Natl. Park Service Cracks Down on ColdWater Spring Use

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Prepare for the enforcement of permits in the area of ColdWater Spring in Minneapolis, like never before.

For years the land surrounding the historic and sacred Cold Water Spring and well house has sat idly. Cold War-era research facilities of the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Mines as well as old FEMA offices have been abandoned, broken into, and boarded up time and time again.

The land used to be guarded by a barbed wire fence and gate that closed at night. In 2008, the spring and the nearby field were occupied by Mendota Dakota people and the American Indian Movement, who boldly claimed native sovereignty of the land during the dark days of the Republican National Convention that was hosted in St. Paul. They set up teepees and a sweat lodge; law enforcement tore them down; the occupying activists set them up again. In the end, they won 24-hour access for all-- the gates to the land came down.

(see press conference, interviews: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/05/18533493.php)

In January 2010, the land was transferred to the National Park Service from the federal Dept. of the Interior.

Steve Johnson works at the National Park Service office in St. Paul. He's the one you see for a free permit to use part of the land for events, or building or placing something there. The need for such permits has not been strictly enforced until this month of June-- after local movements raised the issue of sovereignty again with the Take Down Fort Snelling rallies of May 29 and 30, 2010.

(see some clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdFYRuZD4js)

At an informal meeting last week, Johnson said that the Park Service wanted to give the land to the city of Minneapolis, but they didn't want it. They wanted to give it to the Mendota people, but their tribe isn't recognized by the US, and all government entities have to make transactions with government-recognized entities. According to Johnson, other tribes, like the Shakopee, wanted the land but the Park Service didn't want to play favorites amid such deep factionalism.

According to George Spears of First Nations United, the Park Service has been invited to meetings around the fire by Cold Water Spring, multiple times. Mendota Dakota people and First Nations United meet at the spring every other Sunday at 5 pm, for a brief council. They want to work out something with the Park Service so it would recognize the land as sacred; something similar to the Park Service's deal with native people over Bear Butte. However, no Park Service representatives have showed up to these ongoing council meetings.

In these last weeks of June, the Park Service is clearing brush and buckthorn from the land and seeks volunteers.

Paul Labovitz, National Park Service superintendent of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), wrote that the earliest the run-down buildings could be removed is spring of 2011.

Speaking out about El Salvador; New documentary slated for this summer

MINNEAPOLIS, SATURDAY JUNE 12 – “One of my three addictions is El Salvador,”

Said Wayne Wittman, to those gathered at the Resource Center of the Americas to commemorate the life of Archbishop Romero. Wittman, Steve Boyer and Duane Krohnke spoke about their many visits to El Salvador in delegations with Augsburg College Center for Global Education, Peter Yarrow, Veterans for Peace, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and others.

Their most recent visit brought them to the massive marches commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, on March 24, 2010. Romero was one of the world’s great champions for the poor and oppressed, constantly speaking out against violence until 1980, when he was shot in the chest at the conclusion of Mass.

The American visitors to El Salvador saw "Monseñor: The Last Days of Oscar Romero” at its world premiere in El Salvador, and this summer the documentary about his life will be released in the U.S.

Many who gathered had visited El Salvador and shared insight on the causes of conditions there, including poverty, crime, & the impunity of war criminals, as well as the responsibility that Americans have—

to stop our military aid to Central America, change America’s policies of aggressive free trade, and shift immigration issues into the light of macro-economic crises rather than that of individual morality.

The U.S.’ Involvement in El Salvador

The US has been involved in El Salvador’s affairs at least since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, when Roosevelt reached out to Central America with a paternal attitude.

What the US accomplished by military force in the past, it now attempts to accomplish through trade agreements like CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Before 1980, the US used Low Intensity Conflict to protect its interests (corporations) in Central America. Oscar Romero was one of few in the Catholic Church who spoke out against Low Intensity Conflict strategies used in El Salvador: torture, rape, and cycles of indiscriminate assassinations & selective assassinations.

According to the 1989 volume War Against the Poor,

“US low-intensity conflict strategy in El Salvador utilized generalized terror against civilians in order to sow fear and shape the collective memory of the people. It was hoped that once terrorized the people could be intimidated into silence with lesser amounts of violence, that is, through selective terror. If over time selective terror proved an insufficient deterrent to the 'crimes of the poor,' then violence escalated accordingly.”

