April 05, 2009 By Omar Barghouti
and Justin Podur

Omar Barghouti is an activist and writer based in Palestine. He was one of the early advocates of a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions strategy against Israel's occupation and apartheid policies. He was one of the headline speakers of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2009. I interviewed him in Toronto on March 2, 2009.

Justin Podur (JP): Perhaps we should start with an outline of the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), and the demands of the call.

Omar Barghouti (OB): The BDS call is based on an analysis that the oppression of Palestinians has three basic forms. First, the occupation and colonization of those lands occupied since 1967. Second, the denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees forcibly displaced in 1948 and since. Third, the system of racial discrimination against the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel. The demand is to end these injustices: to end the occupation of the lands occupied in 1967, to allow the right of return to Palestinian refugees, and to end the apartheid system against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

An interview with Raquel Gutiérrez
Stefan Frank and Marcela Olivera
March 3, 2008

Bolivia - Last November, Olivera and Frank interviewed Gutiérrez during her brief visit to Bolivia. The following is an english translation of their conversation.

Question: In Europe, it is generally believed that Latin American governments have turned rapidly towards the left (Chávez, Lula, Kirchner, Morales, Correa) and that they identify themselves as part of a new wave of leftist politics in Latin America. Do you agree with this concept?

Raquel Gutiérrez: It is clear that the opposition to neo-liberal measures and the struggles following the terrible privatizations, plunder, devaluation of labor, and all the other disastrous happenings of last two decades, have led to the return of what is now being called a “progressive” government.

The experience of Venezuela is very positive; the experience of the other three countries could end up being very similar; although each has its particularities. But what we are experiencing are governments that claim to be assuming a leftist position only in the sense that they are not continuing the unchecked implementation of the neo-liberal programs of the past.

For artists, songwriters, storytellers, and dreamers that are reading this, you are in luck. Creativity has won out against the darkness and monotony of neoliberalism. Imagination is revolutionary. The world has good reason to hope. The affirmative and liberatory project of the Zapatistas has spread its message around the globe: un otro mundo es posible. This credo can guide our imaginations onto new terrains, but the work of building and constructing worlds remains in front of us, daunting and formidable. How do we move forward, and what weapons will our creativity arm us with? Alex Khasnabish gives us some guidance in his book, but choices remain to be taken, and we will measure our success only from the viewpoint of the end of a lifetime of imaginative struggle.

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY
(Know your rights during workplace raids attached)

TORONTO EMERGENCY ACTION
11am, Sunday, 5 April
385 Rexdale Boulevard
Buses leave 9:30 am (St. George and Bloor)

Actions are urged in other cities!

Yesterday and today, Immigration enforcement raided a number of workplaces
in Southern Ontario, arresting and detaining workers with precarious
immigration status on their way to and from work.

Hundreds of workers are now languishing in detention centres.

Hundreds of families and friends are wondering why their loved ones did
not return from work. The hundreds of thousands of non-status people
across Canada have woken up to a horrible day in Stephen Harper's Canada.

Mass arrests do nothing but create fear, harassment and intimidation, and
force all people with precarious status further in to the grey and black
market - unable to work good jobs.

In these times of economic crisis when a regularization program would
ensure much needed cash inflow in to the EI program, the Tory government
would rather spend money and energy on arresting people, piling them in to
centers and buying their plane tickets.

Instead of regularizing the millions of dollars of contributions to
Canada's economy by non-status people, the Tory government would rather
use the Bush doctrine of fear, intimidation and racism against the migrant
poor.

By Scott Neigh, April, 02 2009
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums
Publisher: Verso, 2006

If read from a place of willingness to hear its message, Planet of Slums will inflame a fierce hatred of capitalism in your heart. It is an analysis of neoliberalism through the prism of urban space around the globe, and it is a relentless, pounding indictment of the organizing of billions of lives into poverty and suffering by capital.

