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Big Mountain, Black Mesa Residents Under Siege Once Again, Livestock Confiscated
Walee Crittendon stands with her family’s livestock after the initial theft by armed rangers. (Photo Credit: Censored News)
URGENT-PLEASE HELP-PLEASE SHARE-SIEGE IN BIG MOUNTAIN: When John Benally’s cows were confiscated on April 5, 2016, he filed a case before the Interior Board of Indian Appeals (IBIA) to request a Stay (Moratorium) on all livestock confiscations. While this suit was pending, the Hopi Tribe using BIA money funded by US taxpayers invaded John Benally homesite in Big Mountain on what is known as Hopi Partition Land.
Today, 6/7/2016, Hopi police and Hopi Rangers invaded John’s home. They came in police cars, trucks, panel trucks and trailers. They rounded up John’s cows and horses used 4-tracks to round up his livestock while they placed John Benally, his companion Tracy, his niece and nephew under house arrest to keep them from interfering with the impoundment. They also served John’s companion with a Notice of No Trespassing requesting she vacate Hopi lands immediately in spite of the fact she has lived with John in Big Mountain for the past 25 years.
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From Climate Justice to Prison Ecology
A Spotlight on Cascadia’s Ahmed Gaya
by Panagioti Tsolkas / Earth First! Newswire
The Pacific Northwest has long been a stronghold of eco-activism and climate justice organizing, from epic stand-offs in the old-growth forests to bold blockades against energy infrastructure.
The region is where protest tactics like perching 100+ feet in treesit villages or dangling off massive bridges to stop oil-drilling rigs have been most frequently seen in action. It’s also home to another cutting-edge development in environmentalism.
Alongside more classic conservation issues and the fresher climate change discourse, there has been another current brewing in activist circles. Some are calling it the #PrisonEcology movement, which refers to grassroots organizing at the intersections of incarceration and the environment.
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June 11 Statement by Hacktivist Prisoner Jeremy Hammond
from 325
Revolutionary greetings on this June 11! Solidarity with all Earth warriors and anarchists behind bars!We are up against a system of power and profit, a system which is destroying the planet and forcing the people into poverty and imprisonment. Many of us who have fought back found ourselves in the crosshairs of an extensive counter-intelligence apparatus who use trumped-up “terrorism” charges and entrapment by informants to put us in prison for years. There are many lessons from each case to consider before engaging in future work, but it is most important that we do not let the seemingly overwhelming forces of domination intimidate us into inaction and passivity.
Even those of us doing time, you know we stay bucking the system, and it brings us strength and inspiration to hear about your work in the streets, to hear about ongoing campaigns – such as the fight to stop the Bureau of Prisons from building a new maximum security federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky, in the middle of a mountaintop removal coal processing area. This is a winnable opportunity highlighting the connections between the prison industrial complex and the exploitation of the Earth by profiteering capitalists.
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New Anarchist Translation Project: Theory Without Borders
from Theory Without Borders via Insurrection News
Theory Without Borders is a project focused on promoting anarchist texts, theory, and analysis through translating texts into English in order to give their original authors a platform to access a larger audience. The anti-authoritarian left is an important voice that is often ignored or misrepresented within mainstream media, even if it is a major influence behind many contemporary global movements such as Occupy or Rojava.
We want to tear down the walls that stand in the way of global solidarity, allowing anarchists from around the world to be heard outside of the ever-present language barriers. This will both allow for greater dialogue within the global anarchist movement as well as helping give local groups an outsiders perspective on their unique situation. We also want to help spread news of movements that are often overlooked because they lack the language skills to spread awareness of the issues they face and so are unheard of outside of their locality.
Anybody that wants to help translate is welcome to contact us and be a part of the project.
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Sea Shepherd Announces Operation Jairo II
from Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
baby sea turtle trying to make it to the sea
LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 8, 2016: Today, on World Oceans Day, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is proud to announce its latest campaign to defend, conserve and protect our oceans.
