Presenters: Anthony Ingraffea, Robert Howarth, and Keith Schue
From the Organizers:
This press conference is being held on the two year anniversary of New York State’s ban on high volume hydraulic fracturing, and will point out that New York State, which had the wisdom to ban HVHF, is now consuming shale gas extracted in other states in record amounts, with no end in sight.
Native-American Faithkeeper, Human Rights Advocate, Environmental Activist
From the Organizers:
As a closing event for the ArtRage exhibition of Robert Shetterly’s Americans Who Tell The Truth portraits, we will proudly host a presentation by Oren Lyons.
The law says if you poison the water, you’ll die.
The law says that if you poison the air, you’ll suffer.
The law says if you degrade where you live, you’ll suffer…
If you don’t learn that, you can only suffer.
There’s no discussion with this law. -Oren Lyons
Oren Lyons is a member of the Onondaga and Seneca nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. As an activist for indigenous and environmental justice, Oren works with communities across the globe. As a Faithkeeper, he upholds the history and traditions of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga and Seneca. Oren often addresses modern-day conflicts by sharing traditional views on the law of nature. When he says “You can’t negotiate with a beetle”*, he implies that nature will respond to climate change whether or not humans do.
Oren’s dedication to the cause of Native and environmental rights has garnered him many accolades, including an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from his alma mater, Syracuse University. Awards include the Rosa Parks Institute for Human Rights Elder and Wiser Award, the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations, the National Audubon Society, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Lyons serves on the board of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and is board chairman of Honoring Contributions in the Governance of American Indian Nations. He is also remembered for his time as a lacrosse player and is Honorary Chairman of the Iroquois Nationals. In 1989 he was named Man of the Year in Lacrosse by the NCAA. His legendary performance as goalkeeper for Syracuse University, with Jim Brown on the undefeated 1957 national champion team, led to the induction of Oren R. Lyons, Jr. into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. He was most recently invited to speak at the funeral of Muhammad Ali.
On Sunday, October 16, 2016, Vanessa Johnson will perform her one-woman show "I'm Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired," her tribute to civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. The show is based on testimonies and interviews of Ms. Hamer, primary documents from various U.S. archives, and the voices of other Civil Rights Activists who knew her. It includes spoken word, songs, audience participation and monologues.
Ms. Hamer was the youngest of 20 children and was 6 years old when she started working cotton fields in Mississippi. She began working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1962, was a founding member and Vice President of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and was called the “spirit of the Civil Rights Movement.” She said, “Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.”
Vanessa Johnson, who also wrote the show, is a Griot, writer, playwright, actor, fiber artist, museum consultant, community activist, historian, and an educator. She will be accompanied during this performance by Berny Williford.
*A Griot is a West African poet, musician, storyteller, historian and/or praise singer.
Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.
The ArtRageous Players present a dramatic reading of Project Unspeakable, a new play about the 1960s assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy. Twelve local actors play dozens of roles live at ArtRage Gallery.
Project Unspeakable was inspired by James Douglass’ groundbreaking and meticulously researched book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It was written by playwright Court Dorsey and associate playwrights Debbie Lynangale and Steve Wangh, based on extensive research about the four assassinated leaders.
Through the medium of live theatre, the playwrights’ intention is to challenge the silence that for decades has surrounded these four “unspeakable” assassinations (“unspeakable” being a term Douglass borrows from renowned Trappist monk Thomas Merton). In so doing, they hope to shed light on the “unspeakables” of today – the officially covered-up crimes on the part of elements within the U.S. government and their corporate allies that have led to or worsened the multiple crises that currently beset our country and the world.
The play includes the words and stories of courageous individuals who, despite government intimidation, refused to be silent about what they knew about these assassinations. And it calls on all of us to examine our own responses over the years to such crimes, then and now, and to consider the potential for responsible action.
On Being Raised by Radicals & Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood
From ArtRage Gallery:
As part of our speaker series during our Americans Who Tell The Truth exhibition, Frida Berrigan, daughter of Philip Berrigan, speaks at ArtRage about her dad and new book It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood.
The book illustrates how parents can create lasting and meaningful bulwarks between their kids and the violence endemic in our culture by considering how to raise thoughtful, compassionate, fearless young people committed to social and political change without scaring, hectoring or scarring them with all the wrongs in the world.
