Mayor Anthony Foxx declared the protest an “extraordinary event,” dubiously authorizing the removal of civil liberties by police in an area around BoA, a “no free speech zone.” City officials and the police have never seen a crowd this big in protest. In giving police extraordinary abilities to arrest the working class who are daring to confront the worst 0.1%, the stage was set for a challenge of these onerous and illegal rules on the street.

Nerves were on edge as the police patrol in the area around the convergence center picked up beginning three days before the action. An empty box discovered in front of a Bank of America branch downtown was treated as a bomb threat Sunday evening, without any evidence, the media cast allusions of suspicion on the coming protesters. On Monday, three people were arrested for holding a banner above a highway a couple blocks away from the center. Concern began rising on the possibility of a raid of the convergence building even though the event was clearly promoted as being nonviolent.

The morning of the protest, marches began at 8:30AM at three separate locations, representing the three main demands. The hundreds of people in each march were there to force BoA into respecting democracy, stopping the funding of dirty coal and stopping foreclosures.  Timed precisely, they righteously violated the extraordinary event rules and took the streets in unison one block before they all converged at the intersection in front of the shareholder meeting exactly at 9:00.

The energy at the moment of confluence was electric, joyous, proud, noisy and ferociously unstoppable. The police kept back even though some seemed earlier ready to challenge protesters who were disobeying rule but the protesters all stepped onto the street in unison and like an ocean wave crashing to the shore of the Outerbanks, the protesters swooshed past the police and flooded the road.

The strength of the day came from groups and people uniting against a common enemy. Bank of America IS bad for America. Why? Pick the poison and put it on a sign. The three big ones that framed the marches are hardly the only reasons. The working class has seethed from the bail out in 2008, now recognizing that moment as a swindling of American taxes towards protecting the wealthy. Occupy Wall Street projected that sentiment as it was stemming from a sense that finding a mainstream political solution, considering the show of bipartisan support towards giving the big banks everything they wanted, was not possible. Four years later the economy is still tanked and teetering but the Brian “Big Banks” Moynihans of the world rake in millions in bonuses rather than go to jail.

Jail for the CEO and all the executives, a dissolving of the BoA corporate charter and the redistribution of their ill-gotten wealth seems unlikely to come from our federal government. Enough elected officials have been bought by the financial institutions to make reform through elections much more difficult or impossible at this moment. Though the messages that day seemed to indicate an agreement around the scope of BoA’s malfeasance, a strategy for directly organizing for BoA dissolution still seems far off. Clearly there is no making Bank of America a better bank for everyone without dissolving it at least until the point where it is no longer “too big to fail.”

Larger organizations behind this effort have specific self-interested goals. For the larger environmental organizations it is a legal agreement that BoA stops funding the building of coal power plants. The central staffs of these large organizations do not prioritize building movement unity and creating longterm shifts towards democratic power. If these environmental organizations worked more in a solidarity model, they would not break the campaign after BoA agrees to some request around coal. Instead their demands would be unified with the greater movement goals on BoA having to agree to principle reduction for foreclosed homes, to not spending money on election manipulation and the terms of smaller coalition members around stopping outrageous fees affecting the most vulnerable.

A major environmental organization may focus on stopping coal but when it comes down to demands of BoA it is disingenuous to abandon the demands of alliance partners that helped pressure the bank for a deal. This unfortunately happens often in alliances with larger organizations: the smaller organizations and local folks ending up facing the bank from a diminished position once the larger group gets what it wants. This is not to say that reforms should not be accepted on occasion and partial victories celebrated. However, alliances must be consulted and respected. Any reforms must not hurt long-term shared vision.

There is a lot of hope that this action will energize continued relationship development in Wall Street South, as Charlotte has come to be known. Solidarity takes trust developed in shared struggle and a lot of trust was built this week and the many months previous. These relationships should be nurtured for the long-term as Charlotte is a city that will remain a battleground against financial interests.

Financial institutions have risen since the 1970s to become the greatest concentrators of wealth in the US. The opulence of Bank of America stands out in their glass skyscraper, the biggest by far in Charlotte, a daily reminder of inequality for the 99% and an exception to the overall down to earth feeling in the rest of the city. Their concentration of wealth has directly correlated to their increase in political power. The DNC being held in Charlotte pays homage to the city’s clout in finance and the total subjugation of the Democrats to that power structure.

“The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector),” writes Noam Chomsky, in his article on Common Dreams titled, A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age?

The Democratic National Convention protest has the potential for highlighting this relationship between the big banks, especially BoA, and the Democrats. Protesting the relationship between the big bank and the party rather than the party directly would be a message that may resonate better with folks, especially locally. Many of the people of color, in this mixed metropolitan and multicultural city, have a growing voice but may feel divided in using it directly against Barak Obama. Engaging people in focusing on BoA could help efforts at uniting struggles against economic inequality and the continued struggle against racism. Getting BoA money out of the Democratic Party is a broad progressive issue and can put the spotlight on the inequality, especially for people of color, that has been accentuated in the foreclosure struggles, the lack of jobs, and the predatory fee practices of BoA.

The coalition that came together around the BoA shareholders meeting probably won’t be the same one that unites for the DNC protests. If it were, it would really scare the heck out of BoA and the Democrats. Perhaps for that reason alone it would be worthwhile to examine the possibility.

-By Bruce Wilkinson, AFGJ Grassroots Coordinator

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The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is set to go into effect on May 15, 2012, based on the approval given by President Obama regarding Colombia’s “compliance” with the Labor Action Plan. When Pres. Obama talks about improved labor rights in the war torn country, no one must be more baffled than the members of FENSUAGRO (National Unitary Federation of Agricultural Unions). FENSUAGRO is the largest Colombian organization of peasant unions and associations, with more than 80,000 members nationwide. Since the beginning of the year, several of their members have been disappeared, murdered, threatened and/or jailed, including, in April, the disappearance of Henry Díaz, who was on his way to attend events in Bogotá associated with the Left popular mobilization known as the Marcha Patriótica(Patriotic March).

Both the Marcha Patriótica and FENSUAGRO, one of its founding members, are being heavily targeted. On May 7, a pamphlet was received at the FENSUAGRO Bogotá offices from the paramilitary group the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles) declaring the leadership of FENSUAGRO, the Marcha Patriótica (MP)and several other groups associated with the MP to be “military objectives”. The pamphlet threatened,

…all…who are no more than auxiliaries of the guerrilla, terrorists, toad sons of whores friends of Chávez, that participate in all the marches against the legally constituted state and that obstruct the action of our glorious military institutions and the police, meddling and stirring up the communities so that they demand their supposed rights, demand lands and other supposed benefits they claim by virtue of being displaced or victims of the state….

For this reason we declare as military objectives the directives of the organizations…financed by the guerrillas for the work with the people and the construction of the new movement, Marcha Patriótica, which will eliminate the same as in years past: FENSUAGRO, ASOCAMNDES, CONAP, CND, ANDESCOL, REINICAR, FUNHASCOL, MANE, ANDAS, MESA NACIONAL, CASA DE AMISTAD CON VENEZUELA, FEDERACION NACIONAL SINDICAL NUEVO LIDERAZGO CAMPESINO….

It doesn’t matter to us if you are protected, miscarried sons of whores, because it will not serve you for anything, with only a few days remaining to abandon the city….

We are hoping to end this plague soon….”

This warning comes just days after FENSUAGRO affiliate Jimmy Ortiz Gutierrez received a similarly chilling threat. Ortiz is a young unionist who has been hounded by military troops in Sumapaz since December, trying to pressure him into giving false testimony implicating FENSUAGRO affiliates of collaboration guerrillas. Ortiz received a note on May 1 telling him,

“Guerrilla dog, don’t believe that you can save yourself, don’t believe that we don’t know where you are….the cleansing begins….you cannot shield yourself with a simple union because we go there to begin to take heads….and don’t believe that everything is going to end with you leaving your sector, there will not be an alert that saves you, we have already seen you in Bogotá and we do not lack gall, we are waiting to see if you yourself….take this decision, respond to our message within 20 days.”

Since the US Congress passed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, ironically on Columbus Day (aka Day of Resistance to Colonialization), 2011, there have been a number of threats and assaults against unionists. However, the FTA could not go into effect until it was shown that Colombia was in compliance with a Labor Action Plan it agreed to in April.

In a September, 2011 letter to Pres. Obama, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, noted that,

“Despite the Labor Action Plan that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos agreed to in April, violent suppression of workers, as well as land rights, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian activists continues unabated…. Twenty-two union leaders have been killed so far this year in Colombia, including 15 since the Labor Action Plan went into effect. While the new government may have good intentions, unfortunately, on the ground, Colombian working families are neither safer nor more able to exercise basic rights. Colombia continues to be the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member,”

In fact, threats and repression are widespread in Colombia at this time. The Colombian organization Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders) has released a study showing the nation to be at its highest number in 10 years for threats and assaults against Human Rights Defenders.

For FENSUAGRO and other unions, human rights defenders, and for the Marcha Patriótica, the intensification of the targeting against them is cause for serious concern. These are not just idle threats. Consider this partial list of disappearances and assassinations for the last two weeks of April:

• April 18, FENSUAGRO organizer and Marcha Patriótica delegate Henry Díaz was “disappeared”, assumed to have been assassinated by the Colombian military.
• April 18, Martha Cecilia Guevara, who was also a Marcha Patriótica delegate, was also “disappeared”.
• April 26, Mao Enrique Rodriguez was assassinated. Rodriguez was a well-known activist and had been Chief of Body Guards for Carlos Lozano, a member of the Marcha Patriótica National Directorate. At the time he was killed, he was providing services for ANDAS (National Association of Collective Support). ANDAS is one of the Marcha Patriótica affiliates and is listed along with FENSUAGRO in the May 7 Águilas Negras pamphlet.

