Politics

July 4th: No Time for Celebration for Indigenous Peoples in US

Monday, 04 July 2016 11:55

Dunbar-Ortiz writes: "July 4 symbolizes the beginning of the 'Indian wars' and 'westward movement' that continued across the continent for another century of unrelenting U.S. wars of conquest. That was the goal of independence for both the seasoned killers of the so-called 'revolutionary army' and the militias using extreme violence against Indigenous noncombatants to subjugate and expel."

Travis Mazawaficuna of the Dakota Nation at the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations, New York, August 9, 2013. (photo: Reuters)

July 4th: No Time for Celebration for Indigenous Peoples in US

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, teleSUR

04 July 16

Without Indigenous resistance, the intended genocide of the Native peoples by the settlers would have completely succeeded.

he Anglo-American settlers� violent break from Britain, from 1775 to 1783, paralleled a decade of their search and destroy annihilation of Delaware, Cherokee, Muskogee, Seneca, Mohawk, Shawnee, Miami and other nations� villages and fields, slaughtering the residents without distinction of age or gender and overrunning the boundaries of the 13 colonies into unceded Native American territories.

July 4 symbolizes the beginning of the �Indian wars� and �westward movement� that continued across the continent for another century of unrelenting U.S. wars of conquest. That was the goal of independence for both the seasoned killers of the so-called "revolutionary army" and the militias using extreme violence against Indigenous noncombatants to subjugate and expel.

They were met with resistance movements and confederations identified with leaders such as Buckongeahelas of the Delaware; Alexander McGillivray of the Muskogee-Creek; Little Turtle and Blue Jacket of the Miami-Shawnee alliance; Joseph Brant of the Mohawk; and Cornplanter of the Seneca, who called the Anglo counter-insurgents �town destroyers.� Following U.S. independence, the great Tecumseh and the Shawnee confederation also joined the struggle.

Without this resistance, the intended genocide of the Native peoples would have completely succeeded. Although Native nations were �ethnically cleansed� in the region east of the Mississippi by 1850 through forced relocation, they never ceased to exist. These are truer heroes for our children to emulate than the �Founding Fathers.�

The program of expansion and the wars against the Indigenous farmers of the large valley of the Ohio River and the Great Lakes region began decades before July 4, with the so-called "French and Indian War,� which was the North American extension of the Seven Years' War between France and Britain in Europe.

In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded Canada and all claims east of the Mississippi to Britain. In the course of that war, Anglo-American settlers intensified their use of counter-insurgency violence against Indigenous peoples� resistance to incursions into the territories of the Ottawa, Miami, Kickapoo, and other nations. By the end, significant numbers of Anglo settlers were squatting on Indigenous lands beyond the colonies� boundaries and land speculation was the road to riches for a few individuals.

But, to the settlers� dismay, soon after the 1763 treaty was signed, King George III issued a proclamation that prohibited British settlement west of the Allegheny-Appalachian mountain chain, ordering those who had illegally settled there to surrender their claims and return to the colonies. Soon it became clear that English authorities needed far more soldiers to enforce the edict, as thousands of settlers ignored it and poured over the mountains and squatted on Indigenous lands, provoking armed Indigenous resistance.

In 1765, the British Parliament imposed the Stamp Act on the colonies, a tax on all printed materials that had to be paid in British pounds, not local paper money. The iconic settler slogan of �taxation without representation� that marked the surge for independence from Britain derived from this imposed tax was specious, or at best not the whole story. The tax levied was to pay the cost of housing, feeding and transporting British soldiers to enforce the British colonial boundaries. Thus the complaints iterated in the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence largely focused on the measures used by the British to prevent expansion of Anglo land acquisition and settlement.

By the early 1770s, Anglo-American settler terror against cChristianized Native American communities within the colonies, and violent encroachment on those outside the colonial boundaries, raged and illegal speculation in stolen Indigenous lands was rampant. In the southern colonies especially, Anglo farmers who had lost their land to larger, more efficient, slave-worked plantations, rushed for Native farmlands over the mountain range.