Her parents, Phil Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, were a former priest and nun who became nationwide icons for their prophetic witness against war and nuclear weapons, which sometimes resulted in long jail sentences. Frida grew up in the community they helped found, Jonah House in Baltimore, and becoming a parent herself has forced her to come to terms with her own upbringing in new ways. She offers a unique perspective on parenting that derives from hard work, deep reflection, and lots of trial and error.
Author and Activist
Miko Peled, son of an Israeli general and grandson of a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, has become an advocate of Palestinian rights and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which advocates boycotting and divesting from companies that profit off Israeli colonization of Palestinian land and other attacks on Palestinians.
In his 2012 book, The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, Peled chronicles how his views transformed from the Zionism of his childhood to unabashed support for Palestinian rights after his niece Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber.
This talk is also available as a 58 minute podcast on iTunes.
Today the U.S. and its allies are entangled in wars both known and unknown throughout much of the world, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Pakistan. What have we learned in the years and wars since 9/11, and where do we go from here?
This video features a short introductory talk by Donna Marsh O'Connor, who lost her pregnant 28 year-old daughter Vanessa on 9/11. Donna is a national spokesperson for
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.
Next is a talk by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Ray served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from JFK to George H. W. Bush, and from 1981 to 1985 briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers.
Introduction by Caleb Schwartz, President of Binghamton University Peace Action.
A talk by Cornell student activist Robert Schooler. This is the first of 11 lectures in the GMO WTF! series, and it includes a video appearance by Frances Moore Lappe.
Political Analyst Judith Bello Returns From Syria;
Will Speak At ArtRage Gallery August 30
Activist and political analyst, Judith Bello, will report on her recent week-long visit to Syria with a seven-member U.S. Peace Council delegation at 7 p.m., this Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at ArtRage Gallery, 505 Hawley Avenue in Syracuse.
The U.S.P.C. delegation met with leaders of various NGOs, religious and civil society groups, as well as high-level government officials. The delegation held an extended private session with President Bashar al Assad.
This was Bello’s second fact-finding mission to Syria. A student of the Middle East and West Asia, Bello has taught in Iraqi Kurdistan and, several years ago, traveled with Code Pink to the Waziristan region of Pakistan to meet with surviving family members of hunter/killer Reaper drone attacks. She was among the very first arrested, tried and jailed protesting Hancock Air Force Base’s Reaper drones.
Bello, of Rochester, is on the Administrative Committee of UNAC, the United National Antiwar Coalition.
Despite the administrative moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State, we have seen an unprecedented proliferation of fracked oil and gas infrastructure development, as well as a dramatic increase in our use and dependency on fracked gas. United Against Fossil Fuels is a new coalition of over 30 grassroots, frontline, and environmental groups that has formed to stop this buildout and challenge the systemic causes of our fossil fuel dependency once and for all.
Two major projects rapidly under construction in New York, The SPECTRA-AIM PIPELINE in Westchester County and the CPV VALLEY POWER PLANT in Orange County, along with pending approvals for several pipelines, compressor stations, power plants, and storage facilities, all demand urgent action. As a result of this infrastructure, environmental and public health harms are already underway. Our use and dependency on fracked gas and our acceptance of radioactive waste also create unacceptable harm in both New York and Pennsylvania.
The powerful anti-fracking movement must urgently re-engage; our work is not yet done. We stand on the precipice of an irreversible public health and climate change crisis. We must rebuild our movement now to stop fracking infrastructure.
Join us to DEMAND that our elected officials and state agencies immediately "HALT THE HARM". When the health and safety of New Yorkers are at risk, Governor Cuomo has an obligation to act immediately. We demand an immediate halt to the construction of the CPV Power Plant and Spectra-Aim Pipeline. We further demand a total rejection of state approvals for ALL pending oil and gas projects. Finally, we demand that incentives for gas be removed from all state regulatory proceedings
This is the Saturday Night Plenary from the 2016 Left Forum, held May 20 -22 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power."
Moderators:
Bhaskar Sunkara and Glen Ford
Panelists: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a writer, public speaker and activist living in Philadelphia. She writes on Black politics, housing inequality and issues of race and class in the United States. She is the author of the forthcoming From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, published by Haymarket Books in Fall 2015. She is an Assistant Professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.
