Our first community audit for 2012 has revealed dramatic paradoxes that make us all uncomfortable. We can choose to look away and allow walls to be built between us and a livable future or between us and our neighbors. We can also choose to look bravely at them knowing that we have no immediate solutions but that we are willing to bear witness to both the injustices and the actions of hope. We gain resiliency and hope in learning how to ask for what we really want with no guarantee of the outcome. We practice resistance by learning from an inactive marine who teaches us about endless pressure endlessly applied.
Communities of Radical Resilient Resistance understand a paradox described by author and activist Rebecca Solnit “Resistance is one of your obligations, but it’s also a pleasure and a way of stealing back hope.” Ryan Pleune, an organizer with Peaceful Uprising, remembers his Pilgrimage for Hope and how hope “shoved him out the door.”
Once we are “out the door” and “in the streets” we hear many people ask “what do you want me to do about it?” Our answer is in the form of a few stanzas from “Invitation” by Oriah Mtn Dreamer.
[pullquote align=”left”]I want to knowif you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
from “Invitation” by Oriah Mtn Dreamer[/pullquote]
An audit is conducted by various independent and third party agencies for the purpose of revealing data that an organization or system can use to make decisions and changes. For example, in 2006 there was an independent audit of School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) which revealed that executive bonuses were excessive. Three years later the bonus structure was changed. In 2011 The Department of Human Services posted a census audit that reveals 11.5 million undocumented immigrants are currently living in the United States. A year later several states are considering unconstitutional laws to enforce immigration on a local level.
Our community audits are a practice of sovereignty to demonstrate resistance to injustice and resilience towards systemic change that help make the status-quo obsolete. We will not allow rules and policies to be set by interests other than the people in our community. We are the stakeholders, not corporations or the U.S. Department of Labor. Our Hot Spot audit demonstrates corporate interests win over children and public lands. Our Cool Spot audit demonstrates that courageous people can stand up to those interests, demand what they really want in a human rights based campaign, and receive support from unlikely allies.
1st Quarter Audit Publication for 2012
Our community chose to support the activists and dreamers in the Salt Lake Dream Team, a local branch organizers focusing on getting the federal Dream Act passed; they also function as a source of empowerment within our local undocumented communities here in Utah to help people come out of the shadows and stand up for immigrant rights.
Peaceful Uprising chose to draw the connections between climate justice and social justice through supporting one of Salt Lake City’s very own front-line communities. With SB 1070, Arizona’s anti-immigration law, our nation takes one step closer to building a divisive wall between families, communities and the very ideals that holds this country together: democracy, freedom, and equality amongst all people. As SB 1070 is currently being heard in our nation’s supreme court, undocumented communities and their allies hold our collective breaths for a verdict later this summer.
The Salt Lake Dream Team this past Wednesday stood hand in hand with Peaceful Uprising and members of many other communities to stand together in solidarity behind our shared interest in building a movement that is based on the quality of life for all humans. We built and then de-constructed a literal and metaphorical wall of oppression, while singing together the powerful song “Why We Build the Wall” by Anais Mitchell.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”360″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHQNV3RVjGw[/youtube]This community of allies has been willing to connect the dots between climate change, resource extraction, globalized systems of power, Arizona’s SB 1070, Utah’s HB 497, Georgia’s HB87, and our nation’s perpetual use of literal and figurative walls to ostracize “the other.” This community came together to recognize that if we cannot stand up for each other’s dignity as human beings, how can we expect to care for the planet we live upon; this community realized we all need clean water, clean air and a healthy world for our families and friends to live. This is what real coalition building looks like; standing for and with each other because we understand that our struggles are one in the same. We continue to look towards work with the Salt Lake Dream Team and any other organizations willing to help us connect the dots of our common struggle; of our common dream.
[heading style=”2″]Hot Spot: Source of Injustice = Endless Pressure Endlessly Applied to halt Oil Shale and Tar Sands[/heading]Our community has been working through public comment, lobbying regulatory agencies and our legislature, and filing lawsuits through Western Resource Advocates. The oil-shale and tar sands speculative mining industry is killing the future of Utah’s Children. Corporate profits are being placed over people’s health and we have not received any adequate response via legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. We will continue along those avenues, but we will also add tactics of Non-Violent Direct Action that will increase with frequency and intensity until our goals are met. We are using this definition of NVDA:
[quote]Nonviolent direct action uses techniques outside of institutionalized behavior for social change that challenges an unjust power dynamic using methods of protest,noncooperation, and intervention without the use or threat of injurious force.[/quote]The targets are Governor Herbert, Utah legislature, the SITLA Board and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The campaign goal is to stop tar-sands leases in Utah and demand that the governor, legislators and SITLA board members plan for Utah’s children in regard to the climate crisis not for short term profit. To read more about the action we took and to see photos and videos, check out our post: Citizens’ Public Hearing against Tar Sands.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”360″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bapJdbvNnr4[/youtube]After the demonstration, an activist walked in to the SITLA public relations office to ask some questions since they refused to talk to media. NormaLee McMichael (SITLA PR) and Will Stokes (who is in charge of the SITLA tar sands interests) stated that Tar-Sands and Oil Shale are not a big part of the money received for school funding. This should mean that voiding the leases to Red Leaf Corporation and US Oil and Gas Corporation for oil-shale and tar sands extraction will not affect public schools.
If it is not a large part of how schools get money, then why should those two corporations get to lease that land instead of leasing it at the same value to other interests like, The Nature Conservancy, The Sonoran Institute, and Utah Open Lands? If the Oil Shale and Tar Sands leases are not giving schools a significant amount of money, is this an issue of favoritism by our legislators or our governor towards those two corporations?
Since SITLA is unable to provide the information about how much money Red Leaf and US Oil and Gas have paid for their oil shale and tar sands speculations and how long their leases last, we will issue a GRAMA request to get that info.
The issue at hand is how wealthy corporations are controlling policy. Red Leaf and US Oil and Gas along with other corporate interests in our public lands (both state and federal land) seem to be represented in our government more than Utah’s children. If SITLA does not agree with or does not want the pressure from citizens and future community audits, we encourage the SITLA PR office to make a statement to the governor and the Utah legislators that they will no longer lease lands for activities that are causing the climate disruption. Industry involved in Oil Shale and Tar Sands extraction is ruining Utah Children’s future. This is in violation of SITLA’s dual mission. SITLA must keep with their mission of protecting state lands in trust for Utahan’s future at the same time as earning profits to benefit public schools. If SITLA prioritizes the mission of holding our state land in trust for future generations, then the pressure is on the governor and legislators to provide adequate funding for schools since corporate leases on public lands are threatening the future of the children in those schools.
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