• April 27, SINALTRAINAL unionist Daniel Aguirre Piedrahita was assassinated.

Despite this abysmal record, the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is set to go in effect on May 15, based on Colombia’s “fulfillment” of the Labor Action Plan as announced by Pres. Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia on April 14 and 15. Not only that, but Pres. Obama has since announced a plan to send “U.S. brigade commanders with hands-on counterinsurgency experience in Afghanistan and Iraq to spend two weeks with Colombian army and police units being deployed in rebel strongholds”. Since 1998, the US government has given Colombia more than $8 million in military aid through Plan Colombia.

The Marcha Política and the work of FENSUAGRO on behalf of peasant farmers are two of the best sources of hope in Colombia today for the establishment of peace with justice for family farmers and a secure and open political process. However, peace is not the objective for transnational corporations and big landowners, who are more interested in consolidating landholdings and access to natural resources. Plan Colombia has also led to the massive displacement of more than 5 million Colombians from 12 to 16 million acres. The US and Colombian governments have shown themselves to be more interested in serving corporate interests than those of the people. And corporations have also been shown, repeatedly, to be working hand-in-hand with the Colombian military and paramilitaries to repress unions and independent political movements.

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

ACTION NUMBER ONE–WRITE THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT

Send an email to Colombia’s President, Vice President, Minister of Justice, Attorney General and National Public Defender, and to the embassy in Washington, DC. Here are the email addresses:

fsantos@presidencia.gov.co, contactovicepresidencia@presidencia.gov.co, ministro@minjusticia.gov.co, anticorrupcion@presidencia.gov.co, secretaria_privada@hotmail.com, embassyofcolombia@colomobiaemb.org, info@colombiaemb.org

NOTE: A regular problem for internationals contacting Colombian officials is that after a large number of emails complaining about human rights abuses are received, they start bouncing back. Please send your emails anyway, because some of them will get through! If possible, write your email in Spanish, since English messages are usually discarded automatically. Following is a sample email in Spanish, followed by a translation:

ASUNTO:  Demando Protección para los Integrantes de la Marcha Patriótica y FENSUAGRO

Escribo para expresar mis inquietudes sobre los ataques y las amenazas contra dirigentes de Marcha Patriótica y uno de sus organizaciones constituyentes, la Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria (FENSUAGRO). Con el lanzamiento de la Marcha Patriótica y el Consejo Patriótico Nacional, ya han ocurrido una serie de desapariciones, asesinatos y amenazas en contra personas y grupos asociados con la Marcha, incluyendo la desaparición de Henry Díaz, integrante de FENSUAGRO y un delegado a Marcha Patriótica.

Más, en las semanas después del lanzamiento del Consejo Patriótico, FENSUAGRO ha recibido por lo menos dos amenazas significantes. El joven afiliado a FENSUAGRO, Jimmy Ortiz Gutiérrez de Sumapaz, recibió una nota probablemente de parte de miembros del Ejército, estacionado cerca, quiénes le han pedido repetidamente a dar testimonio falso en contra el liderazgo de FENSUAGRO. Y el 7 de mayo, la Directiva Nacional de FENSUAGRO recibió una amenaza en nombre del grupo paramilitar, Águilas Negras, que nombro a FENSUAGRO tanto como otros integrantes de Marcha Patriótica como “objetos militares”.

Como defensores internacionales de los Derechos Humanos, exigimos que el gobierno colombiano actúe inmediatamente para:

1. Proveer protección a los dirigentes nacionales de FENSUAGRO, y todos los otros integrantes amenazados.

2. Investigar las amenazas y, en lugar de la impunidad, llevar a la justicia a los autores y todos los responsables.

A propósito, sabemos que es una táctica usual del gobierno colombiano de no recibir y devolver correos internacionales que denuncian abusos de Derechos Humanos. Nos han devuelto muchos correos que hemos mandado, especialmente de la Presidencia y de otros oficinas gobernamentales. Pedimos que en lugar del rechazar nuestros correos, que escuchen a estas peticiones y actúen de una manera definitiva frente estas amenazas y que protegen los derechos de los integrantes de FENSUAGRO, de Marcha Patriótica de miembros de la oposición política.

Atentamente,

FIRMA AQUÍ SU NOMBRE Y PAÍS.

TRANSLATION:

Subject:  I Demand Protection for the Members of the Patriotic March and FENSUAGRO

I am writing to express my concerns regarding the attacks and threats against leaders of the Patriotic March and on of the constituent organizations, the National Unitary Federation of Agricultural Unions (FENSUAGRO). With the launching of the Patriotic March and the National Patriotic Council, there have already occurred a series of disappearances, assassinations and threats against persons and groups associated with the March, including the disappearance of Henry Díaz, FENSUAGRO member and a delegate to the Patriotic March.

More, in the weeks following the launch of the Patriotic Council, FENSUAGRO has received at least two significan threats. The young FENSUAGRO affiliate Jimmy Ortiz Gutiérrez of Sumapaz received a note probably coming from members of the Army stationed nearby. They have repeatedly asked him to give false testimony against the leadership of FENSUAGRO. And on May 7, the National Directorate of FENSUAGRO received a threat in name of the paramilitary group, the Black Eagles, who named FENSUAGRO along with other members of the Patriotic March as “military objects”.

As international defenders of Human Rights, we demand that the Colombian government act immediately to:

1. Provide protection to the leadership of FENSUAGRO, along with all its threatened membership;
2. Investigate the threats and, in place of impunity, bring the authors of these threats and all those responsible to justice.

By the way, we know that it is a usual tactic of the Colombian government to not receive and to return international emails that denounce Human Rights abuses. We have had returned many emails that we have sent, especially to the President and other government officials. We ask that in place of rejecting our emails, that you listen to these petitions and act in a definitive manner against these threats and protect the rights of the membership of FENSUAGRO, the Patriotic March and the members of the political opposition.

Sincerely,

SIGN YOU NAME AND COUNTRY HERE

ACTION NUMBER TWO-CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE

Email or Call your Representative BEFORE TUESDAY MAY 15. (To find the contact information for your Representative, go to: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ . To call the National Switchboard for Congress, dial (202) 224-3121 .) Urge her/him to contact Pres. Obama and demand that he rescind his approval of Colombia’s compliance with the Labor Action Plan and suspend the US-Colombia FTA.

Tell your Representative that:

I am contacting you to ask that you demand that Pres. Obama take immediate action to stop the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement from going into effect this coming Tuesday, May 15, 2012. At the Summit of the Americas last week, Pres. Obama announced that Colombia was in compliance with the Labor Action Plan, and therefore the FTA could move forward and be fully implemented. However, the truth is that since the Labor Action Plan was agreed to in April 2011, there has been an ongoing series of assassinations, disappearances and threats aimed at labor unionists. In fact, since Pres. Obama’s announcement, three labor unionists have already been assassinated and threats have been made against all the leadership of FENSUAGRO, Colombia’s largest organization of peasant unions and asscociations, as well against the directorate of the opposition political mobilization, the Marcha Patriótica (Patriotic March). Furthermore, recent studies conducted by Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders) have shown that threats and assaults are at a 10 year high against Human Rights defenders in Colombia. Moving forward with the US-Colombia FTA, especially under the false pretense of improved labor and human rights, is tantamount to giving a “green light” for more abuses and more violence. Demand accountability-Stop the FTA!

National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice

The Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia turned out to be an embarrassing fiasco for Pres. Obama and the US delegation. It was mainly marked by the Secret Service prostitution scandal, denouncements of the War on Drugs at every turn, three heads of state in the region not even showing up and Argentina’s Pres. Kirchner storming out, and the utter isolation of the US and Canada in regards to Cuba. 

There was one pernicious dog and pony show, however, that was a “success” for both the US and Colombian delegations–and for the same 1% they both serve. This was Pres. Obama’s announcement of Colombia’s compliance with the Labor Action Plan upon which the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is contingent. The FTA is now on course to go in effect on May 15th–and with it an acceleration of more hard times and displacement for Colombia’s small, family farmers. Pres. Obama’s announcement is especially cynical given that there have been several recent murders and arrests of unionists. In fact, threats and attacks against Human Rights defenders in Colombia are at a ten year high, according to Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders).

The Marcha Patriótica converges at the Parque Nacional

But there was another meeting, also in April, that was of a very different character. This was the convening of the Marcha Patritica (Patriotic March) and its launching of the Consejo Patriotico Nacional (National Patriotic Council), made up of representatives from more than 1,500 grassroots organizations. Several observers, both in and out of Colombia, have said this may well have been the most important event in the Colombian Left since the mid-1990s. The Marcha Patriótica and launch of the Consejo Patriótico Nacional represents the next stage and the coalescing of the movement into a powerful and independent political block.

According to former Senator and former Mayor of the town of Apartado, and member of the Marcha Patriotica’s National Directorate, Gloria Cuartas, “The people have converted their pain into political power.” She called the Marcha Patriótica “…the most interesting reconfiguration of the Left in Colombia since the genocide of the Union Patriótica (Patriotic Union), which was literally eliminated. The Marcha opens a new route of hope for the various sectors found within it….We are very much in tune with what is occurring in Latin America.”

