Alternatives International Journal

An Interview with Ali Abunimah: BDS and Palestinian Solidarity

Sophia Reuss — 2016-07-04T17:16:23Z

Ali Abunimah is a prominent Palestinian-American activist and journalist. Abunimah is the Vice-President on the Board of Directors of the Arab American Action Network, a fellow at the Palestine Centre, and a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, an independent, not-for-profit, publication that covers the Israel-Palestine conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

The Alternatives International Journal spoke with Abunimah about the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and international solidarity for Palestinian struggle in the 21st century.

This February, the Canadian parliament passed a motion condemning the BDS movement in Canada and abroad. Many BDS activists and allies fear that the next step could be the movement's criminalization. To what extent is the criminalization the BDS movement a likely outcome in Canada?

It is important to see the Canadian parliament's condemnation of the BDS movement in an international context. This was part of a wave of legislation or resolutions passed by legislative bodies and cities all around the world in Europe and in North America, that were being pushed by Israel itself, by its foreign ministry, and by Israeli lobbyists in particular countries. This is an Israeli campaign, that very openly and explicitly works to delegitimize BDS and criminalize the BDS movement. Canada of course is very much a part of that, so this kind of thing had already been happening on Canadian campuses with efforts to silent Palestine solidarity groups on for some years. The vote in the House of Commons was the culmination of those efforts.

In the Canadian context, it is important to remember that the Harper government had threatened at a certain point to use hate crime laws to criminalize the BDS movement. They eventually backed down but it was also the case that Justin Trudeau, when he was leader of opposition, condemned the BDS movement. This is very much part of an elite consensus as it is in other countries.

It is also important to note that there has been much resistance, which has won some successes. Again, if we look at the broader context, in the United States, there has been anti-BDS legislation in almost half of the states. I think [anti-BDS legislation] has been passed in about 10 or 11 states, but there have been initiatives in 24 states [writer's note: anti-BDS legislation has been enacted in nine states and at least nine other states are considering anti-BDS legislation this year.] In a number of states we see a strong pushback from the grassroots that's actually having an effect. In Virginia, New York, Ohio, and California, various legislative measures were either shelved or very severely watered down because of strong pushback from activists. New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, introduced an executive order against BDS because they were having difficulty advancing legislation through the legislature.

All of that is a prelude to say that in Ontario, a BDS bill was proposed several weeks ago which was modelled on the New York legislation, very repressive of free speech, and what was really fantastic bout what happened in Ontario, is that as far as I'm aware, this was the first time a BDS bill had been put before a legislature for a full vote and was defeated by a very big margin. That was great, and Ontario really made history there. What was great is that they had introduced the bill in a very stealthy way, with almost no notice to members, no time for a serious debate, and activists in Canada didn't even know about it. But in a very short time, people mobilized and that bill was really defeated very soundly. So that's good news, because if they try to bring more serious federal legislation in Canada, what happened in Ontario is a very good precedent: it can be stopped, and [the criminalization of the BDS movement] isn't inevitable.

The Israeli government is reacting very strongly to the BDS. Is it because BDS is generating a bad image internationally or does it really affect their economy?

Yes, [Israel's] fear of BDS is very real. Part of it is posturing: they like to exaggerate the threat. But [the BDS movement] is very real and they recognize that.

It's not just the economy. The economy is a big part of it - but it's a lot of other activities as well, such as the academic and cultural boycott. A council of presidents of Israeli universities have said through the Israeli media in the past year that, the academic boycott is an issue in the sense that there's a few hundred, a few thousand academics who have publicly declared that they wont [go] to Israel or work with Israeli institutions.

But what's a much bigger problem is what they call the silent boycott. For every professor or academic who publicly supports the boycott, there are maybe 10 others who don't say anything, but who don't [go] to Israel and don't engage [with Israeli institutions]. [Israel and Israeli institutions] are feeling the pressure of the silent boycott.

Theres something very similar [to the cultural and academic silent boycott] that comes in the economic sphere. The number of multinational companies that have pulled out [of Israel] isn't that big. I don't want to underplay the [BDS movement's] victories, because they're important and the result of major campaigns. But the problem for Israel is that a number of companies are going to say: well, Israel is a very small market and it's a big headache to invest. It's much easier [for these companies] to stay away and [they] don't have to say anything, [they] just stay away [from Israel].

And thats how BDS works, its not necessary for everybody to declare why they're not going there, but Israel realizes that this is the big impact the potential losses from a European consumer boycott is more than 12 billion euros a year. Those are major numbers that Israel is looking at.

International solidarity for the Palestinian cause is enormous, both in numbers and in sustainability and perseverance. What are the main reasons behind the international support for the Palestinian cause? And how do we reconcile support for Palestine with the criticism and condemnation of the BDS movement?

The situation in Palestine is the last anti-colonial struggle of the 20th century. But unfortunately, it is continuing into the 21st century, and for a lot of people, [the anti-colonial struggle in Palestine] is symbolic and emblematic of the injustice and violence in the world.

All of the settler colonial projects that reached their height in the 20th century have ended, except in Palestine, and the support for Palestinian rights has been strong for a very long time, for many, many decades. What's different now, and this is really the opportunity we have to hopefully bring liberation and justice into Palestine, is that BDS is providing a set of tools and techniques to translate that solidarity into real political power and action. That's the difference.

It's not enough that people are sympathetic to Palestinians. We have to translate that sympathy into political power and pressure. That's why BDS is seen as such a threat to Israel and Israel's supporters, including of course the Trudeau government in Canada.

The other thing is that Palestine is really seen as a key issue. At the Socialism Conference in Chicago a few days ago, we were doing a session on Black Palestinian solidarity. And one of the speakers made the point that Black people in the United States and Palestinians in Palestine are really at the sharpest end of the empire. Black Americans being on the internal side and Palestinians being on the international side. These two struggles, of black people in the United States against racism and state violence, and the Palestinian struggle for their liberation, really in a way galvanize and represent the struggle against American imperialism in its most violent forms.

Is the unconditional United States veto the only factor blocking the end of occupation?

American support for Israel is of course a major factor. But it's not the United States alone. Canada has been of the most pro-Israel countries in the world, sometimes even more so than the United States. The difference is that Canada weighs much less than the United States.

I was in Australia and New Zealand this Spring, and the message that I was trying to give to activists in New Zealand in particular is that it's much easier to move the politics of a smaller country than it is to move the politics of the United States. The opportunity for activists in New Zealand or in Canada, some countries in Europe as well as in Southeast Asia, is that the victories you win there can have really a global impact. They start to change the discourse internationally, they start to break the consensus [with the United States].

While we recognize the weight of the United States, I think it's very important that we don't disempower ourselves by saying that unless the United States changes nothing is going to happen. The United States is part of an international system. Changing things in Canada, and Quebec is a good metric for this, has an impact on changing the United States. It's critical that people understand that people [both outside and inside the United States] have power and play an important role. And that's the strength of the BDS movement: it's grassroots, it's international, it's internationalist, and it's decentralized. And that's how we exercise power.

Student-led BDS campaigns are galvanizing university campuses across North America, but student campaigners face pushback from both university administrations and pro-Israel student bodies. What role does the BDS movement need to play on university campuses and how would you respond to students who are struggling to maintain the BDS campaign?

Students are the experts at that. What I can say is that, and I know less about Canada, but there have been some important successes recently: at Dalhousie [University] the student government voted to divest, not just recommended divestment, but actually voted for actual divestment. The student union itself has funds of several million dollars and there about tens of thousands of dollars that they were holding in companies complicit in Israeli human rights violations that will be divested.

What we're seeing in the United States, and across North America generally, is university administrations (and they always do this) siding with the status quo, siding with power, siding with governments [over students], siding with Israeli. But this has not stopped the momentum, and what we see is that the momentum is moving up the chain, it's incremental, but it's happening. What I mean by that is that this has gone from a movement which is about passing student government resolutions in support of BDS (and that has happened across North America), [to a movement that now] works to actually turn [that momentum] into campaigns which put pressure on universities to actually divest.

Some of those campaigns are beginning to involve faculty. We see alliances between students and faculty and that [alliance] is very, very important. That's one way students can protect themselves against censorship and intimidation. But the other thing [happening] in the United States that's very important is that we've seen three graduate student trade unions support BDS. We need more involvement of trade unions, and more alliance. This isn't just a way to strengthen the BDS movement on campuses, but also to broaden the movement in society generally.

How optimistic are you about the future of the BDS movement?

I think the one point to make is that there is a major political shift going on in North America, Europe, and other parts of the world. The young generation, the so-called millennials, are becoming much more progressive. They're in revolt against the system which has robbed them of a viable political and economic future. We see that in the United States in the support for Bernie Sanders (that's not to say Sanders is the greatest politician or person in the world), we see that in the support for Corbyn, we see it in Spain with Podemos, in Greece with Syriza. There are victories and losses, like we see in Greece.

But this shift is also critical to support for Palestine, support for Palestine is part of a broader movement for economic and social justice and against racism. So in that sense I'm quite optimistic about the possibilities [for the BDS movement]. We've seen [this change] in the past few years in Canada. Quebec is perhaps the biggest indicator, with the enormous student-led protests that have happened there in the past couple of years, but also in Alberta with the New Democratic Party's victory (although the NDP is nothing fantastic politically, especially on Palestine.) My point is there are opportunities and insurgent movements, and we should be optimistic about our possibility to bring about change.

Lubicon Lake Nation Demands Action, Justice For Ongoing Discrimination And Exploitation

Sophia Reuss — 2016-06-02T16:52:22Z

On Wednesday May 18, Lubicon Lake Nation Chief Bernard Ominayak met with Alberta's Indigenous Relations Minister, Richard Feehan, following the Nation's recent human rights complaints.

In a Skype interview with rabble, Cynthia Tomlinson, recently elected Councillor of the Lubicon Lake Nation, said that the meeting with Feehan involved discussion of Lubicon's ongoing land rights disputes.

Earlier this month, the Nation also resubmitted a human rights complaint to the 89th Session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

"We've been hearing talks of the Liberal government saying that they're going to have the UN have a bigger influence in Canada, and we're hoping that's really the case and not just an empty statement," Tomlinson said.

Lubicon's ongoing fight for their land

The Lubicon Lake Nation never signed a treaty with the Canadian government. "We still hold a title to our land, because we never signed a treaty," Tomlinson told rabble. But when oil and other natural resources were discovered on Lubicon land in the early 1950s, the Albertan government built an all-weather road into Lubicon territory, without Lubicon consent.

Lubicon members filed a caveat, notifying the government that a land claim was contested. Alberta passed legislation to retroactively dismiss the case.

Oil extraction and resource development on Lubicon land exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s upon completion of the all-weather road. The Lubicon have not received a penny of oil and gas royalties.

Throughout the 1980s, the Lubicon organized various actions, most notably a boycott of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. As a result of the boycott, over 30 museums refused to lend artifacts to the the Olympics' Shell Oil-sponsored "Indian Art" exhibit.

In 1988, the Lubicon withdrew their ongoing lawsuits and set up blockades around their land. Days later, Alberta Premier Don Getty sent the RCMP to tear down the blockades. Shortly afterwards, Chief Ominayak and Getty signed the Grimshaw Accords, which set out the 243-square kilometre reserve for the Lubicon. The Lubicon still needed to negotiate a similar deal with the federal government.

Negotiations with the federal government broke down in 1989 when the Minister of Indian Affairs organized a rival band that incorporated Indigenous peoples from communities outside of the Lubicon in Alberta. The government negotiated a land deal with the newly created band, the Woodland Cree, which undermined the Lubicon's land claims.

Since 1990, the Lubicon have fought for recognition of their land claim in courts. In June 2013, the Lubicon filed a $700 million lawsuit against Alberta and Canada. According to the Lubicon Lake Nation's most recent press release, neither the province nor Canada has filed a statement of defence.

UN human rights complaints

The UN, to this day, charges Canada with human rights violations with regard to the Lubicon Lake Nation.