Humanity is somewhere near the point of becoming more urban than rural -- maybe just past, maybe just before. The population of the planet is expected to continue to increase for at least another 30 or 40 years, and the vast majority of that increase will occur in urban areas of the global South. The next couple of decades will see several individual urban areas with greater populations than the entire urban population of the planet at the time of the French Revolution. By 2015, there will be more than 550 cities with at least a million inhabitants, and there are already 5(ish) that have more than 20 million.

G20 Direct Action: April 1st
Published: Wednesday 01 April 2009 01:25 by Imc London

Storm the Bank - Climate Camp at The City

The day started with a big banner reading Smash Capitalism hung near Tower Bridge and a Critical Mass bike protest. Despite hysterical media coverage thousands of people took to the streets occupying the square outside the Bank Of England. The G20 Meltdown Party saw people flood the area, some avoiding attempts by police to prevent them reaching the Bank. Amidst an escalating police operation banners were hung, graffiti sprayed, effigies burnt and RBS invaded to chants of "Whose Bank, Our Bank!".

With riot police encircling thousands there were repeated attempts to push through police lines and indiscriminate police baton charges leading to many injuries, several serious. Later in the evening it emerged that a man had died after collapsing inside the police cordons near the Bank of England. Later identified as Ian Tomlinson, it was unclear what had happened to him.

On April 2, 2009 the jury returned a verdict for Professor Ward Churchill in his case against the University of Colorado.

The jury found unanimously that Ward’s 9/11 essay was a significant factor in the Regents’ decision to fire him, and that he would not have been fired but for his exercise of his First Amendment rights.

In comments made to the lawyers and on KHOW radio, jurors stated that they concluded that Ward Churchill had NOT engaged in research misconduct, and that the University’s accusations against him were essentially trivial.

They also reported having spent several hours debating damages, as five jurors wanted to give a substantial award but one did not. Because Ward Churchill had made it clear that this case was not about money, they agreed on the nominal award of $1.

Reinstatement is the standard remedy in such cases. The judge will make that determination, as well as findings on attorneys fees in a later hearing.

As attorney David Lane observed, “there are few defining moments that give the First Amendment this kind of life.” CU’s attempt to minimize the significance of the findings by emphasizing the $1 award simply illustrates, once again, that money is the only thing valued by University officials.

"Ready to be Traitors": The Israeli Resistance
By Hannah Safran, from CounterPunch, March 26, 2009.

On January 8, 2009, 13 days into the war on Gaza, 45 people, Jews and Arabs, came together in Haifa to discuss how to proceed with our anti-war activities. Each one of those present in the room had already participated in more than one action against this war in Gaza.

In Haifa itself, the third largest city in Israel, there have been at least two demonstrations each day – one at lunchtime at the university and the other later in the evening in downtown Haifa, where many Palestinian citizens of Israel live. At both demonstrations both Palestinians and Jews have been present.

Five days earlier, on the first Saturday after the start of the war, most of us went either to Sachnin, a Palestinian town in northern Israel, to join some 25,000 people for a demonstration, or to Tel Aviv – the largest city – were there were another 10,000 people. All of the protesters were citizens of Israel, but the Israeli-Jewish press hardly mentioned the Sachnin demonstration, because it was mainly Palestinians who demonstrated. The press also hardly mentioned the Tel Aviv demonstration, because it routinely ignores the Jewish left.

On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Operation Allied Force precipitated the displacement of over one million people and directly resulted in the deaths of over 2000 civilians of a range nationalities (a number that gets much larger if we include indirect deaths as a result of the intervention and post-intervention period, as well as those killed in the resulting escalation of the military conflict between the Yugoslav army and the KLA). Ten years later, Kosovo’s ‘independence’ has resulted in a quasi-colonial entity of ‘ethnic’ enclaves and an all-pervasive security apparatus, a new client state for the Western powers that led the bombing campaign. Meanwhile, Serbia and Montenegro remain stalled on a ‘transition’ to neo-liberal democracy marked by a brutal mass privatization, increasing poverty, and the rapid dispossession and continued marginalization of workers, students, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), Roma communities, and others casualties of economic restructuring.

March 18, 2009 By Anthony Fenton
Source: Asia Times Online

As United States President Barack Obama simultaneously escalates and crafts a new strategy for the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led counter-insurgency war and occupation in Afghanistan, critics say that the "surge" will send the country toward an "unmitigated disaster," the brunt of which will be borne by the civilian population.

Since Obama announced an increase in the U.S. footprint by 17,000 soldiers on February 17, the debate over the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has reached a fever pitch. The topic now garners more headlines than the ongoing war in Iraq.

During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly pledged to escalate the war. In a speech last July, Obama called for "at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan," and said that "we need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones."[1]

Although unreported at the time, Obama's campaign pledges were already beginning to be fulfilled by the outgoing Bush administration. While Obama has made frequent references to the U.S.'s having "taken [its] eye off the ball" in Afghanistan, and that his administration will correct the course, he has omitted mentioning that a "quiet surge" had already begun under his predecessor, George W Bush.[2]

Dating the Surge

By Omar Barghouti, March 19, 2009

Introduction

As Israel shifts steadily to the fanatic, racist right, as the latest parliamentary election results have shown, Palestinians under its control are increasingly being brutalized by its escalating colonial and apartheid policies, designed to push them out of their homeland to make a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the old Zionist canard of "a land without a people." In parallel, international civil society, according to numerous indicators, is reaching a turning point in its view of Israel as a pariah state acting above the law of nations and in its effective action, accordingly, to penalize and ostracize it as it did to apartheid South Africa.

FACING THE CRISIS: We Didn't Create It - We Won't Pay for It!
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FREE MEAL AND RALLY: Defend the Special Diet! Raise the Rates Now!
DATE: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
TIME: 11am
LOCATION: City Hall (Bay and Queen)
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SPEAKERS:
Amina Ali, OCAP Women of Etobicoke
Gary Bloch, M.D., Health Providers Against Poverty (HPAP)
Sister Susan Moran, Co-Founder of Out of the Cold
Glen Pappin, Member of Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre (PARC)
AJ Withers, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP)

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(Friday, March 20th, 2009) Last month, the number of people receiving
social assistance in Toronto jumped 13% - an additional 10,000 people.
Only 3 in 10 workers in Toronto qualify for EI if they lose their jobs.
The other 70% of unemployed workers face turning to welfare, with which it
is not possible to pay for both food and rent. Food banks and shelters in
Toronto are bursting at the seams.

In this city, over 10,000 people depend on a monthly social assistance
benefit called the Special Diet payment. Up to $250 a month, this money
makes it easier for poor families and individuals to put food on the
table. This payment is crucial to survival and health, but still is not

Over 150 Jewish Canadians signed a statement expressing their concerns about
the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel that is being carried on within
Canada. The signatories include many prominent Canadians, including Ursula
Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., Naomi Klein, Dr. Gabor Mate, and
professors Meyer Brownstone (recipient of Pearson Peace Medal), Natalie
Zemon Davis, Michael Neumann, and Judy Rebick.

The signatories are particularly concerned that unfounded accusations of
anti-Semitism deflect attention from Israel’s accountability for what many
have called war crimes in Gaza. They state that B’nai Brith and the
Canadian Jewish Congress have led campaigns to silence criticism of Israel
on university campuses, in labor unions and in other groups. Immigration
Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff unquestioningly
echo the views of these particular Jewish organizations.

They strongly state that they are against all expressions of racism. While
firmly committed to resisting any form of prejudice against Jewish people,
their statement explicitly states that these spurious allegations of
anti-Semitism bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind.
The statement underlines the immeasurable suffering and injustice to the
Palestinian people due to the severe poverty, daily humiliations, and

Response to John Ross’ Claims in “Commodifying the Revolution”

By Hilary Klein, Special to The Narco News Bulletin, February 23, 2009

I would like to respond to John Ross’ article “Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot Tourist Destinations,” published by CounterPunch on February 17.

As someone who has supported the Zapatista movement for the last 15 years, and worked in Zapatista communities for six years, I was disappointed by this article. In the first part, Ross presents an accurate critique of the role of tourism and eco-tourism in Chiapas. After making some important points, however, Ross goes on to deride Subcomandante Marcos and the recent Festival Mundial de la Digna Rabia (Worldwide Festival of Dignified Rage), organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). What Ross presents in his article is a subjective and rather limited view of the Digna Rabia festival, of Subcomandante Marcos, and of the Zapatista movement itself. Of course no one person can paint the whole picture, but I would like to provide some balance to Ross’ perspective.

by Shir Hever, Monthly Review Zine.

In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, calling for putting economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip starting on 27 December 2008, which lasted for nearly a month, has given this movement a powerful reason to redouble its efforts. Dozens of BDS campaigns have gained momentum and publicity; dozens of new ones were launched during or immediately after Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.

These campaigns range from calls to boycott goods from the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank to calls to stop all economic contacts with Israel altogether. They include protests at sporting events, two countries cutting diplomatic ties with Israel (Bolivia and Venezuela), and many demonstrations around the world, attended by hundreds of thousands of protestors.

The growing protest against the atrocities committed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip has begun to change something in the Israeli political discourse, and the first indication of this can already be seen in the Israeli economic media.

by João Pedro Stedile, Monthly Review Zine

It's been several months since the crisis of capitalism was unleashed on the international level, with its epicenter in financial capital and the US economy. Now we have more evidence that this crisis will be profound and prolonged, affecting all the peripheral economies -- including Brazil.

Many analyses of the crisis have been published in academia and the media. There are all sorts of positions and ideological currents. But they all converge on this diagnosis: it is a profound crisis, worse than the crisis of 1929. It will affect the entire world economy, which has been increasingly internationalized and controlled by fewer than 500 companies. It will be worse, because it combines an economic crisis, a financial crisis (of the credibility of currencies), an environmental crisis, an ideological crisis due to the failure of neoliberalism, and a political crisis due to the lack of alternatives on the part of the dominant class at the center of capitalism or the governments of the periphery.

In the history of crises of capitalism, the dominant classes, owners of capital, and their governments have adopted the same prescription to exit them.

Judy Rebick and Alan Sears,
National Post, Tuesday, March 10, 2009

These past few weeks have seen an unprecedented attack on free expression on
our university campuses. The poster announcing Israeli Apartheid Week was
banned at Carleton, University of Ottawa and Wilfred Laurier University.
B'nai Brith took out advertisements urging university presidents to ban
Israeli Apartheid Week. Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason
Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have denounced the event. Jason
Kenney also threatened to pull funding from immigration settlement programs
administered by the Canadian Arab Federation on the basis of their record of
advocacy for Palestinian rights.

Nevertheless, Israeli Apartheid Week has proceeded. These attacks have
little to do with the reality of Israeli Apartheid Week. While most
university administrators and event organizers have not been intimidated by
false charges of hate and anti-Semitism, unfortunately the mainstream media
has failed to cover the events.

The demand that this week of panel discussions and cultural events be shut
down is grounded in the assertion that Israeli Apartheid creates an
atmosphere of anti-Semitism on campus. B'nai Brith labels it a "hate fest,"
while Michael Ignatieff states "IAW singles out one state, its citizens and

*Memo to Minister Kenney : Criticism of Israel is not Anti-Semitic*
*by Judy Rebick and Alan Sears (March 1, 2009)*
**
As Israeli Apartheid Week gets underway, there is a major campaign currently
underway to deny freedom of expression on campus to those in solidarity with
Palestine on the basis of alleged anti-Semitism.

The Equity Office at Carleton University banned the Israeli Apartheid Week
poster and the Provost issued a statement that threatened students with
expulsion. B'nai Brith took out newspaper ads calling on University
Presidents to "prevent Israeli apartheid week" in order to "take a stand
against anti-Semitism on campus." This builds on a pattern established last
year, when McMaster University banned the use of the term "Israeli
apartheid" (eventually rescinding the ban) and the University of Toronto
cancelled room bookings for a Palestine solidarity student conference.

