Shannon Biggs directs the Community Rights program at Global Exchange.

By 5:00 am on October 25, as I was boarding a NYC-bound plane, reports of police forces raiding Occupy Oakland were beginning to filter through the local news, Twitter and Facebook. By the time I arrived at the Liberty Plaza/Zucotti Park headquarters of OWS, events in Oakland were already a main topic of conversation.

As one-day visitors to Occupy Wall Street, my fellow organizer Ben Price from CELDF and I were asked to speak and share stories from the frontlines of the grassroots movement enacting local laws that place the rights of communities and nature above corporate interests. But within me was also a keen desire to be a part of the conversation happening on Wall Street that has inspired Occupy Everywhere: Will history remember Zuccotti Park as a landmark location and this as the defining moment we took an evolutionary step forward for democracy and system change?

Indian activist Premilla Dixit, on whose invitation we had come, greeted us Wednesday morning, and walked us through the encampment, answering our countless questions and introducing us to the Zucotti Park community. Throughout the long day of activities we learned of her journey to occupy both Wall Street and Hudson Valley, NY over the last several weeks, and how she connects to the rights-based framework. Click here to meet Premilla Dixit.

Shannon Biggs and Premilla Dixit

By 10:00 am, a drizzling rain ensured many tents remained up, and the number of people walking around remained down.  Still, this is a busy place: information booths in different languages, a considerable library, sidewalk cleaning teams, press tents, and no shortage of drop-in conversations and committees already at work. Click here to see a video clip of the Occupy Wall Street site the morning we arrived. As a tourist, this would be your experience – the earnestness engagement and diversity of those gathered.  But Premilla also pointed us to the deeper human experience of life inside this crowded instant-village.

There is the occasional sign of social strain. We heard that the kitchen workers were on a bit of a mid-morning strike, feeling the pressure of a 24-hour a day operation. And we walked the corner claimed by newly released Riker’s Island inmates, whose presence has raised some security concerns among occupiers (reportedly they are directed there by prison officials).  But equally invisible to passers by, is the direct-democracy experiment at work, coursing through the community like blood to vital organs, to address concerns, meet new and ongoing needs, and organize countless working and moving parts.

By 11:30 we had met with dozens of activists, occupiers and visitors from every walk of life.  Standing at the top of the Plaza steps on the Wall Street sidewalk, surrounded by a crowd of tourists, Wall Street workers, city dwellers and occupiers I took my first words at the People’s Mic in the the staccato cadence it has become famous for. The 360 degree crowd repeats and amplifies your words to the surrounding neighborhood, drawing the curious in for a closer look. Please click here for a blog transcript and video of our presentation.

The rest of the day moved at a blurring pace faster than a New York minute — and our group was growing.  Reinette Senum, former mayor of Nevada City CA and a longtime supporter of rights-based organizing  and Democracy School, was being filmed as a visiting occupier.  She and her videographer joined us for much of the day, as well as new friends met during the presentation.  Click here to see a video clip of Reinette talking about Democracy School. We met an Egyptian student, Shimaa Helmy, who was involved in the democratic uprising in her own country, and was in the US to tell her story in hopes of strengthening efforts in Egypt and in the US. Click here to meet Shimaa. Conversations had to be kept on the move, as we walked to the next activity, and the next. Premilla took us to WBAI radio station to set up interviews, instructed us to grab a pizza slice from a truck and keep walking.

OWS organizing meeting

We were asked to give our speeches again on camera for the OWS web and suddenly it was 6 pm, time to observe and participate in the daily General Assembly meeting, in a formerly empty office directly across the street from OWS, piled with boxes, and a makeshift supermarket of dry goods and a wall rack full of winter gear.  After being on the street all day, the roomy space was quiet by comparison. The meeting itself is informal, run by consensus and a rotating facilitator  and a well organized committee structure to address each item and provide report back.  We linked up with those on the organizing team, about potential next steps.

The day ended with a solidarity march for Oakland, and I vowed to bring the spirit and stories of OWS home with me to the Bay Area.  Whatever you may think about the Occupy Movement, its full of people moving the first conversation about structural change to the spotlight in decades.  This is the most necessary conversation we could be having in our hometowns, and for the sake of system change, we need to have it peacefully, free from excessive force or violence.

Global Exchange is organizing our participation in Oakland tomorrow as part of Occupiers’ call for a citywide general strike/day of action, and if you live in the Bay Area, consider participating for a day, or part of a day or taking action in your community.  Here are some resources:


Blog Author Debra Weistar

This guest blog was written by Debra Weistar, co-director of Finding the Good Traveling Semester Program.

“This was the most amazing day ever.  I learned more today than in all the years of my education.”

–Wyatt Maniarrez, Oct. 6, 2011, after attending a court hearing between the Western Shoshone and the Bureau of Land Management arguing for the protection of water on Mt. Denaho in Nevada, where the largest mining corporation in the world is mining for gold on public lands.