These armed squatters thus set, as military historian John Grenier writes, �a prefigurative pattern of U.S. annexation and colonization of Indigenous nations across the continent for the following century: a vanguard of farmer-settlers led by seasoned �Indian fighters,� calling on authorities/ militias of the British colonies, first, and the U.S. government/army later, to defend their settlements, forming the core dynamic of U.S. �democracy.��

In 1783, the British withdrew from the fight to maintain the insurgent 13 colonies, not because of military defeat, but rather in order to redirect their resources to the occupation and colonization of South Asia. The British East India Company had been operating in the subcontinent since 1600 in a project parallel to Britain�s colonization of the North American Atlantic Coast.

The British Crown determined that great wealth was to be made in Asia. Britain�s transfer of its claim to Indian Country west of the colonies to the settlers spelled disaster for all Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi, and ultimately all of the North American area that would be claimed and occupied by the United States. Britain�s withdrawal in 1783 opened a new chapter of unrestrained violent colonization.

The creation of the constitution began in 1785, but was not approved by all the states and put into effect until 1791. Meanwhile, the interim Continental Congress got to work on a plan for colonization over the mountain range. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a centralized system for surveying and distributing land, with seized Native lands being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, referring to the Ohio country, set forth a colonization procedure for annexation via military occupation, the transformation of land to civilian territorial status under federal control and finally through statehood. These were the first laws of the incipient republic, revealing the motive for independence.

It was the blueprint for the taking of western Indigenous lands, with lines for future settlements reaching to the Pacific. The maps contained in the land ordinances, which laid out land in marketable square-miles plots, were not new. They were the work of colonial elites during the decades before the war of independence, including George Washington, a leader of the Virginia militia that led armed surveying teams into Ohio country, making him one of the most successful land speculators of the time.

Delaware Nation leader, Buckongeahelas, said in 1781, "They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who created us. They would make slaves of us if they could, but as they cannot do it, they kill us. There is no faith to be placed in their words ... I know the long knives; they are not to be trusted."

The ruling elite of the colonies were all land speculators, with land and slave ownership being the very basis of the economy of the first nation-state born as a capitalist state and by 1850, the wealthiest economy in the world.

In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson aptly described the new settler-state�s intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion as an �empire for liberty,� stating, �However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern, continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.�

The policy of U.S. settlers taking land by force was not an accidental or spontaneous project or the work of a few bad apples. The violent theft of Native American land by settlers was inscribed as an individual right in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, second only to freedom of speech. Male colonial settlers had long formed militias for the purpose of raiding and razing Indigenous communities and seizing their lands and resources.

The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, legalized these irregular forces: �A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.� The continuing significance of that �freedom,� specified in the Bill of Rights, reveals the settler-colonialist cultural roots of the U.S. that appear even in the present as a sacred right. Such militias were also used as �slave patrols� in the South, forming the basis of the U.S. police culture after the end of legal slavery.

What the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1967, that the United States "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," remains true and even more deadly today, with no end in sight. The United States was founded on violence, conquest, militarism and slavery� almost always making war somewhere.

For the sake of humanity and our own children, let us own this truth and transform July 4th into a day of mourning, a solemn occasion, telling the true stories, learning from the tragic birth of this nation, accompanied by implementation of full self-determination for the Indigenous nations of this continent and reparations for slavery.

12 comments

FOCUS: Party Platform Still Needs Work

Monday, 04 July 2016 10:27

Sanders writes: "Unfortunately, there were a number of vitally important proposals brought forth by the delegates from our campaign that were not adopted."

Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders holds up his notes while speaking about his attempts to influence the Democratic party's platform during a speech in Albany, New York in June. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Party Platform Still Needs Work

By Bernie Sanders, Philly.com

04 July 16

he Democratic Party platform drafted in St. Louis is an excellent start in bringing forth policies that will help end the 40-year decline of the American middle class. These initiatives, if implemented, will create millions of good-paying jobs, significantly improve health care, and reverse the dangerous trend in this country toward an oligarchic form of society. But, let us be clear, this is a document that needs to be significantly improved by the full Platform Committee meeting in Orlando on July 8 and 9.

Here are some very positive provisions in the platform as it stands today:

At a time when huge Wall Street financial institutions are bigger now than they were before the taxpayers of this country bailed them out, the platform calls for enacting a 21st-century Glass-Steagall Act and for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks.