Recently released Political Prisoner, Human Rights Defender and labor activist Liliany Obando told me that,

“The MP [Marcha Patriótica] is like the Phoenix that was reborn from the ashes of previous failed processes…such as was the case with the genocide against the Union Patriótica and many other social and political processes…. With the MP, we find all those who…feel that there is no true space in the Colombian political system for dissidence, for critical opinion, for political opposition….We hope to be able to continue our search for…a just and durable peace, without social iniquities and with truly inclusive politics, so that they no longer incarcerate, torture, displace and kill you for thinking and dreaming of a different kind of country.”

I was one of five US delegates representing the Alliance for Global Justice, the National Lawyers Guild, the video collective Pan Left, and the pro-immigrant, anti-border militarization Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Coalition for Human Rights). We witnessed more than 400 delegates from all over Colombia coming together to organize a new political platform on April 21 and 22. And on April 23, we saw some 100,000 persons march to the Parque Nacional (National Park) to demand peace with justice, negotiations toward a political solution, full, open and secure political participation and meaningful land reform.

Reported widely in Colombian press of all kinds, international corporate media completely ignored the event and, indeed, much of the international progressive media also ignored it. Cuba’s Prensa Latina, Telesur and a variety of Leftist media supplied coverage, but other voices were conspicuously absent, especially in the US. This is a shame for a couple of reasons. First, it betrays a general ignorance or neglect for Colombia solidarity. The Marcha Patriotica brought together under one banner the Left wing of the Liberal Party as well as Colombianas y Colombianos por la Paz (Colombians for Peace), both led by Piedad Córdoba (who is part of the Marcha’s National Directorate), the Colombian Communist Party, FENSUAGRO—the largest organization of peasant unions and associations, the indigenous Minga movement, a former mayor of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community and hundreds of other organizations and popular representatives.

Piedad Córdoba and Gloria Cuartas at the Marcha Patriótica

However, the second reason the silence is so deafening is because violence and repression are already underway against the Marcha and the rest of the Colombian Left and labor movement. Even before delegates had arrived in Bogotá, the disappearance of FENSUAGRO delegate Henry Díaz dampened the event. Then, on the Friday after the Marcha, SINALTRAINAL unionist Daniel Aguirre Piedrahita and Coordinator of Body Guards for Carlos Lozano, Mao Enrique Rodríguez, were both assassinated in separate events. Lozano is the Editor of Voz, Colombia’s largest circulation Left newspaper, and is part of the National Directorate for the Marcha.

Numerous threats continue against members of the Marcha, many directed at FENSUAGRO. Jimmy Sneith Ortiz Gutierrez is a young leader of the SINPREAGRICUN union, a FENSUAGRO affiliate. He has been contacted numerous times by members of the Armed Forces who have cajoled and, finally, threatened him, wanting him to go on record identifying unionists as members of the FARC-EP. On May 1^st, he received a note full of run-on sentences and bad grammar…but all too easily understood:

“Guerrilla dog, don’t believe that you can save yourself, don’t believe that we don’t know where you are ….the cleansing begins….you cannot shield yourself with a simple union because we go there to begin to take heads….and don’t believe that everything is going to end with you leaving your sector, there will not be an alert that saves you, we have already seen you in Bogotá and we do not lack gall, we are waiting to see if you yourself….take this decision, respond to our message within 20 days.”

This is, incidentally, a classic example of how people are pressured and forced to turn into informers to give false, usually paid testimony to frame union and popular movement leaders as guerrillas. In fact, former Defense Minister Freddy Padilla de Leon once bragged that one out of twenty Colombians acted as agents and informers for the Colombian state. Padilla was the General Commander of the Colombian Armed Forces from 2006 to 2010, including the time when the False Positive scandal was first uncovered, for which he urged an “attitude of tolerance” in investigations and prosecution of these crimes. The False Positive scandal stems from a process wherein young persons are rounded up and executed, then dressed up as guerrillas and claimed as enemy combatants. So far some 3,000 victims have been officially identified, and perpetrators have been implicated up to the highest levels of the Colombian military.

International awareness and accompaniment are considered absolutely key to the success of any peace process and to the safety of the Marcha. In fact, in my travels to Colombia, never have I heard so many requests for the presence of internationals.

Sen. Cuartas called to both the national and international communities that “…you might accompany us, protect us and attach yourselves to this Marcha.”

Human Rights lawyer, Luis Carlos Dominguez Prada, writing a few months before in the magazine Taller, writes that for a successful political solution and land reform to occur in Colombia, “It constitutes an imperative….that it can count on ample solidarity and international accompaniment.”

Liliany Obando, with her family, has endured repeated threats and harassment since her release in March, 2012, including being followed and photographed by unknown men. For her, the issue of accompaniment is very personal, saying,

“International accompaniment always will be fundamental….Your presence in some form prevents them from committing so many human rights abuses. Equally, it is of great importance that you might serve as direct witnesses to these processes….This is just as important for the positive aspects, such as the case of constructing new initiatives of social and political organization and participation, as well as for the negative that takes place in Colombia such as the systematic violation of human rights, the theft of our natural resources on the part of the multinationals, the support of foreign governments for war in Colombia and the nefarious role of the Free Trade Agreements.”

It is important to note that the Marcha Patriótica is not a second phase of the Union Patriótica (UP), which included the open and legal participation of the FARC-EP. Nevertheless, the memory of the UP’s experience is seared in the minds of the Marcha Patriótica. The UP was created as part of an effort toward a political solution to the armed and social conflict in Colombia. Over ten years of existence, from 1985 to 1995, military and paramilitary attacks killed 5,000 of its candidates and elected officials, including two presidential candidates.

Nevertheless, Sen. Cuartas adds that, “You can’t compare them. The UP was born out of the negotiations between an insurgent group and the government. The Marcha Patriótica, in contrast, emerges from the social movements.” Cuartas added, “We’re not going to get tangled up in responding to the government….Whatever person who in this country speaks against the system or defends human rights, they are going to be labeled as a son of the FARC.”

Leader of the Asociación Campesina del Valle del Río Cimitarra (ACVC) and Marcha National Directorate member Andres Gil adds, “The FARC are not our political leaders.”

But there is ample reason to believe that both the government and corporate media in Colombia will try to paint the Marcha as a front for the FARC-EP. There are more than 9,000 political prisoners in Colombia and only 800 of them are known to be members of the FARC-EP. The vast majority are prisoners of conscience or of judicial set-ups, more often than not behind bars for the vague charge of “Rebellion”. Many of these, after several years of incarceration (as in the case of Liliany Obando) will be later freed for lack of evidence and/or violation of conditions. Yet the government still claims that most these prisoners are members of or sympathizers with guerrillas.

Even worse is the long-standing practice of political, business and media leaders and outlets who accuse dissidents, without supporting evidence, of being members of the FARC. These kinds of accusations are often followed by acts of violence against those so maligned. Similar accusations have already been leveled against the Marcha, both by government officials and corporate media, and there is no basis for thinking they will stop.

Still, it was clear throughout the event that the vast majority of Marcha delegates rejected the demonization of the FARC-EP as completely counter productive to any hope or possibility of a political solution and a legitimate process toward peace with justice. This stage of the Marcha Patriótica–the launching of the Consejo Patriótico Nacional–grew out of the National Encounter for the Land and Peace that took place in Barrancabermeja in August, 2010. At this meeting some 27,000 delegates from indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities met with members of the Colombian Left, elements of the Catholic Church, student and labor movements to demand land reform and a peace process based on negotiations and a political solution to the armed and social conflicts.

It was also clear at both the National Encounter and at the Marcha Patriotica that, whatever approval or disapproval participants had regarding insurgent groups, that their good faith efforts toward a political solution were recognized. The FARC-EP has repeatedly declared its willingness to enter into negotiations and work toward a legitimate peace, and these declarations have been backed up by numerous unilateral releases of prisoners, culminating in the release of all remaining prisoners of war held at the time (military and police captives), and the renunciation of taking political prisoners for ransom purposes.

In a joint statement released in August, 2011, the Marcha Política and FENSUAGRO called for, “dialogue among the rural communities, the unions, the government and the Colombian insurgency…for all the political and social actors to sit down to think and construct from the hopes of the country, proposals for peace, and not for war.”

Marcha Patriotica member organization, ACVC, were clear about where they felt the obstacles were coming from. An August 14, 2011 statement declared that,

“…It is necessary to interpret as positive the…recent messages of the guerrillas…expressing their availability for dialogue…such as their call…for citizens to mobilize for peace as a fundamental method to achieve it. On the other hand, it is very positive that those who make up the model of the Mafioso State are losing political space before those who opt for a conventional state under ‘Rule of Law’.”

Or as FENSUAGRO President Eberto Díaz told me,

“The military aid of the United States and Plan Colombia constitute one of the greatest obstacles to peace…The US must not continue intervening in this conflict and maintaining that peace is not possible. It must stop calling the armed insurgency terrorists because this blocks dialogue and it also shows a double standard regarding political violence in the country….”

The Colombian popular movement wants international support. One thing that they clearly are not asking for, however, is interference or judgment. Yet to our extreme discredit, many US based solidarity activists and organizations, in the name of “peace”, repeat and spread around lies, distortions and misinformation emanating directly from sources such as the US State Department, the Pentagon and the very transnational corporations that are currently plundering Colombia.

