advocates have been recognized because the Mexican government has failed to respond to a growing national emergency. As Mexico’s crisis deepens these patriots have gone abroad to sound an urgent alarm — amplified by the human rights, labor, and cultural groups who invited them — that Mexico is at the breaking point.

These are the kinds of Mexicans that President Obama, Congress, the media, the American public, and philanthropic foundations should be listening to and taking their cues from. These are the voices of those who have lived the tragic consequences of bad bi-national policies – so unlike President Calderon and his supporters north of the border who echo the hollow victories of the drug war and repeat market based delusions of success in the face of NAFTA’s bitter harvest.

The need for profound systemic changes on both sides of the border is painfully clear. 50 thousand Mexicans are dead since Presidents Calderón escalated the war for drug prohibition. Millions are displaced by the economic disaster of “free trade”. In Mexico, as in the US, ultra-rich plutocrats have hijacked the political system and are trying to foreclose on a dignified future for the poor and middle classes.

We need intelligent strategies and urgent action to end the “war on drugs”, level the economic playing field, and to make real our democratic aspirations on both side of the border. We must not let the inheritance of Mexico’s NAFTA generation be a disintegrating society where neither jobs nor educational opportunities exist for an expanding and politically repressed underclass.

In 2012 presidential elections will be held in Mexico as well as in the U.S. These elections, while no doubt important, will not bring the kind of deep changes needed in both countries. Such change and the movement necessary to make it happen must be driven from below — by those who bear the greatest burdens of inequality and have the most to gain by shattering the toxic status quo.

During 2011 movements led by victims of violence and those who are alienated from politics as usual have broken through the discourse of silence, altered the political landscape, and brought calls for revolutionary change back into view in both our countries.

The new struggle for fundamental reform is just getting underway and will take many forms, some of them unpredictable. But, you can be sure that, as resistance to war and inequality grows on both sides of the border the Mexicans leaders profiled below will be on its frontlines, joining their voices together with millions more on both sides of our shared border.

  • Abel Barrera, a anthropologist and human rights defender of indigenous and rural communities, who founded the respected and successful NGO Tlachinolan in the southern and impoverished state of Guerrero, was honored by the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights;
  • Javier Sicilia, leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity awarded a “people’s choice” human rights prize by Global Exchange; The movement is led the victims of the “drug war”. He was just profiled in TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2011 issue;
  • Gael Garcia, well known Mexican actor, and AMBULANTE, an organization he co-founded, headlined the Washington Office on Latin America’s (WOLA) annual Gala in recognition for his passionate and committed work to give visibility to the plight of migrants who undertake the perilous journey north and to the organization’s work to promote documentaries and to bring these films to the Mexican population;
  • Father Pedro Pantoja received the Letelier – Moffitt International Human Rights Award from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC on behalf of Bethlehem, the Migrants’ Shelter of Saltillo, for their work to protect migrants in Mexico from kidnapping, extortion, sexual abuse, and murder — courageously challenging organized crime and corrupt public officials.
  • Marta Ojeda, a long time maquiladora activist was saluted by the New York Radio Festival and received an award for her organization, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras and “La Frontera” a documentary investigation of organized crime, violence and impunity and injustice along the Mexico – U.S. border; Marta connects the dots between neoliberal policies, economic dislocation, arms industries, money laundering corruption and impunity that have Mexico submerged in a deep crisis.
  • Napoleon Gómez Urrutiais the mine workers’ union president. He received the AFL-CIO Kirkland Award in recognition of his honest work work that included accusing the Mexican government of industrial homicide following a mine explosion that killed 65 miners –and whose bodies remain buried. The government retaliated with bogus charges and he has been forced into defacto exile in Canada.
  • Sister Consuelo Morales who received the Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forges Award for her work in Mexico to defend victims of human rights violations and hold their abusers accountable. She has worked with indigenous communities, street children, and founded Citizens in Support of Human Rights (CAHDAC) in her native Monterrey.
  • Tita Radilla was granted an award byPeace Brigades International and the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk for her relentless struggle for human rights.She has worked for more than 30 years with the Association of Relatives of Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations (AFADEM), demanding justice for the victims of enforced disappearance in Mexico.