The platform calls for a historic expansion of Social Security, closes loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes, creates millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, makes it easier for workers to join unions, takes on the greed of the pharmaceutical companies, ends disastrous deportation raids, bans private prisons and detention centers, abolishes the death penalty, moves to automatic voter registration and the public financing of elections, eliminates super PACs, and urges passage of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, among many other initiatives.

These are all major accomplishments that will begin to move this country in the right direction. I congratulate Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), chairman of the Platform Drafting Committee, and all 15 members of the panel for their hard work.

But, unfortunately, there were a number of vitally important proposals brought forth by the delegates from our campaign that were not adopted. My hope is that a grassroots movement of working people, environmentalists, and human-rights advocates will work with us to demand that the Democratic Party include these initiatives in the platform to be adopted by the full committee in Orlando.

We need to have very clear language that raises the minimum wage to $15 an hour, ensures that the promised pensions of millions of Americans will not be cut, establishes a tax on carbon, and creates a ban on fracking. These and other amendments will be offered in Florida.

Further, one of the most important amendments that we will offer is to make it clear that the Democratic Party is strongly opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In my view, the Democratic Party must go on record in opposition to holding a vote on this disastrous, unfettered free-trade agreement during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond.

Frankly, I do not understand why the amendment our delegates offered on this issue in St. Louis was defeated with all of Hillary Clinton's committee members voting against it. I don't understand that because Clinton, during the campaign, made it very clear that she did not want to see the TPP appear on the floor during the lame-duck session.

If both Clinton and I agree that the TPP should not get to the floor of Congress this year, it's hard to understand why an amendment saying so would not be overwhelmingly passed.

Let's be clear: The trade agreement is opposed by virtually the entire grassroots base of the Democratic Party.

Every trade union in this country is strongly opposed to the pact. They understand that this agreement will make it easier for corporations to throw American workers out on the street and move factories to Vietnam, where workers are paid 65 cents an hour.

Virtually every major environmental group is opposed to the TPP because they understand that it will make it easier for the biggest polluters in the world to continue despoiling our planet.

Major religious groups are opposed because they understand that it will reward some of the biggest human-rights violators in the world.

Doctors Without Borders is strongly opposed to this agreement because its members understand that it would increase prescription-drug prices for some of the most desperate people in the world by making it harder to access generic drugs.

This agreement also threatens our democracy. We cannot give multinational corporations the ability to challenge our nation's labor and environmental laws simply because they might reduce expected future profits through the very flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement system. That would undermine the democratic values that our country was founded on.

During the coming days and weeks our campaign will be reaching out to grassroots America to do all that we can to oppose the TPP and make sure that it doesn't get passed.

70 comments

FOCUS: How Can America Celebrate Independence Day With Millions Behind Bars and Under Surveillance?

Monday, 04 July 2016 10:07

Nicholas writes: "It was bizarre to celebrate a day dedicated to freedom from inside prison. Even after being released, the day smacks of hypocrisy for me."

Millions of Americans spend Independence Day behind bars. (photo: Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast)

How Can America Celebrate Independence Day With Millions Behind Bars and Under Surveillance?

By JB Nicholas, The Daily Beast

04 July 16

It was bizarre to celebrate a day dedicated to freedom from inside prison. Even after being released, the day smacks of hypocrisy for me.

or 13 Independence Days, I was a prisoner. To be a prisoner on the Fourth of July is to know the essential hypocrisy of contemporary America.

In the early 1990s, when I was at the Collins Correctional Facility in western New York, July 4 was a big thing. Preparations would start a few days before, when we started brewing homemade wine. Orange and grapefruit juice would go into a bucket placed inside a plastic garbage bag. Into the juice would go as much fruit and sugar as we could steal from the mess hall. Then someone would produce a clean sock, we�d mash a loaf or two of stolen bread inside it, tie it off, and drop it into the mix.

We�d squeeze all the air out of the garbage bag, tie it up, and hide the contraption in a dark corner, or under someone�s bunk. Every few hours someone would have to go, take it to the bathroom, open a window, and bleed the make-shift still of excess air.