Such actions show a profound lack of understanding of the Solidarity Model. As my colleague and National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice Chuck Kaufman explains,

“The Solidarity Model to which we ascribe mandates that we create relationships based on self-respect and interdependency in order to moderate power differentials. We view our role to be to amplify the articulated priorities of our Southern partners rather than one in which we tell them what we think is best for them. One aspect of this is that we do not criticize the strategies and tactics of authentic organizations of the oppressed.  We trust that they know the realities of their lives and culture better than we do. In nearly every matter we believe that our partners have the right to walk their own path to peace and justice; a path on which we accompany them. In our own country, our responsibility is to change our own government, and we welcome our international partners to walk our path with us. “

Because the problem of disinformation is all too widespread in the US-based Colombia solidarity movement, it is necessary to identify and at least partially rebut some of the more common of these false or distorted assertions. In broadcasting the call our partners have made for international accompaniment, it is all the more pressing upon us that we address these myths and insist that US based solidarity activist be informed and refrain from distortions and interference in the internal affairs of our Colombian allies. Let me address some of these myths one by one.

Myth Number One:

The FARC-EP is a terrorist organization that refuses to enter into a political process, preferring indiscriminate violence against local communities to a path toward peace.

The FARC-EP was founded in response to campaigns of violence and displacement against rural communities by the government and the hired guns of big landowners. FARC-EP membership is mostly made up of members of rural populations, rather than outsiders. The majority of casualties from FARC-EP attacks have been members of the Colombian Armed Forces and Paramilitaries. Whatever excesses and atrocities may have been committed by members of the FARC-EP , the ELN (National Liberation Army) and other guerrilla groups, it should be noted that throughout the course of the history of the FARC-EP (dating from May 27, 1964), 70 to 80% of all political violence has been committed by either members of the Colombian Armed Forces or by “private”, paramilitary death squads.

As far as entering into the political process goes, there are many, many examples of the FARC-EP’s willingness to negotiate and take up political organization, and we have already discussed the main example of the Union Patriótica. The lesson learned from this history is that minus an end to the impunity of political criminals and a secure and open political process, the FARC-EP has no guarantees that good faith entry into the electoral arena will be met by good faith efforts on the part of the government, corporate leaders and big landowners and their paramilitary hirelings.

In fact, this last November, at the 2011 protests to close the School of the Americas, I took part in a workshop in which a woman from the Justicia y Paz movement in Colombia, brought to this event by Witness for Peace, was asked point blank if she thought that the FARC-EP should be required to disarm as a prerequisite for negotiations. She responded with an emphatic, “no”. She was most definitely neither supporter nor friend of the FARC-EP, but still seemed incredulous that the question was even asked, given the experience of the UP.

Recent history has also not been encouraging regarding government and corporate commitment to peace. For instance, on the opening day of the National Encounter for the Land and Peace, Pres. Santos ordered the indiscriminate and unprovoked bombing of a villages in the municipality of Chaparral, Tolima, alluding to the alleged presence of FARC-EP troops in the area. That same day, Pres. Santos declared that the door to peace was “…closed with a key, and I have the key in my pocket.” A few days before, Santos had commented that “There are many people who do not want peace and many people who want to play a leading role, and the advocacy for peace is very harmful.”This was both preceded and followed by the arrests of several FENSUAGRO members in the Department of Putumayo. The timing of these attacks, arrests and statements seemed designed to undermine the Colombian movement for peace.

So far, the Colombian government, the US government that funds and advises war and repression in Colombia, and the transnational corporate interests they serve have not shown a genuinely strong interest in negotiations. Having displaced more than 5 million mostly rural Colombians from as much as 12 to 16 million acres of land, their interest is not in peace, but in the consolidation of illegal corporate land-grabs and access to oil, water, energy, agricultural and mining resources.

For the US government to list the FARC-EP as a terrorist organization, and for US “solidarity” activists to repeat this assertion does nothing to advance the cause of peace but, rather, justifies ongoing war.

Myth Number Two:

The FARC-EP and other guerrilla groups are too fragmented to negotiate meaningfully. With only 9,000 members or less left; with no clear, well-functioning centralized command; and with a lack of regular, viable communication among the various fronts, there is no one who can truly speak for the guerrillas.

First of all, where exactly does this “9,000” number come from but from the previous administration of Pres. Uribe–a man who was listed in 1991 by the US Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the 100 most “important narco-traffickers” in Colombia? This number was being quoted before revelations showed that at least 3,000 young people-the false positives-had been murdered and used to inflate the numbers of killed insurgents.

The figure of only 9,000 soldiers left in the FARC-EP also comes from the Uribe administration in its employment of Luis Carlos Restrepo as a “peace commissioner”. Restrepo has since been found to have concocted another kind of “false positive” scandal in which he claimed to have overseen the demobilization of an entirely fictitious front of the FARC-EP.

This 9,000 figure comes from an administration that employed the services of Cesar Caballero, former director of Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics. Caballero admitted that the government had manipulated and continues to manipulate ‘statistics to make Colombia appear safer than it is. Caballero adds that , “…the president’s policy is…to maintain the perception that security has improved, no matter what the case.”

In other words, there is absolutely no reason for US-based Colombia solidarity activists to accept this number as credible, much less to repeat it. Doing so is a service to the propaganda efforts of Empire.

Almost all credible sources will admit that it is impossible to get an exact count on the numbers of FARC-EP insurgents. Canadian scholar James Brittain has suggested the number of FARC-EP combatants may be well over 40,000, citing several carefully documented sources and his own experience conducting first hand research among a number of FARC-EP fronts.

Scholar James Petras says that the FARC-EP is “…the dominant political force in over 50 percent of the country’s municipalities, fielding a guerilla army of approximately 18,000 mostly peasant fighters.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross affirms that there has been no significant loss of capacity for the FARC-EP, despite the high-profile deaths of several FARC leaders. In a press conference launching a report by the ICRC, Christophe Beney noted that, “What we see today, perhaps between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, is that…the FARC adapts itself dynamically….to continue being an important actor in the armed conflict.”

The Colombian government-funded think-tank Nuevo Arco Iris notes that there have been steady increases in 2010 and 2011 in military actions by the FARC-EP, although it attributes them to restructuring and new strategies, rather than the failure of the government’s “Democratic Security” strategy. Nevertheless, it does recognize the failure of the predicted “end of the FARC-EP” and a subsequent demoralization among the armed forces. According to a 2011 Nuevo Arco Iris report,

“There was an overvaluation of the successes of democratic security in 2008…[and] the country was said to be at the “end of the end” [of the war]…Then General Padilla de Leon declared that in no more than one year the FARC would be practically liquidated….The research showed that there is a wear or fatigue in some structures of the Military Forces. This is due to the fact that the so-called “end of the end” is not so near for the guerrilla group….”

When US-based Colombia solidarity activists repeat as fact that the FARC-EP is fragmented and down to only 9,000 combatants, they are relying on outright liars and manipulators of statistics for their numbers. I once even heard one such oft-cited activist remark, “Who would the government negotiate with? The FARC are so weakened and the communications between fronts so disrupted, that even if the government reached agreements with FARC Commanders, how could they be enforced?” In other words, he was repeating exactly what the Empire wants us to believe.

Myth Number Three:

The FARC-EP no longer need popular support or the backing of local communities because they have forsaken their ideological principles and have converted into nothing more than a narco-trafficking organization.

This is a myth that is repeated ad nauseum by many alleged proponents of peace.

Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle note in their new book, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror, that,

“From the late 1980s the Colombian state commenced efforts to manufacture its image as a defender of democracy at war with narco-terrorists. The state employed the services of the Sawyer/Miller Group, a leading public relations company in the United States to wage PSYWAR on Colombia’s narco-terrorists, the FARC….By the 1990s, the Sawyer/Miller Group had regularly used the American press to disseminate Colombian government propaganda….

Despite the propaganda about the FARC as narco-terrorists, in 2001 Colombian intelligence estimated that FARC controlled less than 2.5 percent of Colombia’s cocaine exports, while the AUC controlled 40 percent, not counting the narco-bourgeoise as a whole…

The guerrillas provide the security and enforce a drug tax, as they do with all products under their control. By protecting its campesino base, the FARC accepts the cash crop as a supplementary income for the campesinos’ subsistence…When territory is captured by the FARC insurgents the narco-bourgeoisie is driven out…

…If the FARC dominated the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade in any way, it could not be in conflict with needed contacts within the Colombian establishment and the United States.”

Donnie Marshall, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency under Pres. George W. Bush has gone on record saying, “…there is no evidence that any FARC or ELN units have established international transportation, wholesale distribution or drug money-laundering networks in the United States or Europe.”

According to Rafael Suarez, who was a military advisor to the Uribe administration, “if you reduce the FARC to just a drug cartel, you make the possibility of negotiating a political settlement more difficult.” Of course, if the goal is not peace, but the consolidation of stolen lands, then the strategy works well of branding the FARC-EP as major drug traffickers and carrying out a “War on Drugs” that is really a War of Displacement and a War against Farmers.

