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Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

water rights

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Grassroots responses

A roadside billboard ad features Nestlé's Ice Mountain spring water bottling plant. Trees below the ad are orange and red.
Photo credit: 9 and 10 News, MI; © Heritage Broadcasting.

I teared up this morning watching a 30-second video of indigenous women singing at yesterday’s Women’s March.

Deborah Parker, a Tulalip Tribes organizer and policy analyst from Washington, explained to Pearce that she and the other indigenous women and men who had traveled from other nations had come together to “make sure that the indigenous woman’s voice is not forgotten.”

They’re concerned about water integrity, the sacredness of tribal territories, and the safety of women across this continent, and they have been organizing with several other tribes and nations to see those concerns addressed and resolved by the United States government.

A few years ago, Lakota organizer Matt Remle wrote about multi-nation grassroots coalitions that formed in Seattle to challenge a pro-colonization school curriculum and the observance of Columbus Day. They mobilized over several years, lobbying city council members, drafting resolutions, preparing alternative to current curricula, and insisting on the value of their own perspectives.

“We are simply part of a larger movement being fought on the local grassroots level,” Remle wrote, “to not only abolish Columbus Day, but see our communities rise up and assert our own voices on our own terms on issues of importance to us.

“We sought to show the power our communities possess when we come together unified under the belief and knowledge that what we do today is both work to heal past generations and lift the spirits of our future generations.”

I see a lot of people asking one another “what’s next” post-Women’s March. I had the same question for myself after the People’s Climate March three years ago. What has to be next each time is multi-issue, multi-demographic active solidarity. It doesn’t matter which issues we each start with, but the principle of the network of mutuality means that my individual zone of responsibility begins right where I’m standing and each issue and community I open up to eventually connects with others.

#NoDAPL + gross state neglect of human services in Flint, Michigan + corporate presumption + unchecked privatization = Nestlé hoping the State of Michigan will allow it to pay $200 per year so it can bottle 400 gallons of water per minute, and make billions in sales profits. Meanwhile, Flint still has no clean water supply.

Nestlé is essentially appropriating what is a common good for their personal corporate utility.” —Jeff Irwin, November 20, 2016

The public comment period on this proposal was extended from November 3, 2016 to March 3, 2017. This means a few more weeks for Michiganders to make it clear that Nestlé should not be able to pump water out of the ground, especially while some state residents remain thirsty.

What you can do

Submit a comment to MI’s Department of Environmental Quality by March 3: Email Carrie Monosmith at deq-eh@michigan.gov, or write to Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance, P.O. Box 30241, Lansing, Michigan 48909.

Materially support the work of the Indigenous Rise coalition: Donate through the Native Americans in Philanthropy website.

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Water is life, we say.

It's a profusely cloudy day. The Flint Water Plant looms into the air. In the foreground are yellow-green grasses and a dark brown-grey wooden slat fence.
Flint, MI’s water plant tower. Photo credit: Jeanette Hoyer

There’s some good news from Standing Rock this week: good in the way that mere bureacracy always looks heroic when set beside rank cruelty and neglect.

The US Army Corps has agreed to prepare an environmental impact statement on the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline otherwise known as DAPL. This impact statement, as Natives have said for months, should have been prepared before Energy Transfer Partners ever gained license to reroute the pipeline away from Bismarck, ND, and begin construction through treaty lands and, potentially, under the Missouri River.

Tribal chairman David Archambault has asked that those “standing with Standing Rock” leave Oceti Sakowin Camp and return home now. Veterans only just joined water protectors in the snow this weekend.

On Sunday, the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the 1,172-mile pipeline to cross under a dammed section of the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The river crossing is the last major piece of the pipeline that remains unfinished.” —Rebecca Hersher (December 5, 2016)

So there’s a reprieve now, but there’s also the issue of the pipeline project still being live. A week and a half ago I read one of the Standing Rock Tribe’s statements and wondered whether its goal had shifted from “No” to “NIMBY,” from stopping the pipeline to merely moving it to some other community. I hope it hasn’t shifted in that way.

In the meantime, some of the veterans who went to Standing Rock are now planning to move on to Flint, MI, where residents haven’t had safe drinking water for more than two and a half years.

This isn’t the final chapter by any means, regardless of the government’s single decisions in this case. Because if water is life, then it’s worth protecting for all of us, everywhere, not only where the money flows and not only when the cameras are on.

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The latest from Standing Rock

A view of Standing Rock under a huge blue sky.
Photo credit: Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council

The story of the Dakota Access Pipeline continues:

The pipeline is planned from Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Illinois, where it would tie in with an existing pipeline to refineries in the Midwest and on the Gulf coast.