Ted Lewis directs the Mexico Program of Global Exchange.

Manuel Perez Rocha is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

On Monday, December 12th, thousands of people took part in a coordinated shut down of ports along the West Coast, including the port of Oakland here in the Bay Area where protesters successfully shut down the port for three consecutive shifts starting at 5:30am when 1,500 people came out to disrupt the morning shift. I took part in the afternoon rally and march to the port.

Why the ports?

The actions were carried out in solidarity with longshoremen port workers and truck drivers, in support of their long-time struggle against unjust treatment by companies that have a strong influence on port operations, in particular EGT (Export Grain Terminal) and Goldman Sachs, which owns a large stake in major port operator SSA Marine. Both EGT and Goldman Sachs have been involved in an ongoing battle with the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) around its members’ right to organize. Read more here.

Angela Davis speaking at Oscar Grant Plaza before the march

Aside from showing support for port workers’ rights, the port shut downs were also intended as a means of economically disrupting the 1% by cutting into the economic profits of major corporations that depend heavily on port operations. The shut downs also symbolized a response to the nationally coordinated, brutal police repression that the Occupy Movement has faced in recent weeks. Around four thousand people took part in the afternoon march to the Oakland port on 12.12.11. Here’s a breakdown of what happened that afternoon and into the evening:

3pm

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Oakland at Oscar Grant Plaza on 14th & Broadway, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen who is on the long road to recovery from a serious head injury he sustained as a result of police violence in October spoke to the crowd followed by Angela Davis, an activist, scholar and retired professor from UC Santa Cruz. Watch the video of them speaking here.

4pm

The march leaves Oscar Grant Plaza for the port, led by Scott Olsen and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

5:30pm

An announcement is made that port operations for the evening shift have been shut down, people chant and cheer in celebration as the march continues into the port joined by another march of close to 2,000 people that left from West Oakland BART station.

7pm

A General Assembly was held to decide whether or not the blockade will be extended until the 3am shift. Occupy Oakland decided that they would extend the blockade if there were any instances of Occupy-related police repression or violence in other cities. Once news broke about San Diego and Long Beach where several protesters were arrested and in Seattle where police used pepper-spray and concussion grenades, the Occupy Oakland website posted  “Based on verified police repression at Occupy Seattle, Occupy Houston, Occupy Long Beach and Occupy San Diego, the port blockade in Oakland will continue. Next shift is at 3am and we need as much people as possible!” About 400 people stayed and successfully shut down the 3am shift.

Sign reading ‘Defend Truckers Right to Unionize’

While there are mixed views about the action on Monday between labor union leaders and activists on whether or not it was right to shut down the ports for a day, many rank and file workers have expressed that although they are disappointed to lose a portion of their wages, they recognize the occupiers’ genuine intention to raise awareness around port worker mistreatment and the union-busting practices of corporations like Goldman Sachs who are part of the 1%.  Port truck drivers published an open letter in response to the port occupations on Monday on the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports website.

I think that the higher than expected turnout at the port shut down on Monday speaks to the continuing vibrancy of the Occupy movement and a potential shift towards coordinated, issue-specific actions that call attention to the many problems that are shared by the 99%.

It was inspiring for me to stand beside so many people coming from different experiences who are joining together under a common goal – changing the system to better the lives of the people who support it.

Javier Sicilia (left) with Global Exchange Human Rights Director Ted Lewis (right) June 2011

Congratulations Javier Sicilia, Global Exchange’s 2011 Human Rights Award winner who was just named one of TIME magazine’s People of the Year. TIME’s Person of the Year went to “The Protester” and Javier was among those profiled.

On June 1st 2011 Global Exchange honored People’s Choice winner Javier and two others at our annual Human Rights Awards gala.

Javier Sicilia is a Mexican father, poet, and citizen who lost his son Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega in a drug war massacre on March 28, 2011 in Mexico. Juan was murdered along with six friends in an act of violence that Morelos state authorities immediately dismissed as “a settling of accounts.”