By the Fourthwe�d be good to go.

At Collins, Independence Day was holiday, and all of us, the prisoners and the corrections officers, would take off and relax. The COs would let all the doors in the prison swing, from the housing units to the yard, and all day we�d walk around, visiting friends in other housing units, maybe play some spades, loop around the yard, maybe play some bocce. In the afternoon, if the weather was good, the mess hall would shift their operation outside, and start grilling hot dogs and hamburgers. There was potato salad, too, and sliced watermelon to finish it with.

After lunch, my friends and I busted out the hooch, which we sipped in opaque plastic cups, to wash everything down.

That was 1992 when there were 810,500 prisoners in America. Since then, the prison population in tripled to 2.3 million people, 713 behind bars for every 100,000 people. Another 4,708,100 are subject to custodial supervision, as probationers or parolees. Some 80,000 children are in juvenile jails. Of these, in 2014, 7 percent of state prisoners and 19 percent of federal prisoners were held in facilities run by private, for-profit prison companies.

The nation that imprisons 7 million of its own people, the most of any nation in the world, has no business celebrating freedom, on July 4, or any other day of the year.

The nation that has more solitary confinement cells than any other nation in the world has no business pridefully waving its flag around. The nation that encourages a culture of sadism among its police and prison guards, by arming them with all manner of modern torture tools, and then being deliberately indifferent to their malicious use, has no business boasting of its human rights record. The nation whose prosecutors, judges, and juries blindly accept police and prison officials� legerdemain when they are called upon to explain themselves, knows not real freedom, but an illusion of freedom, haphazardly built upon a person�s individual luck in escaping official scrutiny, or their financial ability to buy their way out of it.

On the Fourth of July, politicians and their corporate sponsors like to proffer patriotic bromides designed to make us feel good about ourselves, and our place in the world. They tell us we live in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. They tell us we live in the land of opportunity. They tell us all people are created equal, with certain unalienable rights, among those the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Tell that to Akai Gurley. Tell that to Eric Garner, and Ramarley Graham, and Sean Bell, and Timothy Stansbury, and Ousmane Zongo, and Patrick Dorismond, and Amadou Diallo, and Anthony Baez, and Nicholas Heyward, and Ernest Sayon.

All unarmed men killed by police in New York City alone. What happened to their equal, unalienable rights?

When I was a prisoner, prison rules required that I carry my prison-issued identification card everywhere I went within the prison. It was a violation of prison rules to leave you cell without your identification card. You could actually be sent to solitary confinement for not carrying your ID.

Since I was released, in 2003, I�ve made it a point to not carry identification.

Since then, I�ve been stopped by police, while walking or riding my bicycle around New York City, more than few times. Every time they ask me for identification. Every time I say I don�t carry it. Every time they say the could arrest me just for that; they say that the law requires me to carry identification.

Just like when I was in prison.

When I was in prison I read a lot of books. One of the books I read Michel Foucault�s Discipline and Punish. From Foucault I learned about the �Panopticon.�

In Greek mythology, Panoptes was a giant with 100 eyes. Only a few of the eyes slept at any one time, so Panoptes was an excellent watchman. The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham applied the idea of Panoptes to prison design. In the late 1700s, he designed a prison that was circular in shape, with a guard tower in its center. The prisoners lived in barred, transparent cells around the circumference, while the guards in the tower watched them. However, the presence of the guards was obscured by blinds or other contrivances. Thus the prisoners always felt they were being watched, but did not know when or if they were actually being watched.

Bentham theorized that this architecture of surveillance, actual and perceived, would cause the prisoners to act as if they were always being watched. In this way, the criminals would internalize the surveillance, and become model citizens�because they believed they were always being watched.

Life in America today is defined, and bounded by, the digital panopticon of the surveillance state.

Most New Yorkers live in a building. Most buildings have some kind of surveillance technology. When you walk outside your door, chances are there is a camera documenting you, telling whoever is watching what time you left your house, and when you return. As you walk around the city, more private and police cameras capture your movements.

If you carry a cell or smartphone, digital transmissions from your cellphone �ping� your location to cellphone transmission towers, which are recorded in a digital database, telling the watchers where you go, and for how long you stay there.

