[News] Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives
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Tue Mar 5 11:40:54 EST 2019
Newsletter 8: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives
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Newsletter 8: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives
March 5, 2019
Dear friends,
Greetings from The Red Nation.
Neoliberalism is losing its legitimacy across the globe. Part of its
demise can be traced to the very thing that gives it life: oil. Climate
change—the warming of temperatures caused by the burning of fossil
fuels—is intensifying the crisis. The poor face the worst of it; they
always do. But they are also struggling to build an alternative. At the
forefront of that fight are Black, brown, Indigenous, poor, and
colonized people.
In France, the Gilets Jaunes
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=c67ac9a80c&e=ec92217b5f> (Yellow
Vests) Movement has rocked the country with back-to-back protests since
last November. A gas tax levied against the working poor, which the
government said would help reduce carbon emissions, sparked the
backlash. Why should the poorest pay for the crimes of the industries
most responsible for climate change?
Yet a longer, more vicious battle has ensued in Haiti since July of last
year. In recent weeks, a fuel shortage caused by corruption and the
looting of public assets has inflamed tensions. The economy of the most
impoverished country in the hemisphere is hamstrung. Popular protests
amplified after February 7 of this year, the day the dictator
Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the island in 1986. Cities and roads are
nearly devoid of normal life—cars and pedestrians—except for protests.
Rallies, motorcycle caravans, strikes, and the burning of police
stations and government buildings now define everyday life.
Photo by Alba Movimientos
Lautaro Rivara, a sociologist and member of the Dessalines Brigade of
Solidarity with Haiti, reports
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=7a89e214bd&e=ec92217b5f> that
among the protests one banner clarified the aspirations of everyday
Haitians: “We Have the Right to Live Like People.”
The Haitian uprising is directly related to US-backed coup attempt in
Venezuela. In 2005, the Bolivarian government under Hugo Chavez
integrated Haiti into the Petrocaribe platform, generously donating
Haiti billions of dollars for much-needed infrastructure development and
subsidizing gas prices—vital resources that the current government under
Jovenel Moïse has squandered.
The solidarity economy between the nations stretches back two centuries.
In 1815, Simón Bolívar, popularly known as the Liberator of Venezuela,
fled to Haiti, receiving protection from the self-emancipated former
French slave colony. From Haiti, Bolívar led the successful Venezuelan
independence movement from Spain. Moved by the hospitality he received,
upon his departure from Haiti Bolívar promised to abolish African
slavery as part of the independence movement. He did. The history of
solidarity is not forgotten.
Venezuela’s solidarity has also extended to Indigenous nations of Turtle
Island, or North America. In 2007, Tim Giago, a preeminent Oglala Lakota
journalist, applauded Hugo Chavez
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=e122c4ba1d&e=ec92217b5f> and
the Bolivarian Revolution for providing heating assistance to hard-hit
Indian reservations, the poorest places in North America on the Northern
Plains, during the harsh winter months. Citgo Petroleum, a Venezuelan
state-owned oil company, has for nearly a decade donated millions of
dollars of heating oil not only to reservations communities in the
United States, but also to low-income Black and Chicanx neighborhoods
and homeless shelters.
Giago excoriated the United States’ hypocrisy for failing to uphold its
own treaty obligations while criticizing other countries such as
Venezuela, and the failure of capitalist Indigenous economies to keep
Indigenous people warm and fed.
“Where was the rich casino-owning tribes?” Giago asked. “Busy counting
their money I guess.”
The gravity of enforced reservation poverty hit home this winter, when
Donald Trump shutdown the federal government for 35 days to force the
construction of his border wall with Mexico. Federal jobs and funding
provides (which come in the form of treaty obligations) keep Indigenous
families afloat. Without them, families face a choice of food or heat.
Prominent Ojibwe activist from White Earth Winona LaDuke has also made
the connection between the war on Indigenous nations in Turtle Island
and the economic war waged against Venezuela. In 2016 during the Dakota
Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests, she told Democracy Now!
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=842c311555&e=ec92217b5f>that
the construction of DAPL “has to do with crushing Venezuela, because
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.”
As we reported in our last newsletter
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=4b4b6e3b34&e=ec92217b5f>,
the North American oil boom that began in 2007, led by Canada and the
United States, made the price of oil drop nearly crippling the
Venezuelan economy.
Both the United States and Canada drilled their economies out of the
gutter by producing the dirtiest oil in the world from tar sands and
fracking rigs at the expense of Indigenous lands and lives. Each
proposal for new carbon infrastructure such as oil pipelines not only
deepens the climate crisis and locks in carbon consumption, it is also
aimed to crush Venezuela.
Why target Venezuela? It partially has to do with its oil reserves. But
it also has to do with threat that it poses: an economic and social
alternative to neoliberalism.
