"Something must be done, and it must be done now!"
Professor Kurt Huber, member of White Rose Resistance Group. Executed by Germany's Nazi Regime in 1943
“...why
do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly
and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one
day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system
presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed
by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty -
to eliminate this system?”
From the White Rose’s Third Leaflet
Previous Hobo Dispatch Report on the White Rose resistance movement: http://hobodispatch.blogspot.mx/2011/02/finding-treasure-in-mexicos-sierra.html
Over the coming months and years the Hobo Dispatch will try to cover the struggles that must be fought. Here in this text-only edition we share the words of Noam Chomsky, Harry Belafonte, and Danny Glover thanks to the wonderful coverage provided by "Democracy Now" (democracynow.org)
"A Victory at Standing Rock, For Now" By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, Dec. 8, 2016
The Dakota Access Pipeline has been stopped, at least for now. The
Standing Rock Sioux Nation and thousands of native and non-native allies
won a remarkable and unexpected victory Sunday. Word came down that the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had denied a permit for the pipeline
owner, Energy Transfer Partners, to drill underneath the Missouri River,
and that a full environmental-impact study would be launched.
Grass-roots organizing, nonviolent direct action and leadership from
front-line indigenous people succeeded in stopping the $3.8 billion,
1,200-mile pipeline in its tracks.
As water protectors celebrated in the frozen camps, one question loomed: What will happen when Donald Trump takes over the presidency in six short weeks?
“Finally, for the first time in history, over centuries, somebody is listening to us,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II told us on Democracy Now! hours after hearing the news. “We’ve been talking about this with the Corps of Engineers for almost two years now, and we’ve been letting them know that we had problems with this pipeline, because it not only threatens our water, it threatens our heritage, it threatens our culture, it threatens our environment.”
Bitter cold weather has descended over the region, making life in the resistance camps even more difficult. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier and his deputies, along with a multijurisdictional array of paramilitarized police and National Guard, unleashed an arsenal of pepper spray, concussion grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and, in the freezing cold, water cannons.
North Dakota’s outgoing Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, along with Sheriff Kirchmeier and Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren, shares responsibility for the unbridled police and private-security-company violence that has rained down upon the pipeline resisters for months. A week before the permit denial, Dalrymple declared a state of emergency, saying, “Winter conditions have the potential to endanger human life.” In response, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe wrote, “The Governor of North Dakota and Sheriff of Morton County are relative newcomers [here]. It is understandable they would be concerned about severe winter weather.” Former Vice President Al Gore, commenting a week later, said the use of water cannons in cold weather was “inhumane,” and called the pipeline itself “an atrocity.”
While Dalrymple threatened to forcibly evict the thousands of peaceful water protectors, troops of a different sort were massing to defend them. U.S. military veterans were responding to a call from tribal elders to come defend the camp. Veterans Stand for Standing Rock were traveling to the camps to form a human shield around the protectors. Over 2,000 veterans made the journey, under the leadership of veteran Wes Clark Jr. If his name sounds familiar, it might be because of his father, Wesley Clark Sr., the retired four-star general who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO and later ran for president.
After the announcement denying the easement to drill under the Missouri River, Wes Clark Jr. spoke at a ceremony at Standing Rock: “We came. We fought you. We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke. ... We’ve hurt you in so many ways. And we’ve come to say that we are sorry, we are at your service, and we beg for your forgiveness.”
Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault told us, “The pipeline is not going to move ahead. The campers that are there can now enjoy the winter with their families at home.” Many in the camps remain skeptical, like U.S. veteran Remy, a native of the Navajo Nation, who has been at Standing Rock for almost six months. “Until the project has ended, we are not planning to go anywhere," he said on Democracy Now!
Donald Trump supports the pipeline, and could very well scuttle the Obama administration’s decision to deny the permit. According to financial-disclosure statements, Trump has held between $500,000 and $1 million invested in the pipeline, although a Trump spokesperson claims he has since sold his shares. Trump has nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Congressman Keith Ellison said the nominee “denies climate change and is beholden to fossil-fuel companies. Scott Pruitt has pledged to roll back environmental protections and go to bat for multibillion-dollar oil and gas companies.”
Last September, Lakota water protector Olowan Martinez locked herself to an excavator that was being used for pipeline construction. She was arrested and spent a week in jail. When we asked her how long she was planning on staying at the camps. She told us, “Until we know for sure that this black snake is dead.”
Cold weather, police violence and government promises won’t deter these water protectors.
Watch Standing Rock Victory Reports on Democracy Now
https://www.democracynow.org/topics/dakota_access
As water protectors celebrated in the frozen camps, one question loomed: What will happen when Donald Trump takes over the presidency in six short weeks?