Wyatt is 16 years old.

I should mention that the education Wyatt received on that day included a crash course on Rights of Nature and rights-based governance.  As a prospective student in Finding the Good Traveling Semester Program, Wyatt joined us for a day.  When he is enrolled in the full semester on January 2012, he will take a block course on community rights, Rights of Nature, corporate personhood, the regulatory system, the history of the Constitution of the United States, and social movements.  Did I mention this is for high school?

Students with Chief Almir, Surui people of Brazilian Rainforest

Without the crash course in Rights of Nature and rights-based governance, Wyatt would likely have come away from the day in despair, instead of with his eyes wide and his head full of new thoughts. The hearing was, in his words, “stacked heavily in favor of the BLM and Barrick Gold Corporation” and we witnessed the lawyer for the tribes argue within the regulatory “script” to try to save the waters of Mt. Denabo. The argument was not about rights – the right of Mt Denabo to “exist, flourish and evolve”, nor of the Western Shoshone’s ancient rights to the land and water. Instead, the argument was, as it most often is, about an interpretation of a possible flaw in the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) carrying the slim chance that the waters of Mt. Denabo – a sacred site to the Western Shoshone – might be partially protected. Opposition to the mine itself years ago was not successful and the open pit at the base of Mt. Denabo is well over a mile across.

Not an encouraging picture, to be sure, in an all-too-familiar scenario in the fight to protect and preserve the fragile ecosystems on which we all depend. The difference, to Wyatt and the other students who are learning about corporate personhood and community rights, is that they are also learning about rights-based governance, and what that might mean to them as citizens and young leaders.  They can participate in action that is based on standing up and saying “no” to corporate destruction, instead of begging for lesser harms. So even though the picture is bleak, frustrating, and frightening, they are no longer bound by a myth and controlled by a fiction in their own minds. The truth can be hard, but knowing the truth is essential to an authentic education.  Authentic education is essential for social change.

Students interviewing Thomas Linzey

Youth need to learn from community organizers doing rights-based work. At Finding the Good (FtG) they learn from Shannon Biggs, Rights Based Campaigner for Global Exchange, and Ben Price from CELDF, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. They interview people like Thomas Linzey, co-founder of CELDF, to learn about communities that are claiming their right to self-governance, drafting and passing ordinances that keep destructive corporate activity out. FtG is currently working with Shannon Biggs and others to create a Youth Summit for Rights of Nature and Rights Based Organizing.

In front of the courthouse on the day of the hearing, Wyatt along with Skye, media intern for Finding the Good, shot footage of the water ceremony and speeches with tribal members. They interviewed Shoshone grandmothers who spoke about the sacredness of water, and how water has a right to flow unimpeded and pure. “That’s what we believe”, said Mary McCloud, “that’s the Indigenous way.” They heard the lawyers for Barrick Gold and the lawyers for the government make statements like, “There can be degradation, just no “undue” degradation”, when speaking of the water. When the issue of Shoshone religious and cultural values was brought up, they argued that those cannot be “quantified” and therefore do not fit into the established analytical model. As such, they cannot be considered. Wyatt and Skye can consider them, though. They can also consider that humans and Nature have inherent rights and that those rights must be protected.

Wyatt and Skye will take the footage they shot and the interviews they recorded and produce news pieces for our local radio station and online news source, as well as the Finding the Good blog. While they may not yet be prepared to draft a new constitution recognizing the rights of Nature, they are learning to educate others on issues and solutions that can lead to a just and sustainable world.

Finding the Good Traveling Semester Program is open to all high school juniors and seniors, and gap year students. Please visit the Finding the Good student blog at www.blog.findingthegood.org

To donate to Global Exchange’s ongoing Community Rights Program, please click here.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan gained independence from Sudan after an overwhelming majority of South Sudanese voted to secede and become Africa’s newest country.

Beth Garriott, Global Exchange’s Gifts & Grants Officer, lived in South Sudan from 2006-2007 while she worked with Mercy Corps. She shares her thoughts about South Sudan’s independence.

The birth of a New Nation: South Sudan

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

“Peace is good. I built a house a year ago, and it has not been burned down like it was every year before.” —Nuer woman, Rumbek, South Sudan – 2006, one year after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed

Watching the celebrations in South Sudan this weekend, I felt a mix of emotions. Mostly I felt incredible joy, relief and satisfaction on behalf of millions of people who had endured more loss and pain than most could ever imagine – after a generation of civil war and the displacement of millions of people. I also couldn’t help but feel a longing to be back in Sudan, celebrating with the friends I made during my time in the country from 2006-2007. And I was cautiously optimistic about the future of this infant nation, given continued conflicts along the border regions between the north and the south, tensions among tribes in the south over land rights and political control, and the poor infrastructure, healthcare options and education system in the country.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

That said, sheer delight trumped all other emotions and questions this past weekend while I watched the singing, dancing and festivities online. A world away, I share in their joy. But my happiness about South Sudan’s independence surely didn’t come close to comparing to the utter elation that most people in the country – and South Sudanese around the world – must have been feeling, deep in their bones, on July 9th.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

South Sudan is different culturally and religiously from the northern part of the country – it is primarily Arab and Muslim in the north and animist and Christian in the south.