James Brittain explains that,

“Guerrillas don’t get paid and receive three meals a day and medical treatment if they need it, but sometimes even those are scarce. They live in camps in the forest, sleep on wooden planks, bathe in rivers, and fight with diseases. It isn’t a life of luxury, which led journalist Garry Leech, who once spent time in a FARC camp, to say:

‘And if guerrilla leaders…are little more than the heads of a criminal organization, then they must be considered miserable failures. After all, other Colombian criminals live in luxury. The leader of the former Medellín cocaine cartel, Pablo Escobar, lived lavishly in magnificent mansions, as have many other Colombian drug traffickers over the past thirty years. Paramilitary leaders have also lived well on their vast cattle ranches in northern Colombia, enjoying the riches wrought from their criminal activities’”

Regarding measuring the popular support of the FARC-EP, again, when Colombia “solidarity” activists claim that there is none, and that the FARC-EP is isolated from the populace, they are once again mouthing the words of the Colombian oligarchy and the US-Corporate Empire.

The FARC-EP is strongest in areas abandoned by the government. In these areas, the FARC-EP has built roads, set up schools and health clinics, acted as a legal system for the settlement of disputes and protected the populace against paramilitary and military attacks. James Brittain notes that, “Alongside the creation of education centers, the guerrillas have shaped grassroots medical facilities…Medical and dental services have been provided by the FARC-EP directly or through allies….When someone is ill, remedial treatment is offered at no cost. I experienced this at first hand when I became severely ill in the jungle.”

Brittain also notes that, 

“the FARC-EP has been involved in much simpler excise practices in some rural communities. These levy systems saw the guerrillas collect a tax on amenities such as toothpaste, soap, and in some cases, beer, which was reciprocally repaid in full to a community-based body. The taxes were collected but not spent by the FARC-EP. They are forwarded to ‘an elected committee from the locality’called Juntas Acción Comunal (JAC) – a locally elected neighborhood council – which implements social programs and infrastructure with the collected funds.”

Polls are often cited as proof positive that the FARC-EP does not enjoy any popular support. However, these polls are generally done via landline telephones. Most Colombians don’t own land lines for economic or geographic reasons. Furthermore, those polled can easily be identified using landlines, therefore the polls are not truly anonymous.

Perhaps the peace negotiations of 1998-2002 give some clue, though, to how rural communities regard the FARC-EP. For instance, before negotiations, the region of San Vicente del Caguan had around 100,000 residents. After negotiations, roughly 740,000 peasants migrated to the area under the control of the FARC-EP.

Myth Number Four:

The lack of concern or consideration for human rights and life is proven by the FARC-EP’s recruitment of child soldiers.

No one who cares about peace can approve of the use of child soldiers. But I also have heard repeated testimonies from Colombian rural villagers as well as students about killings of Colombian young people by the military and paramilitaries. Young people are killed as false positives, they are killed for their political activities, they are killed because they refuse to become informers, they are killed for a variety of reasons. In fact, I heard one story about a young 13 year old girl who wanted to join a contingent of the FARC-EP, but the brigade commander refused. A year later the commander was in the area again, only to find that the girl had been killed by paramilitaries.

When I was visiting in a village of the municipality of Corinto, Cauca, in 2008, we saw a video that graphically illustrated the dangers of being a young person in a rural zone of conflict. The video showed two teenagers who had been murdered by members of the Armed Forces while they were sitting on the floor eating supper. The villagers refused to let the soldiers leave–and refused to allow these young people to be dressed up to become yet two more false positives. A subsequent investigation confirmed that this was indeed a murder committed by the military–but no one was jailed for this crime.

The Alliance for Global Justice condemns the use of child soldiers. And we condemn the killing and maiming of children by the Colombian Armed Forces and paramilitary death squads, and we recognize that part of the reason some children are compelled to take up arms is for their own safety.

Because AfGJ refuses to either endorse or condemn Colombian guerrilla groups, I have been asked several times what is the attitude of the Alliance for Global Justice toward the FARC-EP, the ELN and other groups. AFGJ and myself, personally, emphatically do not meet with any clandestine groups nor do we know nor can we identify any members of such groups. We have no reason and no desire to talk with such organizations or their membership. We do not in any way give our support to insurgent groups in Colombia. Besides, if they needed the paltry resources of the AfGJ, then they would be pitifully bad off indeed.

However, we also refuse to condemn insurgencies or spread false information about them. As a solidarity organization based in the US, our job is to oppose US policies of war and repression, not to choose sides in the internal affairs of other countries.

All our allies in Colombia have chosen the road of popular mobilization and political organization rather than violence. Indeed, all our closest allies have hitched their horses to the wagon of the Marcha Patriotica. Our solidarity takes the form of efforts to change US policies toward Colombia and to give our support for a legitimate peace process. Our solidarity takes the form of a positive answer to our partners’ calls for accompaniment. As internationalists, we also join in worldwide efforts to bring to bear the pressure of international opinion on the Santos administration to pursue negotiations for a political solution because peace in Colombia is of vital importance to the stability of the continent, the hemisphere and the entire planet.

I would be remiss to suggest that Santos is no different than his predecessor, Álvaro Uribe. In Santos’ dealings with Cuba and Venezuela and in his criticisms of the War on Drugs and openness to the prospect of legalization, he shows some level of independence, however small, from the dictates of Washington, DC.

In regards to the armed conflict, unlike his predecessor, Santos at least admits the armed conflict exists and has even said that he and others could be found guilty of crimes against humanity in a context other than the war. Most important has been the reality that the Santos administration has already engaged in backdoor, unofficial and low level talks with guerrilla forces. Thus it is all the more important that we bring international pressure to bear on this administration that it might enter fully and in good faith into a legitimate peace process.

With the advent of the Marcha Patriotica and a history of growing mobilizations for peace in Colombia, the role of the US solidarity movement is to stand squarely with these mobilizations. Several times in the past, the US government and Pentagon, and US corporations like Drummond Coal, Chiquita Banana, Coca-Cola and others have interfered to sabotage movements toward peace. We must demand that the US support the goal of a political solution by not interfering. A good start would be for the US government to return to Colombia extradited guerrilla Prisoners of War such as Ricardo Palmera, so that they may participate in a peace process. The US should also return extradited paramilitary prisoners so they can participate in truth-telling commissions. And the US government should take the FARC-EP off its list of terrorist organizations.

The Colombian popular movement is insisting that international awareness and accompaniment will be necessary components for any kind of social transformation and peace. We in the US must step up to the plate and do what we can to answer this call in the affirmative. But what is not needed, and not welcome, are those who, in the name of peace, naively or arrogantly repeat the lies and distortions of the Empire. For “solidarity” activists such as these, it is best that you stay at home.

Enraged? Tell Mayor Anthony Foxx that the right to speech and assembly can’t be zoned illegal on behalf of corporate criminals. Contact: mayor@charlottenc.gov, 704-336-2241. (More information below or at http://www.ncagainstcorporatepower.org/ )

Fanning the flames against BoA, which has had its stock drop 40% since last year, could possibly push this “too big to fail” bully to finally failing. As an AFGJ supporter, most likely you have switched to a credit union or local bank, or are looking into it. The next step is to keep the pressure up. On May 9, take to the streets, picket your nearest BoA branch with two or three folks who share your affinity. Let us know how it goes and send pictures to bruce@afgj.org

Working with local and national organizers at the Charlotte convergence center we have seen police and private security forces, the Group 4 Securicor (G4S), the company who bought out Wackenhut, in the neighborhood. The nonviolence training and agreement has shown our intention to ensure that the thousands we bring will be engaged in free speech, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience. Released from the constraint of law by the “extraordinary event” declaration, we expect the police and private security to act violently without punishment.

For those that twitter, follow @all4globaljust or #makeboapay

Duke Energy, Bank of America and Charlotte use “extraordinary event” order to suppress upcoming shareholder protests

Denouncing anti-protest ordinance, local and national groups gear up for a show down in Charlotte

(Charlotte, NC) The NC Coalition Against Corporate Power, Greenpeace, and Rainforest Action Network who are planning massive protests at the Duke Energy shareholder’s meeting on May 3rd and Bank of America’s shareholders’ meeting on May 9th, said that the City of Charlotte’s designation of the meeting as an “extraordinary event” would not deter or intimidate people from attending the events.

The upcoming shareholders meeting will see peaceful protests and nonviolent direct actions aimed at holding the corporations accountable for their profiteering from the economic and climate crisis — despite efforts by the city of Charlotte to shut down the demonstrations with its “no free speech zones.” A new city ordinance lists a series of items that are grounds for arrest at an extraordinary event, some of which are absurd, such as permanent markers. In addition, the extraordinary event designation gives police broad powers to search backpacks, coolers, and briefcases of people going about their business on the street. ”

“Invoking this draconian law is another example of our democracy being sold to the highest bidder. The City of Charlotte is protecting Bank of America’s bottom line. The Constitution and everyday people be damned,” said Julie Morgan, a local leader with Action NC.

The demands for each of the shareholder meetings are simple. Masses of people are coming to Duke and BOA to demand these corporations cease their role in funding dirty coal energy projects in the U.S. and prioritize funding renewable energy projects, keep people in their homes, pay their fair share of taxes and keep corporate money out of the 2012 and future elections. The right to assemble and express these views is protected by the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions.

“In lobbying to deny North Carolinians their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly, Duke Energy has set a dark precedent for corporate greed and suppression of civil liberties. With enormous power and money comes a responsibility to ensure the highest level of commitment to protecting the health and well-being of its customers, while also maintaining our fundamental rights. Duke is being protested because they are polluting not only our environment and public health — but now our democracy,” said Monica Embrey, Greenpeace Field Organizer.