Where ever you go, you are recorded. Go into a store, there are cameras. Get on a bus, there are cameras. Go into an office building, still more cameras. If you drive, both fixed and mobile license-plate trackers record the movements of your motor vehicle, as does your E-ZPass.

Get on the subway, more cameras.

On the subway, posters and pre-recorded announcements instruct you, over and over, to snitch on your fellow citizens: �If you see something, say something.� Another pre-recorded announcement says that anything you carry, any kind of bag or box, is subject to being searched by the police, at their whim, without some kind of individualized suspicion, much less a search warrant.

At work, more surveillance.

Customarily, to access office buildings, workers have to prove who they are by carrying and displaying identification. Once inside, workplace cameras record your movements. On the computer, software monitors your internet use, telling contemporary over-seers if you�re doing something other than working. If you drive for work, a GPS device monitors were you go, and tells your bosses if you were late because you stopped for lunch at Burger King, and didn�t get stuck in traffic like you once were able to say.

Even inside the so-called sanctity of your own home, you are still being watched. Thanks to the bravery of Edward Snowden, we now know that everything we read and download from the internet is subject to observation and copying by the government. Even if they are not doing it directly, they can always simply ask the corporation providing your internet service for a copy of your records, and the corporation, dependent on the government for many things, like licenses to do business, will comply. Just like in prison, where prison authorities, as a matter of course, review and screen what you read, as well as your incoming and outgoing correspondence.

Some say that surveillance doesn�t seem to bother most Americans. Most Americans seem fine, some people say, with what amounts to self-surveillance on social media. I look at it differently. I don�t see social media as an embrace of the surveillance state. I see it as open rebellion. I see it as people saying, well, if I�m going to be surveilled, I might as well take some control of it, and offer a counter-narrative to the really sleazy porn I watch online. See Mr. Government Watchman, I�m not all that bad, I visit my parents regularly. I get my coffee from Starbucks. I�m normal. I�m just like everyone else. I�m not a threat.

I think its time we all started being a little more threatening.

You want to really celebrate freedom on this Fourth of July? Leave your identification at home. Smash your smartphone. Break a surveillance camera. Download an anonymous internet browser and encryption software. Buy a big hat or sunglasses to defeat facial recognition software. Cover your license plate in dust. Go for a ride in the countryside. Shoot a gun, maybe buy one. The next time you see something suspicious, don�t call the cops, go up to your fellow citizen and ask about it�chances are you�ll get a satisfactory explanation.

That�s real independence. Quiet subservience is not.

19 comments

The Five Principles of Patriotism

Monday, 04 July 2016 08:12

Reich writes: "True patriotism isn't simply about waving the American flag. And it's not mostly about securing our borders, putting up walls and keeping others out. It's about coming together for the common good."

Robert Reich. (photo: unknown)

The Five Principles of Patriotism

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

04 July 16

e talk a lot about Patriotism, especially around July 4th, but we need also to take to heart its five basic principles.

First: True patriotism isn�t simply about waving the American flag. And it�s not mostly about securing our borders, putting up walls and keeping others out.

It�s about coming together for the common good.

Second: Real patriotism is not cheap. It requires taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going � being willing to pay taxes in full rather than seeking tax loopholes and squirreling away money abroad. Not just voting but becoming politically active, volunteering time and energy to improving this country.

Third: Patriotism is about preserving, fortifying, and protecting our democracy, not inundating it with big money and buying off politicians. It means defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard, not fewer.

Fourth: True patriots don�t hate the government of the United States. They�re proud of their country and know the government is a tool to help us solve problems together. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve our government, not destroy it.

Finally, patriots don�t pander to divisiveness. They don�t fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren�t homophobic or sexist or racist.

To the contrary, true patriots seek to confirm and strengthen and celebrate the �we� in �we the people of the United States.�

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

46 comments

Grief and Resistance: The Mass Grave Pipeline Action

Monday, 04 July 2016 08:11

DeChristopher writes: "This week I took action to express the grief that has been weighing on my heart ever since I read about Pakistan digging mass graves in anticipation of their climate change induced heat waves last month."