Between 1980 and 1992, the Salvadoran Civil war was fought in the context of the global Cold War, with Cuba and the USSR backing the Marxist-Leninist rebels and the United States backing the right wing military Salvadoran government. It was not just a proxy war of superpowers, but also an economic & psychological war against poor people's movements & their ability to organize from the bottom up.

The military fought the rebels with American guns and helicopters, paid itself with American aid money, and sent its officers to the School of the Americas in the state of Georgia, where they graduated with degrees in torture, assassination, mass murder and mass intimidation. Every November Americans protest this training at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia—though now the School is renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney remarked that El Salvador was our model of democracy. His ominous remark hung over the debate at the Resource Center of the Americas like a shadow. How many more countries will we spread democracy to, if democracy looks like civil war, impunity, kidnappings, and the endless intimidation of civilians?

This sort of democracy came to Nicarague as well as El Salvador, where Father Miguel D’Escoto told Minnesotan Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, years ago,

“A nation that wages war against the poor in Nicaragua will ignore the needs of its own poor. A country which in the name of ‘democracy’ fights wars against the self-determination of other peoples cannot remain a democracy. I have felt for a long time that the U.S. people will one day be the most repressed in the world.”

(War Against the Poor, Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1989)

President Mauricio Funes

On March 15, 2009, Mauricio Funes, a television journalist, became the first president from the FMLN party. Like President Obama, he is a center-left politician who decided to resume relations with Cuba in 2009. Also like Obama, his platform was transparency and revealing the corruption of past governments, but his popularity has declined throughout his first year in office.

Those marching on March 24 demanded an investigation of Romero’s death, the end of impunity, and refusal of amnesty to the perpetrators of the massacre, though many of them are dead.

First Recognition of Romero by Salvadoran Government

Today a mural with images of Romero hangs in the departure zone of the San Salvador International Airport. It was the government’s first recognition of Romero’s assassination as a tragedy. When his life was commemorated this year, the government recognized him as the country’s Spiritual Guide.

Roberto D’Aubuisson

The speakers' delegation passed a notable statue in San Salvador: a monument to Roberto D’Aubuisson, unmarked but for a plaque in remembrance of D’Aubuisson's son. Roberto D’Aubuisson founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which he led from 1978 to 1985. He was behind the paramilitary death squads and ordered the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980.

They saw a demonstration against D’Aubuisson at the monument, and a counter-demonstration. They saw a man in black spray-painting swastikas and epithets on the sidewalk near the monument; police stood by and later cleaned up the spray paint. The delegates noticed that police tended to avoid confrontation in the open.

The US embassy recognizes this as a culture of impunity. The embassy told the delegates that only 5% of common crimes result in convictions in El Salvador, corruption and impunity prevail, and there is a greater fear of crime in cities now than there was fear in the countryside during the Civil War.

CAFTA

The speakers spoke about the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by CAFTA when they projected their photos of shanty towns and cardboard homes in El Salvador.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement is a force of globalization acting on not only the imports & exports of economies, but the farms, villages, and towns of Latin America. It frees the flow of capital from country to country, but restricts the flow of people. Foreign companies are free to set up shop in countries where they can use up the natural resources, offer goods at prices that kill local competition, and bust unions mercilessly. When governments try to impose regulations for environmental protection or worker safety, they are often hindered by the free trade agreements, and multinational corporations can actually sue them for denying their rights to invest however they like.

Liberation Theology

Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said that when he gave food to the poor they called him a saint, but when he asked why people were poor they called him a communist. This association with communism is the main accusation made against Romero's sort of liberation theology, which still divides religious people in El Salvador.

The American delegates who spoke had noticed a sharp struggle between the rich, powerful, and very real Opus Dei and liberation theology. One encourages bodily suffering and endurance of suffering on earth for the rewards in heaven; the other wants to end the suffering of the poor.

Upcoming Trips to El Salvador

Americans continue to visit El Salvador to learn Spanish, listen and join in solidarity with people's movements. Minneapolis' Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is taking a delegation there this summer, and the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad is taking a special delegation there in November.

http://www.cis-elsalvador.org/

Gold Mining Controversy

The American delegates learned of a fight over potential gold mining in the Department of Cabanas. The Canadian mining company Pacific Rim opposes El Salvador's ban on gold mining for environmental reasons. Pacific Rim is prospecting for what it calls the El Dorado Project.

