Ablow writes: "On South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, Nick Tilsen is upending entrenched poverty and rebuilding his Lakota community."
Screenshot form "Making Change" video, made by 35-year-old Nick Tilsen, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. (photo: Nick Tilsen)
Making Change: Building Sustainable Communities on the Pine Ridge Reservation
06 July 17
On South Dakota�s Pine Ridge Reservation, Nick Tilsen is upending entrenched poverty and rebuilding his Lakota community.
n this �Making Change� video, we profile 35-year-old Nick Tilsen, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Tilsen was at Standing Rock with the Indigenous People�s Power Project and worked to train thousands of resisters how to take nonviolent direct action against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Last fall, he was arrested for being chained to an excavator � but for Tilsen, that was just another hurdle in his ongoing fight to empower indigenous communities.
Tilsen was born into activism. His parents, Mark Tilsen and Joann Tall, met during the American Indian Movement (AIM) standoff with the federal government at Wounded Knee in 1973 and in later years, gained recognition for social entrepreneurship and environmental activism. His grandfather, Ken, was a civil-rights lawyer who, along with his wife Rachel (daughter of renown leftist writer Meridel Le Sueur), defended the AIM activists in their fight over treaty and civil rights. Tilsen grew up between Minnesota and South Dakota and decided as a teenager to take up the family torch and run with it � right back to his roots on the reservation.
In the video, he talks about what inspired him, at 19, to return to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (in one of the poorest counties in the US), and at 24, to found the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit supported by foundations, government grants and individual donors.
On 34 acres, the organization is developing a regenerative community that builds homes, creates jobs and produces all of its own energy, clean water and food. Tilsen believes that the soup-to-nuts sustainable community � a $60 million project � could inspire others around the world.
�We�re doing it in the hardest place there is to do anything. So, we sort of tongue-in-cheek say, �If we can do it on Pine Ridge, what the hell is everybody else�s excuse?'�
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They had their fingers crossed when they took the oath.
It depends upon who is reading the Constitution. It is unconstitutiona l to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process of law. What process is due? That's for the justices to decide. The Supreme Court, in furtherance of police powers, has signed off on forfeitures. There are several forms of forfeiture including IRS seizures, civil and criminal seizures- tools for law enforcement for decades. If the property is alleged to be part of a criminal enterprise, everything can be taken - bank accounts, cars, boats, houses, cash, businesses, everything. The IRS can take your property without showing much proof. There is no requirement that the allegation be accurate or that the property seized be proportional to the offense. This began as a tool to fight organized crime, but over the years, it has become a cottage industry for local law enforcement. The right wing Supreme Court has expanded the powers of the police in this area. Another area of taking is the condemnation of land by municipalities allowing local government to take your home so that a mall can be built where you lived. No one cares much about the civil liberties of criminals, that is until law enforcement gets you in their sights. In Oakland, your lose your car for cruising prostitutes. Forfeitures have grown from a tool to stop drug cartels to a justification for taking stuff the police want.
The Fifth Amendment, among other things, states, "Nor] shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But if cops simply seize and hold it, that's not "use"--and if they take it for themselves, it's not "public use."
Police therefore have ways of justifying what is, in effect, theft by law enforcement.
"Reasonable" does not mean what it means in common usage; it means the cop has to to supply a valid reason. Suspicion that you are going to use it to commit a crime has been held to be a valid reason.
1) no charges are filed,
2) charges are filed but dismissed,
3) the charges are adjudicated in their favor,
4) the property seized is greater in value than the fines resulting from any conviction.
Second, since they don't know these seizures are legal, they don't know there is a problem until THEIR property gets confiscated.
Third, in not knowing there is a problem, people don't realize that the best remedy is to seek to have their State laws governing seizure of property amended. In States that do not have a ballot measure process, this means the only course of action is to persuade the State legislature to act, not an easy thing. For States like California, should the legislature prove unresponsive, people could organize to write amendments to State law and submit them to the voters. Frankly, if I were a California legislator, I would much prefer my house amend the law rather than trust amending to a group whose focus was on retrieving personal property and who probably didn't give a rat's ass about the valid reasons to allow seizure AND RETENTION of personal property.
In many cases, i.e. "U.S. v.s. $4,000", or "U.S. v.s. White Cadillac", the costs to the citizen in both time and money will far exceed the value of either the cash or the property described above.
Local Statutes will also see to that.
The New Mexican Clown is not kidding.
It *IS* a "gold mine".
The ACLU is the only organization fighting this insanity.
https://downsizedc.org/blog/lets-attack-asset-forfeiture-in-the-supreme-court
https://downsizedc.org/blog/asset-forfeiture-laws-endanger-your-right-to-an-attorney
Indeed.
"None are more helplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
~ Goethe
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken
Also we have voted in a bunch of scientific deniers so the things that have to be done to prevent the exponential rise in the climate crises ,
will be on the back burner, possibly until it is too late.