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The Wet'suwet'en Crisis Has Exposed Deep-Seated Racism in Canada |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=52802"><span class="small">Tara Houska, Al Jazeera</span></a>
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Monday, 16 March 2020 12:17 |
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Excerpt: "Native communities do not hurt the economy - they bear the hurt of corporations ruining the land."
Supporters of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs block access to the Port of Vancouver as part of protests against the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. (photo: Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters)
The Wet'suwet'en Crisis Has Exposed Deep-Seated Racism in Canada
By Tara Houska, Al Jazeera
16 March 20
Native communities do not hurt the economy - they bear the hurt of corporations ruining the land.
 t is all well and good until the Indian mascots start talking back.
That has been an observation of mine, after years of public advocacy as a Native woman. Society likes us in caricatured form, they sometimes like us in regalia opening events, but once a Native speaks out in a way that challenges North American society, we are regularly, and sometimes violently, silenced.
We need look no further for an example of this than the current Indigenous-led infrastructure shutdowns in Canada, in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, who have refused passage of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through their territory.
Across what is now Canada, Native resistance is exposing an underbelly of racism, ignorance and historical denial. Following the Canadian government's refusal to listen to the hereditary Wet'suwet'en chiefs' rejection of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, hundreds of ongoing disruptions to transportation infrastructure have forced a reckoning on every level imaginable. Angry comments proliferate across online comment boards, death threats fill the inboxes of Native front-line resistors posting photos of solidarity actions with #WetsuwetenStrong and #LandBack hashtags.
Angry fossil fuel employees, their families, friends and citizens, concerned with economic security (but apparently not at all concerned with equality) call for violence upon Indigenous youth standing up for their long-suffering people, upon any and all Native peoples disrupting infrastructure trying to be heard, to be seen, to be respected.
"Yes, this is [a] threat," I read in one Tweet replying to the Twitter feed of the Unist'ot'en (working in conjunction with the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs) Camp, along with instructions and an illustration for locating and approaching Indigenous blockades with a mask and baseball bat.
Hostility to Native resistance ranges from physical violence to basic supremacy themes - people who "live off our taxes" have no room to complain about anything. The incalculable contributions Native people made to both non-Native survival then and to the economy as it exists today are summarily disregarded. I suspect a vast majority of North America has little to no understanding of treaties made between fledgeling Western governments and Native Nations, or of what "unceded land" means.
While the US and Canadian constitutions are respected law, the treaties that literally ceded the lands those countries exist on today in exchange for basic services ensuring the survival of the people holding those lands are viewed as old news, as something to "get over".
The desperate state of far too many Native nations should anger any patriot who believes in country; a glaring failure of the US and Canada to uphold their end of the contracts they signed. Instead, Native communities are a source of shame, of anger towards Native people, or intentionally ignored. The refusal of Native peoples to assimilate is a 500-plus year thorn in the side of colonisation and an affront to American exceptionalism.
The racism on display with regard to Wet'suwet'en is not a new phenomenon. It did not just suddenly appear because of incendiary stories about job layoffs (layoffs that were already in progress before the disruptions).
I recall how a group of men driving by an Anishinaabe woman walking down a pavement in Thunder Bay, Canada, allegedly threw a trailer hitch at her and struck her in the stomach. Barbara Kentner, 34, later died of her injuries. The man charged with her killing faces trial in April. Internet rumours attacking Barbara Kentner grew so malicious that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran a piece debunking one claiming Kentner assaulted a child. The celebrations around the killing of Colton Boushie - a young Cree man shot in the head by a white farmer who was subsequently acquitted of his murder and manslaughter - was another moment that should have cued folks to the deep-seated racism towards Native people. So is the literal epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women on both sides of the colonial border.
