USSF
Email this pageWorkshop Notes: Randa Solnick
USSF June 2007: My notes from programs/ workshops I attended
Randa Solick, Santa Cruz WILPF
Welcome program: Recognition we're here on Cherokee land, speaker Cherokee 'auntie': “We believe in multi-generational trauma; what happened to our ancestors gets passed down to us. So we're working to bring back some of the ceremonies, language, values, and working with our young people to bring back our traditional values again, which allowed us not to have police, lawyers, jails - and gave us our sense of well-being.”
DISARMAMENT and the U.S. World Social Forum, June 27-July 1
DISARM: Dismantle the War Economy committee sponsored or co-sponsored five workshops at the USSF and we were generally pleased with the results. In addition, Linda Richards of the DISARM team managed to present a statement on behalf of WILPF to the final plenary, calling for more emphasis on demilitarization in any future Social Forum. Other goals of the forum – economic justice, human rights, universal health care, etc. – cannot be realized while more than half of our tax dollars are going to feed the war machine.
A War Economy or an Economy for Peace?
Sound files from A War Economy or an Economy for Peace? |
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The lead USSF workshop of the DISARM Committee was A Military Economy or an Economy of Peace?
Happily staff and key leadership from POCLAD, National Priorities Project, War Resisters League (WRL), Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, UFPJ, Western States Legal Foundation, Students for a Democratic Society and the new Bite the Bullet War Profiteering Education and Action Network all joined us to share grim information on the war economy, its profiteers and its weapons of death.
During the first hour we concentrated on who profits and who pays in the nuclear weapons industry, in space militarization and bio-weapons research, robotics and conventional weapons programs. We shared brief descriptions of each program, and asked which corporations (and universities) are promoting and profiting from them. We also talked about who pays, including tax payers (with more than half of our taxes going to the U.S. military.) We discussed cuts in many social services, and the terrible price paid by Native Americans whose lands have been used for 80% of nuclear programs, for bombing ranges, chemical weapons storage, uranium mining and bioweapons testing.
During the second hour we explored non-violent ways to end war profiteering and develop a peace economy. We shared many ideas for future action and public education. In the process we of course shared WILPF's extensive resources for the task. We also introduced the new Bite the Bullet Network which grew out of the Stop the Merchants of Death conference WRL and WILPF co-sponsored in Minneapolis last September.
Jody Dodd on KPFA
WILPF membership and outreach co-ordinator Jody Dodd speaking to a Pacifica reporter during the opening march of the US Social Forum.
»War, Militarism and the Prison Industrial Complex
Sound files from the War, Militarism and the Prison Industrial Complex plenary:
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Thursday June 28th
When the U.S. government launched the "War on Terror" and established the Department of Homeland Security, this meant an increased use of military might by the government against all critics of U.S. domination - at home and abroad. Today, the United States continues to flex its murderous, military might all around the globe. Meanwhile, under the guise of security, local, state and federal governments pump more money into building more prisons, detention centers, and border walls, and directing an increasing number of police and agents to the streets to conduct raids and to squash the peoples' opposition. As the U.S. government threatens to invade, bomb and sanction more countries, and as more and more people in the United States are thrown into prison or
subjected to state violence, we have to answer the question of what it will take to stop the U.S. government's war on the peoples of the world.
Gulf Coast Reconstruction in the Post-Katrina Era
Sound files from the Gulf Coast plenary:
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| Daniel Castellanos on black brown solidarity
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On Katrina as a capitalist and racist human rights crisis |
| Dr. Beverley Wright on the transformation of poor neighborhoods into "green space" |
The destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita exposes the historic forces of genocide, slavery, and militarism, as well as widespread exploitation, white supremacy, and sexism. The total devastation demonstrates the environmental crisis facing the world; and highlights local, state and federal governments' abandonment of low-income communities and communities of color, including immigrant communities, and their women, children, elders, and disabled. The ongoing struggle to win the right of return for all displaced people and the right of working people to return to their jobs, including in the public sector and especially in the public schools, points to growing struggles against gentrification and massive privatization - the right to housing, education, health care, to all public services, and the right of workers to collective bargaining in their workplaces. These struggles also point to the need for new strategic alliances among organizations in the African American, Indigenous, immigrant and other communities of color, and among working people, women, and queer communities to make our vision of Gulf Coast reconstruction a reality.
Opening March video of the US Social Forum
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