Javier Sicilia (left) delivering speech at 2011 Global Exchange Human Rights Awards

As we described in our Human Rights Award announcement back in May: Rather than retreat to the shadows of shock or fear, Sicilia has turned the pain of his searing loss into a tool for peace by convening marches and building a movement to free Mexico from the dogmas, dark alliances, impunity, and political expediency that fuel this tragic war.

Here is Javier Sicilia’s speech from the 2011 Global Exchange Human Rights Awards:

Javier Sicilia – 2011 People’s Choice Honoree from Global Exchange on Vimeo.

TIME magazine’s Person of the Year 2011 article about Javier is an inspiring read. In it Javier describes how he got involved in the movement to free Mexico:

“I got the awful news about Juan Francisco’s murder while I was at a conference in the Philippines. When I got to Cuernavaca [the Mexican town south of Mexico City where his son and six friends had been tortured and killed by gangsters angry that two of the young men had reported members of their gang to police] I was in a lot of emotional pain. But when I arrived at the crematorium I had to deal with the media. I asked the reporters to have some respect; I told them I’d meet them the next day in the city plaza. When I got there I found they’d put a table [for a press conference] out for me, and I realized this was going to be bigger than I’d anticipated.

Read the complete TIME magazine article here.

Global Exchange Berkeley Fair Trade Store Staff

Our Fair Trade Stores are throwing holiday parties on Dec. 15th (all are invited!) in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. The evening will bring seasonal spirits and refreshments while guests shop for Fair Trade gifts from around the world.

  1. Here’s What to Expect at our Holiday Party:

Exhibit A: Recycled glassware display I snapped at the SF store 2010 holiday bash

1) First the obvious: A wide selection of Fair Trade gifts from around the world. I have at least 5 people left on my gift list, and I hope to cross them all off by the end of this party!
2) 20% OFF everything in the store (can’t combine with other promos) when you use the secret party password. Don’t know what it is? Visit our Facebook page to find out, and click “like” while you’re there.
3) Knowledgeable, friendly staff just waiting to help you find the perfect gifts!

Fair Trade Store Director Jocelyn (r) with former Asst Mgr Ariel (l)

4) Ladies and gents dressed to impress. Global Exchange staff and members tend to get all gussied up in our holiday best, and we sure do clean up nicely! It’s certainly not a formal affair, but holiday sweater sightings are likely.
5) A shombler or two:) Shombler is a word I just made up. It’s a cross between a shopper and a stumbler. (There’s a good chance you’ll spot at least one person who gets just a little too tipsy from the free wine.) Full disclosure: that shombler most likely will be me.
6) To meet progressive people and make new friends. Every year our holiday parties bring together a terrific group of like-minded individuals; Global Exchange members and staff, friends, family and community members.

What Not to Expect at Our Annual Fair Trade Store Holiday Party:

Now that you know what to expect, here’s a couple of things you should not expect to find at our annual Fair Trade holiday party:

  1. Mass produced sweatshop-made products. We pride ourselves on offering handmade products from around the world, with fair prices for consumers and fair prices paid to producers.
  2. A long drawn out program. This is a party, complete with spirits and munchies, music, laughter and a whole lotta shopping. There is no formal program for the evening, just the extended Global Exchange community coming together to mix and mingle the evening away.
  3. To leave empty-handed or empty-bellied. Between the appetizers, holiday spirits and shopping your heart away, there will be plenty to take away from our annual Fair Trade holiday party. So come on out!

Global Exchange 2010 holiday party attendees shopping about

TAKE ACTION

Attend the Fair Trade Holiday Party: Hope to see you at the Global Exchange Fair Trade Store Holiday Party. Remember to RSVP on Facebook invite and find out the secret password so you can get your 20% OFF!

Join the #ecowed Twitter Party: We’ll be talking #fairtrade holidays with @YourOrganicLife on Wednesday, 12/14 at 7pm Pacific. Hope you Tweeters out there can join us! Please help spread the word with this suggested tweet: Twitter Party! 12/14 7pm PST @gxfairtrade and @YourOrganicLife talk about #fairtrade holidays #ecowed Plz RT

Happy Holidays!

The following post was written by 2011 Human Rights Awards Awardee, Pablo Solon. Solon was present in Durban, South Africa where the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP17) was being held. You can read updates from South Africa by Shannon Biggs, Director of Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program, who was also present in Durban. 