Kshama Sawant is an activist who brings a passion for social justice to her work. As a member of the Seattle City Council, now in her second term, she has been a voice for workers, youth, and the oppressed. After earning her PhD in economics, Kshama moved to Seattle and began teaching at Seattle Central Community College, Seattle University, and the University of Washington Tacoma. She joined Socialist Alternative in 2009, and since then has helped organize demonstrations for marriage equality, participated in the movement to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a leading presence in the Occupy Movement. In November 2013, she defeated a 16-year incumbent Democrat to become the first socialist elected in a major US city in decades and the only Councilmember in Seattle outside the Democratic Party establishment. Kshama has consistently used her position to expose the ties between powerful corporate interests and a majority of the city's politicians - all Democrats. After being at the forefront of the movement that won a $15/hour minimum wage, Kshama helped win critical funding for homeless people in the City budget.
August H. Mintz is a professor of political science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, August H. Nimtz is the author of several books including Lenin’s Electoral Strategy (2014) and Marx, Tocqueville and Race in America (2003). His essays on Marxism, race and politics have appeared in leading journals and publications and have been translated into many languages.
Debbie Bookchin is an investigative journalist, author, and former press secretary to U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders. She has published in The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, HarperCollins' Best Science Writing and many other venues. She is coauthor of The Virus and the Vaccine (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) and recently coedited and introduced a new book of essays by her father, Murray Bookchin, called The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Verso Books, 2015).
This is a panel from the 2016 Left Forum, held May 20 -22 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power."
This is a panel from the 2016 Left Forum, held May 20 -22 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power."
From the Organizers:
The Sanders campaign has drawn tens of thousands into massive, enthusiastic rallies for "a political revolution against the billionaire class". Grassroots organizations like "Labor for Bernie," "People for Bernie" and "#Movement4Bernie" swelled around the country. How do we continue the fight against the billionaire class after the primaries? Do we need a new party for the 99%? Can this be a step towards revitalizing the labor movement? Come discuss these questions and more with leaders of the movement.
Panel Chair:
Bryan Koulouris is the National Organizer for Socialist Alternative.
Panelists:
Charles Lechner is with People for Bernie.
Philip Locker is the national spokesperson for Socialist Alternative and a founder of #Movement4Bernie.
Micah Landau is with Labor for Bernie.
Kshama Sawant is Seattle's socialist City Councilmember. She was initially elected in 2013 as an open socialist fighting for a $15 an hour minimum wage. After Kshama initiated the "15 Now" movement, Seattle became the first city in the country to win 15, and that victory rapidly spread to other cities across the country. Kshama was re-elected in 2015 with widespread labor support while she campaigned for housing justice. She spoke alongside Bernie Sanders at rallies addressing thousands in Seattle.
Brian Zbriger is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Binghamton University. He will discuss why palm oil plantations are expanding in Southeast Asia, how this is negatively impacting the environment, and how citizens and consumers are working to address the problem.
Swanson will speak about and take questions on a variety of approaches to resisting, reducing and eliminating war, from counter-recruitment in schools, ending the draft, and conscientious objection, to lobbying, protesting, and dramatically disrupting the machinery of war. He will focus, however, on the process of educating people to recognize false justifications for war and to reject them.
Swanson argues that, while the prevention of a U.S. bombing campaign in Syria in 2013 and the upholding of a nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015 left much to be desired, they also provide grounds for encouragement, and were built on the public understanding of the lies about Iraq that had been promoted in 2002-2003. Swanson argues for a different understanding of current U.S. wars in Western Asia from that most often promoted on television. Frightening beheading videos, he suggests, were intended to draw the United States into war, and succeeded only because the U.S. public is not yet sufficiently resistant to such manipulation.
Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, NY; April 22, 2016
As 171 nations gathered Friday morning to sign the Paris Agreement, and most environmental organizations hailed this as an “historic” achievement, The Climate Mobilization staged a die-in, collapse scenario outside the United Nations to demonstrate the truth of this agreement: it puts us on a path to a 3.5°C temperature rise and the collapse of global civilization.
Instead of the “carbon gradualism” of the Paris agreement, protesters demanded a WWII-scale climate mobilization to rapidly eliminate emissions and draw excess greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.
How Dangerous are GMO Crops to Your Health and to the Environment?
British Scientist Dr. Jonathan Latham talks about the new and old research into the hazards of GMOs and the lack of regulatory supervision in the United States.
This discussion followed a screening of the 2014 documentary "Drone," and features whistleblower Christopher Aaron, Kambale Musavuli (Friends of the Congo), and ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern.
