Reaching the U.S. Social Forum

After 5 days on the road, the People’s Freedom Caravan made its way into Detroit for the opening march and ceremony of the U.S. Social Forum. And the caravanistas did not arrive empty handed. The 5 days on the bus stopping from community to community, meeting our brothers and sisters in the struggle had left its mark. As we winded our way up from one U.S. border to the other, we had gained a sense of freedom – freedom from silence, freedom from hopelessness, and freedom from isolation. We heard the stories of the indigenous Ponca people, who stressed that our ancestors had made the way for our current path and purpose, and the stories from the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression who carry the torch for a long line of freedom fighters, and stories of ongoing struggles in St. Louis, Chicago, Toledo, and the communities we could not reach but word had gotten out. Once we finally reached Detroit, a city that was once one of largest stopping points on the Underground Railroad, we felt invigorated with a sense of purpose and history. We hope to keep reinvesting this energy into Detroit, now known as the most segregated city of the U.S. metro areas. We also hope to reinvest this energy on the journey home to each and every one of our own communities and beyond, reinforcing the fabric of shared community and shared hope for the possibility of better world and better United States.

Chicago: Purging of the Poor

On the final leg of our caravan heading north to the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, we joined Chicagoans for a march to Chicago’s City Hall to demand jobs, housing, and critical health care services.

We began at the site of Cabrini Green, a historic public housing project that has been mostly razed by the city of Chicago as part of its “Plan for Transformation,” which will ultimately raze or rehabilitate 25,000 public housing units in the city.

At its height, Cabrini Green was home to 15,000 people. Rather than maintain the housing over time, city officials chose not to invest in the community, leading to deplorable conditions that masked the web of community inside for those outsiders who act as judge and jury on its future. Now, the site is a ghost of the past community, with the high-rises gone, and about a third of the population remaining in row-housing that still stands.

A mix of affordable and public housing will be set aside in the new developments in the area for former Cabrini Green residents, but they’re too little too late for keeping intact the extended families that lived in Cabrini Green for generations. When Cabrini was destroyed, lease-abiding residents were given a “right to return” to new development, but many of those have seen their applications denied due to things like poor credit, a history of late rent payments, or criminal records in their families. Another option for residents was to take Section 8 housing vouchers, which can be used to subsidize rent. A vast majority of those who took that option have dispersed to other areas of Chicago, that are more “…segregated, isolated, and poor than Cabrini had been.”

Our march to City Hall began in a barren parking lot skirting the edge of a fenced off section of ground that used to hold towering housing projects. “Coming soon” said one design sketch posted on the wall of a building along our route.

The signs of new development encroaching on the space are everywhere, and its a development that looks vastly different from what came before. But as we wound through largely boarded up two story row houses, the outdoor social life of the remaining community was evident, suggesting once bustling streets. Men played dominoes at a table and clustered on sidewalks. Children rode their bicycles. A solitary grill smoldered next to a chair in front of boarded up doors.

The story of Cabrini Green’s demise is an old one, actually.

The history of the United States is rife with social engineering that disregards the value of intact social and familial communities, in the name of economic development or urban revitalization. Not surprisingly, these demolitions don’t happen in wealthy neighborhoods.

In Albuquerque, for instance, a lone house surrounded by the National Hispanic Cultural Center confronts visitors with the lost history of an entire swath of the historic Chicano neighborhood of downtown Barelas demolished in the name of “urban renewal” in the early 1970s. In that case, a significant portion of the traditional Barelas families were displaced, so that the area could be re-zoned for industrial use. The attempt to attract large industry just south of Albuquerque’s downtown failed, but not before the houses were razed. Eventually, public institutions like the NHCC filled the empty space.

The end results of these sorts of schemes to “improve” the urban environment actually has an overall effect that Lawrence Vale, a public housing expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls the “purging of the poor.”