By Pablo Solon

After 9 days of negotiations there is no doubt that we saw this movie before. It is the third remake of Copenhagen and Cancun. Same actors. Same script. The documents are produced outside the formal negotiating scenario . In private meetings, dinners which the 193 member states do not attend. The result of these meetings is known only on the last day.

In the case of Copenhagen it was at two in the morning after the event should have already ended. In Cancun, the draft decision just appeared at 5 p.m. on the last day and was not opened for negotiation, not even to correct a comma. Bolivia stood firm on both occasions. The reason: the very low emission reduction commitments of industrialized countries that would lead to an increase in average global temperatures of more than 4° Celsius. In Cancun, Bolivia stood alone. I could not do otherwise. How could we accept the same document that was rejected in Copenhagen, knowing that 350,000 people die each year due to natural disasters caused by climate change? To remain silent is to be complicit in genocide and ecocide. To accept a disastrous document in order not to be left alone is cowardly diplomacy. Even more so when one trumpets the “people’s diplomacy” and has pledged to defend the “People’s Agreement” of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia last year.

Durban will be worse than Copenhagen and Cancun. Two days before the close of the meetings, the true text that is being negotiated is not yet known. Everyone knows that the actual 131-page document is just a compilation of proposals that were already on the table in Panama two months ago. The formal negotiations have barely advanced. The real document will appear toward the end of COP17.

But more importantly, the substance of the negotiations remains unchanged from Copenhagen. The emission reduction pledges by developed countries are still 13% to 17% based on 1990 levels. Everyone knows that this is a catastrophe. But instead of becoming outraged, they attempt to sweeten the poison. The wrapper of this package will be the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a mandate for a new binding agreement. The substance of the package will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: do virtually nothing during this decade in terms of reducing emissions, and get a mandate to negotiate an agreement that will be even weaker than the Kyoto Protocol and that will replace it in 2020. “The Great Escape III” is the name of this movie, and it tells the story of how the governments of rich countries along with transnational corporations are looking to escape their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of becoming stronger, the fight against climate change is becoming more soft and flexible, with voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. The question is, who will step up this time to denounce the fraud to the end? Or could it be that this time, everyone will accept the remake of Copenhagen and Cancun?

The truth is that beyond the setting and the last scene, the end of this film will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: humanity and mother earth will be the victims of a rise in temperature not seen in 800,000 years.

Pablo Solon is an international analyst and social activist. He was chief negotiator for climate change and United Nations Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009-June 2011). http://pablosolon.wordpress.com/

By Shannon Biggs

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program director Shannon Biggs is in South Africa with our allies from the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature for a series of activities in Durban to advance the Rights of Nature as an alternative framework to the corporate-led agenda of the COP 17 and the global economic system.

Our day began early as we worked feverishly with students who travelled across South Africa on the “Climate Train,”(one of the most visible campaigns in the COP 17 process) to finish decorating 10 4-foot tall beach balls emblazoned with “Earth Rights NOW” in English, French and Spanish.

Earth Rights Now beach ball used in the march

These marches have a different flavor in South Africa, where music and dancing remain deeply embedded in the culture, a vital part of the solidarity movement that ended Apartheid.  As we arrived at the gathering spot, jubilant voices were raised in chanting and song from every group present, creating an atmosphere of oneness, no matter where you were from.

The march travelled several miles through the streets of Durban, stopping at the US Embassy, and the official ICC conference site, where speeches were made over the wall, and beyond the somber police line.  We playfully tossed our Earth balls across the fence, symbolically entering Rights of Nature into the official space.  The balls were returned by police forces caught somewhat off-guard at the gesture.  You can find yours truly at minute 11:20 throwing the ball to the ICC. Watch the video here!

Ultimately, the message of those participating was recognition that solutions to climate change were not to be found inside the process. The march culminated in the handing over of memoranda of understanding to UNFCCC COP17 President Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, who came out to address the crowd.  She called upon civil society to “do more, and then…to do MORE, ” to which the assembled marchers responded in unison for her and officials to “do more.”

Below are some pictures and videos from the march, as well as some blogs from global participants.