An open letter from the Civil Rights Clinic at Charlotte School of Law to the City of Charlotte on January 20, 2012, when the extraordinary event ordinance was under consideration, stated:

Picketing and protesting… are rigorously protected First Amendment rights, and courts examine any restrictions on them with the most stringent level of scrutiny. Any restrictions are only valid provided “they are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, that they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and that they leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.” Courts are suspicious of overbroad or vague laws, created under the guise of public safety concerns, which actually target a group of political dissidents.

The announcement of the designation of the Duke and BOA shareholders’ meetings as extraordinary events has created more interest in traveling to Charlotte. Rather than intimidating or scaring people, people are committed to attending as a way to show their unflinching desire for economic, racial and environmental justice.

“What is the nature of the process by which organizations, institutions and societies transform themselves?” Donald Schon contemplated the question of how we learn and adapt to change in an increasingly unstable society during the upheavals that frame the late 1960s and early 1970s. Now Occupy Wall Street, on the heels of the Arab Spring and the uprisings across Europe, reignites that question in the US. The Alliance For Global Justice, perhaps unique as a national organization with the depth of experience and analysis capable of understanding the transformative power of movements, gave one answer through the creation of the Occupy Solidarity Social Forum.

The AFGJ board and staff retreat, held the first week of November 2011 in Tucson, manifested the idea of the national gathering at the end of a weekend of discussions and a night of drinking. The insight and courage gained from sipping Nicaraguan rum into the wee hours of the morning has enabled more than one revolution.

As the fiscal sponsors of Occupy Wall Street AFGJ had a symbiotic and trusting relationship with the movement and engaging in solidarity meant helping them but not leading them. The Occupy Solidarity Social Forum (OSSF) came into being President’s Day weekend on February 17- 20. Over 60 workshops occurred on wide ranging subjects with nearly 500 participants over the course of the weekend. AFGJ, along with a strong committee of Occupy Olympia, demonstrated a national gathering without a rigid agenda, where folks could bring their passions and learn from each other and create relationships with people that they found the most kinship with.

“The Occupy Solidarity Social Forum was the best event of its type I have ever attended,” said Dorli Rainey, the 84 year old lifetime activist internationally known for getting pepper sprayed by the police as part of Occupy Seattle.

Dorli Rainey gave an inspiring and tenacious speech encouraging direct action, inspiring the younger generation, which was everyone in comparison to her, to follow their hearts, to not be fooled by the politicians and not fear the police. This was Occupy at its most authentic, earnest and heartwarming. This was the proud horizontal fearlessness that spread like a wild fire across the country and inspired thousands into political encampments in protest against the inequality of the 1%. AFGJ, in partnership with Occupy Olympia, had succeeded in focusing that essence into a positive forum where creative solutions could surface and where camaraderie could be deepened.

Many of the workshops were inspiring but some of the best were the ones put together by Bill Moyer and Kyle Tanner of the Backbone Campaign. Together they gave workshops that engaged the Occupy movement in doing honest organizing towards a long term strategy. These workshops were some of the best attended with more than 50 people turning out for them. While some of the workshops were delivering analysis these provided concrete training in how to transition from being an activist to being an organizer.

One of the eclectic choices for participation was the “Occu-Pie as Protest, Occu-Pie as Affirmation.” This workshop was led by Jusby the Clown, complete with a red nose. While many of the workshops were packed, this one had only ten people, so we all had a chance to take a pie in the face. Two of the participants were from Occupy Wall Street and had come to present workshops on creative direct action but it was clear that the clown was ///the/// also a natural teacher of direct action skills.

Well versed in the possible consequences of the long tradition of pieing, Jusby had a very different take on the possibilities of this tactic and others. Pieing someone who didn’t want to be pied is considered assault, which doesn’t mean it is off limits but it means that for Jusby that sort of action would take a direct action team. He specified that he would need a legal team, a getaway strategy, several camera people, distractors and a detailed strategy to carry it out. However, a pie could be an affirmative tactic, we discussed how a well publicized and consented pieing of a progressive politician, a rare bird in these times, could show a humbleness of the politician to the Occupy movement and show the politician as a good sport. Jusby was the professional clown that could articulate direct action tactics better than the best of organizers that I have known.

“I always tell people that as activists we have a “toolbox” and the more skills and experiences you can put in there, the more you can use on your campaigns,” said Kerri Griffiths, an OSSF Olympia organizer. “The campaign you are working on might require strategic thinking and tactics, street corner demonstrations, press releases, hosting a forum, filming a video, lobbying your elected officials, and fundraising. Many people in our community know these skills. How do we teach and learn from each other?”

There is a way to facilitate learning from each other which must also be learned. After 33 years of learning through solidarity from the Nicaraguans and other Latin American social movements, AFGJ has internalized that skill and it was on display at the OSSF. The Occupy movement has been for many people their first time organizing without hierarchy and as part of a solidarity movement. Ideas spread horizontally very quickly through the internet and the encampments were a way that people learned to get along with each other and share certain practical skills but the training on how to put together a campaign, create organization, develop a long term successful strategy and succeed in the goal of revolution is much more difficult to teach. The OSSF was the first national gathering that focused on those pieces.

The feedback AFGJ has received has been overwhelmingly positive. One thing people loved was the food, which oddly enough can make or break opinions of a conference. The one major critique was the need for more time for each workshop. It is the intention of AFGJ to remedy this need through continuing growth of its online activist school and by building on the success of the OSSF with further national gatherings.

There is the question of what came out of the OSSF. For many relationships were made or strengthened and those relationships are at the core of solidarity work. In an increasingly digitally connected world it is sometimes forgotten that ultimately the point of all that technology is to bring us closer together in real life and to enhance the quality of time all of us can spend with folks that we love or who share our goals.. A chance to form deeper bonds with people who share the same source of struggle is what powers a movement.

All of the 99% face some level of struggle. Being alive today in America can be traumatic, as we all are subjected to the madhouse of the corporate hierarchical and militaristic system. Meeting others in struggle, being there listening to their story and creating bonds of solidarity is the way that a popular movement is built. When Occupy Wall Street brought everyone into their public squares that was only the beginning of solidarity. It is the beginning formation of relationships that must be tested, strengthened and expanded.

There were three words that the Occupy Olympia organizers began using when considering the scope and strength of the OSSF. They are liberty, equality and solidarity. In the dance of those three words is struggle, power, unity and freedom. It is the same sentiment as “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” or “Liberty and Justice for All” or “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!” These tripartite mottos are powerful concepts worth ruminating over. If the 1% had their own tripartite motto theirs must surely be “Veni, vidi, vici,” or an English translation of Julius Caesar’s famous words, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

I believe that when we cooperate, trust and love each other we can build any society that we would like. Conversely the opposite is true. The measure of our suffering and lack of liberty is exactly equal to the amount that we let our trust disintegrate for rules, our cooperation fail for hierarchy and that we allow for our love to have national boundaries. It was a feeling that was felt by thousands of Americans last October that brought them into building encampments, it wasn’t social media. It bonded everyone to each other and that feeling and other similar ones will erupt from our hearts to fall upon the earth as the tectonic shifts of our universal consciousness builds the new future. Welcome to the new age.

The Occupy Wall Street movement that by December 2011 had spread to 900 cities world-wide led me to question my earlier allegiance to the idea that government/the state is the most effective avenue to radical social change. The Occupy movement also led me to revisit a related argument that didn’t begin with OWS and that’s been going on in Latin America since the 1990s: whether government or grass roots is the best road to a good society. Is the state nearly always a source of domination no matter who is at the helm? Or can it be harnessed to combat domination of all kinds

OWS rejects a top-down leadership structure (although some political analysts like John Heilemann insist that a cadre of “prime movers” guides the movement). Occupiers practice a horizontal, not a vertical form of decision-making, that is, decisions are made by discussion and consensus.

Moreover, they also move away from politics-as-usual by so far saying “no” to the call from many quarters ― liberal and left ― for a list of legislative demands. They advocate instead a broad commitment to economic equality and political inclusion, both of which the current capitalist system subverts. (OWS is by some accounts divided into social democrats who want a reformed capitalism and those who choose an anti-capitalist, communitarian path.) Up until now, OWS has resisted suggestions that they participate in the electoral process. In part, their position stems from a view that the deck is stacked in favor of the top 1% of the economic pyramid. There is a second factor as well: Instead of focusing on government and political parties, it aims to build a new society within the “shell of the old.” OWS refuses to wait for the revolution. That means instead of confronting capitalism’s economic and political structures, many in Occupy, like their Zapatista counterparts in Mexico or the neighborhood assemblies in Argentina, seek to build self-governing communities. OWS shares with several social movements in Latin America a refusal to take power or strategize to take power They regard power as coercive and the enemy of autonomy, of self-organization. The Argentinian slogan of 2001 “Que vayan todos” (they all should go) summed up the distrust of all forms of “power over” ― bureaucratic, electoral, labor ― on the part of many mobilizations in Latin America. “Change the world without taking power” became their rallying cry.

In the process of direct action, social movements rejected the political parties and centralized structure of the Old Left. The Marxist Left was too far removed from the daily life of the marginalized, the “newly poor” created by neoliberalism, who lacked jobs, union representation and party affiliation. Their grassroots movements therefore focused not on the factory but on neighborhood or another form of geographic space as the locus of organizing. So both the ends and the means of social movements in the region differed from that of the historic Left.