Three anti-mining activists from the Cabanas Environment Committee have already been killed in 2009: Gustavo Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera, and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto. Their murders fit the pattern of Low Intensity Conflict: mysterious, unidentified killers go after the opponents of the Church, the government and foreign companies, then the government says that guerrilla fighters are responsible and denounces their terrorist tactics.

Journalists and staff of the independent Radio Victoria have also received death threats for their coverage of this controversy in Victoria, Cabanas.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

• Send appeals to authorities:

• calling on them to order a prompt, full and independent investigation into the threats against Radio Victoria staff, and the recent killing of Ramiro Rivera and Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto, environmental activists in Cabañas department, and to bring those responsible to justice

• requesting that they ensure that full protection is provided to all Radio Victoria staff and volunteers, and to members of the Cabañas Environment Committee and their relatives who have received threats

APPEALS TO:

Presidente Mauricio Funes
(President)
Casa Presidencial
Alameda Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo, No. 5500
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax: +503 2243 9947

Fiscal General
(Attorney General)
Fiscalía General de la República
Final 4a Calle Oriente y 19a Avenida Sur, Residencial Primavera
Santa Tecla, La Libertad
San Salvador, El Salvador
Fax : +503 2523 7170
E-mail: astor.escalante@fgr.gob.sv
E-mail: cc: radelgado@fgr.gob.sv

Comisionado Carlos Asencio Girón
Director de la Policía Nacional Civil
(National Police Director)
Policía Nacional Civil
6ta. Calle Oriente entre 8va y 10ma
Ave. Sur, # 42 Barrio La Vega
San Salvador, El Salvador
E-mail: carlosascencio@pnc.gob.sv

Please send copies and messages of support to:

Radio Victoria
Av. José Matias Delgado #47
Victoria, Cabañas, El Salvador, C.A.
E-mail: radiovictoriapopular@yahoo.es

Peter Erlinder Jailed for Helping Rwandan Opposition

KIGALI, RWANDA – As President Paul Kagame’s regime faces elections,
as well as the International Criminal Tribunal proceedings about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, his administration has jailed opposition leaders and used other repressive tactics.
Things are heating up in Rwanda, and they’re starting to in St. Paul as well, where concerned Americans are pushing back.
St. Paul’s Peter Erlinder, law professor at William Mitchell Law School, long time human rights lawyer and Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda,
was arrested by Rwandan Authorities the morning of Friday, May 28.

Background

Erlinder had traveled to Rwanda's capital, Kigali, on May 23 to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Umuhoza was jailed in April, and released on bail one day later. According to Erlinder, her lawyer, “Ingabire was arrested on trumped-up, political thought-crimes, including: association with a terrorist group, propagating the genocide ideology, genocide denial, revisionism and divisionism, all arising from the “crime” of publicly objecting to the Kagame military dictatorship, and Kagame’s version of the Rwandan history.“
Erlinder is being held in a Rwandan prison and was recently denied bail. He is reportedly being interrogated at the Rwandan Police Force's Kacyiru headquarters.
In the run-up to the national election, the administration of President Kagame has engaged in increasing repressive tactics including shutting down independent media and jailing opposition candidates and their supporters under a vague charge of "genocide ideology" ¬the same charge Professor Erlinder is now accused of.
The Genocide Ideology Law is vaguely worded, requires no link to any genocidal act, and can be used to criminalize a wide range of legitimate forms of expression. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even the U.S. State Department have denounced it as a tool of political repression. The Kagame administration has used it widely to target political opponents.
The Obama administration has done little to address Professor Erlinder's situation. This is because the US backs the Kagame regime.
According to The Guardian, Erlinder’s arrest prompted other defense lawyers at the UN tribunal to refuse to participate in proceedings.

In a joint statement to the court and the UN security council, seen by the Guardian, more than 30 defense lawyers said they fear for their own safety, demanding Erlinder's release.
"We hereby resolve to postpone all activities, other than those which strictly conserve the interests of our mandates, until such time as the minimum conditions or the normal exercise of our missions have been restored by the removal of threats," the statement says. "[We are] aware of the dangers which immediately and directly threaten most of our number."