For far too long the people of South Sudan were oppressed. They suffered through violence, displacement and slavery during 22 years of civil war leaving over one million people dead and more than four million people displaced. But finally, in 2005, they got a chance to taste freedom when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, signaling the start of a six-year semi-autonomous period in which the government of South Sudan would be initiated and power-sharing structures would be established with the North. At the end of the six years, the CPA stipulated that South Sudan would have a chance to vote for independence.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

During my time in South Sudan working for a U.S-based non-governmental organization on an initiative to strengthen civil society, most people were not certain whether peace would even last another year, much less all the way through to the election in 2011. One of the least developed countries on earth, the majority of people in South Sudan back then had no access to clean drinking water, electricity or roads. I lived in a mud hut and had it well.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

Carrying out an election in such a massive geographical area (the former country of Sudan was roughly the size of Western Europe, the largest country in Africa) without roads, and with a literacy rate of between 20-30%, seemed all but impossible. Additionally, tensions were still high between the northern and southern militaries, and rising between various tribes in South Sudan over land and political representation. But alas, we were all proven wrong when – in January this year – democracy triumphed on a continent where peaceful elections are few and far between. And this past weekend, the long and perilous journey towards a freer and calmer Sudan was complete.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

My time in South Sudan was the most seminal and important period of my life. It continues to inspire and ground me in my work at Global Exchange to bring about greater awareness of human and environmental rights issues around the world. If I close my eyes, I can still picture the lush mango trees along the Nile River in Juba, the new capital of South Sudan. I smile imagining the traditional Dinka greeting, which includes a brief clasping of a person’s right hand, then slapping of the other’s shoulders with the same hand – over and over again for several cycles.

Photo Credit: Beth Garriott

I recall the conversations I had with community members in the remote village where I worked for a year – in the disputed region of Abyei, straddling the north-south border – where much of the country’s oil lies (it is unclear whether this small area will become a territory of North or South Sudan). People here talked about their vision for South Sudan – a peaceful, independent and thriving nation.

This vision is now two-thirds of the way there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This alert was originally sent out to our Global Exchange e-mail list. Be the first to get breaking Global Exchange news and sign up for our e-mail lists.

The failure of the Obama administration to swiftly condemn the bloody crackdown in Bahrain that has killed four and injured hundreds points to the ongoing hypocrisy that defines U.S. Middle East policy. When pushed, our government eventually supported the multitudes of demonstrators in Cairo, but not before assuring that the U.S.-backed military is there to manage Egypt’s “transition to democracy.”

Bahrain, the tiny island nation in the Persian Gulf that harbors the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is a different story. There, demonstrators face a U.S. and Saudi backed monarchy that has just violently broken up a tent city that sought to emulate the actions in Cairo’s Tahrir square. The White House response has been to ask all sides to refrain from violence.

We must encourage the U.S. government stand for democracy and the people of Bahrain by condemning the violence inflicted by the Bahraini government and allow for peaceful protests. As Bahraini human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, told DemocracyNow! this morning:

[I]f Barack Obama could come out and speak about other countries like Egypt and Iran, so he could speak about Bahrain. Especially we have more dead people here than they had in Iran, that he should come out and speak and say to the Bahrain government, they should stop [this violence against the people]. Barack Obama and the United States are a very influential country here. … They are the people who could speak. But so far, unfortunately, we have not seen any positive statement made by the United States government.

Lend your voice and write your member of Congress and the White house asking that the US use its powerful influence to ask the army to go back to the barracks and allow peaceful protests to continue.

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

I was in the middle of buying some mints from a street vendor on Cairo’s Talat Harb Street—right off Tahrir Square–when the rocks started flying. I had given a 20-cent coin to the vendor. He gave me one pack of mints, and all hell broke loose.

“Run, run,” people yelled at me. I saw a group of men running down the street, carrying a man whose face was streaming with blood. Then I saw the pro-Mubarak thugs, armed with rocks, metal pipes, whips. “Run, Run,” the Egyptians on the street told me. I ran for shelter as fast as I could.

This has become a pattern the past few days. Thugs hired by the regime, many of them plain-clothes police, try to create chaos on the streets just outside the entrances to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Egyptian Revolution. They randomly attack people, including us foreigners. Many of us have been beaten, our cameras smashed. My CODEPINK colleague Tighe Barry had been picked up on this very street two days ago, thrown into a car, roughed up, and later dumped out with a warning to stay way.