In the past when I wrote about the competing claims of the state vs. the grass roots, I tried to be pretty even-handed. However, in conversations with Chuck Kaufman and Jamie Way of the Alliance for Global Justice, I leaned toward the state side of the ledger; in part because the grass roots seemed to lack the political muscle that I associated with collective strength; in part, because many of my generation found the decentralized, anarchist tendencies of the Seattle era activists somewhat alien. (It is said that the anarchist principles of the anthropologist and activist, David Graeber, form the ideological core of the movement.) Now that I am fed up with electoral politics in the U.S., I find myself more attracted to grassroots autonomy than I was previously. So I decided to revisit the argument of government vs. grass roots with new eyes. The way I did that was to read a recent study of the relationship between social movements and left-leaning governments in Latin America. Benjamin Dangl, who has written about Bolivian mobilizations, in 2010 published Dancing with Dynamite, an analysis of the tension between movements and governments. He considers how grass roots movements can and do function outside of the state-centered models for social change.

Dangl’s book, Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, analyzes the dynamic of radical social movements and left-leaning governments and political parties in the region: Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil and the more rightist government in Paraguay. Social movements played a crucial role in electing these governments; subsequently there was an uneasy, even rocky, relationship between them. Dangl clearly sides with the movements. It is their militancy that he doesn’t want compromised, though in fact this is what usually happens when the left comes into office.

He argues that the logic of the state is invariable: it always wants to centralize power. Therefore it weakens grassroots organizations especially when they make radical demands that the state and the governing party are not able or willing to meet. Leftist governments are constrained by right-wing forces, both national and international. They do, after all, still operate within a capitalist framework domestically and abroad. Look at Brazil under Lula. Because of the power of agro-industry and global capitalism, once in office Lula pursued neo-liberal policies; he ignored his promises for land reform spearheaded by the most powerful social movement in Latin America, the Landless Workers Movement (MST).

A second factor operating to demobilize the social movements is their cooperation with the state. For example, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina neutralized large segments of grassroots groups by handing out government posts and creating social programs to reduce poverty. As Dangle points out, programs to help the poor don’t change social structures. Working with the state and party apparatus on elections especially undermines the strength and autonomy of the movements. This is evident even in the country where the government is most responsive to the grassroots ― Bolivia. Dangl agrees with the stance of the influential Uruguayan analyst, Raúl Zibechi, that expanding the power of the movements is essential. This expansion decidedly does not involve becoming part of the electoral process, which benefits parties more than movements. It does not mean watering down demands to meet the institutional political needs of parties. One can see clearly what an oppositional position is by looking at the MST in Brazil. It showed electoral support for Lula in 2006 as the lesser of two evils. But the MST didn’t let that support detract from its radical organizing for land reform or from direct action in the form of land takeovers.

A novel aspect of the grassroots movements is a different view of revolution than that of left-leaning governments. The traditional left has always defined revolution as confronting the state, taking it over and dismantling it. Social movements today, by contrast, prefer to see revolution woven into the fabric of everyday life. They make a point of not waiting for government and political parties to build the society they want. Opting for a non-verticalist structure, rejecting elections, they follow John Holloway’s now well-known dictum, “change the world without taking power.” In his book of that title, Holloway focused on the Zapatistas in Mexico, who organized their communities in Chiapas autonomously, practicing “politics from below.” (Dangl doesn’t include the Zapatistas in his study.)

As an example of revolution now, Dangl cites the Argentinian social movements before they were co-opted by Kirchner ― the piqueteros (road picketers), worker-run factories, and neighborhood assemblies. They organized schools, food production and construction with the intention of creating a world where the dispossessed could thrive without directly challenging or confronting capitalist relationships and the capitalist state. The strongest social movement in the region, the MST in Brazil, is also the most autonomous. Unlike grassroots movements in Bolivia and Venezuela that are entwined with the party in power, the MST stands for separation. It started schools for liberating education in the areas it occupied; also health centers and other institutions, not waiting for Lula’s government to bestow the state’s largesse. (From the historical record, the wait would have been interminable.)

Dangl concludes his study of social movements by looking at fledgling efforts in the North and their links to grassroots efforts in Latin America. In the U. S., as in other countries with an established tradition of representative democracy, the electoral system defines the democratic process for most people. It’s as if no other forms of democratic government existed. (I have noticed recently that the mainstream media no longer speak of direct democracy. It prefers more pejorative words to describe the government of, for example, Hugo Chavez ― terms like “populist” or “authoritarian.”) However, North or South, many radicals argue that building a movement to undermine the power structure is a more valuable contribution to democracy than elections. The Civil Rights movement in the U. S. for the most part operated outside the electoral arena. Rosa Parks never presented a demand to a legislature. Dangle describes recent instances of direct and autonomous action. Workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago occupied the factory in 2008. They drew directly, self-consciously on the tactics of Argentine worker cooperatives. The Take Back the Land movement of the homeless in Miami, Florida, similarly operated outside of legal and government channels. Homeless people and local citizens occupied vacant land in Miami in 2006 and 2007, borrowing from the strategies and esprit of the landless workers movement in Brazil. Through communal meetings, the Miami group learned how to exercise heretofore elusive control over their lives.

Dangl hopes to see more of this kind of organizing in the North. Undoubtedly, he welcomes the emergence of OWS in the U. S. and around the world

Heretofore, I sympathized with the statist argument that the main role of the grassroots movements was to bring Left governments to power. Though critics of “power from below” typically don’t marginalize popular struggles ― at least not explicitly ― they nonetheless privilege the state. For example, William Robinson in a 2008 article on Latin America, gives a nod to civil society. He then explains further, saying that no emancipatory project is possible “without addressing the matter of the power of dominant groups, the organization of that power in the state (including coercive power) and the concomitant need to disempower dominant groups by seizing the state from them, dismantling it, and constructing alternative institutions . . . Without some political hammer the popular classes cannot synchronize the forces necessary for a radical transformative process.” This is a legitimate concern for those of us on the Left. I just wanted to shift the balance in my own mind from the primacy of government and political parties. The statist position gives the social movements a decidedly secondary role as handmaidens of the state. Questions remain. Is government, as Dangl and others believe, necessarily hierarchical and authoritarian? Can we say with confidence that grassroots groups don’t have, can’t have, the coordinated power to change social relations?

NATO and the G8 are two of the main international institutions through which the US/Corporate Empire wields its military and economic power on behalf of the 1%. Their War and Poverty Agenda also includes an anti-environment agenda. The wars they wage and the trade policies they pursue threaten the livelihood and health of communities around the world with their never-ending quest to open up natural resources to private plunder.

AFGJ urges people to come to Chicago in May as we join together to say a resounding “NO!” to the NATO/G8 and “YES!” to the power of the 99% and a Nato and G8-Free Future! Let’s stand up with one voice in defense of our neighborhoods, our land, our air and our water against the assaults of those whose main motivation is selfishness and greed.

Over the coming weeks, we will be sending out a number of emails to help keep our supporters abreast of the latest news and developments regarding the NATO/G8 protests.

Meanwhile we suggest you mark the following dates and visit the following links to make your plans as you get ready to:

COME TO CHICAGO IN MAY!

* MAY 12 AND 13: Join Jesse Jackson, Col. Ann Wright (Ret.), Medea Manjamin, Kathy Kelly and others at the PEOPLE’S SUMMIT

* MAY 18 AND 19: Join Tom Hayden, John Nichols, Vijay Prashad, Sarita Gupta and others at the COUNTER SUMMIT

* May 20: March and Rally to Protest NATO, starting at noon at Petrillo Bandshell. The Iraq Veteran’s Against the War (IVAW) will be marching with us in solidarity. At the end of the march, within sight and sound of McCormick Place, members of IVAW will conduct the closing ceremony where they will return their medals to NATO. It will be a moving event, and not to be missed.May 20: March and Rally to Protest NATO, starting at noon at Petrillo Bandshell. The Iraq Veteran’s Against the War (IVAW) will be marching with us in solidarity. At the end of the march, within sight and sound of McCormick Place, members of IVAW will conduct the closing ceremony where they will return their medals to NATO. It will be a moving event, and not to be missed.

As NATO meets, the NATO Free Future Network http://bit.ly/GEtoyS will bring together peace and justice activists to map out an alternative path in a Counter-Summit for Peace and Economic Justice http://bit.ly/GYgTQL on May 18 – 19.

Today, the public debate over every new international crisis or national security issue is framed by how, not if, we should use military force. This is what we’re working to change. Read articles on NATO and the dangers in their new strategic direction here. http://bit.ly/HeNnaA

The 2-day Counter Summit will have over 20 workshops to explore the alternatives, to wars and a US driven “arms race of one.” Register http://bit.ly/GEtypZ for the conference and join the dialogue.

Choices must be made between more funding for wars and newer weapons or funding human needs.

Join us in Chicago http://bit.ly/GEtypZ and hear speakers like Sarita Gupta, the executive director of Jobs with Justice http://bit.ly/HcmJC0, a national labor-community network.

She is organizing a movement which links the rights of domestic workers to quality medical care for our elders which depends on demilitarizing the federal budget.

Other speakers include: Suraia Sahar – Afghans for Peace, Tom Hayden, Vijay Prashad – Trinity College, Tobias Pflüger – former member of European Parliament, Joseph Gerson & Peter Lems – American Friends Service Committee, Kevin Martin & Judith Le Blanc – Peace Action, Phyllis Bennis – Institute for Policy Studies, Jackie Cabasso, Western States Legal Foundation, Reiner Braun – No to War, No to NATO (Germany) and many more.