“Finally, for the first time in history, over centuries, somebody is listening to us,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II told us on Democracy Now! hours after hearing the news. “We’ve been talking about this with the Corps of Engineers for almost two years now, and we’ve been letting them know that we had problems with this pipeline, because it not only threatens our water, it threatens our heritage, it threatens our culture, it threatens our environment.”
Bitter cold weather has descended over the region, making life in the resistance camps even more difficult. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier and his deputies, along with a multijurisdictional array of paramilitarized police and National Guard, unleashed an arsenal of pepper spray, concussion grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and, in the freezing cold, water cannons.
North Dakota’s outgoing Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, along with Sheriff Kirchmeier and Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren, shares responsibility for the unbridled police and private-security-company violence that has rained down upon the pipeline resisters for months. A week before the permit denial, Dalrymple declared a state of emergency, saying, “Winter conditions have the potential to endanger human life.” In response, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe wrote, “The Governor of North Dakota and Sheriff of Morton County are relative newcomers [here]. It is understandable they would be concerned about severe winter weather.” Former Vice President Al Gore, commenting a week later, said the use of water cannons in cold weather was “inhumane,” and called the pipeline itself “an atrocity.”
While Dalrymple threatened to forcibly evict the thousands of peaceful water protectors, troops of a different sort were massing to defend them. U.S. military veterans were responding to a call from tribal elders to come defend the camp. Veterans Stand for Standing Rock were traveling to the camps to form a human shield around the protectors. Over 2,000 veterans made the journey, under the leadership of veteran Wes Clark Jr. If his name sounds familiar, it might be because of his father, Wesley Clark Sr., the retired four-star general who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO and later ran for president.
After the announcement denying the easement to drill under the Missouri River, Wes Clark Jr. spoke at a ceremony at Standing Rock: “We came. We fought you. We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke. ... We’ve hurt you in so many ways. And we’ve come to say that we are sorry, we are at your service, and we beg for your forgiveness.”
Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault told us, “The pipeline is not going to move ahead. The campers that are there can now enjoy the winter with their families at home.” Many in the camps remain skeptical, like U.S. veteran Remy, a native of the Navajo Nation, who has been at Standing Rock for almost six months. “Until the project has ended, we are not planning to go anywhere," he said on Democracy Now!
Donald Trump supports the pipeline, and could very well scuttle the Obama administration’s decision to deny the permit. According to financial-disclosure statements, Trump has held between $500,000 and $1 million invested in the pipeline, although a Trump spokesperson claims he has since sold his shares. Trump has nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Congressman Keith Ellison said the nominee “denies climate change and is beholden to fossil-fuel companies. Scott Pruitt has pledged to roll back environmental protections and go to bat for multibillion-dollar oil and gas companies.”
Last September, Lakota water protector Olowan Martinez locked herself to an excavator that was being used for pipeline construction. She was arrested and spent a week in jail. When we asked her how long she was planning on staying at the camps. She told us, “Until we know for sure that this black snake is dead.”
Cold weather, police violence and government promises won’t deter these water protectors.
Watch Standing Rock Victory Reports on Democracy Now
https://www.democracynow.org/topics/dakota_access
NOAM CHOMSKY on Democracy Now DEC. 6, 2016:
Trump's Victory Recalls Memories of Hitler & Fascism's Spread Across Europe
And for the young people among you, a special word: You’ll be facing problems that have never arisen in the 200,000 years of human history—hard, demanding problems. It’s a burden that you can’t ignore. And we’ll all—you, in particular, and all the rest of us—will have to be in there struggling hard to save the human species from a pretty grim fate.
Well, my wife and I happened to be in Europe on November 8th, that fateful day, in fact, in Barcelona, where we watched the results come in. Now, that had special personal resonance for me. The first article I wrote, or at least that I can remember, was in February 1939 at the—it was about the fall of Barcelona to Franco’s fascist forces. And the article, which I’m sure it was not very memorable, was about the apparently inexorable spread of fascism over Europe and maybe the whole world. I’m old enough to have been able to listen to Hitler’s speeches, the Nuremberg rallies, not understanding the words, but the tone and the reaction of the crowd was enough to leave indelible memories. And watching those results come in did arouse some pretty unpleasant memories, along with what is happening in Europe now, which, in many ways, is pretty frightening, as well.
Well, the reaction to November 8th in Europe was disbelief, shock, horror. It was captured pretty eloquently in the—on the front cover of the major German weekly, Der Spiegel. It depicted a caricature of Donald Trump presented as a meteor hurtling towards Earth, mouth open, ready to swallow it up. And the top headline read "Das Ende Der Welt!" "The End of the World." Small letters below, "as we have known it." There might be some truth to that concern, even if not exactly in the manner in which the artist, the authors, the others who echoed that conception, had in mind.
