READINGS AND BOOK SIGNINGS
I’ll
be launching my new book, Three Tides:
Writing at the Edge of Being starting this month, with
more appearances scheduled in October and November as follows:
2090 Kittredge Street
Saturday, September 24, 2 - 3:30 PM
Saturday, September 24, 2 - 3:30 PM
Downtown San Rafael
Fourth St.
Saturday, October 8, 3 - 4:15 PM
Fourth St.
Saturday, October 8, 3 - 4:15 PM
Berkeley Fellowship
Cedar at Milvia
Saturday, November 19, 4 – 5:30 PM
DISPLACEMENT, WHO ME?
Displacement is the subject of the newsletter this week.
Displacement is what
my soon-to-be-published book Three Tides: Writing at the Edge of Being is all about. All three sections deal with the pressures acting on people
everywhere to leave home: leaving an unsustainable way of living (mine);
leaving flooded New Orleans (Katrina); and destroying a culture and leaving ancestor
graves yawning empty because a toxic waste disposal company lays claim to village
land (Japan).
Much closer to home, two crises crowd all other stories to
the back pages (except for the selection circus), namely the global refugee
crisis brought about by climate collapse and resulting military hostilities
(the Middle East) and all European countries
trying to close their doors to the flood of displaced people. It may
bring the crisis more clearly into focus to know that one out of every 200children in the world is now on the run, vulnerable to drowning in the
Mediterranean and Adriatic seas; vulnerable to being incarcerated in jails for
months on end because refugee camps are already full to overflowing.
STAND OFF AT
STANDING ROCK
And in the Untied States, the Standing Rock Sioux have been
joined by hundreds of other First Nations in a last stand to defend their
sacred burial grounds and their drinking water from contamination by the
proposed Dakota Pipeline.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse stated:
Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the
beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have
brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.
Private security forces have turned the dogs on them, injuring
one small child with horrifying facial wounds. A local judge has ruled against their case. Governor Dalrymple has called out the national guard, and Jill Stein and her
running mate, Ajamu Baraka have been threatened with arrest and warrants have been issued
by the Moran County Sheriff’s Office for criminal trespass and vandalism in
connection with their weekend trip to Standing Rock, to stand in solidarity with
indigenous tribes resisting oil pipeline expansion through their sacred native
burial grounds. It’s the first time in U.S. history that a presidential
candidate and her running mate have been targeted for arrest.
To quote Ajamu Baraka: What we need… in North Dakota [is]
authentic decolonization. …Indigenous people don’t have full control over their
sovereignty,…We are not going to have social justice as long as there’s
continuity in this settler colonial project. …All of us are implicated.
As of yesterday, September 10, the federal government
stepped in to ask the pipeline company to “pause” action, to voluntarily halt
construction temporarily within 20 miles of Lake Oahe, a sacred site of the
local tribes. The snake doesn’t shed its scales easily. The government’s
ploy acted to diffuse the threat of more violence by hired security forces and
the national guard; and by initiating a delaying tactic, it attempted to
disperse the massive resistance gathered together at Standing Rock.
But this issue will not go away. This newsletter believes the Sioux stand in the front lines
of all the displacement now
threatening every one of us:
We have been displaced by the subprime mortgage crisis from
our homes; we have been displaced from our universities by massive tuition
hikes; we have been displaced from a reliable banking system now that U.S. law
has determined that all monies on deposit are property of the bank, not
depositors; we have been displaced from our jobs by offshoring and by trade
agreements such as the TPP and the TISA, and by the disproportionate
incarceration of people of color for minor drug offences, providing slave labor
for the prison/corporate complex; we have been displaced from our streets by
free speech zones; we have been displaced from our lives by the use of drones
to target/assassinate even American citizens, and by militarized police who kill people of color with impunity and
without judicial consequence; we have been displaced from our wombs by the
anti-abortion agenda of the neocons; we have
been displaced from our DNA by continued used of nuclear technology, not
only in lands affected by the use
of uranium tipped ordnance, but on our
own soils by nuclear contamination from testing, and from accumulating nuclear
waste.
We all need to pay attention to Chief Arvol Looking Horse’swords:
Know that you yourself are essential to this world.
Understanding both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are
desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put
here for something less? In a Sacred
Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
OAKLAND, OSCAR GRANT PLAZA 5:30 PM
ALBANY, SAN PABLO @ MARIN 4 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment