Original Peoples

On his second day in office as president of the United States, Barack Obama issued an executive order to make good on his promise to shut down the Guantánamo Bay incarceration facility in Cuba. Nearly at the end of his second term as president, Obama has not yet realized his promise. The act of holding rendered people continues.
It is hardly surprising to the people when their political representatives fail to make good on their pledges. It is all too common in a system that the ruling classes bill as “democracy.”

In his article, “How Genuine Are NGOs?” Joseph Mudingu stated that NGOs “are the vehicles through which the exploiters seek to influence the opinions of ‘civil society’.” Thus it would not be surprising, given America’s pivot to Asia in response to its waning economic influence, that some NGOs would be prodded to excoriate a designated enemy — even though that enemy country does not surround other countries with its military bases, neither does it threaten violence nor militarily attack other countries; conv

Mainstream media would have most of us believe that the current struggle at Standing Rock, North Dakota is all about clean water – that its only focus is stopping the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from running through Indigenous reservation land. And, yes, it is about these things. But while such a narrative may create “hot headlines,” it fails to capture the full truth and essence of what‘s really going on there.

Government officials and business people today routinely negotiate: “We’d like to extract the oil.” Or gas, or such and such a mineral.  Water? “Oh don’t worry, we’ll see to that too….”
But they’re not angels, and their bottom line is profit, so Nature and human beings have a problem having enough to drink, and to survive, not just along Kabul River, but also along the Missouri and Mississippi of the Standing Rock Sioux.
They craft the ‘legal’ rules of the industry, and embellish their plans with ‘democracy, or development, or rights’.

They say that home is where the heart is. If this is so, my heart must be of the restless variety, for I’ve changed the location of home some forty plus times during my adult life. Apparently I’m not finished yet.

We should be able to say ‘no.’ And our ‘no’ should be heard.
— Joe Pierre of the Ktunaxa Nation speaking regarding any development in Qat’muk, Ktunaxa territory

Thousands of Native Americans resurrected the fighting spirit of their forefathers as they stood in unprecedented unity to contest an oil company’s desecration of their sacred land in North Dakota. Considering its burdened historical context, this has been one of the most moving events in recent memory.

I can’t believe it, but then I can believe it, or I must believe it. These are compliant times, where people in the US workforce are kowtowed and then for years these multiple generations in the workforce have thrown in the towel and been so bullied by the Politically Crap Corrective Collective Group-Think that they are not even human — they can’t even rage against the injustice befalling them. I have both taught and worked alongside people who just believe deep down there’s no sense in fighting the powers that be, and that’s it, too bad, sure, but what can we do about it?

In this sedition we bring you an exclusive interview with prison inmate Melvin Ray, secretly filmed inside Holman Prison in Alabama. Melvin is a member of the Free Alabama Movement, a national organization against mass Incarceration and prison slavery. They have teamed up with the IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, to organize the largest prison strike in history, set to kick off on September 9th.