The campaign, Operation Jairo II, will span three countries including the United States, Honduras and Costa Rica to protect endangered sea turtles. The launch comes on the heels of Sea Shepherd’s announcement of its first full-length feature film, Why Just One?, chronicling the organization’s successful 2015 Operation Jairo campaign.
The crowd-funded documentary Why Just One? raised its goal of $18,000 in one day to complete the production and has a star-studded list of names supporting it. Like its predecessor, Operation Jairo II is named after Jairo Mora Sandoval, a Costa Rican turtle defender who was brutally murdered on May 31, 2013 while attempting to protect leatherback turtle nests.
There are seven species of sea turtles in the world. Four have been identified as “endangered” or “critically endangered,” and two are classed as “vulnerable,” by the IUCN Red List of Endangered species. Sea turtles are some of the oldest living creatures, one of the few who’ve watched dinosaurs evolve and become extinct. They are now facing the same fate as their predecessors.
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Environmental Activist Daniel McGowan Loses Appeal for Free Speech in Prison
by Adam Classfeld / Courthouse News Service
MANHATTAN (CN) — An environmental activist thrown in solitary confinement for sharing his politics in online magazines does not have a First Amendment case against his former prison officials, the Second Circuit ruled Tuesday.
Daniel McGowan, a former member of the Earth Liberation Front, was involved in the arsons of two Oregon-based lumber companies in 2001.
Four years would pass, however, before McGowan’s foray into radical activism caught up with him.
The FBI eventually closed the loop on McGowan’s case during “Operation Backfire,” an investigation that the bureau described as a crackdown on “eco-terrorism,” which critics cast as a green version of the Red Scare.
McGowan insists that he had renounced his affiliation with the group long before authorities arrested him at work, but his later disavowal of their methods did not provide him with any mercy at his criminal prosecution.
In 2007, a federal judge would apply a so-called “terrorism enhancement” in sentencing him to spend seven years in prison.
Initially designated as a low security prisoner, McGowan claimed in a federal lawsuit that officials at FCI Sandstone in Minnesota assigned him to a so-called Communication Management Unit, or CMU, a year into his sentence to squelch his online journalism.
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Vermont Treesit Stops Pipeline Construction for Second Time in Three Days
from Rising Tide Vermont
Monkton, Vt.– In a new wave of public opposition to the project, participants in the campaign to stop the fracked gas pipeline have stopped construction for the second time this week. Early this morning, Samuel Jessup scaled a tree on an active work site to begin yet another indefinite delay, this time by tying the support line of his platform to machinery meant to blast open the hillside where Vermont Gas Systems plans to build the pipeline.
“The climate crisis is already deadly, and it’s getting worse” Jessup said. “Each passing month there are new records set for heat and drought across the planet, and with each passing year, fossil fuels kill five million more people. We simply can’t afford to let this pipeline get built.”
Jessup, a timber frame carpenter and Montpelier resident, is the third person in the last ten weeks to have stopped construction through a tree-top occupation. His blockade begins just two days after dozens of pipeline protesters delayed work for 8 hours at three different construction sites on Monday, ending in five arrests.
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Mexico: Foxes and Birds Liberated!
received anonymously / Earth First! Newswire
At 4am, while so-called mexico city was blanketed by police, pollution, and restless capitalism, 320 birds and 3 foxes were liberated from Mercado Sonora, a crowded distribution point of nonhuman creatures kidnapped from their homes and crammed into horrid conditions of human negligence.
All the human-labeled bird species that spread their wings, such as Amazilia beryllina, Aquila chrysaetos, and Pharomachrus Mocinno, are found within the bioregions of “mexico”; and so, we are hoping, they have great chance of returning to their perch, or at least finding a viable new one where they can rest and continue to exercise their colorful existence.
The foxes were tended to by a comrade and transported to their bioregions where, once released, began to frolick once again in rejuvenation.