The People Push Back

Sarah Erlinder, Arizona attorney and NLG member said, "My father has made a career defending unpopular people and unpopular speech -- and is now being held because of his representation of unpopular clients and analysis of an historical narrative that the Kagame regime considers inconvenient. We can help defend his rights now by drawing U.S. government and media attention to his situation and holding the Rwandan government accountable for his well-being."
On the evening of Tuesday, June 8, Minneapolis groups rallied in support of Peter Erlinder, at the Federal Building behind Minneapolis City Hall. Communities United Against Police Brutality and Women Against Military Madness brought their message to the people downtown and the government workers as they were leaving work for the day. St. Paul supports are now planning a benefit event for Peter Elinder. They’ll meet on Sunday, June 13 at 1:00pm, in Room 105 at Hamline University School of Law, 1536 Hewitt Avenue, Saint Paul.

Though local universities don’t want to touch the issue, several organizations want to hold an event to raise awareness of Peter’s arrest, the role of defense attorneys, or a benefit to raise money for his defense. Representative Betty McCollum responded to pressure and introduced a bill in the House calling for the Government of Rwanda to release Peter Erlinder. Representative Keith Ellison has agreed to co-sponsor the bill. According, to Minnesota Public Radio, McCollum said the Rwandan embassy in Washington D.C. hasn't responded to repeated inquiries from her office. She said that pattern could eventually jeopardize the partnership between the two countries.
Only two representatives have commented on voting for House Resolution 1426.
Minnesotans continue calling their Congressmen and Secratary of State Hilary Clinton. This is not a local issue but a State Department issue. When an aide answered the phone this week, they said, "Minnesota? You must be calling about Peter Erlinder!"

Call and demand the immediate release of Professor Peter Erlinder:

Senator Al Franken
(202) 224-5641
Or send an email at franken.senate.gov/contact/


Senator Amy Klobuchar
202-224-3244
Or send an email at klobuchar.senate.gov/emailamy.cfm

Representative Keith Ellison
202-225-4755
Or send an email at forms.house.gov/ellison/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm

Representative Betty McCullom
(202) 225-6631
Or send an email at
forms.house.gov/mccollum/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm

Write to: publicaffairs@panet.us.state.gov

---Many thanks for the contributions of National Lawyers’ Guild Minnesota, Women Against Military Madness, The International Humanitarian Law Institute & Communities United Against Police Brutality to this article & cause. ---

May 29 Marches to Take Down the Fort

On May 29 and 30, protesters gathered outside historic Fort Snelling by Minneapolis, Minnesota. They protested the state & the maintenance of the Fort by the state, entering the grounds without paying the admission fee, by invitation from Dakota activists who passed freely by their rights under the Treaty of 1805.
Please read more about this long-running campaign at
http://www.takedownthefort.com/

Here I present the reflections of an observer.

