Sep 12
20130
350.org / 1Sky, Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex
350.org Divestment Campaign First Peoples Worldwide Ford Foundation Idle No More Naomi Klein Rockefeller Foundations Seventh Generation Fund Spectacle Celebrities
Spectacle celebrities like Naomi Klein, while raising valid (albeit hypocritical) criticism of the complex, count on infantile consumers to maintain their activist credentials. Serving as proxies for consumer rage, yet asking nothing serious of them as citizens, makes these capitalist activists popular and profitable PR puppets.
"Neocolonialism is the growing middle class movement that is spreading across the world. It self-identifies wherever it is as a grassroots activist movement yet it is dominated by individuals who are not grassroot activists. The black grassroots activism in the US is experiencing what is currently overtaking indigenous grassroots activism here – both ‘movements’ propagate the idea that the crisis can be ‘fixed’ within the current system and social order. As a result, both maintain the status quo and the current class system."
Mar 19
20130
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
AFN Assembly of First Nations Canada Idle No More Mohawk Warriors Oka Pacifism Resistance
"What happened with Idle No More is that as it progressed, they also revealed very, very reformist politics. They started out wanting to stop Bill C-45. They began imposing all kinds of codes of conduct on people people who were attending Idle No More rallies. They’re imposing a pacifist ideology on this grassroots movement and strict legalism."
Mar 19
20130
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance Idle No More KXL Oklahoma White Savior Complex Whiteness & Aversive Racism
"Before long, we began to see a pattern that has played out repeatedly: Non-Indians armed with a savior complex, condescending tones and a penchant to show us a better way to do things, begin to plan strategy and events for us. We just show up and hand over the imaginary strings attached to our bodies, which they manipulate until the show’s over."
"The reality is that there are various factions working under the banner of Idle No More. INM is not simply a grassroots movement, but is instead one that has been manipulated from the start by Indian Act chiefs with their own agenda, and who worked closely with the “official founders” of INM in mobilizing the grassroots in pursuit of that agenda."
Jan 17
20130
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Capitalism Colonialism Idle No More Imperialism Omali Yeshitela Onkwehón:we Rising Uhuru Movement
"Whatever criticisms can be made about this movement due to the involvement of neocolonial agents attempting to direct it towards pacifist and reformist ends, this movement has profoundly awoken Onkwehón:we in a way that has not happened since the rebellion of the Kanien’kehá:ka people at Kahnawà:ke in so-called Quebec in 1990."
Jan 16
20130
Foundations, Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
Disobedience Idle No More NAACP Resistance SCLC SNCC Urban League
"In James Forman's 1997 book The Making of Black Revolutionaries, the former organizer of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) -- that led the sit-ins against American apartheid, and risked their lives in support of Black communities in Mississippi Freedom Summer -- recalled the challenges of working with the established Black elites of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who wanted to control the activists.'
"So while some INM’ers believe they are leading a “peaceful” Indigenous Rights Revolution, they are actually benefiting from the militant grassroots resistance that preceded them, gained through blood, sweat, and tears, assaults, arrests, and in some cases death. Perhaps if they knew their history better, they would understand this."
Jan 10
20130
Debates arising from the recent Idle No More movement have revealed two main interpretations of what comprises the grassroots. One seeks to exclude band councils, while the other views chiefs & councillors as an integral part of the grassroots, simply by virtue of them being members of the community. Clearly, we need some basic understanding of what constitutes the grassroots in order to advance our movement.
Indeed, Gord Hill told the Georgia Straight the high-level meeting actually represents the co-optation of the grassroots indigenous-sovereignty movement by band chiefs and councils that owe their power to the paternalistic Indian Act. According to the 44-year-old Kwakwaka’wakw author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, the Canadian government has historically used these “elites” to suppress efforts by First Nations people to fight colonialism and oppression.