Throw in extractive industrial projects that hold the boon of hundreds of well-paying jobs, a way to keep food on the table, and that ignorance explodes to the surface. The Native person trying to protect their land, the deepest part of their identity, becomes an obstacle blocking a good job. Such a narrative benefits the company seeking its latest fossil fuel project. Stories of Coastal GasLink pipeline, Enbridge, TransCanada and many others' failing profit margins, uncertain oil forecasts and lack of demand are buried. It has to be somebody's fault, we are told, but it never seems to be the companies making these destructive choices.
I was born and raised in North Country; I grew up with loggers and miners, the folks who use their hands and backs for a living, as my family members and neighbours. Distrust and lack of understanding between rural communities and the Native folks nearby are a constant. Exploitation of the lands and waters we call home is also a constant. The jobs that pay well are usually jobs that require taking far, far more than we need, for shipment somewhere else.
When the mine finally gives out, it is our water that sits contaminated, our children that play on the soil with a spreading chemical plume below it. When the old growth timber is gone, it is our ecosystem that is disrupted, the wild game many of us still depend on that disappears. We bear the risk of spills, of explosions, of all the immediate risks of bodily harm associated with extractive industry. When Coastal GasLink bulldozes its way through the unceded territory against the authority of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, it is our communities that bear that hurt and destruction, it is our people, our youth that carry those wounds and further separation between Native and non-Native neighbours.
We are at the point now where the climate crisis has extended serious risks outside of our local communities. The polar ice caps are melting, the Global South has rising seas and burning rainforests, North America's own western seaboard is on fire for longer and longer periods in these recent times. It is not just our problem and reality any longer; it belongs to the whole of humanity.
In the realm of finger-pointing, it seems to me that blaming the Native taking a stand for our shared and only home might seem like the easiest thing to do, but it makes the least sense. Corporations are made of people, those people make decisions with enormous consequences. Governments are made of people, those people shape economic accountability, public policy and subsidise the future they want to back. Communities are made of people, we can collectively all do a lot better towards understanding one another and ending a vicious cycle of hatred.
It is the 21st century - surely we can do better than unchecked mega-corporations destroying our only home to make a buck. Investment in technology, in people, in education, in the forgotten, still-beautiful places that hold the remaining biodiversity and delicate ecosystems we all need to survive should be a no-brainer, one would think. One would hope.
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44994"><span class="small">Bess Levin, Vanity Fair</span></a>
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Monday, 16 March 2020 10:55 |
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Levin writes: "Earlier this week a disturbing new development occurred on the coronavirus front when it was reported that Jared Kushner had paused his efforts solving the opioid crisis, bringing peace to the Middle East, and 'reinventing the entire government' to work on the administration’s response to the crisis."
Jared Kushner. (photo: Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg)
Great News: Jared Kushner Doesn’t Think the Coronavirus Is a "Health Reality"
By Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
16 March 20
In related news, Ivanka Trump has been exposed to an individual with a confirmed case.
 arlier this week a disturbing new development occurred on the coronavirus front when it was reported that Jared Kushner had paused his efforts solving the opioid crisis, bringing peace to the Middle East, and “reinventing the entire government” to work on the administration’s response to the crisis. While you might not know it based on the many top-level assignments Donald Trump has entrusted his son-in-law with, Kushner is not actually a boy genius capable of succeeding where others have failed. He’s neither a public health expert nor a doctor. In fact, some might argue that he’s a barely functioning adult. Still, perhaps we were being too hard on the guy? Maybe he would be the one to finally get it through to Trump that this is an extremely serious issue? And that the government needs to get its act together, and fast? And that we’re literally talking about a matter of life and death here?