A funny thing happened on the way to City Hall

Gentrification and displacement, lack of jobs, poor social services; our caravan joined with our Chicago companer@s to make demands on city leaders.

When we arrived at City Hall, our vibrant and highly diverse group were met by Walmart funded “protesters” wearing pristine white t-shirts emblazoned with the Walmart logo and a demand for jobs.

Can you say “twilight zone”?

We had been met by one of the largest sweatshop corporations in the world, trying to co-opt our march and rally to get their message on the evening news. Apparently, unions in the city have successfully blocked expansion of the retail giant into the city proper until they raise their minimum wage.

The battle over Walmart’s minimum wage in Chicago is long-standing, with the company being successfully blocked by the passage of a big-box ordinance in 2006 calling for $11.03 an hour, plus $3 in benefits. Yesterday, the company offered $8.75 an hour, which was met with outrage from union leaders.

Walmart supporters say the city can’t afford to turn up its nose at the jobs. But union leaders say Walmart can afford to pay the wage mandated by the big-box ordinance.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t make this investment out of a sense of corporate largess. They’re not gifting the money. They’re doing it because they have to invest in an urban market. Their stockholders are demanding it,” said union leaders in reply.

Rock on Chicago Labor!

Peabody Coal Protest in St. Louis

The People’s Freedom Caravan rolled into St. Louis last night and was joined by the bus representing Southern Echo and the people of Mississippi. We now have representatives from all across the Southern and Southwestern United States in our caravan. This morning we pulled up in front of Peabody Coal headquarters with the power of 3 buses full of rowdy caravanistas. The People’s Freedom Caravan gave it’s support to the people of St. Louis in demanding an end to the excessive consumption of taxpayer dollars by the massive, global energy corporation.

Peabody Coal, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, is seeking an incentive package from the City of St. Louis that would include a 10-year tax abatement on up to $50 million in new equipment and $11 million on building improvements, and a 50% break on earning and payroll taxes for new employees Peabody hires. Peabody Coal has already received $10 million in new market tax credits and now they are asking for another $61 million, all without a guarantee that they will stay in the city of St. Louis.

Peabody Coal’s massive tax breaks are just another example of corporate profits given priority over people and communities. The time for clean, renewable energy has certainly arrived, yet these fossil fuel companies continue to leech off of the taxpayers. Peabody Coal, like so many other corporations that sap our community resources, hides behind the guise of providing jobs. However, investment in renewable energy creates three times as many jobs as investment in fossil fuels. Coal-fired pollution also causes more than 23,000 premature deaths every year, and St. Louis was named the #2 Asthma Capital by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. And all this without any guarantee that Peabody Coal will even stay in the city!

The New Mexico delegation bound for the U.S. Social Forum was excited to participate in the protest outside of Peabody Coal’s headquarters today because we see the damage that fossil fuel corporations are doing to our country, and we realize that the only way to fight back against such massive forces is for many communities to join together and speak with one voice.

Not to mention, our allies on the Navajo Nation fight Peabody Coal Company every single day, in a historic and profound struggle to save their water and their land from the company’s rapacious quest for coal.

St. Louis residents passed by our protest on their way to the Cardinals game and stopped to ask why we were gathering and protesting. That kind of exchange is exactly why the caravan is important- we’re letting communities everywhere no that they’re not alone and we’re ready to take back our country!

Thank you St. Louis! On to Louisville…

Caravanistas protesting outside Peabody Coal headquarters.

People’s Freedom Caravan kicks off with visit to Ponca Nation

Casey Camp of the Ponca Nation addresses the People's Freedom Caravan

A fine black dust from Continental Carbon Black coats the trees, the wheat, and the wetlands. A city’s landfill sends its detritus on the wind to toss and tumble through the sacred burial ground of the Ponca people. The children are forbidden to swim in the natural springs. The land is incapable of providing organic food for families to eat. After a day of travel Friday on our way to the 2010 United States Social Forum, SWOPistas and companer@s from Southwest Workers Union in San Antonio, Texas were hosted in northeastern Oklahoma by the wonderful, extended Camp family, who are members of the Ponca Nation and leaders in the American Indian and environmental justice movement.