Come to Chicago, to meet with Afghans for Peace http://bit.ly/HeIDSo and support Afghanistan war veterans on May 20 as they rally and march to the NATO Summit to return their military medals to the NATO Generals in a March for Justice and Reconciliation. http://bit.ly/HeHsCg

Be the representatives of the 99% who suffer from the effects of a militarized federal budget and want an end to wars at the Counter-Summit for Peace and Economic Justice. http://bit.ly/GYgTQL

Power to the Peaceful!

In 2008, Roy Bougeois and Lisa met with President Daniel Ortega who said he would consider taking Nicaragua out of the School of the Americas. This delegation will follow up on that trip and will meet with high ranking government officials as well as social movement leaders and the grassroots base.

In 1986, Oxfam-UK called Nicaragua “the threat of a good example.” Since the Sandinistas returned to government in 2007, led by President Ortega, Nicaragua has undergone big changes. Extreme poverty has been cut in half, the small farm sector has been revitalized, electricity and potable water have been extended to hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, education and health care are again free, labor rights are enforced, thousands of land titles have been granted, illiteracy has been eliminated, and fewer Nicaraguans are migrating because the economy is booming. These were all goals of the 1980s revolutionary government that were short-circuited by the US-backed contra war and the US-engineered electoral defeat of 1990.

And yet, persistent attacks against the Sandinista government continue from right-wing members of Congress and even in the progressive press. This delegation will provide an unsurpassed opportunity to judge for yourself whether the Nicaraguan government has a “preferential option for the poor.” We’ll meet with government supporters and critics and visit the real people in Managua and the countryside where anti-poverty programs are in place and the people of Nicaragua are recovering rights denied them by 17 years of US-supported neoliberal governments.

For an application or more information send an email to chuck@AFGJ.org. The cost is $1100.

Summary
We stand in solidarity with rural and urban communities of the global North and South who are exposed to the hazards of climate change; ecological degradation and contamination; and land and resource grabs. We believe in food, resource and climate justice rooted in sustainability and democracy. We call on activists, concerned citizens, farmers, indigenous peoples and environmentalists to join us in Chicago in non-violent protest of the closed-door NATO and G8 summits and to participate in an open, civil society discussion of the G8’s environmental impacts and community-based alternatives.

What is CANG8?
The Coalition Against the NATO/G8 (CANG8) is a broad-based coalition of civil society groups—including environmental, interfaith, labor, LGBTQ groups and others—formed in opposition to the NATO/G8 “war and poverty agenda.” Representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance will be coming together for a private summit in Chicago on May 20-21, 2012. Leaders and finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) economic powers were originally scheduled to meet on May 19-20, 2012, in Chicago, but have moved to the more isolated US Presidential retreat center at Camp David. The policy priorities of these two bodies have enormous influence on communities throughout the world, yet their summits are closed to democratic participation. By sponsoring a parallel Peoples’ Summit May 12-13 and a rally and march on May 20,  CANG8 aims to raise the voices of civil society groups to articulate their own needs, experiences and priorities for global development and security.

What is the CANG8 Environmental Committee?
The CANG8 Environmental Committee was formed to highlight the environmental impacts of G8 policies and NATO resource wars at the NATO/G8 protests in Chicago. The goal is to amplify the voices of affected communities and social movements—locally, nationally and globally—fighting to protect their lands, natural resources and biodiversity from destructive and exploitative development policies. We also seek to help connect the dots between war and militarism; the extractive, expansionist development model; and the global environmental and climate crisis. What CANG8 calls the “war and poverty” agenda is also an agenda of environmental destruction and climate chaos.

As of 2010, the G8 countries represented 51 percent of global energy production, 55 percent of global energy consumption and 42 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The Keystone XL pipeline is perhaps the highest profile recent example of the expansion of extractive industries, which is moving increasingly into high-risk environments like the Alberta Tar Sands, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, shale oil and gas fields around the world, and deepwater reserves like the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. Families and children affected by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for natural gas suffer grave illness from water contamination and the destruction of their rural economies based on tourism, agriculture and recreation.

Meanwhile, degradation and climate change are devastating millions of livelihoods, particularly in the global South. Indigenous peoples and subsistence farmers face floods, droughts and other extreme weather events. As many as 200 million people will be displaced by worsening natural disasters and climate change. Without a radical change in our global energy use and economic system, such “climate chaos” is expected to worsen, with devastating consequences for the world’s most vulnerable people. The global environmental and climate crises require that we rethink “business as usual,” respect natural limits to economic growth, and rebuild sustainable local economies.

We denounce…

Resource warswaged over the control of land, water, minerals, oil, gas and other natural resources. In Africa, for instance, over 35 million hectares (86m acres) of prime farmland and forests have been violently grabbed for export production or speculation since 2008. We strongly condemn the forced displacement and military and police repression of communities struggling to defend their lands and resources. We also strongly condemn the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus munitions, the targeting of water and public health infrastructure and other practices that leave lasting damage in war-affected countries.

Free trade agreementsthat open the door to the unfettered corporate exploitation of natural resources; destroy locally-based economies and food systems; and promote a corporate “race to the bottom” towards countries (and “free trade zones”) with lower or non-existent environmental and labor regulations.

False solutions to climate changethat allow the biggest polluters to pay their way out of genuinely reducing emissions and other environmental impacts. While we recognize the good faith efforts of some corporations to “green” their supply chains, we reject sustainability certifications based onlyon voluntary compliance, which are difficult to enforce and leave large gaps for abuse. We reject agricultural biofuels as a false solution to climate change and energy security that is leading to deforestation, human rights abuses, increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and rising food prices, especially in the global South.

We support…

Community-oriented sustainable developmentthat promotes local, democratic control over resources; provides high quality, living wage jobs; supports workers and immigrant rights; reduces energy consumption; and contributes positively to community well-being. We support private businesses—as well as cooperatives, public enterprises and other economic models—that place people and ecosystems before profits.

A binding climate agreementin which G8 countries live up to their historical responsibility for global climate change and commit to legally bindingobligations to dramatically cut GHG emissions, without conditions or mechanisms that allow big polluters to evade regulations. Climate commitments must also include support for poor countries and vulnerable communities to build sustainable, climate resilient economies.

Peoples’ right to food sovereignty, meaning the right of rural and urban communities to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. Food sovereignty means protecting food-producing resources from agrochemicals, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other industrial technologies that in the long term deplete soil, pollute water, reduce biodiversity, contaminate native seeds and worsen climate change.

Call to Action
We believe that the current environmental crisis requires a broad convergence of social movements to demand environmental regulations and meaningful climate commitments, especially from the world’s most powerful countries. We call on activists and communities, rural and urban, North and South, to join the Cangate Environmental Committee in protest of the May 2012 NATO/G8 summits in Chicago and participate in an inclusive, civil society discussion of the environmental impacts of G8 policies. Activities will include workshops, alliance-building sessions, non-violent protest and special events to be determined.

• For more information about the Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda, please contact: CANGATE2012@gmail.com
• To participate in or help organize a Cang8 Environmental Committee workshop or activity in Chicago, or for more information, please contact: pweskebway@gmail.com or call 520-243-0381
• To join the Cang8 Environmental Committee email list, send an email to: eco-2012-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

• Please visit the CANG8 website at www.cang8.org , and CANG8’s environmental page at http://cang8.wordpress.com/working-groups/environment

ENDORSERS (*: organizational affiliations for individual signers listed for identification purposes only):

Noam Chomsky, *Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Massachusets Institute of Technology

Medea Benjamin, *Co-founder of Code Pink

Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda

PERRO (Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization)

Rising Tide-Chicago

Martha Ojeda, *Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras

Dan Kovalik, *Senior Counsel to the United Steel Workers

Alliance for Global Justice

Food First

Banbose Shango, *All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC)

Andy Thayer, *Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda and Co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network

Tanya Kerrsen, *Food First

Stephanie Dernek, *8th Day Center for Justice

Mike N. Durschmid, *Rising Tide-Chicago

Midwest Coalition Against Lethal Mining

Joe Iosbaker, *United National Anti-War Coalition

8th Day Center for Justice

Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor

Media Island International

Chuck Kaufman, *National Co-Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice

Pat Hunt, *Chicago Code PINK

Dr. Julian Kunnie, *Voices of Opposition and Professor of Africana Studies, University of Arizona

Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras

Nicaragua Network

Voices of Opposition

Elane Spivak Rodriguez, *3rd Space

Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ

Helen Jaccard, *Veterans for Peace

Beth Adams, *United National Anti-War Coalition

James Jordan, *National Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice Eco-Solidarity Project

Nick Egnatz, *NW Indiana Veterans for Peace

Dave Ewoldt, *Sr. Analyst, Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor

Raquel Mogollón, *Pan Left Video Collective

NW Indiana Veterans for Peace

Latin America Solidarity Coalition

Lee Siu Hin, *National Coordinator, National Immigrant Solidarity Network

Barbara Larcom, *Casa Baltimore/Limay

Paul Teitelbaum, *Tucson International Action Center

Joe Bernick, *Director, Salt of the Earth Labor College

Kathy Hoyt, *National Coordinator, Nicaragua Network

Tim Jeffries, *Bend-Condega Friendship Project

Dr. Arnold Matlin, *Alliance for Global Justice

Bruce Wilkinson, *Media Island International

Shelley Scribner, *Alliance for Global Justice

Midge Quant, *Nicaragua Network

Dick Kaiser, *Occupy Tucson

Julius Gordon, *Tucson Activist Network

Tucson International Action Center

Campaign for Labor Rights

Respect for Democracy Campaign