In 1990, the UN issued charges against Canada in violation of Article 27, stating that "recent developments threaten the way of life and culture" of the Lubicon.

"The first complaint was made in 1990, and the UN urged Canada to deal with us in a way that was honest and respectful," Tomlinson told rabble.

At their meeting with Feehan, Ominayak and Tomlinson discussed the recent UN Human Rights complaint that was re-submitted earlier this month.

"We're hoping that [our complaint] is enough for [the government] to say 'okay we should deal with this right'. We want someone to come to the community and deal with the paperwork. We're hoping that the end result is a bit different than in 1990, meaning that we'll actually get this resolved."

As for the outcomes of their meeting with Feehan, "I'm not really sure what he's going to do, but the ball is in his court now," Tomlinson asserted.

Article taken from rabble.ca

The Murder of Berta Caceres and American Foreign Policy

Sophia Reuss — 2016-04-02T02:31:57Z

Tourists, government employees, and people strolling through downtown Washington D.C. last week likely noticed two large banners outside the buildings at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. One featured a drawing of Berta Caceres and the other spelled out “USAID stop funding murder in Honduras” with large block letters.

Two local activists, Jake Dacks and Nico Udugama, unfurled the banners on 14 March in front of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s offices. In a press release, Dacks and Udugama stated “we stand in solidarity with our dear comrade Berta [Caceres] and the Lenca people and all Hondurans who are valiantly resisting displacement in their territory.”

Just before midnight on 2 March, Berta Caceres was assassinated in her home in La Ezperanza, in Northwest Honduras. Caceres, an environmental justice and indigenous land rights activist, co-founded the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations (COPINH) in the 1990s and has become a global symbol of resistance to ecological destruction and transnational capitalism. In the 1990s, Caceres and COPINH began a series of direct action mobilizations, including road blockades and other modes of peaceful resistance, against the various hydropower projects on the Gualcarque River.

In a COPINH report, Caceres wrote:

“at the present time several international organizations are pressuring us to build megaprojects on indigenous lands — refineries, tourist resorts, and hydroelectric dams — that threaten to displace our people. But we ask: who are the people that make these proposals? We are the people who live in those areas, and we should have a right to decide what kind of projects are built on our lands.”

In 2000, Caceres described some of COPINH's successes: “we have expelled 36 big lumber companies from our area and most of them were foreign, even from the United States.” COPINH was also successful in pressuring the Honduran government to ratify the International Labor Organization's International Convention on Indigenous People (No. 169).

In the same report, however, Caceres described how the World Bank-funded El Tigre dam in Honduras would “displace 60,000 indigenous families, [and exact] a heavy social cost.” Despite COPINH's traction, transnational capitalist interests continued to displace and dominate local indigenous communities.

Throughout the 2000s, Caceres and COPINH continued to mobilize against numerous large-scale, internationally-funded projects, including the Agua Zarca dam, which would effectively cut off water access for the indigenous Lenca communities in the area. That the Lenca communities who live in the area were not consulted about the dam violates international law, yet the companies funding the Agua Zarca continued with the project anyways. Even after Caceres's murder, Dessarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA) is still pursuing the Agua Zarca dam, with international funding through the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and with contracting from Voith-Hydro (Siemens).

In 2008, President Manuel Zelaya, under pressure from COPINH and groups of small farmers, introduced a land reform decree to review land title claims. Zelaya's reform aimed to restore land to the farmer cooperatives and the campesinos who had been violently coerced into selling collectively owned land to large landowners under the 1992 Law on Modernization of Land. Despite these gains, Caceres knew that COPINH's resistance to projects like the El Tigre and Agua Zarca dams would continue to be an uphill battle.

In June 2009, the Honduran military and elites staged an illegal coup to overthrow Zelaya and reverse his plans for land reform. In the following years, Honduras became the most dangerous country for environmental activists in the world. Global Witness reports that more than 109 people were killed between 2010 and 2015 for protesting destructive dam, mining, logging, and agriculture projects. Berta's murder is not an isolated event.

Human Rights Watch reported that at least 8 journalists and 10 members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), an opposition group that opposed the 2009 coup and demanded the reinstatement of Zelaya, were killed shortly after President Porfirio Lobo Sosa assumed power in 2010.

The post-coup government, led by President Lobo, pursued an aggressive international development and foreign investment strategy, courting transnational private investors and multinational corporations to build hydroelectric dams, mining operations, and other ecologically destructive projects.

However, Caceres and COPINH faced not only the new (unconstitutional) Honduran government, but American foreign policy interests. Even before the coup, Caceres and COPINH had called for indigenous communities in Latin America to “wake up” to the “subtle ways” that international organizations “exert great pressures on [indigenous communities] to accept their projects.”

The U.S. State Department floundered in response to Zelaya's unconstitutional ousting. Immediately following the coup, the U.S. Embassy in Honduras sent a cable to the State Department declaring, “there is no doubt” that the coup “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” Despite this cable, the U.S. claimed that the State Department needed lawyers to determine whether the coup was indeed a ‘military coup' and to further investigate the events, producing confusion about the events in the media, which seeped into political debates and public opinion.

Why would the State Department pretend not to know what had happened in Honduras? Because although the U.S. nominally denounced the coup, the State Department supported its political ends: the reversal of land reform policies in Honduras, the propping up of America-friendly leaders, and the continuation of socially, ecologically, and culturally destructive policies and projects for financial interest.

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the 12 months prior to the coup, the U.S. responded to other coups by cutting U.S. aid within days. USAID did not cut aid to Honduras after the coup, and turned a blind eye to the country's worsening human rights conditions. In fact, USAID continues to support the Agua Zarca dam project.

The U.S. has a history of fomenting coups and instigating political upheaval in the region to maintain American influence (or, as the State Department words it, to ‘promote democracy'). Bolivian President Evo Morales has alleged U.S. involvement in coup attempts in Venezuela and Ecuador. With regard to Honduras, Morales declared, “the empire of the United States won.” Morales's use of the word ‘empire' is deliberate: American foreign policy in Latin and South America combined the distribution of aid to countries with horrific human rights records constitutes nothing other than imperialism poorly disguised as international development.

