Indigenous rights

Ottawa Action kills notion of ethical oil

One of the organizers of the event, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Dave Coles, is the first to climb the fence and be arrested. Maude Barlow (far left) was in the first wave over the fence and was led away by police.

Ever feel like you aren’t where you should be? It’s okay, we all do. Yet, sometimes, we feel, without a single doubt, we are in precisely the right place at precisely the right moment.

A meticulously-planned civil disobedience uprising demanding climate justice and the honoring of the rights of indigenous people, felt just like that. Even before the drums.

The right place is a hill which belonged to the Algonquin First Nation for centuries, yet is currently occupied by Canada’s capitol buildings and is known as Parliament Hill.

The right time is the blue sky morning of Monday, September 26th. Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation and organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, opens a solidarity rally by thanking the Algonquin First Nation for use of their land.

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Experiments with truth: 9/28/11

  • In California, at least 100 prisoners at Calipatria’s Adminstrative Segregation Unit (ASU) and 50-100 prisoners at Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) resumed their hunger strike to protest conditions on Monday.
  • Philippine Airlines suspended all its early flights Tuesday after some of its workers walked out of their jobs to protest the flag carrier’s plan to outsource airport services, catering and call-center operations.
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Experiments with truth: 8/17/11

  • Bolivian indigenous activists started a long protest march on Sunday from the Amazon plains to the country’s capital against a government plan to build a 306km highway through a national park in indigenous territory.
  • Jubilant students at Glasgow University were celebrating a victory on Monday night after one of the longest sit-ins in British history. The students will move out at the end of the month after reaching agreement with the university which they say will ensure no further cuts and a new club.
  • Roughly 25 percent of the Trinidad’s police officers joined in a one-day strike on Monday to protest the government’s offer of a 5 percent pay raise, which the union says that isn’t enough.
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Experiments with truth: 8/15/11

  • About 100 people participated in a two-mile march in Santa Cruz, California on Sunday to demand a halt to construction of 32 homes on what is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Native American burial site.
  • Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse several hundred protesters in the capital demanding that the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.
  • Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel on Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.
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Experiments with truth: 8/10/11

  • About 125 people gathered outside Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office in West Chester, Ohio on Tuesday to demand more jobs for people in his district.
  • Dozens of Togolese journalists marched in the capital, Lomé, on Saturday to call attention to reported allegations that government security agents planned to retaliate against critical reporters.
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Experiments with truth: 5/20/11

  • Ugandans are taking to the streets to protest rising fuel and food prices and rapid inflation in the so-called Walk to Work protests, named after a handful of opposition leaders who were arrested back in April as they walked to work in solidarity with those who can no longer afford to take public transportation.
  • Students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute held a second graduation ceremony on Saturday to protest the school’s choice of commencement speaker, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, whose company they criticize for its environmental record. The “counterpoint commencement’’ featured Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, a sustainability think tank, as its speaker.
  • Residents of North Fair Oaks, California gathered around a 65-foot-tall tree nicknamed “Granny” on Monday after learning days earlier that utility crews were planning to cut it down. They have so far managed to save a centuries-old California valley oak tree in the path of a San Francisco water pipeline.
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Experiments with truth: 4/13/11

  • Around 3,000 people marched through central Tokyo on Sunday to protest the Hamaoka nuclear-power plant, which is located about 200 kilometers southwest of Tokyo in Shizuoka Prefecture—the heart of a region that seismologists believe is well overdue for a massive undersea earthquake of a magnitude 8 or higher.
  • After Bahrain’s interior ministry acknowledged that two political prisoners had died in custody last week, the daughter of a detained human rights activist began a hunger strike on Monday, calling on the authorities to release her father and other members of her family who have been arrested.
  • Tens of thousands of Yemenis filled the streets of Sanaa, Taiz, Hudaydah, Ibb and the southeastern province of Hadramaut on Monday to protest the Gulf Cooperation Council’s plan for Saleh’s removal.
  • Workers at Buenaventura’s Uchucchacua silver mine in Peru have lifted an eight-day strike seeking higher bonuses and better working conditions, but a protest by villagers with their own set of unresolved problems stemming from the mining company kept the workers from returning.
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Experiments with truth: 12/8/10

  • La Via Campesina—the world’s largest federation of peasant and smallholder farmers—held what they called the “1,000 Cancún Global Day of Action for Climate Justice” in which several thousand people took to the streets to march in protest of the UN climate summit.
  • Public transport in Athens and train services across Greece are shut down today as state workers protest cuts in wages and bonuses and the reorganization of state-controlled companies.
  • Iranian students have defied a security clampdown to stage anti-government protests throughout the country. Unconfirmed reports say about a dozen people have been arrested, including at Tehran University in the capital.
  • More than 10,000 supporters of Macedonia’s leading opposition party protested in the country’s capital to call for early elections, accusing the conservative government of mismanaging the economy and criticizing its failure to bring the country closer to the EU and NATO.
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Experiments with truth: 10/8/10

  • The group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrated in Washington, DC, Thursday to launch “Operation Recovery,” the first veteran-led campaign to stop the deployment of soldiers traumatized by multiple tours of duty. The veterans gathered outside the Walter Reed Army Medical Center before marching to Capitol Hill.
  • Thousands of prisoners across Venezuela have ended a hunger strike after authorities agreed to some of their demands, a watchdog group said Thursday.
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Experiments with truth: 9/22/10

  • Trade unions, university students, peasants and other groups in Peru are holding a 48-hour strike in Cusco that has suspended train services to the Inca citadel Machu Picchu due to protests over an irrigation project that critics say could leave communities without water.
  • Six activists chained themselves to a crane in western Turkey on Monday to protest a hydroelectric dam that will mean the destruction of an ancient city of Allianoi.
  • An estimated 1500 Scouts gathered in the little town of Vlaardingen near Rotterdam on Saturday to create an aerial image of 10:10, a global campaign to cut carbon emissions by 10 percent a year starting this year.
  • A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. They were arrested under a Pinochet-era law that criminalizes legitimate forms of protest against the seizure of their lands.
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