Tim DeChristopher. (photo: Douglas C. Pizac/AP)

Grief and Resistance: The Mass Grave Pipeline Action

By Tim DeChristopher, Tim DeChristopher's Website

04 July 16

n my trainings and workshops with activists, I always tell folks that we are most powerful when we are expressing our deepest personal truths. This week I took action to express the grief that has been weighing on my heart ever since I read about Pakistan digging mass graves in anticipation of their climate change induced heat waves last month. Even as someone who reads a lot of heartbreaking stories about climate change, the fact that we have now entered the age of anticipatory mass graves broke my heart in a whole new way.

When I saw the pictures of the long trench they dug as that mass grave, I realized it looked just like the trench that Spectra is digging through the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston for a new high pressure fracked gas pipeline. I felt powerfully called to connect the dots between those two trenches and climb into the one in Boston to reflect on this new age of anticipatory mass graves.

The morning began with around 200 people gathering, praying and singing before marching down the street to the Spectra's worksite for the West Roxbury lateral pipeline. The folks with Resist the Pipeline have been fighting this pipeline with direct action for nearly a year, with over 140 people arrested so far. For most of that campaign, the Boston police have allowed to activists to walk on to the site and temporarily stop work. This week, the cops began preventing any access into the worksite, so when we marched up we were met with a line of police using bikes as a barricade. We kept singing as we unsuccessfully looked for opportunities to get past the police into the trench.

Instead we stayed there in the street and had a religious service honoring our grief for the mass grave in Pakistan and all those to come. Rabbi Shoshana Friedman opened the service and was followed by powerful eulogies from Rev. Ian Mevorach, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Rev. Rali Weaver and Rev. Lindsay Popper.

Some folks carried two large images of the mass grave in Pakistan as it was filled with bodies.

Dying From the Heat in Pakistan

The spirit of this ceremony was one of heavy grieving and grappling with a traumatic world. I spoke about the need to combine that grief with resistance and hold both at once.

What we did next has not gotten much mention yet in most of the reports of this action. We left.

We had been outmaneuvered by the police who were in position with a wall of officers blocking the entire street. We probably had enough numbers to rush the line and perhaps get a few folks to the hole while others were arrested, but we were not prepared for that kind of blitz. We were holding the heavy energy of grief, and have not yet learned to simultaneously hold that energy along with the kind of energy that is needed for a game of capture the flag with the police. As I said in my speech, it might take us some practice to meet this new challenge of combining grief with resistance.

So we left and regrouped off site to figure out what to do next. We acknowledged the change in the logistical situation that required a shift in our tactics. We re-centered ourselves to be able to hold on to the spirit of love and the principles of nonviolence that have been established throughout the campaign even if we were moving with a different speed and energy. We strategized a plan of rapid approach, assigned different roles, and broke into groups to be able to support one another and move quickly and deliberately.

I think this quick adaptation was possible because the consistent long-term organizing done in that community had created a group bound in trusting relationships and rooted in principles. Everyone there had been trained in nonviolent civil disobedience by Resist the Pipeline trainers Marla Marcum and Cathy Hoffman. The heart of the group revolved around local residents like Mary Boyle with longtime ties to the neighborhood and to each other. Rabbi Shoshana and many of the other clergy had previously been arrested together and helped spiritually ground many of the resistance actions happening there for the last year. Those bonds of relationship and principle were too strong to be rattled by a little shift in the logistics.

A couple hours after we had left the site, we came back with speed and determination. The police were not expecting us, and we found the worksite completely open. When I saw an open path to the trench, I felt a surge of adrenaline and rushed forward. I jumped into the hole and eleven other people followed me into the trench, while another 40 or so swarmed over the site. I moved toward the far end of the trench opening, ducking under cross beams as I went. (One time I didn't duck enough, but that's where the adrenaline came in handy.) When I got to the end of the opening, I laid down right next to the pipe. I felt my heart pumping hard with excitement and I knew the trench was ours.

Raw video footage of our taking the trench:

As machines were powered down and work ceased on the pipeline, many of the workers began congregating right above me on a metal plate that stretched across the trench. Several of our supporters also leaned over taking photos and video of those of us in the trench. Soon I heard Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, minister at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, begin preaching people's mic style somewhere in the trench behind me.