Just hours before the murder of Nelson Garcia, an activist who worked with COPINH and Caceres, a group of over 700 leading Latin American scholars and policy experts co-signed an open letter calling on Secretary of State John Kerry to suspend foreign aid to Honduras until the government changes its human rights record.

Jake Dacks and Nico Udugama's allegation that USAID funds murder in Honduras is not a far-fetched conspiracy theory. Indeed, providing aid to a government that fails to prevent (or is perhaps entirely responsible for) the murder of activists and opposition leaders is the American status quo. And the status quo is not only irresponsible, it is simply unacceptable.

Sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000816200746/http:/www.epica.org/advoc.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/22/gustavo-castro-soto-and-the-rigged-investigation-into-berta-caceres-assassination/
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/61365
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/774

“The People of Rojava are Staging a Social Revolution”

Sophia Reuss — 2016-03-02T20:26:13Z

Dimitri Roussopoulos, a Montreal-based political activist, writer, editor, publisher, and community organizer, was a member of an International Peace Delegation that visited Istanbul, Turkey from 14 - 17 February, 2016. The delegation, which was organized by the European Union's Turkey Civic Commission with local Kurdish lawyers and consisted of ten influential figures in politics, public life and culture, aimed to meet with Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdish leader and President of the PKK, who is currently detained at Imrali Prison in Turkey. The Peace Delegation's ultimate objective was to seek to facilitate the restarting of dialogue between the Turkish Government and Öcalan in order to bring about a peace process. I interviewed Mr. Roussopoulous and learned about his involvement with the Delegation, the Kurdish freedom movement and the Rojava Revolution. The interview follows.

How did you become involved in the International Peace Delegation?

I was invited to be part of this delegation most likely because, last fall, I participated in a large international conference in Hamburg organized by Germans and Kurds about what kind of actions can lead to a society other than the one that we have, in other words, a post-capitalist society. It was quite a star-studded cast of speakers, people like David Graeber, David Harvey, John Holloway and Janet Biehl and others attended. I was a featured speaker at that conference, and the comments I made generated a considerable amount of interest. My name must have come up when the idea was launched of sending an International Peace Delegation to Turkey as an initiative to get the Turkish Government to be more reasonable and intelligent in its approach towards the Kurds.

What were the objectives and goals of the delegation?

Our objective was threefold. First, we wanted to meet with the Turkish Minister of Justice to learn about what we could do, as delegates from around eight countries and with a variety of skills, to facilitate a peace process whereby the Turkish Government and the leadership of the Kurdish community can engage in a discussion. We wanted to facilitate a discussion between the Kurdish community and the Turkish Government so as to work out a new accommodation, a new understanding, and a new relationship. Peace missions have a specific composition and specific way of working. For instance, a peace mission never enters into a situation with blame, a peace mission tries to find ways in which people can talk to each other. And in talking to each other, people may find some common ground upon which they can build a relationship.

The second reason why we wanted to meet the Minister of Justice is because we needed the Minister's permission in order to visit Imrali prison. We had to get his clearance to visit Abdullah Öcalan, who is recognized as the main spokesperson for the Kurdish community, and an important political thinker in redefining a new relationship between the Kurdish community and the Turkish Government and in imagining what kind of society the Kurdish freedom movement should aspire towards.

The third objective was that we wanted to meet a large variety of civil society organizations in Turkey. We met with some remarkable people, extremely well-informed and extremely articulate activists, intellectuals, and public figures. One group we met with was the Democratic Society Congress (HDK), an important three-year old association of Kurdish and Turkish civil society, who cooperate in trying to promote a more just and harmonious Turkey. Another one was the Free Öcalan Committee, run by two remarkable women, who collected 10.3 million signatures in Turkey and internationally to petition the Turkish Government to free Öcalan from jail. We also met with several groups of human rights lawyers, the Asrin Law Office, the Libertarian Lawyers Association (OHD), the Foundation for Society and Legal Studies (TOHAV) and Libertarian Democratic Lawyers (ODAV), all of whom work to help establish a negotiating relationship and to free Öcalan from jail. We met with Pervin Buldan, a member of Parliament from the HDP, the important pro-Kurdish progressive political party who participated in the Imrali committee and has visited Öcalan 33 times.

What process did the Delegation follow, and to what extent did the Delegation meet its objectives?

The process was engaged as follows: the delegation was led by Judge Essa Moussa, who is a distinguished superior court judge in South Africa. Judge Moussa helped facilitate the peace process in South Africa and also helped free Mandela. He wrote to the Turkish Minister of Justice, in a letter dated 3 February, asking to see a) how we could be helpful in restarting the peace process and b) whether we could get clearance to visit Öcalan. He did not receive a response. He wrote a second later dated 9 February, and again there was no response. He then got in touch with the South African Ambassador in Ankara, and the South African Ambassador facilitated the letter to be sent to the Minister of Justice who finally acknowledged having received our letter. In the acknowledgement, the Ministry said it would reply that day to the letter. Well, the Ministry never replied. By the time we left Turkey, we hadn't received a reply. As far as we know from Istanbul, a reply never came in.

In terms of facilitating a restart to the peace process, the mission did not obtain its objective. Nor did the mission obtain its second objective of visiting Öcalan. But, we were successful with regard to our third objective: we met at least nine different organizations in Istanbul. We were very well received, learned from and made connections with these organizations that will be important for future collaboration, and we left Turkey with a commitment to do everything we can, from abroad in our respective countries, to facilitate some kind of solution.

What does Öcalan and the PKK stand for?

The PKK was founded as a Marxist-Leninist party and went through a transformation. Not only is it no longer a Marxist-Leninist party, but now the party is no longer interested in establishing another nation state, they are not interested in this classical national liberation outcome to their struggle. What they advocate is what Öcalan terms ‘democratic confederalism', which is grassroots direct democracy at the local level, in neighborhoods, cities and villages, connected through a confederation. This is confederation very much controlled from the bottom up. Indeed, he makes this proposal not only for Kurdish society but for Turkey as a whole, proposing the decentralization of decision making to empower local communities across Turkey. This is very new for the Left, and Öcalan writes a great deal about this, another reason the Turkish state silences him.

