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Tagged ‘Tea Party‘

Promoting Interracial Discord

Public Good Project

By Jay Taber

 

Lummi Image 12

Photo: Canoe and Bulk Carrier at Cowichan Bay, B.C. © 2008 klahowya.ca

 

For readers who might wonder why I make a big deal of “the appalling disrespect of Pacific International Terminals and BNSF Railroad toward the citizens of Whatcom County and Lummi Nation over the last five years, as well as the reprehensible behavior of Gateway Pacific Terminal spokesman Craig Cole” in my op-ed at Cascadia Weekly (Apr. 13, 2016 issue), the short answer is my twenty years of experience dealing with violent white supremacy instigated by industrial developers, a.k.a. Wise Use terrorism.

While some might think that “the sinister desecration of the sacred Lummi burial ground at Cherry Point in the dark of night” or “the lavish funding of Tea Party-led PACs run by KGMI hate radio hosts” or “the repeated corruption of elections year after year through money-laundering with the Republican Party” or “the intimidation and libeling of journalists that exposed their ongoing nefarious deeds” or “promoting interracial discord and anti-Indian resentment” is no big deal, allow me to explain why I think it is.

As you can read in my comment on a March 12, 2016 news story at Northwest Citizen, Sandra Robson, a former correspondent to Whatcom Watch, was recently named the Paul de Armond Citizen Journalist of the year for outing Pacific International Terminals and BNSF Railroad, who financed a CERA-promoting, Tea Party led-PAC to attack Lummi Nation for its opposition to the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal coal-export facility. CERA, for those unfamiliar with the acronym, is Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, “the Ku Klux Klan of Indian country”.

Paul de Armond, former Public Good Project research director (who passed away in 2013), in the 1990s contributed to the apprehension of people engaged in violent intimidation of Indian treaty proponents and human rights activists. Seven of the white supremacist militia members Paul (and I) helped expose were, in 1997, convicted in U.S. District Court in Seattle for manufacturing bombs and machine guns to commit murder.

The militias had been hosted in Whatcom County by Wise Use organizer Skip Richards, a paid agent of the Building Industry Association of Whatcom County. More recently, Mr. Richards and Minuteman militia member Tom Williams of Lynden were the organizers of the April 6, 2013 CERA anti-Indian conference in Bellingham, Washington.

In February 2014, Sandra Robson was threatened with a SLAPP suit by Gateway Pacific Terminal spokesman, Craig Cole, over her January 2014 Whatcom Watchcover story. In October 2015, Robson came back fighting with an IC Magazinefeature story.

The full story of this injustice, perpetrated by some of the largest corporations in the United States, is told in my April 2016 Wrong Kind of Greenspecial report.

 

[Jay Thomas Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and communications director at Public Good Project, Email: tbarj [at] yahoo.com Website:www.jaytaber.com]

 

Further reading: Coast Salish Gathering briefing on treaty rights (2013): for-publication-april-2013-protecting-treaty-rights-sacred-places-and-lifeways

Public Good Project: Shining a Light on the Blind Spots that Aid Hate Groups

PUBLIC GOOD PROJECT NEEDS YOUR HELP

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA October 8, 2015 – Public Good Project — an investigative research network in the US and Canada — has been defending democracy for 21 years. Our volunteer researchers, analysts and journalists have led the pack in fighting the fascism, racism and fraud that threaten both civil society and indigenous nations. To keep our free public service available, though, we need your help.

Collaborating with IC Magazine, Public Good Project has provided key information on the convergence of Wall Street, the Tea Party and CERA — the “Ku Klux Klan of Indian country” — constituting the industrial-sponsored terrorism called Wise Use. As IC Editor-in-Chief and Public Good correspondent John Schertow remarked, “Defending democracy isn’t something we do as a career; we do it as a duty.”

Public Good and IC Magazine have had a unique and productive relationship. For instance, our research published at IC in April 2013 was first in world media to expose a nationwide campaign by CERA to terminate American Indian tribes. In July 2013, we collaborated with IC Magazine and Wrong Kind of Green collective to publish Communications in Conflict, an introduction to the topic of netwar.

In the very near future Public Good and IC will team up again to produce Mandates from God, a groundbreaking documentary film about white power, Indigenous Peoples and fossil fuel export.

Help us continue our vital work. Make a donation today!