There is a cycle to oppression and resistance. A cycle of give and take.
The cycle is like the oscillations of sound waves when people chant, sing, and pray together.
If it is steady, it has an effect; if the singers are disciplined, their song will grow and resound; if resistance continues no matter what sets it back, it will influence the whole world. Though oppression has been normalized, resistance is a part of all of us too; it speaks to each of us with relevance too.
It speaks even louder than fear to the wild core of our souls. It speaks with actions, and here I meekly summarize with words the way of human determination that will win back the world.
We will win because we must. Because the ecosystems must be restored, we must win back the planet with paradigms of Mother rather than of Lord.
he environment demands equilibrium again. This doesn’t come easy in the city, but suddenly the heat of the day is breezy as Dakota people gather and pray.
There was a prayer in the parking lot of St. Peter’s Church, before a group of Minnesota’s indigenous activists took up their signs and their staff, before they marched in a line over Mendota Bridge.
There was a prayer and a song that lifted their spirits and thanked Wakan Tanka for the day and their lives.
It was always said that Native American spirituality is incorporated in every aspect of life, like tobacco smoke permeating the smells of labor and cooking and cars and clothes.
It’s still true. Ceremonies and spirituality are still as important to culture as water is to the trees.
Yet I find myself in a culture somewhat drained, among the white American Left, a spectrum of people who shed religious and spiritual heritages, teachings, and hierarchies, like a porcupine sheds quills.
That is to say, we carry around both emotional baggage and spiritual confusion, though we don’t see it; when we feel threatened we do see it as our quills stand up, our baggage is apparent, and we throw off the spiritual and emotional inklings we carry like weapons against attackers. Our critiques of the spiritual and metaphysical are sharp and stinging.
The Left believes in hard work for justice, and when it sees neighbors pause to pray, it asks where divine justice was when we needed it.
Where was the Creator during the American genocide? Where was the Savior throughout over 500 years of colonization of the African and American continents? Where were the Spirits during China’s Great Leap Forward?
The refrain goes, ‘No, no, it’s not enough to pray. There’s a lot of work to do before justice has its day.’
So many arguments flit back and forth over this issue, which appeal to critical thinkers on an intellectual level but often surface because of the deep wounds where we stung ourselves.
The anarchist, anti-theist arguments drift away as smoke billows over the heads of activists and lifts up their prayers.
Today, May 29, 2010, a hot parking lot filled up with intention and power as indigenous people and allies came together: intentions to set things right, to remember injustices of the past, to let nature take its course with Fort Snelling.
The old military post at the confluence of Mississippi and Minnesota crumbles; large white families pour in for opening day of tourist season; the legislature allocates money to the Minnesota Historical Society for renovation and restoration of a most violent racist period.
Today white children picnicked in the shade of the Visitor Parking Lot with George Washington stickers on their T-shirts-- and observed native children carrying banners and clapping and shouting along with Dr. Waziyatawin
at the megaphone, in the shade outside the Fort.
Wandering white adults enjoyed Memorial Day weekend with a cigarette atop the Fort’s reinforced rotunda, looking down over the cheering and chanting brown people who came to meet them. Their stickers bearing dead presidents showed their casual monetary support for the Fort that was once the military’s defense of traders and settlers, against the Dakota people in its concentration camp downhill.
Tax-payer funding was challenged and, in a way, so was the entire consumer routine of our lives. Why continue rebuilding this model of the original foundation of Statehood? So that future generations can reenact settler life in elementary school, reenact the Civil War in middle school, tour Cold War sites in high school, and then enlist against the War on Terror??
Someone waved a sign that read, ‘They don’t have reenactments at Auschwitz.’
I’ve been to Auschwitz.
Rather than historical reenactments, I saw the words of Churchill greeting tourists: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
In that way, history too has a wavelength. History is a turning oscillation of similar events. Only by learning—by Consciousness – do we get to higher planes called the future.
It takes discipline to learn, to open your mind, to change the song sung by the generations, in the same way it takes discipline to chant, to sweat, to endure these afternoons with messages for the masses while staying on your toes between barricading Sheriff cars and plain-clothes police.
How will Mnisota’s wheel turn now?
Will the big wheel of fear turn and grind us down, or will we switch gears like equal peers, leaving behind the racist fears?
Latinos and allies met the native marchers at the Fort to protest all the steps backward our nation takes. The Arizonan law against illegal immigration, SB1070, was heavy on the hearts of those who walked from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement building to Fort Snelling.
As speakers related at the megaphone, already their friends and family down south were being harassed & pulled over by cops in the state where brown skin is probable cause for suspicion of illegal immigration. The northern blue states would not be immune to this case of racial profiling; in the past legislative session a similar law was proposed for Mnisota. It had just a few sponsors—Congress people who we will not vote for again—but next year it will be reintroduced as if it made sense.
How will the wheel turn? When will we find the frequency of harmony and peace?
Maybe it can’t be found in this world of well-funded violence and state-supported ignorance—but it can be created by people, powerhouses of conscious energy that we are.
The sacred staff touched the Fort’s stone wall. The cheers rose up for one and all. People harmonized in solidarity: Dakota people, SEIU, MIRAC, First Nations United, and CUAPB. The chants grew louder:
‘Take Down the Fort!’
By their rights native people entered, presented the treaty of 1805, and invited everyone gathered to invade the Fort and educate from inside.
Within the visitor center and ‘historic’ re-creation, no marker mentions the imprisonment of displaced native people or the hanging of leaders.
With history preserved in a supposed moral vacuum, with costumed actors firing canons every day on site, dark days are ahead in the land of the free and the home of the hidden mass graves.
In spite of it all, these people standing up for their rights have an attitude of gratitude towards the spirits they thank. It sounds so cliché, but it’s what we need to have strength to fight another day:
an attitude of gratitude, humility, disciplined persistent positivity.
That’s how we can influence history’s waves so that they do indeed arc towards justice in the end.