Check out these other blog posts and reports on the events in Durban around COP17 this week:

Pictures taken by Shannon Biggs from the Global Day of Action People’s March for Climate Justice in Durban, South Africa December 3rd, 2011

  

Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez, an activist of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) was gunned down on November 28th while walking in Hermosillo, Sonora in northwestern Mexico.

“Don Nepo” (as he was known to friends) joined other victims of Mexico’s violence to speak out and seek justice – in his case on behalf of his son, Jorge Mario Moreno León, who was kidnapped and disappeared in July, 2010.

Don Nepo took part in the Caravans that crisscrossed Mexico earlier this year and was part of a small group that met with President Calderon in mid-October. That same month, several armed men came to his home and threatened him with death if he did not stop looking for justice for his son. Despite his high profile complaints, the government offered him no protection.

Now, after his murder, concern for the safety other family members has led the MPJD and others to request pressure on Mexican officials to provide necessary protection and carry out a full and credible investigation of both murders.

Please join us in making that call. Tell Mexican officials to protect Don Nepo’s family and to investigate his murder! Send a letter today!

Links in Spanish:
Exigir justicia, una sentencia de muerte en México
Pronunciamiento del MPJD ante el asesinato de Don Nepo
En memoria de Don Nepomuceno Moreno Nuñez

By Shannon Biggs

The sun rises at 4:45 each morning in Durban, and like most of those still on California time, I woke soon after.  The beach here is beautiful and nearby so I decided to take a brisk walk amongst the shore fisherfolk and shell collectors, a great change the mad bustle of the ICC center, where the official negotiations for the climate conference are taking place.

Oil on the beach in Durban

The bluff beach is several miles south of the harbor—the largest on the African continent—and a few miles north of South Durban, where two oil refineries and dozens of other industrial plants operate. I walked and admired the wild coastline for a mile or so, then sat to watch the waves. Something black and sticky was on my feet, hands and shoes: it was oil.  Looking around, I noticed there were large plate-sized piles of black goo…everywhere.  Seaweed was coated in it, and as far as the eye could see there were literally tons of large and small deposits everywhere. Some firefighters up on the road were surprised when I showed them the sample I’d collected, and speculated that perhaps it came from a tanker spill in Kenya from last October, but no one knew for sure. Yesterday I’m told that the South African government is denying the “rumors” of oil deposits on the shore (and on my shoes and in my clear plastic bag). There were no big news items or beach warnings posted.

Shannon holding a bag of oil collected on the beach in Durban, South Africa

The disturbing and angering irony of a country hosting international climate talks while ignoring (and possibly denying) millions of tons of crude in the very midst of the negotiations is indicative of why international leaders will predictably fail to come to resolution or agreement on how to halt human induced climate change despite the stakes.  Instead, they speak of “adaptation” (get used to it) or “risk assessment” (what are we willing to lose next to feed the economic status quo).

Cynical, you say?  Not in the least.

Also gathering are pan-African and South African civil society and international climate justice activists—some to Occupy, protest and critique the continuing failure of the UN process itself to reach agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, some hoping to influence negotiators on minor concessions, and many others with reasons of their own. So many of the civil society participants come to talk about climate change in the context of the tangible work they are doing to stop dams, incinerators, deforestation or promote food sovereignty and indigenous rights.

We are here to talk to them—because when we stop putting false hope into the UNFCCC, we can finally turn to each other as the ones we’ve been waiting for. Global Exchange —and our partners including 2011 Human Rights Award Winner Pablo Solon (Bolivia) Fundacion Pachamama (Ecuador) South African activists from South Durban and environmental Earth Rights lawyer Cormac Cullinan, Indigenous Environmental Network, World Futures Council, and many others from the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature — are here not just to critique the general framework of the UN climate process, but to share and discuss an alternative that requires we the 99% taking action.  The week ahead is for us, in this sense, is full of promise.

Banner from Duban protesting oil extraction

I brought my non-existent bagged oil along with me throughout the day’s activities. First to the Indigenous People’s Caucus, where Indigenous delegates report on the prior day’s negotiations around forestry, and to several other gatherings in the official and People’s space.  Saturday morning we gather for the Peoples’ march.