Link to fundraiser: http://igg.me/at/publicgood/

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Indigenous Cultural Survival: A Matter of Human Rights

Intercontinental Cry

March 20, 2015

by Jay Taber

The Lummi Indian tribe (Lhaq’temish in Coast Salish language) originally owned much of the San Juan Islands (Washington state) and surrounding waters. They and neighboring tribes in British Columbia shared the Salish Sea, one of the richest marine estuaries in the world. Subsequently confined to a reservation on the mainland, Lummi Nation — which boasts the largest indigenous fishing fleet in the U.S. — has been targeted for destruction by three of America’s largest corporations: Peabody Energy, SSA Marine (SSA), and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad (BNSF). As Sandy Robson notes in her award-winning expose What Would Corporations Do? Native American Rights and the Gateway Pacific Terminal, these corporations will stop at nothing to get what they want.

In The Line is Drawn, Robson chronicles the conflict between SSA Marine subsidiary Gateway Pacific Terminal (GPT) and Lummi Nation, including close financial ties between GPT and Whatcom Tea Party leaders, who throughout 2012, 2013, and 2014 recruited and promoted Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) — the “Ku Klux Klan of Indian Country” — on KGMI radio programs. Those ties — exposed by Robson in January 2014 — led to a SLAPP suit threat in February 2014 by GPT PR spokesman Craig Cole.

Most recently, the GPT consortium launched a divide-and-conquer campaign against Lummi Nation, by posing the Crow tribe of Montana as an innocent victim of the conflict, when in reality the Crow tribe is in bed with coal companies. Oddly, no one in mainstream media has questioned why the Crow should have any say about Lummi efforts to protect their economy and sacred sites at Cherry Point. As Winona LaDuke observes, Dirty Coal & Clean Fishing don’t mix. As Lummi Nation tribal council chair Tim Ballew remarked in a link at Robson’s article A Sovereign Nation Stands Tall, “Our treaty rights are not for sale”.

Since paying $1.6 million in penalties and fees for illegally bulldozing a registered Native American archaeological site at Cherry Point in 2011, SSA and its public relations firm (Edelman PR) have tried everything under the sun to defeat Lummi Nation’s resistance to turning their treaty fishing area into a carbon corridor for exporting coal and oil to Asia. Wall Street v. Coast Salish is a battle between Big Coal and Big Oil on one side, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Coast Salish First Nations, and Lummi Nation on the other.

Having funded two Tea Party-led Political Action Committees (PACs) to launder electoral campaign donations from the GPT consortium — that includes Peabody, SSA, and BNSF — GPT PR firms and front groups are now promoting the notion that Lummi Nation is unreasonable in its rejection of what would be the largest coal export facility in North America, in the heart of its treaty-guaranteed fishing area. This “usual and accustomed” fishing area, adjacent to the ancient Lummi village and burial ground at Cherry Point, supports treaty and non-treaty harvests of Dungeness crab, halibut, and salmon. As Ballew stated in a Lummi press release, “We have a sacred obligation to protect this location.”

Expanded export of Alberta Tar Sands bitumen, Bakken Shale crude, and Powder River Basin coal through ports on the Salish Sea would vastly increase the odds of a Superspill in the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Preventing that likely catastrophe has brought environmental organizations, churches and tribes together. As GPT doubles down on promoting interracial discord, the carbon corridor conflict demands that we listen to The Voice Within.

When fossil fuel corporations engage in Capitalizing on Fear to destroy the basis of indigenous cultural survival, it becomes a matter of human rights. Given the deceitful and malicious GPT track record toward Lummi Nation, one has to ask why the Washington State Human Rights Commission has so far taken a pass. In fairness, they might be confused, thanks in no small part to Edelman and Cole.

 

Fossil Fueled Fearmongering

Public Good Project

November 22, 2014

by Jay Taber

Fear

Sandy Robson’s November 2014 article on fearmongering by fossil fuel export developers, i.e. SSA Marine, Peabody Coal and BNSF Railroad, raises a couple questions. One is why no local media is reporting on this, and another is why the Washington Secretary of State hasn’t censured their PACs for distributing misleading communications to influence elections.

Sandy’s January 2014 article at Whatcom Watch shined a light on these PACs and their collaboration with fossil fuel exporters in money-laundering to influence elections. It also illuminated their connection with the Tea Party and KGMI radio, both of which assisted CERA (“the Ku Klux Klan of Indian country”) in promoting inter-racial discord aimed at the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which opposes fossil fuel export in their traditional territories. As noted at IC Magazine, capitalizing on fear is what the developers do best.

Drumming up resentment against Native Americans and environmentalists is established practice by Wise Use propagandists, and has a particularly violent past in the Greater Seattle area, as reported by Robson in her October 2013 article at Whatcom Watch. As noted in an article at NWCitizen in February 2014, Robson and Whatcom Watch were threatened by coal export consortium PR man Craig Cole. As reported at IC Magazine in February, the politics of land and bigotry has a long history in the Salish Sea region.

 

[As an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, Jay Taber has assisted indigenous peoples seeking justice at the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. Since 1994, he has served as creative director at Public Good Project.]