Of course, as it turns out, that hasn’t happened at all, and Kushner, if anything, is reportedly making the situation worse by feeding into the president’s impression that this whole thing is much ado about nothing. Here’s the New York Times on how the father-and-son-in-law duo from hell have been approaching the issue:
For weeks [Trump] resisted telling Americans to cancel or stay away from large gatherings, reluctant even on Thursday to call off his own campaign rallies even as he grudgingly acknowledged he would probably have to. Instead it fell to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s most famous scientist, to say publicly what the president would not, leading the nation’s basketball, hockey, soccer, and baseball leagues in just 24 hours to suspend play and call off tournaments. Mayors and county executives, hospital executives, and factory owners received no further direction from the president as he talked about the virus in the Oval Office on Thursday than they did during his prime-time address to the nation the night before. Beyond travel limits and wash-your-hands reminders, Mr. Trump has left it to others to set the course in combating the pandemic and has indicated he was in no rush to take further action.
Among the advisers who share the president’s more jaundiced view is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who considers the problem more about public psychology than a health reality, according to people who have spoken with him.
According to the Wall Street Journal, despite the fact that Kushner was in charge of Trump’s Wednesday prime-time address to the nation, he hasn’t “attended a single task force meeting,” where he might’ve, y’know, gleaned some insight on the issue. (The task force, you may recall, is waiting for Kushner to finish his own “research” on the virus before making a recommendation to the president re: declaring a national emergency.)
To be fair, Kushner apparently is consulting with experts…via Facebook:
Just before midnight Wednesday, a doctor asked a group of fellow emergency room physicians on Facebook how they would combat the escalating coronavirus outbreak. “I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House,” Kurt Kloss wrote in his post. The next morning, after hundreds of doctors responded, Kloss explained why he sought the suggestions: Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had asked him for recommendations.
Kloss, whose daughter is married to Kushner’s brother, sent Kushner 12 recommendations Thursday morning. The Facebook crowdsourcing exercise showed how Trump’s team is scrambling for solutions to confront the outbreak after weeks of criticism for the administration’s sluggish response, a shortage of tests, and the president’s own rhetoric downplaying the pandemic. It is now expected to consume the final year of Trump’s first term and threaten his campaign for a second term.
On the one hand, the phrase “Jared Kushner is getting coronavirus advice from Karlie Kloss’s father’s Facebook friends” is surreal and insane. On the other, at least he’s consulting with someone in the medical profession. Meanwhile, it appears that the disease may soon be hitting quite close to home for the Boy Prince of New Jersey:
A top government official from Australia said that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus, just days after he returned from a meeting with Ivanka Trump and a Justice Department event in Washington that was attended by U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr and acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
It’s not clear at this time if the first daughter has felt the need to be tested, though if she’s anything like her father, who’s been exposed to at least one person who tested positive for COVID-19, she likely has not.
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51193"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Bernie 2020</span></a>
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Monday, 16 March 2020 10:35 |
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Sanders writes: "One of the fundamental questions in this Democratic primary is who owns the power in this country and who can you trust to take it from those who have too much and deliver it to those who need it?"
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with members of the media after a Democratic presidential primary debate in Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 25, 2020. (photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
Last Night’s Debate
By Bernie Sanders, Bernie 2020
16 March 20
 ne of the fundamental questions in this Democratic primary is who owns the power in this country and who can you trust to take it from those who have too much and deliver it to those who need it?
Do you want the real thing — someone who has stood with working people in the fights that matter for his entire career?
Or do you want someone who has argued that we have to cut Social Security, voted for the war in Iraq, supported the Hyde Amendment that restricts poor women’s access to abortion, has threatened to veto legislation that will guarantee health care as a right, led the fight for the disastrous bankruptcy bill, and much more?
We have to make a choice. What kind of nation do we want to be?
Do we want to work together to tackle the problems facing this country, or be one where nothing fundamentally changes for the people with power who make huge amounts of money on greed and corruption?
At a time of such economic uncertainty, in addition to the coronavirus, it’s time for all of us to ask how we got here and who our best choice is to deliver the change we need.
I believe we are that campaign. Thank you for being such an important part of it.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=14693"><span class="small">Jeff Cohen, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Monday, 16 March 2020 08:14 |
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Cohen writes: "It’s doubtful that Sunday night’s CNN debate shifted momentum in the presidential race currently favoring Joe Biden. The next few weeks offer the Bernie Sanders movement perhaps its last chance to win over – mostly through electronic means – Democratic primary voters."