How would you characterize, in general historical terms, the relationship between the Turkish Government and the Kurdish population living in Turkey?

What we have to appreciate in this situation is that the ethnic groups who inhabited, and who continue to inhabit, Anatolia, the great peninsula of Asia Minor, paid a very high price for the nationalism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk created ex nihilo a country with a singular identity ('you're a Turk or you're nothing'), and the intolerance towards the Kurdish population was absolutely incredible: their language was forbidden, publications, radio, television, newspapers, forms of cultural production were forbidden. None of this was allowed in the name of "Turkishness". But the opening of a dialogue around a peace process, which began around 2005, loosened this up a bit, especially after the painful years of violent civil war in the 1990s. The Kurds were allowed to use their language, they could use it in primary schools over and above learning Turkish, they could have several cultural periodicals, etc. Moreover, there was none of the military violence seen in the past. The situation had definitely improved, and Öcalan participated in facilitating that.

And then, the analysis goes as follows. Ergodan, the current Prime Minister, was determined to provoke a situation which would lead to an election where he could win an absolute majority in parliament so he could change the constitution to create a presidential system, where he could have far more power and authority than he has now. This is especially after such ambitions were temporarily thwarted when the HDP finally achieved the 10% threshold needed to enter parliament in the June 2015 elections. The military campaign starting in the fall of last year by provoking situations in Kurdish areas via the police or even the army. Erdogan's relationship to the army was initially a very poor one: when he became Prime Minister, he arrested several dozens of generals and brought them in front of the courts, accusing them of all sorts of things and these trials went on forever. Thus the army, which is a very Kemalist army and a very powerful institution in Turkey, were not friendly at all with Ergodan. But somehow he buried the hatchet with them in order to declare war on the domestic Kurds. The elections that took place in November last year were very tense; although he still didn't win the number of seats needed to change the constitution, Erdogan nevertheless did win the absolute majority. One of the reasons he did not win the number of seats he wanted to form a super majority and change the constitution is because the new Kurdish party, the HDP, held on to the 10% threshold. Under extreme persecution and military repression, the HDP lost votes but the party held on to what they had and effectively blocked Erdogan from winning the super majority.

So the relationship is at a real impasse, and the repression is ongoing. For example, before we arrived, Cizre, a city of 120 000, was heavily attacked by police and military forces, resulting in the vast majority of its residents fleeing. Hundreds of people who remained in the town, in order to protect themselves, hid in the basements of several houses with their children. Well, this did not hold the Turkish police back. After being stranded in these basements for twenty days, often without food and water, the Turkish military and police attacked the houses through airstrikes and then firebombed the basements with petrol, and the people burned to death in those basements. 190 people were burnt alive, some with signs of decapitation. The vast majority of the bodies are unrecognizably burnt. And the Turkish Government has tried to cover up this massacre, sending the human remains to different cities for autopsies. As a matter of fact, we had one meeting, organized by the Turkish Peace Assembly of at least 80 to 90 academics, artists, activists and a range of others, in a downtown Istanbul hotel, and we were told awful stories of what was going on, as well as the harassment and imprisonment of academics who signed a petition. It continues to be a very sad situation.

How does the relationship between the Turkish Government and the Kurds living in Turkey compare to the Turkish Government's stance towards Kurds living outside of Turkey in the region?

One of the reasons why the current Turkish Government has a very internally aggressive campaign towards the Kurds within Turkey is because the government is very nervous regarding what is happening outside of Turkey in the northeast of Syria, in an area called Rojava. Because, there, some very extraordinary things are taking place. Given the Kurdish struggle has abandoned the goal of a nation-state, this national liberation struggle now aspires for a stateless post-capitalist society based on decentralism. The people of Rojava are staging a remarkable social revolution. It is organized from the grassroots through direct democracy with street and neighbourhood assemblies. Gender equality is also an important factor, with the women's movement being very influential. This is a revolution that is becoming increasingly recognized internationally. There are even volunteers going to fight with the Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Rojava.

You may recall, for example, there was a Canadian ex-soldier who had travelled to Rojava to fight, John Gallagher. He wrote an extraordinary manifesto as to why he was going to Rojava to fight alongside the people there. I was very impressed with the manifesto because it was filled with the right humanistic values, and when his body was flown back to Ottawa, not only was the body unofficially received by Canadian military members, but when the body arrived in Toronto, there was a big solidarity demonstration with his coffin; the local Kurdish community came out, other people came out and greeted the body. I found this quite extraordinary that he would be received this way.

I was a student of the Spanish civil war and social revolution, and I find some very interesting comparisons to be made between what's going on in Rojava both in terms of social experiment, but also in terms of the interest that Rojava is garnering internationally. And any society, as far as I'm concerned, that not only talks about, but actually implements, gender equality cannot be ignored. There were two international delegations that travelled to Rojava in late 2014, and again in 2015, and I know some of the people who were part of these delegations, who actually saw the various governing bodies in Rojava, be they municipal councils or local political organizations. Strict gender parity is enforced for all leadership positions and parallel women's only committees have veto power. They described how everything was done on the basis of gender equality. The other thing that those two delegations came away with is that ideology in Rojava is extremely important. They talk about social and political theory incessantly. One of the people in the delegation went into a secondary classroom, and they were being taught about social ecology. Ideology is constantly being discussed. Nothing prevents them from having long conversations about what is equality, what is gender equality, what is ethnic harmony, how do we combat illiteracy, what leadership role women have to play in this new society, and the women's organizations were quite remarkable according to these two organizations that went there.

The other very remarkable thing is that there is a practice, an ethnic coexistence, within Rojava amongst the diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, including: Kurds, Arabs, Yezidis, Aramaens and Assyrians. In other words, whatever people's ethnic background is, whatever their religion is, it is part of the fabric of the new society that is trying to be built. Those two practices alone are making the Ankara government nervous, because obviously the Kurds in Turkey are thinking and talking and debating about all that too, and it's influencing other places in the so-called Middle East. And this is an example that, as far as these interests are concerned, must not spread. And therefore, it is not surprising, in a way, that the Ankara government behaves the way it does domestically, and also that it uses its military to attack the Kurds outside of Turkey along the border. And we were sitting in a restaurant, half a dozen of us of the delegation and others, and they were showing on television a whole row of Turkish tanks just bombarding across the border. And they're supposed to be fighting ISIS, but they're not, they're trying to destroy Rojava.