Tighe refused to stay away, and so did a million Egyptians who, despite the threats of violence, teemed into Tahrir Square today in what was termed the “Day of Departure.” Young, old, rich, poor, religious, secular—they defied the desperate acts of a dying regime.

Ever since this uprising began on January 25, the determination and bravery of the Egyptians has been overwhelming to witness. The democracy forces in Tahrir Square have braved tear gas, water cannons, rocks, sniper fire and mobs storming in on horses and camels. All the while, they have stood their ground and continued to hold on to this sacred square.

Today they were determined to liberate the outside streets as well. While I was running away from the Mubarak mob on Talat Harb Street, a huge crowd came rushing out of the square, running towards the thugs. Just the sight of this oncoming sea of people was enough to frighten the thugs. The Mubarak mob disappeared as quickly as it had formed. Talat Harb Street, the site of street battles the last few days, was once again liberated. People cheered “Horreyah, horreyah”—freedom, freedom.

Out of breath from running so fast, I turned around and saw the street vendor who had sold me the mints. He had run after me. It turns out that the 20-cent coin I had given him was enough to buy two packs of mints, not one. He had come to give me the second pack.

“Welcome to Egypt,” he said, smiling.

 

 

By Shannon Biggs, Global Exchange Community Rights Director (January, 2011)

 

 

Whose Supreme Court?

If the Supreme Court had never granted “personhood” rights to corporations, would they still be trammeling the rights of citizens and riding roughshod over communities and nature?  Would we have democracy?

By deciding 5-4 in the Citizens United case, the US Supreme Court expanded corporations’ ability to spend money to influence our elections, and reignited the controversy over corporate personhood. A bevy of campaigns have emerged to challenge it, through litigation or via a Constitutional amendment.

Abolishing corporate personhood is necessary, but our entire system of law is engineered to keep decision making out of the hands of the people.  The unelected Supreme Court, which created corporate monsterhood, would still exist and wealthy interests would continue to shape that judiciary and the debates before it. The Commerce and Contracts clause of the Constitution would continue to place corporate interests over citizens’ rights. The legislature would still be influenced more by Fortune 500 powerbrokers than voters.  State laws that “preempt” communities from making decisions about their local welfare in favor of corporate interests would still be in effect, and regulatory laws would still be written largely by the industries to be regulated.

Perhaps corporations are not even the real problem. The corporation is just the current tool for exploitation: once upon a time Lords and Barons ruled. After jettisoning them in the Revolution, the Constitution guaranteed the slave system.  And in the same breath that law ended human property, the courts made property (corporations) “persons” as a vehicle for the wealthy to continue to maintain power over the many.

Changing the status quo and creating a living democracy will take grassroots organizing.  Even if we start with abolishing corporate personhood, how will we get there?  Past people’s movements for rights suggest we cannot merely ask for change from those who hold the reigns. The Declaration of Independence says that our rights are inalienable, we’re born with them—they do not come from law. We must not relinquish our rights, but exercise them in the face of unjust laws—what some call civil disobedience. Susan B. Anthony cast her ballot and went to jail. The underground railroad ignored the slave laws, and the lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights struggle remains a powerful symbol of a movement for change. Today’s movement for the inherent rights of people and nature and against corporate power is no different.

At the forefront of this movement stand communities of people confronted by corporate GMOs, water theft, mountaintop removal, and on and on.  They find that it is the law itself that enables corporations to determine their destiny.

GX’s Community Rights program, in partnership with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), works with California citizens in a growing number of communities to challenge unjust law through local lawmaking.  These local ordinances strip corporations of their legal privileges and assert the rights of people to make governing decisions.

Concerned about water in her pristine mountain community, Angelina Cook of Mount Shasta, CA is one of those leading the charge for rights in partnership with Global Exchange. “Our ordinance is designed to reverse the dangerous momentum of business as usual by placing citizen rights ahead of corporate interests.  Our ordinance will prohibit corporate cloud seeding and ground water extraction for resale within city limits.  In addition to preventing further degradation, it will transform our existing submissive private-public dynamic.”  The citizens’ group formed to pass the ordinance has spent the winter knocking on neighbors’ doors in freezing temperatures to talk about rights, and to gather the petition signatures needed to put the ordinance on the ballot this year.

Citizens in Mt. Shasta are organizing to assert their community’s rights!

Meanwhile, the 125+ communities who have passed these ordinances in others states have begun to take this work to the next level—organizing to create new state constitutions based on the legitimate rights of people, while also stripping unjust laws protecting corporate privilege; and from there, national reform. What will those solutions look like? That is for We the People to decide.

Take action:

 

Interested in Rights based organizing or want to assist the Mt. Shasta campaign? Contact Shannon@globalexchange.org or 415.575.5540