The project was never examined under an environmental impact review but instead was approved under a fast-track process that three federal agencies have stated was not adequate.” —Lynda V. Mapes, November 25, 2016

A neighboring town, Bismarck, ND, also rejected the Dakota Access Pipeline over pollution risks before the company approached the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Tribe rejected it too.

This weekend, the Army Corps of Engineers informed the Standing Rock Sioux that it planned to close public access to the Oceti Sakowin camp, a site where thousands of Native and non-Native water protectors have gathered over the last several months. Tribal chairman David Archambault, Jr. published a response this morning on the Standing Rock Sioux website:

Our Tribe is deeply disappointed in this decision by the United States, but our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever. We ask that all everyone who can appeal to President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to consider the future of our people and rescind all permits and deny the easement to cross the Missouri River just north of our Reservation and straight through our treaty lands. When Dakota Access Pipeline chose this route, they did not consider our strong opposition. Our concerns were clearly articulated directly to them in a meeting on Sept. 30, 2014. We have released that audio recording from our council meeting where DAPL and the ND Public Service Commission came to us with this route…

We ask that the United States stop the pipeline and move it outside our treaty lands.” —David Archambault, Jr., November 26, 2016

Three people in my network have joined camps at the Standing Rock Reservation, and several more in my extended network are reading for winter there. Excessive local police force has been all over the headlines, and rightly so. But state violence is the easiest story to tell because, as Archambault writes, it’s so common, so continuous with the history of the US and its dealings with Native peoples.

EarthJustice’s legislative counsel Raul Garcia tells a simpler, less sexy story of Native and non-Native people gathering at Standing Rock out of shared spiritual conviction, not just common political belief.

Even when we were talking about politics, the sacredness of it all was what tribe members conveyed as important. The respect of the people overcame any thought of animosity, and the solemnity of the place and the need to protect nature inspired peaceful unity. This indigenous vision of sacred air, sacred water and sacred land was striking to me. I live in Washington, D.C., where polarized rhetoric dominates the landscape, and where, since the presidential election season, distasteful attacks are rampant. Visiting the camps and understanding the spirituality driving this struggle against corporate profit was an eye-opening and humbling experience.” —Raul Garcia

All of the camps and the medical council still need material support, and as Dr. Adrienne Keene has said, “money might be best.” Please give what you can.

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Read: #NoDAPL, Sea levels, Organizing

A man holds an oar in the air on the Missouri River: a thick line of water protectors line the banks of the river.
Photo credit: Rob Wilson (via Sacred Stone Camp)

On #NoDAPL: the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline

“What the Trump victory means for Standing Rock.” (Jenni Monet for Common Dreams)

Now that Trump has won the election and has said he would steer energy policy toward more oil production rather than less, [Energy Transfer Partner’s] plans to ignore the Obama administration and advance the pipeline so swiftly doesn’t seem so brazen at after all. Just prescient.

According to his Public Financial Disclosure Report, Trump disclosed between $500,000 and $1 million in investments in ETP. He also disclosed $50,000 to $100,000 in investments in Phillips 66, which would own one-quarter of the Dakota Access pipeline once complete.”

On rising sea levels in West Africa

“West Africa is being swallowed by the sea: Encroaching waters off the coast of Togo, Ghana, Mauritania, and others are destroying homes, schools, fish, and a way of life.” (Matteo Fagotto for Foreign Policy)

Fuvemeh is one of thousands of communities along the western coast of sub-Saharan Africa, stretching more than 4,000 miles from Mauritania to Cameroon, at risk of being washed away. Spurred by global warming, rising sea levels are causing massive erosion — in some places eating away more than 100 feet of land in a single year. Sea levels around the world are expected to rise by more than two-and-a-half feet by the end of the century, but they are expected to rise faster than the global average in West Africa, according to the West African Economic and Monetary Union. In a region where 31 percent of population lives along the coastline, generating 56 percent of total GDP, according to the World Bank, this is a potentially catastrophic problem.

“In West Africa, infrastructure and economic activities are centered along the coastal region, so as sea levels continue to rise, it threatens our very existence and source of income,” says Kwasi Appeaning Addo, a professor in the University of Ghana’s department of marine and fisheries sciences. “We are sitting on a time bomb.”

Ways for marginalized people to self-secure ahead of January

“Concrete Suggestions in Preparation for January 2017’s change in American government (by demographic issue, but for any interested readers).” (Kara Hurvitz/crowd-sourced) Hat tip: Leslie H. Foster

Hurvitz is compiling a series of resources and action items for people concerned about how a new federal administration will handle healthcare access and fragile social rights. Even if you don’t need any of these recommendations for yourself, consider passing the link onto others who might.