While we cannot help them all at once nor control the fate of all those libertated, we can break their chains, alleviate their suffering, and offer a space to breathe and escape into remaining habitat.
Unfortunatelty, there remain many cages, many lives, stacked and suffocated. For this reason, we send out this note, this shout into the fibers of civilization.
To all fellow beings, whether or not you identify as an “activist”, “radical”, “anarchist”, “punk”, etc…
We all have the choice, the ability, to defend life (human and nonhuman). Everyday we choose how we interact with our surroundings. Everyday there is a creature trembling in the corner of a cage. Everyday a sprout is pushing against concrete. Let us not forget our potential to act upon our values. Whether it is spreading stories and inspiration, nourishing seeds, or slipping on a mask and quietly opening doors…etc…we ALL have a role in the fight for liberation.
In instinctual insurrection,
LATTAL
Liberación Animal Transfronteriza /Libération Animale Transfrontière/ Transborder Animal Liberation
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Earth First! Journal Subscription Sale: One Year of Magazines for $20 US, $40 International
Drawing by Jacob Barrett.
Our summer issue is on the way, and we want you to read it! So until Sunday we’re offering a one-year Earth First! Journal subscription for the discounted price of $20 (or $40 outside the United Snakes). That’s four issues of radical environmental direct action news and analysis delivered to your door!
Order a subscription at the EF! Journal store today!
And while you’re there, check out our t-shirts, patches, pins, stickers, and books–and consider ordering a subscription for a prisoner! Every purchase helps us cover the cost of printing news and analysis from the front lines of the radical environmental movement.
You won’t want to miss the summer issue, Litha 2016! In this 80-page volume you’ll read about treesits in Pennsylvania; coal train blockades in Australia; anti-nuclear sabotage in Finland; prisoners keeping it wild behind bars; deserts, druidism, political dumpster fires; and much, much more! Subscribe during this flash sale and you’ll receive the summer 2016 issue when it comes out at the end of the month (or a little later if you’re international).
For the Wild,
The Earth First! Journal Collective -
Indigenous Forest Defender Illegally Jailed in Mexico
from Indian Country Today Media Network
Human rights advocates are calling for the immediate release of an Indigenous “prisoner of conscience” in Mexico who is an activist jailed on charges they assert were created to hide the fact that the man was fighting illegal logging in his region; they added that he is diabetic and in need of medical care.
In November of 2015, Mexican authorities arrested Ildefonso Zamora in the Indigenous Tlahuica community of San Juan Atzingo on charges of participating in a burglary. Zamora is an internationally known activist who is part of a “guardian of the forests” movement in Mexico.
The advocates, which include Amnesty International (AI), the Miguel Agustin Center for Human Rights Pro Juarez (PRODH in Mexico), Greenpeace Mexico, and State Legislator Omar Ortega, assert that the arrest of Zamora is related to his anti-illegal logging campaigns that started in 1998.
According to AI and others, the charges against Zamora are based on fabricated testimony. They point out that the prosecution’s eyewitnesses described the events “using the exact same words, as if reading them from a script.” They also say the crime scene was not preserved and evidence was handled improperly.
Earth First! Newswire Features
Saturday, May 14th, 2016
Rancher Kills First Wolverine Seen in North Dakota in 150 Years
Thursday, May 5th, 2016
Incarceration, Justice and the Planet
Wednesday, May 4th, 2016
The Spring Earth First! Newsletter is Out! Read, Print, Share
Friday, April 1st, 2016
Litha 2016 Submission Time
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016
The Winter Earth First! Newsletter is Out! Read, Print, Share
Action Alerts
Friday, June 10th, 2016
Big Mountain, Black Mesa Residents Under Siege Once Again, Livestock Confiscated
Friday, June 3rd, 2016
Billions of Cicadas Start East Coast Invasion
Wednesday, June 1st, 2016
Honduras: Cemetery Occupied to Prevent Gold Extraction
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