But what is neoliberalism? Simply put, neoliberalism is a decades-long
tax strike of the rich. Instead of redistributing the wealth of the One
Percent for social projects that benefit the poorest (like healthcare,
education, housing, treaty rights, and environmental protection), public
goods are privatized and wealth trickles upwards concentrating into the
hands of a few. (We recommend reading the Tricontinental’s excellent
pamphlet by Vijay Prashad on neoliberalism, “In the Ruins of the
Present.”
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=cb153b7a56&e=ec92217b5f>)
That is why proposals like the Green New Deal (though not without
itsfaults
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=de1128ad1a&e=ec92217b5f>)
calls for a 70 percent tax increase on the rich to allocate the
necessary resources to mitigate climate change and redistribute the
wealth. If implemented, the Green New Deal could pose a significant
challenge to the neoliberal order. As the planet burns, a ruling class
tax strike is the only strike worth breaking.
Neoliberalism, however, has also successfully crushed alternatives to
capitalism throughout the globe. For more than half a century, the US
has led a bloody counterinsurgency war against any alternative that
might force the rich to pay their due, providing fertile ground for the
rise of a right wing authoritarianism as the only alternative. We don’t
have to look far, whether Trump in the United States or Bolsonaro in
Brazil, to see how quickly violent strong men and bigots fill the vacuum
left by neoliberalism.
Venezuelans voted the Bolivarian Revolution into power, which, in turn,
increased the participation in social, economic, and political life of
Indigenous peoples, Women, LGBTQ, Africans, and poor people. The
nation’s oil wealth was redistributed to the lowest sectors of society.
And while, for a moment, the U.S.-backed coup to oust the
democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, seemed
imminent, people took to the streets and to the countryside to defend
these hard-fought gains. Far from a perfect model (as if there is such a
thing), the Bolivarian Revolution represents a possible alternative to
neoliberalism.
International People's Assembly
That’s why from February 24 to 27, 500 delegates from 87 countries and
181 people’s movements descended on Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas
to participate in the International Peoples’ Assembly in Solidarity with
the Bolivarian Revolution and Against Imperialism
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=725d279b2c&e=ec92217b5f>.
In the declaration of solidarity, international assembly stated its
aspirations, “The peoples of the world want peace; we do not want
another war.”
Maduro closed his address to the people’s assembly with this message:
“One cannot be free, one cannot be revolutionary, one cannot be
independent without punishment. It is necessary to pay the price of
bravery, of rebellion, and of courage. And we are paying that now…They
know that here, there is courage, rebellion, that we are confronting
North American imperialism and that we are not scared of them. We will
continue advancing in the construction of our own model of country.”
The looming threat of U.S. intervention remains, but, for now, the
Venezuelan people’s movements have won a small but significant victory
for now.
Yet the battle is being fought here in Turtle Island as Trump wages a
war against the migrant masses. Our organizers participated in a second
solidarity delegation to Tornillo, Texas to protest the continued
detention of migrant children at the border. You can read part one of a
two-part report by Hope Alvarado here
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=bb98317f80&e=ec92217b5f>.
Lastly, mark your calendars! We have confirmed dates for the 2019 Native
Liberation Conference, which will be hosted in Gallup, New Mexico
September 7-8. Like all our events, the conference is free and open to
the public. More information coming soon. If you are willing and able to
make a donation to help offset costs of hosting the conference (such as
rental fees), please do so here
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=f013896f73&e=ec92217b5f>.
Every dollar helps. We are a one hundred percent volunteer-run organization.
On March 12 in Santa Fe, New Mexico The Red Nation will co-host
Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Artema, who helped co-found the Great
March of Return. RSVP here
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=7ecd3aca1a&e=ec92217b5f>.
On March 16, the Red Revolution Radio podcast will also be co-hosting
with Red Planet a discussion with Red Nation comrade Majerle Lister on
my new book, /Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota
Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance/
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=5e0df5c9e2&e=ec92217b5f>.
RSVP here
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=f14de5fa53&e=ec92217b5f>.
The Red Nation is partnering with the national campaign #NoKXL Promise
to Protect. If you are interested in participating in a free, public
training and workshop on how you can help us stop the dirty Keystone XL
pipeline from trespassing through Lakota territory, sign up here
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=57d7449bde&e=ec92217b5f>.
The world is shaking with anger. There are storm clouds on the horizon.
The world we want to live in is actively being built by the humble
people, the good people of the earth. But we have to struggle for the
world to breath and grow. Join us.
Solidarity forever,
Nick
Upcoming Events:
March 13: Hashtag to Headlines: The Gaza Great March of Return
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=a6c8843fd2&e=ec92217b5f>
March 16: Red Revolution Radio Book Panel, March 16
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=e625bb930d&e=ec92217b5f>
March 23-24: #NoKXL Promise to Protect
<https://therednation.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=de414e67166ab938a82851840&id=12aba4dd17&e=ec92217b5f>
September 7-8: Native Liberation Conference (more info coming soon!)
--
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