How do the various foreign interventions in the region respond to Rojava?

I have no doubt at all that it is in the interest of the ruling parties and individuals in most of these pockets to isolate Rojava and to undermine it. The only 'allies' of the people in Rojava are paradoxically the Americans, because the American military has worked out a relationship of necessity with Rojava: the Kurdish fighting forces on the ground find the most efficient military force to push back ISIS and, via telecommunications, tell the American Air Force where ISIS is. This is the kind of collaboration that takes place. So the Americans have told Erdogan to downscale his violence against the Kurds, because the American military operation in the region relies on the Kurds. So even though there is this bizarre relationship with the American military, nobody wants to see this revolution spread, nobody.

Are the Kurdish communities in the region feeling the impact of Rojava?

Rojava's ideological and political developments are spilling over, in some ways, into the Kurdish community in northern Iraq, though it is still a corporate petro-government. That's a fact. How far east it goes, whether the Kurds in Iran are talking about Rojava, I can't say. And of course, within Turkey from the southeast all the way to Istanbul, the Kurds are talking about it. So there is a lot for us, in the international community, to think about — the importance of the Kurdish struggle, and the originality of Rojava.

Crises in France: the left's response

Sophia Reuss — 2016-03-02T20:17:37Z

The people of France have been confronted with multiple challenges lately: while the migrant crisis and the situation in Calais is ongoing, Paris was a target of a terror attack in November last year. In December, the Paris Climate Conference, COP21, took place in Paris Le-Bourget while the city was under the state of emergency. To find out about how the French Left responded to the situation, I spoke with Bernard Dreano over the phone. Bernard Dreano is Chair of CEDETIM (Centre d'études et d'initiatives de solidarité internationale) and a co-founder of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly international network (HCA).

What was the French Left's response to the state of emergency declared after the Paris attacks?

First of all, we have to clarify what we mean when we speak of the French Left. There is what I term the ‘left of the left', which includes the Green Party, the Communist Party and its allies in the Front de Gauche. Then there is the ruling Socialist Party. The vast majority of the Socialist Party not only accepted the state of emergency, but promoted it. Manuel Valls and Francois Hollande's position is that France needs a state of emergency to face terrorism, and that France needs to extend this state of emergency. Valls even said that France should implement a state of emergency as a long as Daesh is a danger, which means potentially for years.

Now, the left of the left initially accepted the state of emergency, and voted for it during the first vote in the National Assembly. A few MPs abstained or voted against it, but this was a small minority. Recently, MPs in the left of the left are criticizing the prolongation of the state of emergency and its consequences. Their criticism is not only against of the state of emergency as such, but of what lies behind it: the anti-terrorist regulation, which is supposed to be very far from the Patriot Act but yet contains a lot of things which are quite problematic in terms of freedom, etc. So after some time, the left of the left criticized the new legislation and the state of emergency. And of course, they strongly criticized the developments right after the attacks, because during the pre-COP21 period, several people were put under home arrest, including 25 ecological militants.

Then we had the development of the constitutional reform which would have put the state of emergency into the constitution. The background to this is quite complicated, but to sum it up, in France, we have 3 statutes. The first is the state of siege, which means military rule (this is never applied). Then we have Article 16, which grants full power to the president and which was used only one time by De Gaulle during the Algerian War. Finally there is the state of emergency, which has existed since 1955 which was used during the struggle for liberation in Algeria. It has been used very few times in France since 1955, generally in the way of symbolic action, like in 2005 during the riots in the banlieues, and in New Caledonia, which is a long story of colonialism.

But this time, the state of emergency was extended, and alongside putting the state of emergency in the constitution, the ruling party wanted to insert an article about “decheance de nationalite” in the constitution, which would effectively suppress the nationality of someone accused of terrorist behavior and which would apply to individuals with dual citizenship. The left of the left reacted against this, as well as significant numbers of MPs from the Socialist Party and conservative MPs. But, the majority of MPs nevertheless stood for it.

All in all the political Left reacted slowly. Civil society and human rights organizations, on the other hand, reacted immediately. The Human Rights League, which is a very respected organization in France, alongside many organizations mobilizing around migrant issues, immediately criticized the state of emergency very strongly. Currently, there is a committee in France organized around fighting the promulgation of the state of emergency. This committee denounced the abuse in the name of the state of emergency, and organized a demonstration in more than 50 cities and towns in France just two weeks ago. The demonstrations were not very big by French standards, all together around 14,000 people demonstrated. But the demonstrations took place in many places, which reveals the more robust grassroots response.

What was the Left's reaction to COP21? How did the state of emergency impact the mobilizations that were planned around the conference?

There was a lot of mobilization within society around COP21— there was a movement called Alternativa, which organized 400 events all around France to discuss alternatives in terms of production, consumption, etc. In addition, there was a relatively important coalition organized to express the voice of civil society during COP21, Coalition Climat. Coalition Climat was a very broad coalition, but it was not big enough in terms of the number of people involved in activities.

No political parties were involved (formally) in the Coalition Climat. If you look carefully at who was involved in the Coalition and developing it, there were many leftist activists and people involved in the ‘alterglobalist' movement. The Coalition also involved some trade unions, including the reformist trade unions, and a lot of grassroots organizations. This made for a very interesting and broad Coalition, but the political Left did not form its backbone. For example, the Green Party, which is supposed to be at the forefront of such a subject, was not active. There was a big dispute within the Green Party about whether the party should have participated in the Coalition or not. This debate was a characteristically party politics debate, and as such, paralyzed the party when it came to the question of participation.

