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Monday, July 23, 2012

TONATIERRA: Message to the Equal Voice National Convening


Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio

From Civil Rights to Human Rights,
Indigenous Rights and
The Rights of Mother Earth!

Equal Voice
National Convening
Los Angeles, California   July 23-24, 2012


Good greetings.  As members of the great and humble Nations and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala [the Americas], we extend this message of solidarity, commitment and principle to all of our relatives engaged across the country in the struggle for social justice and environmental sustainability for the Human Family.  We are all related, we are all children of Mother Earth and share equally in the great love for life with which she has bequeathed us as inheritance.  Now it is also due time that we return this same love and act to fulfill our mutual responsibilities to the natural world and all our relations.  As global citizens, we face the brink of climate chaos due to unrestrained and unsustainable policies of economic development that have brought human society to the brink of climate chaos, and even TERRACIDE.

In addressing issues of the National Family Platform at this gathering, our attention is particularly drawn to the call referenced under Immigration Reform to:
·  Separate the responsibilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Police.

Among all of issues articulated and prioritized in the Equal Voice National Family Platform here today this is a very timely point to address in that back in Phoenix, Arizona on this very day the new Chief of Police will be attending a community gathering organized by the Barrio Defense Committees of TONATIERRA to bring to account the practice of racial profiling and discriminatory policing in Maricopa County.  As one of the plaintiffs in the Valle del Sol vs. Whiting case presently in federal court, better known as the challenge to AZ SB1070, TONATIERRA is demanding immediate preliminary injunction of the section 2(B) of AZ SB 1070.  We demand this action from the US Federal Court precisely to accomplish the separation of community police practices from the pogrom of persecution which has been fomented by fear, ignorance, and the racism of colonialism disguised as “Immigration Enforcement” policies and politics.

Today, when Police Chief Daniel Garcia is received at the Nahuacalli, Embassy of Indigenous Peoples in Phoenix Arizona he will be presented with a set of demands.  He will also be introduced to a new yet ancient concept of civic responsibility that originates in our common humanity and is upheld by the struggle for Self Determination of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala [the Americas} in framing our community issues:

The issue is public health and safety, and the responsibilities we share collectively in society to support the enforcement of public health and public safety policies that protect us all.  We are ALL members of the PUBLIC, whether we possess or do not possess status as citizens or nationals within the REPUBLICS of the NAFTA regime (Canada-US-Mexico). The status of citizenship is a separate issue.

The rights of possession of status before the state are distinct from the exercise of responsibilities and Human Rights that are inherent to all Peoples equally anywhere in the world.  The issue of status in terms of citizenship and nationality among the countries currently enjoying international recognition within the UN system and the Organization of American States in North America is relevant in the discussion, formation, and implementation of public health and public safety policy, but it is a separate and distinct issue.  This is common sense.

Relatives, the time has come to redefine our relationships with each other beyond the deforming constraints of the racism of colonialism. As members of Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio we share this message with you today here in Los Angeles in Equal Voice and with Mutual Responsibility fully intending to support and defend the Civil Rights and Human Rights all our families of all of our communities.  As members of the Nations and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples of Cemanahuac, Abya Yala we salute this gathering on the traditional lands of the Tongva Peoples, and announce once more:

We are not immigrants in our own continent.
*******

When in the course of Human Events, it becomes necessary for the Voice of the Peoples to be heard, and their presence as members all of the PUBLIC to be recognized as Human Beings with equal right of self identification and self determination as PEOPLES of the Nations and Pueblos of Mother Earth, such jurisprudence demands that at the present time the clarification be boldly made and convincingly argued that:

AZ SB1070 IS NOT RECOGNIZED AS LAW,

Being instead an ill-conceived and illegitimate product of state sanctioned racial profiling in the form of an unacceptable act of legislation, which is to the detriment of the common well being of all members of the State of Arizona, and which without recognition as law by the Peoples of Arizona, is hereby denounced and shall be defied in the

Spirit of Nonviolent Peaceful Resistance.

AZ SB 1070 a product of the tragically flawed legislative process of collusion and illegal manipulation of the powers of representative government to the benefit of an illegitimate and immoral power structure of historical complicity built upon the discriminatory principles of Manifest Destiny, whose precedent in the form of the Doctrine of Discovery we also now reject once more and shall continue to challenge as a deformation of our COMMON HUMANITY, which we share with All Our Relatives from the:

Four Directions of Mother Earth.

*******

Embassy of Indigenous Peoples
802 N. 7th Street Phoenix, AZ
tonal@tonatierra.org

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