From the Organizers:
Hosted by the Community of Living Traditions - a multifaith intentional community dedicated to social justice — this working conference will link anti-war organizing with the struggle to decolonize our faith traditions from racism, Islamophobia and empire. It will be an interactive, working conference that will follow up on the work done at the Interfaith Conference on Drone Warfare held at Princeton Seminary in January 2015, including building on the Interfaith Letter on Drone Warfare which was sent to President Barak Obama and the U.S. Congress.
Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, Muslim Peace Fellowship, Westchester Coalition Against Islamophobia, Standing Together Against Racism and Islamophobia, WESPAC, United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC), Muslims for Ferguson, Middle East Crisis Response, Veterans For Peace
The rally will focus on the AIM pipeline, and other pipelines in our region and beyond.
Speakers will include:
Hudson Riverkeeper - Paul Gallay Delaware Riverkeeper - Maya van Rossum Earth Guardians - Rachel Marco-Havens & Aidan Ferris Nuclear Expert - Paul Blanch Protect Orange County - Pramilla Malick Resist AIM - Courtney Williams New York State Assemblywoman Sandy Galef Food and Water Watch – Barbara Hough Peekskill Mayor Frank Catalina Community Climate Initiative – Lisa Moir SAPE Co-Founders and Affiliates
Ed Kinane welcomes press and supporters, introduces Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, and provides an update about the Jerry Berrigan Memorial Blockade and upcoming "Mass Mobilization to Stop the Drone Wars" at Creech air base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
Mary Anne Grady Flores, who was released from the DeWitt County jail on Monday [3/7/16], discusses the scope of Pres. Obama’s drone program, the impact on victims, and the attempt to silence witnesses to the drone assassinations internationally. She provides an update on the stay of her jail sentence for violating an unconstitutional Order of Protection and the appeals to the NY Court of Appeals that have been filed to challenge the legality of the Orders of Protection, supposedly to protect the air base commander from nonviolent protesters.
Beth Harris, Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace, shares the ACLU's call to limit the next president's power to wage drone warfare and the importance of breaking the government’s silence about the selection of drone targets and accounting for the actual killings that have occurred due to this policy.
Harry Murray, who will be sentenced at 8pm, discusses the prohibition during his trial of disclosures to the court the impact of drone warfare on children. He concludes that quashing this evidence hampers democracy and governmental accountability. He addresses the need for civil disobedience to counter the human rights abuses inflicted by drone policy.
Father Tim Taugher, Pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Hillcrest, NY, and Scott Lauffer, Chair of the Susquehanna Group of the Sierra Club, will both speak to the message of this momentous work on our "common home" that covers the Earth's environment, with an emphasis on climate change as well as morality and social justice issues. The Pope speaks to non-Catholics and Catholics alike.
Catherine & Megan Holleran take viewers on a tour of their family's property, currently under eminent domain threat from the Constitution Pipeline, which will carry fracked gas from the wells of Pennsylvania to upstate New York.
They are joined in the second half of the video by Alex Lotorto of Energy Justice Network.
Finance.
Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century
connected? Inthis
talk, Jason W.
Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a
common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature, including
human nature. Drawing on environmentalist, feminist, and Marxist
thought, Moore offers a groundbreaking new synthesis: capitalism as a
“world-ecology” of wealth, power, and nature. Capitalism’s
greatest strength—and the source of its problems—is its capacity
to create Cheap Natures: labor, food, energy, and raw materials. That
capacity is now in question. Rethinking capitalism through the
pulsing and renewing dialectic of humanity-in-nature, Moore takes
readers on a journey from the rise of capitalism to the mosaic of
crisis and limits today.He
shows how thinking about humanity as part of nature is key to
understanding our predicament, and to pursuing the politics of
liberation and sustainability in the century ahead.
Bio
Jason
W. Moore is Associate Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, where he teaches world history and world-ecology. He is
author ofCapitalism
in the Web of Life(Verso, 2015)
and editor ofAnthropocene
or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism(PM
Press, 2016). He writes frequently on the history of capitalism,
environmental history, and social theory.
Moore is presently
completingEcology
and the Rise of Capitalism,
an environmental history of the rise of capitalism, and with Raj
Patel,Seven
Cheap Things: A World-Ecological Manifesto–
both with the University of California Press. He is coordinator of
the World-Ecology Network.
Many of his essays can be found on his website: www.jasonwmoore.com.