During our visit in Ponca City with the members of the Coyote Creek Center for Environmental Justice, the Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism, and the American Indian Movement, we learned not only about the brutal environmental devastation visited upon the Ponca Nation in the modern era by big corporate polluters, but also about the historic injustice that the state of Oklahoma represents in the United States.

The painful legacy of forced removal and relocation of almost 50 tribes to the state, broken treaties and stolen land, is compounded by a dominant Anglo society that refuses to acknowledge the past or make amends in the present. Instead, environmental racism is on vivid display, with hugely polluting industries located on the Ponca homeland on the south side of the town.

Green grass belies the deep contamination that exists from heavy industrial pollution in Ponca land

Continental Carbon Black, the huge Conoco Phillips Refinery, Ponca Iron and Metal, abandoned heavy industrial plants contaminated with heavy metals…they dot the landscape of the Ponca Nation land. Heavy poisonous metals permeate the air, dust the crops, sink into the groundwater.

His own children live in a radically different natural environment, from the time of his own youthful days growing up on the land, Micasi Camp said as he recounted the impact of the heavy industrial facilities on the land of the Ponca Nation. They can’t swim in the natural springs or eat fish they catch from the river.

“It’s a form of genocide. We can’t live on the land, grow food or drink the water,” he said.

To compound the injustice, Ponca City officials chose to locate the city’s landfill directly across the road from the Ponca tribe’s burial ground, which demonstrates a deeply ingrained disregard for the Ponca tribe’s almost 3000 members.

“When we come up here to put away our loved ones, to have our final ceremony, in this place that was established in 1891, we have to listen to bulldozers,” Casey Camp told caravanistas as we observed the close proximity of the landfill to the sacred site of the Poncas on a hill top overlooking the country side. “When there’s a wind, we find Walmart sacks and other trash.”

In the face of the historic injustice that permeates their present, the Ponca people are resilient and determined. They demand that companies cease their pollution. They insist the city remove its landfill. They retain their culture in the face of constant assimilationist pressures. They work in concert with their brothers and sisters cross country to end the multi-state, multi-national production and movement of community-killing fossil fuels to meet the needs of a society mired in wasteful consumption habits.

They met us in their community with open arms, welcoming us with food, stories and songs. Our meeting embodied what the social forum process is about: a space to share, build relationships, and strengthen our movement for justice.

Many thanks in particular to Casey and Dwain Camp for organizing our visit, and sharing the story of their people.

Just as we did in 2007, when we took a large delegation of New Mexicans to the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, we’re headed to Detroit cross-country in a caravan with a multitude of our friends and allies from across the southwest.

The People’s Freedom Caravan is stopping along the way, to share histories, culture and struggles with communities along the way. First, the Ponca Nation. Next up: St. Louis, Louisville, and Chicago, before heading in to Detroit for the five days of the social forum.

On the road to the 2010 United States Social Forum in Detroit

The People’s Freedom Caravan is a Social Movement on Wheels–a Convergence of Grassroots Communities along the way to the second United States Social Forum (USSF), happening June 22-June 26, 2010, in Detroit, Michigan.

We’re meeting up on the road, stopping in communities along the way to build a movement from the ground up, connecting our local struggles and creating a shared vision for another, better world.

Southwest Workers Union, SouthWest Organizing Project and Southern Echo have launched the South by Southwest  People’s Freedom Caravan to join with our movement for justice in Detroit, Michigan this June at the second United States Social Forum (USSF).

Along the way we’ll build community, inspire one another, foster hope, and create change. We’ll meet new people, learn about our shared histories and experiences, and strengthen our relationships.

SWOP youth say, Get on the Bus!