Her words reminded me that I was not just there for an exciting rush into a pipeline trench. She helped ground me in the reality that I was there to recognize this trench as the mass grave that it is. I felt the adrenaline drain away and I settled into a period of deep reflection about all the kinds of death we are imposing on the world. In particular, I thought about my own mortality.

A week and a half before this action, I was at the funeral of my partner's grandfather. When he was interred, we walked past the open grave and leaned over to look at the urn with his ashes in the bottom. Now I felt like I was on the other side, in the ground, looking up from my grave.

Once the police cleared our supporters out of the area, all the people standing over my end of the grave were pipeline workers and cops. Most of the construction workers were heckling and sneering at us in their Texas accents, threatening to pour concrete over our bodies.

At some point I began to see them as the mourners looking at my body in the grave, and I was grateful that they had come to witness this. I even appreciated that their jeering and laughter brought a little levity to this somber ceremony. I found myself hoping that when I die, there will be some folks like those construction workers above my grave, laughing and reminding everyone that dark humor is better than no humor at all. The 50 bodies who ended up filling that mass grave in Pakistan were the ones who were unclaimed out of the 1100 who died in the heat wave. They had no one but the grave digger to say a final prayer over their bodies.

When the police cleared our supporters off the surface street, there were eleven who remained. These eleven were soon arrested and hauled away.

Next the police climbed down into the grave and told us that we were all under arrest. We didn't move. One officer grabbed my arm and pulled me into a sitting position while another one cuffed my hands behind my back. They moved on to handcuff Sophia Wilansky, who was laying on the other side of the pipe. While they cuffed her, I laid back down, which was now significantly less comfortable with my cuffed hands behind my back.

Once the cops had handcuffed all twelve of us in the hole, they came back to me and said that I could either walk out of the trench or they would have to carry me out. I said that I was willing to be carried. The cop had the confused look of someone who didn't think he was offering multiple serious options. He said that I could be hurt if they had to carry me out. I said I trusted them to find a safe way to get me out. He said that he or another one of his officers could be hurt trying to carry me up a ladder. I said that they shouldn't take that risk, and should leave me there until they could ensure their own safety. He asked how long I was prepared to stay in the trench. I said I was willing to stay there as long as they would leave me there. He asked how long, a day, a week? I said yes. He said I was being unreasonable. I said I thought this pipeline was unreasonable, and the officer walked away. I went back to reflecting on mass graves.

Four of the twelve in the trench decided to walk out rather than be carried, and they were taken away. Around that point the police decided to call in the fire department to extract us from the grave. Before long I heard the workers exclaiming how there were five or six fire trucks on the street. Firefighters were leaning out over the grave, smiling and taking pictures of us. Soon I could hear the clanging of their stretcher as they began extracting people at the other end of the trench.

I was the last one they raised from the grave. Several firefighters grabbed onto my shoulders, belt and feet, and they maneuvered me into the stretcher. They strapped me in and lifted the stretcher up to the surface. I had been in the shade for most of the nearly two hours I spent in the hole, and as they brought me up, I suddenly felt the warm sun on my face. I felt like I was reentering the world, snugly held in my stretcher cocoon.

I was lifted into the police wagon and was taken with the other seven who were lifted out of the grave to the Jamaica Plain police station. We were charged with disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and trespassing, and finally released around 9pm that evening.

Friday morning we appeared in court, and the eight of us faced a different plea bargain situation than the other 140 or so people who had been arrested resisting the West Roxbury pipeline. We were offered a six month pretrial probation and a six month stay away order of 500 yards from this or any other pipeline project. Two folks took that deal to bring some closure to their experience. But six others refused the offer and are willing to take the case to trial. Those six are myself, Karenna Gore, Nora Collins, Sophia Wilansky, Dave Publow, and Callista Womick.

We head back to court in Boston on July 29th, and I'm sure I will be sharing much more as we proceed through the legal system. And while we're tied up in court, I know the folks with Resist the Pipeline will continue their committed campaign to stop Spectra. Wednesday was a turning point in escalation in the campaign, so there will certainly be more excitement to come.

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