Festival de Resistencia Press Statement "No one is illegal."

Clanes de Destino – Clans of Destiny

Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio

FESTIVAL DE RESISTENCIA
Message to the Movement

September 21, 2011
YouTube:

“NO ONE IS ILLEGAL”

Phoenix, AZ – Today’s free concert performance by internationally reknowned global music artist Manu Chao, in solidarity with the Comités de Defensa del Barrio (CDBs) and other organizations from Arizona and across the country marks a new era in the fight in defense of Civil Rights, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, and the Rights of Mother Earth.  With this event, the inter-continental dimensions for recognition, respect, and protection of the Rights of Migratory Workers and their families launches into full flight, breaking the artifices of false borders and allegiances that the corporate elites utilize to subjugate and exploit the Nations and Pueblos of Mother Earth.

We are all children of Mother Earth, and correspondingly whether we are in France or Spain, Algeria or South Africa, India or Pakistan, Mexico and Arizona, we share in the responsibility to preserve and protect the natural world for the future generations.

Four score and twenty centuries ago, our ancestors of the Altepetl Nican Tlacah began this journey which we, as their children and grandchildren continue today with this Celebration of Resistance. We are speaking of our Treaty with Mother Earth, which binds us and under which we are also obligated to fulfill our responsibilities to each other and the Four Sacred Elements of Life, unto the spiraling horizons of the Universe of the Four Directions. 

The stipulations of this Treaty predict that we must not infringe upon the Rights of the Future Generations nor the Rights of Mother Earth, that the waters and the winds must not be polluted, and each and all carry a shared responsibility and respect for the vision and Ways of Life that bind us together as Humanity equally.  No one is illegal, but colonialism is.  No one is racially superior to another, but the reality of the officialization of racial profiling in Arizona is “Manifest Destiny” masked as the rule of law.  This is not the Rule of Law, this is the law of rules: Rules that began with the opening phrase of the Master’s Narrative on October 12, 1492.

We shall not comply.  We resist. We rebel. And we shall regenerate our future in accord with the Principles and Commitments we make here-now, Nican Tlacah, to each other as Families and Communities, Nations and Pueblos, Confederations of Nations and Pueblos unto the future Seven Generations. We are clans of destiny: "Clanes de Destino".

As part of the Festival de Resistencia, the Boycott Commission of the CDBs will conduct a COMMUNITY CONSULTATION to identify the priority targets for the ongoing La Huelga del Pueblo, calling for transparency and accountability for the economic interests that have been profiteering through contracts with the private prison industry in cahoots with law enforcement personalities and financial institutions across the state.

Simultaneously, the Comités de Defensa del Barrio have been an constructing an alternative grass roots Community Commerce economic infrastructure based with the goal of driving Arizona into a Just and Sustainable economy. 

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TONATIERRA

Primer Festival de Resistencia
Press Statement

September 20, 2011

In 1967, after the battle of Selma, Alabama, Dr. Marin Luther King stated:

“We have emerged from the era of Civil Rights into the era of Human Rights.”

In 1967 Dr. King delivered this message and in 1968 he was assassinated.  If he were alive today, he surely would be one of those who would give voice in denunciation of the ongoing systematic discriminatory practices of state sanctioned racial profiling which have come to be the norm for police practices across Arizona since the passing of AZ SB1070 just over a year ago.

Human Rights are expression of the inherent responsibilities we all share as global citizens, as members of the public whether or not we have status as citizens or national of any particular state or country.  Accordingly, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 23:

"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

Just like in Selma in 1967 we are being called to the Bridge of History.  And just as then, we are reminded by all those who have gone before across that Bridge, people like John Ross of the Cherokee Nation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, and Cesar Chavez, that:

“Justice is always compelling, not always popular.”

It is not the popular position in Arizona to day to stand for the principle that “Everyone has the right to work” yet this is the law of the land.  The US is after all a signatory to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The issue is not the right to work, the issue is the criminalization of our families and communities that has resulted from the pogrom of persecution which was ignited by AZ SB1070, and exploded in sequences engineered by the lobbyists of the private prison industry into the 287(g) Program of the ICE’s Secure Communities regime across the entire country.

The issue is the criminalization of our communities via labor policies that are derivatives of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) across North America which are designed to callously restrict the opportunities for lawful employment, and thus provide a disposable and marginalized work force for the regimes of the corporate class of elites.  We are facing a corporate-government-police state conglomerate that is driven by the profits of some $5 billion dollars a year.

The Bridge is before us.  We shall pass.  We shall pass over this gruesome and dehumanizing era of Manifest Destiny disguised as the “Rule of Law” and continue on our journey to achieve our global humanity.

As Nican Tlacah, as Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, Mother Earth we have travelled the furthest in this journey and we have come a long way.  Yet, we have a long way still to go.  Let us begin once again, in Celebration of the Struggle to defend our Civil Rights, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, and the Rights of Mother Earth.

NAHUACALLI

Embassy of Indigenous Peoples

www.nahuacalli.org

The Earth

 Heinmot Tookyalaket (Chief Joseph) of the Nez Perces

The Earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was...

The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it was no man's business to divide it...

The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same. 

Say to us if you can say it, that you were sent by the Creative Power to talk to us. Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit.

If I thought you were sent by the Creator I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me.

Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. 

I never said the land was mine to do with as I chose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who created it.

NAHUACALLI

I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to live on yours.

                                                                                                                         ----  Heinmot Tookyalaket (Chief Joseph) of the Nez Perces