The argument that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic rests on
the notion that Israel is singled out for undue criticism because it is a
Jewish state. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney used this logic when he said
recently, "We do see the growth of a new anti-Semitism predicated on the
notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland."

This statement is only legitimate if we completely ignore the situation of

It is of immense importance that the soldier, high or low, whatever rank he has, should not have to encounter in War those things which, when seen for the first time, set him in astonishment and perplexity; if he has only met with them one single time before, even by that he is half acquainted with them. This relates even to bodily fatigues. They should be practiced less to accustom the body to them than the mind. In War the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consequence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and despondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.

- Carl von Clausewitz, On War

A couple of years ago i visited San Francisco to table at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, which was a somewhat disappointing experience - however, the bonus of any such trip is the chance to meet with comrades and colleagues who you otherwise only know via email.

So it was in this way that after the bookfair i found myself out with some folks from AK Press drinking beer. Talk turned to work and future publishing plans, and on the walk back to the subway someone asked me why today's radicals would be interested in reading about the Red Army Faction - West Germany's iconic Cold War urban guerillas, and the subjects of a book i had vague plans to publish.

Obama’s Durban II Boycott & The Perils of a “Post-Racial” Planet
by Roberto Lovato, from Of America, March 2, 2009. (Found via RaceWire.)

At a time when racial conflict and discrimination are on the rise around the world, the Administration of the world’s first black U.S. president will not be attending the world’s most important conference on race and racism.

In what may signal a dangerous new, “post-racial” approach to global race relations, President Barack Obama’s Administration announced that it will not attend the second World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva next April. According to this article in the New York Times, the Administration will boycott the conference to protest what it deems the unfair equation of Zionism with racism in the outcome documents of the first conference held in Durban, South Africa, and now the second conference, also known as “Durban II, as well .” Other concerns cited by Administration officials, some of whom recently attended preparatory meetings in Geneva,in their justification of the boycott include a proposal to place restrictions on the defamation of religions and any language calling for reparations for slavery. According to the Times article, one of the primary reasons for the Obama Administration’s decision was that “Israel and some American Jewish groups urged a boycott of the April conference, and several close American allies, including Canada.”

February 27, 2009, From Z Net
[This essay is part of the ZNet Classics series. Three times a week we will re-post an article that we think is of timeless importance. This one was first published September 20, 2000.]

The growth of ethnic consciousness and the consequent mobilization of Indian communities in the Western hemisphere since the early 1960s have been welcomed neither by government forces nor by opposition parties and revolutionary movements. The "Indian Question" has been an almost forbidden subject of debate throughout the entire political spectrum, although racism, discrimination and exploitation are roundly denounced on all sides.

—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

Indians of the Americas

Shawn Hattingh, from Interactivist

By Elliott Liu, re-posted from Lines of Flight

With the election of Obama and a widening economic crisis, it seems immense changes are sweeping national and global politics every week or so. Radicals, along with everybody else, are struggling to comprehend the nature of the changes around us, and the directions we can head in the future. The good news: pretty much everybody thinks the next few years are going to offer the greatest opportunity to remake our world in decades. The bad news: there are as many opinions about how to do it as there are letters in this paragraph.

Amid the flurry of forums, panel discussions, listserv back-and-forths and spirited bar talk animating lefty circles right now, socialist groups are putting forth proposals for new directions in the capital-L Left. Two notable proposals appeared recently in pamphlets distributed online and in bookstores. The first, Which Way Is Left, was produced by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a nationwide post-Maoist group formed in 1985. The second, Manifesto For A Left Turn, was put together by a collection of professors from the east coast including Stanley Aronowitz and Rick Wolff. Both pamphlets call for cohesion and organization-building in the U.S. left, and both fill me with mixed emotions.

Yves Engler, courtesy of The Electronic Intifada

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper's government publicly supported Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel's actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally.

In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January, The Jerusalem Post reported that "Israel's interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy." This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela.