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. (image: Rolling Stone)
Socialists for Biden – and the Power of Corporate Media
By Jeff Cohen, Reader Supported News
16 March 20
t’s doubtful that Sunday night’s CNN debate shifted momentum in the presidential race currently favoring Joe Biden. The next few weeks offer the Bernie Sanders movement perhaps its last chance to win over – mostly through electronic means – Democratic primary voters.
One voting bloc to focus on might be called “socialists for Biden.”
In a speech last week from Vermont, Sanders made two key assertions. First, he said: “Poll after poll, including exit polls, show that a strong majority of the American people support our progressive agenda.” He then added: “While our campaign has won the ideological debate, we are losing the debate over electability.”
Sanders was correct on both points – which tells us something about the persuasive powers (and limits) of “corporate liberal” news outlets like MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Despite those outlets having long maligned Sanders’ progressive proposals – from Medicare for All to big tax increases on the wealthy – his policy agenda is remarkably popular with Democratic primary voters.
By contrast, the media barrage on electability has proved far more persuasive to many Democrats – apparently convincing them that Biden can defeat Donald Trump while Sanders is a huge risk who could bring on a Trump landslide and undermine Democrats down-ballot.
On Super Tuesday, NBC News exit polls revealed the previously unknown existence of millions of socialist-inclined Biden voters. In North Carolina and Tennessee, where Biden handily defeated Bernie, more voters expressed a favorable opinion of socialism than unfavorable. In Texas, which Biden won, socialism also triumphed with 57 percent favorable vs. 37 percent unfavorable. Ditto for California (which Sanders won): 53 percent favorable vs. only 33 percent unfavorable.
In four Southern states where Biden trounced Sanders on Super Tuesday and the following week (Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama), NBC News found that a majority of Democratic primary voters support Sanders’ signature policy, Medicare for All – phrased in the poll as “a single government health insurance plan for all.” Most startling were Mississippians who voted for Biden over Bernie by an 81 to 15 percent landslide, but exit pollsters found nearly two-to-one support for Medicare for All: 62 to 32 percent.
So, on the policy agenda, Democratic primary voters have shown some resistance to corporate media propaganda – such as the oft-repeated canard that Sanders would “strip 150 million people of their health insurance.” (“Stripping” is hardly accurate to describe a proposal that would provide fuller coverage – and, except for the superrich, at less cost.) When questioned continually by elite journalists and candidates like Biden about costs, Sanders has cited federal statistics showing that sticking with a private insurance system would cost more.
Since Democratic voters are closer to Bernie than Biden on most policy issues, Biden’s string of primary wins suggests that corporate media have proved much more convincing on the issue of electability – with their drumbeat about Biden as electable against Trump, and Bernie as too risky. Primary voters, including older African Americans, are rightly terrified of a second Trump term. But not much data supports the claim that Biden would be a stronger candidate against Trump, and there are plenty of counter-arguments and counter-data, including the fact that Biden often appears unsteady and inarticulate.
The abrupt solidification behind Biden by the corporate establishment within the Democratic Party and allied media (MSNBC, CNN, etc.) appears driven as much by an ideological fear of a Sanders presidency as by a logical belief that Biden has a better chance of defeating Trump.
Pro-Sanders activists are running out of time in their efforts to confront the electability issue and persuade progressive-leaning voters to vote for the actual progressive in the race.
Unfortunately, when it comes to electability, too many Democratic primary voters are listening to the pundit elite – the same elite that had told us in past years how “moderate,” status-quo, corporate Democrats were the most electable. You remember President Gore? President Kerry? President Hillary Clinton?
Jeff Cohen is cofounder of the activism group RootsAction.org and founder of the media watch group FAIR.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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ongress needs to authorize cash payments to every adult and child in the United States, and it needs to do so right now.