Right after the attacks and the declaration of the state of emergency, the government forbade all public activities and demonstrations, not only because they considered mobilizations to be possible sites for more terrorist attacks, but because they would require police to divert resources away from protecting the COP21 conference. The government was divided on this, and the Coalition Climat leaders pressured for the continuation of demonstrations. In the end, some demonstrations did take place, but not as many as were planned. If the state of emergency was not declared after the attacks, the number of people participating in initiatives parallel to COP21 would have been bigger, but not by much. While some interesting events did end up taking place in Montreuil during the Climate Forum, most of the participation was international… there was much less French participation than there should have been.

After COP21, it was decided that the Coalition Climat should not carry on. Part of its membership is already preparing for COP22: there is actually already a French committee for COP22. But the broad coalition as such, is not active.

Was the Coalition Climat successful in linking climate justice to other problems, like issues of social and economic inequity?

The Coalition Climat as such was a very broad coalition and focused primarily on COP21, but there was some attempt to mobilize on the basis of other socioeconomic issues. There were some appeals from leaders in the banlieues to mobilize, which, had the calls been more robust, would have symbolized the Coalition's linking of climate justice with French inequity in the banlieues. But practically speaking, very few things happened to demonstrate the Coalition was thinking about other social issues. Questions of social issues like unemployment were treated very abstractly, not practically.

Let's take the inequity in the banlieues as an example. COP21 took place in the northeast of Paris, in the middle of one of the most popular, prosperous neighbourhoods in Paris. And the Coalition Climat was taking place in Montreuil, which is in the same part of the city. But the local groups in Montreuil, as far as they exist, were not really involved; they were really only represented to a very small extent. Local communities were not very involved in the civil society mobilization organized in the cities. There was actually much more work done in small towns and in the countryside by the Alternativa network.

To give you one more example — we had a debate about the effects of climate change in the Climate Forum in Montreuil. Montreuil is known as the third city of Mali — many Malian migrants live in Montreuil. With thousands of Malian people in Montreuil and the Climate Forum taking place in their town, there was not much Malian representation in the debates. They were not there. That's just one example among others. This was a fault of the Coalition's lack of political backbone, but it also shows the weakness of the movement in terms of being rooted in parts of society.

What was the French Left's response to the migration crisis?

With this issue, once again, we see the weakness of the French Left today. On paper, the Left, not including the centre-left Socialist Party (the Socialist Party's leadership has a very strong anti-migrant attitude), is supposed to be pro-migrant, but there are very few mobilizations organized to demonstrate this. France has accepted 10,000 syrian refugees. 10,000 is the total for the whole five year period. But France opened its door to elites, not to the ordinary or working class people at all. And that's just an example with regard to the Syrian question. But of course it's the same thing for everything.

You have the infamous issue of Calais; all these migrants are coming to France because they want to get to the UK and they are blocked in Calais. It has been a scandal for 3 or 4 years now. The policies of the French government, both Sarkozy as well as Hollande, have categorically denied to take action in Calais. Their attitude is basically: “we cannot do anything because if we do something, if we create an official refugee camp, it will generate an appeal and more migrants will come.” It's basically just a continuing catastrophe.

Locally, there are extraordinary people mobilizing to support the migrants in Calais, but then there are more and more anti-migrant demonstrations going on as well. Nevertheless, the Calais locals are generally doing a good job, a bit like the population of Lampedusa. But the local activists are mobilizing without the support of, and actually in defiance of, the authorities, the Socialist Party, and the centre left. So while the Left has a (formally) good position on migrants, but they are not developing concrete activities.

If you take the problem with racism, there is a big division within the left of the left regarding Islamophobia. There is a big division on this issue which is paralyzing the left of the left - it is a big problem. Within each party you find the same divisions: while some politicians are able to speak about the issue of anti-Muslim racists, some people just say that there are no anti-Muslim racists and that simply invoking the concept of Islamophobia means you support the Islamists, because Islamophobia is a concept invented to protect Islamists. Even the self-proclaimed leader of the left of the left, Jean Luc Melenchon, supports this position, I mean it is his official position, for example, that Muslims cannot wear veils at school. So the Communist Party is totally divided on the question of Islamophobia (the Green Party is much more open, I would say). But this is an example of a problem that weakens the Left. And moreover, a lot of French Muslims are looking to the left of the left and are frustrated, so they vote for the centre right party — not for the Socialists. Although some still vote for the left of the left, most of them vote for the centre right, for the liberals, which is how the left lost at least ten municipalities in the last elections...because the islamophobic attitude of the left of the left is very strong.

Is there any hope for a rejuvenated, unified French left in the near future?

I think that it's going to be complicated for the French left in the coming months, and I hope that in the coming year the situation will improve. Most likely, the right wing will win the upcoming presidential election. Some people think it will be better to have a centrist right, because the liberals would be better than the current crazy social democrats. And this isn't a small phenomenon, it is a very big phenomenon. So because of this, and because a lot of people will not vote for the Socialist candidate, we can assume the traditional right will win. And during this sequence, it becomes very difficult for the left of the left to appear. What we hope is that after the 2017 elections, a new phase will really start. After the 2017 elections, we will hopefully witness the recomposition of the French left starting from the left of the left. But we still have the remains of the old parties, so it will take a few years yet.

A few notes about the French Left:

● The governmental "left" is composed of the Parti Socialiste and a few small allies (center left and ecologist dissidents)
● The "left of the left”: The Greens Europe Ecologie les Verts (EELV), the Front de Gauche (Left Front) a coalition of Parti Communiste Français PCF, Parti de Gauche PG (Left Party), Ensemble ("Together"mainly former members of PCF and NPA) and a few small groups...
● The far left: mainly Troskystes, the most important group being the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party/NPA) and its popular leader Olivier Besancenot

The Fight for $15: A National Cry for Workers' Rights in the United States

Katrina Gibbs, Sophia Reuss — 2016-02-02T16:29:13Z

As Iowans gathered on February 1st to endorse party nominees for the American presidential election, thousands of fast-food, home-care and child workers in Des Moines staged Iowa's first fast-food labour strike to voice their demands for a $15 per hour minimum-wage and the right to unionize.