February 3, 2009
Dear All,

Last week, with initial hesitation but finally strong conviction, I endorsed the Call for a U.S. Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel. I'd like to offer my reasons to friends, family and comrades. I have tried in fullest conscience to think this through.

My hesitation: I profoundly believe in the visible/invisible liberatory social power of creative and intellectual boundary-crossings. I've been educated by these all my life, and by centuries-long cross-conversations about human freedom, justice and power -- also, the forces that try to silence them.

World Social Forum

Anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist and socialist alternatives are necessary

Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum 2009, Belem, Brazil.

We the social movements from all over the world came together on the occasion of the 8th World Social Forum in Belém, Amazonia, where the peoples have been resisting attempts to usurp Nature, their lands and their cultures. We are here in Latin America, where over the last decade the social movements and the indigenous movements have joined forces and radically question the capitalist system from their cosmovision. Over the last few years, in Latin America highly radical social struggles have resulted in the overthrow of neoliberal governments and the empowerment of governments that have carried out many positive reforms such as the nationalisation of core sectors of the economy and democratic constitutional reforms.

Conquering Inevitability: A Review of John Gibler's Mexico Unconquered
From Narco News, By Kristin Bricker.

A little over a year ago in Mexico City, John Gibler and I were having drinks and talking about work with a handful of other journalists. John told us that he'd recently watched a documentary about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle with Mexican activists. He said that during the scenes where police beat protesters who offered no resistance, he and the Mexicans exclaimed, "Why don't they fight back?!"

In the United States, where grabbing the billy club that a police office is using to beat you is almost universally considered to be "assaulting an officer" (a felony crime) rather than "self-defense," it probably did not occur to most people who watched that documentary that fighting back was even a possibility.

In Mexico, fighting back is a daily reality.

Many US ex-pats living in Mexico have spent long hours pondering the same question both amongst ourselves and with Mexican friends and colleagues: Why aren't Mexican activists afraid to defend themselves?

by Sukey Wolf

In the opening scenes of the movie Milk, starring Sean Penn, old black and white newsreels from the 1950s silently depict police raiding gay bars, herding men into paddy wagons.

The images of police persecution hit you in the gut. The reaction is similar to the shock and outrage aroused when viewing images of Black civil rights demonstrators being attacked by cops and dogs — and this invited link between the civil rights movement and gay liberation is not accidental. It is just one of the insights contained in this thoughtful, realistic portrayal of the life and times of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to prominent U.S. office.

Déjà vu. With a couple of exceptions and thanks to Milk's own oral history, recorded just months before his assassination, the film is historically accurate. It covers the period from Milk's arrival in San Francisco in the mid-1970s to his election as a city supervisor and his death in office in 1978. Milk's murder is announced at the movie's outset, and the plot follows his collision course with the wrapped-too-tight Dan White, a fellow supervisor.

The backdrop for the drama is the era's gay movement.

February 2009

The Olympics Resistance Network is a space to coordinate anti-colonial and
anti-capitalist efforts against the 2010 Games within Vancouver, Coast
Salish Territories. Our organizing is based on the recognition that the
Olympics is taking place on unceded Native land, and exists to create a
movement for all anti capitalist, Indigenous, anti poverty, labour,
migrant justice, housing, environmental justice, civil libertarian, anti
war, and anti colonial activists to join forces. We come together on the
basis of anti-oppression principles and with a respect for diversity of
tactics. In addition to building ongoing educational and resistance
efforts, we are working towards a convergence between February 10th-15th
2010, based on the call by the Indigenous Peoples Gathering in Sonora,
Mexico to boycott the Games.

We recognize that we, the Olympics Resistance Network, represent part of a
wider movement opposing the 2010 Olympics. Therefore this statement aims
to encourage solidarity and unity amongst the diverse groups, communities,
and movements who are opposed to and/or critical of the 2010 Winter
Olympics.

The negative effects of the upcoming 2010 Winter Games are already quite
clear:

- Expansion of sport tourism and resource extraction on Indigenous lands.
There are over $5 billion worth of resort plans since the Olympic bid,