Comités de Defensa del Barrio: FREEDOM RIDERS: NATIONHOOD and SUSTAINABILITY

NATIONHOOD and SUSTAINABILITY

“Freedom is not a free ride, you got to get out and push.”

La Familia by Joaquín Chiñas

After Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King said: “We have emerged from the era of Civil Rights to the era of Human Rights”. He said that in 1967 and in 1968 he was assassinated. Five days before his death, in an intimate conversation with Harry Belafonte, he shared his concerns over the trajectory of the US civil rights movement, revealing, “I am afraid we are integrating into a burning house.”

Today we know it is not just the house that is burning, but due to global warming driven by industrial greenhouse gas emissions and the failure of the recent global UN Climate Change Conferences (Catastrophe of Copenhagen 2009, Collapse of Cancun 2010, and the Disaster of Durban 2011) we are plunging headlong past the brink of planetary Climate Chaos. In this “we” there is no “they”.

Without meaningful mechanisms of control and elimination of industrial carbon emissions by human society into the atmosphere which we share with all life, the global environment and the continent of Africa especially is doomed to suffer from the devastating effects of global warming and extremes of environmental degradation.

Today we recall the lessons learned and know that lessons still have not been learned since that Bloody Sunday crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Today we know that we have overcome much, yet much remains to be done in our quest for liberation and self-determination. We know that the great strides of the US Civil Rights movement were steps in the longer journey of liberation and self-determination for All Peoples. We also know by having lived the experiences of the Environmental Justice movement of the present generation, that we must make the connections to link our Civil and Human Rights campaigns to the global fight by Indigenous Peoples to defend the Rights of Mother Earth.

“Justice is always compelling, not always popular.”

As Nican Tlacah, as Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, Mother Earth we today we are speaking of TERRACIDE: the willful and premeditated crime against Humanity and the Rights of Mother Earth that results in the destruction of the capacity of Earth to be a Mother to the Future Generations.

As Indigenous Peoples, we are called to engage human society at the planetary level in order to put in place the necessary communications platforms and strategic alliances to BRIDGE the MOVEMENTS of CLIMATE JUSTICE across cultures, continents, and Peoples. There is only a single Sea, and the oceans of Mother Earth do not separate us, but instead unite us in Spiritual and Ecological responsibility to protect the Natural World for the Future Generations: World Water ONE (www.www.www)

The Bridge is before us. We shall pass. Here in Arizona, we shall pass through the gruesome and dehumanizing Nightmare of Manifest Destiny disguised as the “Rule of Law” and continue on our journey to achieve our global humanity.

Today we awake not in dream but in realities that command that the injustices of Environmental Racism be addressed and responses from the grass roots communities most impacted be articulated and implemented as public policies of Sustainability, Environmental Justice, and Climate Justice.

We have come a long way. Yet, we have a long way still to go. Let us begin once again, Building Understanding and Solidarity, let’s all GET ON THE BUS!