It had to do with other events that were taking place right at the same time, November 8th, events that I think were a lot more important than the ones that have captured the attention of the world in such an astonishing fashion, events that were taking place in Morocco, Marrakech, Morocco. There was a conference there of 200 countries, the so-called COP 22. Their goal at this conference was to implement the rather vague promises and commitments of the preceding international conference on global warming, COP 21 in Paris in December 2015, which had in fact been left vague for reasons not unrelated to what happened on November 8th here.Watch Noam Chomsky report on Democracy Now
https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/6/noam_chomsky_trumps_victory_recalls_memories
"Welcome to the Fourth Reich": Legendary Actor Harry Belafonte on the Election of Donald Trump, Democracy Now Dec. 6, 2016
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the legendary musician and actor Harry Belafonte, who was also speaking at Democracy Now!'s
20th anniversary celebration. For more than half a century, Belafonte
has been deeply involved in the fight for social justice. One of Dr.
Martin Luther King's closest confidants, he held organize the March on
Washington in 1963. Harry Belafonte spoke last night at Riverside
Church, the same location where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King came out
against the Vietnam War a year before his death. In 1967, he spoke.
https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/6/welcome_to_the_fourth_reich_legendary HARRY BELAFONTE: In a few weeks from now, if there is a platform on which I will be privileged to stand and speak, my opening remarks will probably be something like "Welcome to the Fourth Reich." I was talking with a comrade recently. He was a victim of the Third Reich. He was a victim of the great Holocaust and what happened to the Jewish people during the reign of Hitler. And all my life I have committed myself to making sure that here, this country, not for the want of effort, but I and so many others would be forever committed to the idea that America will remain an open and a free and a democratic society. With each cycle, those thoughts become a bit dimmed. Now, I think, more than ever, we are in need of Democracy Now!
I’m just at the threshold of my 90th year, and I had often—who said that? I never thought I’d live this long, but to be able to share an evening with Danny Glover, and certainly with Noam Chomsky, for whom I have great affection and deep respect, that I can kind of dance out of here feeling like, well, I did it all. But, in a way, each time it was done, we kind of figured it was the last time we would have to do it. During a lifetime of Paul Robeson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, those who mentored me and guided me and inspired me, that I should have lived long enough to be able to stand here and once again say thanks to all my colleagues, to all of my comrades, to all of the people who have sacrificed so greatly to make this nation whole—we are looking upon a curious time. But I think it’s a time that should be used as an opportunity to know that we have to make a much bigger difference than we’ve made up to now. We should not let the current state of affairs dull the fact that all that we have done was worthless. Nothing could be further from the truth.Watch Belafonte on Democracy Now
On Monday night, actor
and activist Danny Glover spoke at Democracy Now!’s 20th anniversary at
Riverside Church—the very same place where civil rights leader Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic speech against the Vietnam War
in 1967. As Danny Glover addressed more than 2,000 people, he called on
the crowd and the country to organize once again in the spirit of Martin
Luther King.
Actor & Activist Danny Glover: We Must Organize in the Spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Democracy Now, Dec. 6, 2016
DANNY GLOVER: I would be remiss if I would stand on this stage without mentioning one of the great moments on this stage nearly 50 years ago, when a young minister, a liberation theologist, a—one of the most extraordinary human beings of this century, any century, stepped here and, with all his consciousness, with all the pain it took, denounced the war in Vietnam—Dr. Martin Luther King, on this stage—knowing that he spoke for his heart and his consciousness, knowing that he was doing something that he was going to be vilified. Yet he spoke up.
As we think about the moments ahead and the work that we have to do, the history that we must—it’s imperative that we make, we have to think about those moments and use all our courage, every bit of it, whether it’s in the service of finding the truth and finding those stories, where those who feel that they are lost within their own country here and can only turn to the far right in everything else—so, where we have to do and where we’re going to have to go, and not simply just preaching to our choir, to our constituency, is farther than we’ve ever wanted to reach and understand. We have all the technology in the world. We have every single thing available to us. But organizing, taking ourselves serious about that and doing the work we need to do, wherever it is, is going to take something from our hearts. It’s going to take something deep from our hearts.
So, as we move forward and we realize the work we have to do, Noam Chomsky talked about the opportunities that we have within—right here, at this moment. We look at the demographics, talks about the ways in which we can use what has happened as a platform to build, to create, to imagine and continue to imagine. That’s our responsibility right now. At 70 years old or at seven years old, at 90 years old or whatever we are, we have to take that on. And certainly, we come armed with the information that Democracy Now! has provided us through the journey that they’ve taken us on, learning lessons, finding new ways in which we can employ those lessons, use those lessons in our own work, in our own moment. And we are here to celebrate, but at the same time to move forward more fiercely, more courageously than ever before. Thank you.