The Iowan fast-food labour strike is no isolated protest — an American social movement dubbed the ‘Fight for 15' has grown steadily since 2012, when fast-food workers in New York striked in what became one of the first mass-scale labour actions in 21st century America. The New York workers called for some of America's largest corporations, fast-food chains, to pay workers $15 per hour, and insisted corporations begin conversations with labour unions to improve job safety, security, and sustainability.

All this against the bleak Midwest backdrop: since the early to mid-2000s, state legislation in the American Midwest has sought to squash labour unions and workers' rights movements. Republican leaders have slashed collective bargaining rights for public sector workers (such as Wisconsin's 2011 freedom-to-work bill), considered passing state legislation against unions (in Missouri, New Mexico, Kentucky, Illinois and numerous other states), and issued executive orders unions barring non-union workers from paying union fees (in Illinois, for example). Federal law already permits workers to opt out of unions, and the American right-wing continues to bolster state-level anti-labour policies.

The Fight for 15, which began in New York in 2012 with the “Fast Food Forward” worker's campaign (backed by the Service Employees International Union) and quickly gained traction in states throughout the United States, is based on a simple yet systemic issue: American workers just cannot survive on the current minimum-wage standards. The National Employment Law Project reports that over four in ten American workers earn less than $15 per hour. American food services make up the vast majority, that is, 96 per cent, of ultra- low wage earners. $15/hour is the bare minimum needed to live decently anywhere in the country. Even the most enticing meritocracy-myth (read: the American Dream) cannot compete with the stark inequity of the statistics.

Since the initial strikes in 2012, social movements have sprung up across the United States calling for labour reform to the tune of $15/hour. And to a degree, these grassroots movements have been heard. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo approved state-level policies to raise minimum wage to $15/hour by 2018, Seattle's Mayor Ed Murray pushed a proposal to raise minimum wage to $15/hour through city council, San Francisco voted for a $15/hour minimum wage in a ballot initiative, and the Los Angeles city council voted to increase minimum wage to $15/hour by 2020. Indeed, the movement has scored numerous policy victories in the past two years.

The movement has also garnered support in Canada — Canadian solidarity movements in the Fight for 15 reveal the broader scope of issues regarding wages and labor standards, as the movement has sought to reach global support. The spread of solidarity for the movement demonstrates how mass communication in the age of the Internet can prove to be a powerful tool in the fight for grassroots social justice movements, especially regarding issues that impact large portions of the population. President of SEIU Local 1, Sharleen Stewart, has expressed that the union focuses on corporations like McDonald's that offer little to their low-level employees. The SEIU has organized the McDonald's protests, which have taken place outside of several McDonald's restaurants across Canada, as well as the McDonald's Canada headquarters in Toronto.

As with the Fight for $15 in the United States, the Canadian movements have expanded to represent other low-wage laborers. The success of direct action initiatives in the United States and Canada reveal the power of civil disobedience for urging politicians to change their policies to represent the needs of the people. In Canada, the Fight for Fairness and 15 has drawn attention to much needed legislative changes, as the Ontario government has launched the Employment Standards and Labour Relations review in order to amend loopholes in the Employment Standards Act.

Despite the relative success of these movements in North America to put pressure on legislative reform, political activists have warned against construing the North American Fight for 15 as distinct from calls for broader socio-economic change. The success of the movement is rooted in its ability to impact policy, however, the Fight for 15 cannot be won simply by passing legislation that balances workers' wages with the cost of living.

According to an article published by National Employment Law Project (NELP), the low wages driving the movement point to the structural oppression built into the labour force, and while “policies to raise hourly pay have drawn populist energy, they will not directly improve the lot of workers stuck in the informal economy, undocumented laborers, people who are part-time and erratically employed, or those trapped in jobs where wage theft and overtime violations are rife.”

In short, raising the minimum wage will not solve the numerous other issues that exacerbate income inequality in the United States. Moreover, raising the minimum wage is not enough to confront complex, overlapping systems of oppression: the Fight for 15 must be part of a broader call for social, economic, and political alternatives to neoliberalism. And the movement, though it has a long way to go, has made the effort to link the labour movement to other social-justice issues in America.

NELP reports that American women and people of colour are overrepresented in jobs that pay less than $15/hour. More than half of African American workers and over 60 percent of Latino workers make substantially less than $15/hour, and while female workers represent less than half of the American workforce, they comprise more than half (54.7 per cent) of American workers making less than $15/hour. The issue of wage inequality necessarily intersects with racial injustice and gender inequality; the Fight for 15, as a social movement, will therefore only succeed in bringing about systemic change if it organizes alongside social movements oriented around race, gender, and other social issues.

The Fight for 15 must align with other social-justice issues not only in content, but in form. The movement must certainly wage its fight in formal political and legislative arenas, but if labour is to generate systemic economic change, workers must continue to channel their energy in direct action initiatives and civil disobedience.

When cries can be heard through the streets, the voices can be unified under a common cause that might otherwise get sifted through the holes of convoluted bureaucracy. The struggle now is to bridge the gaps between different social movements, in order to strengthen the power of the people in the fight for social justice. The Fight for 15 points to the capacity and the need for such movements to build strong coalitions, in order to unify specific problems under the umbrella of broader structural problems within the North American neoliberal system.

The power of mass communication has proven over the years to be a successful avenue for the unification of otherwise disjointed movements. The capacity for the Fight for 15 protests to put pressure on politicians to push for legislative reform demonstrates that the strength of these movements can only grow. Civil disobedience will continue to be necessary for maintaining social justice, and movements like the Fight for 15 provide avenues for citizens to organize, unify, and demand change.

Sources:
http://www.nelp.org/publication/growing-movement-15/
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-fight-for-15-in-iowa/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/business/fast-food-workers-seeking-higher-wages-plan-another-strike.html?_r=0
http://fightfor15.org/why-we-strike/
http://rabble.ca/news/2015/04/tomorrow-canadian-workers-are-joining-global-action-fight-15-minimum-wage
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/02/17/ontario-to-review-labour-laws-for-gaping-holes-when-it-comes-to-precarious-work.html

An Interview With Indian Political Activist Satya Sagar: Part I

Katrina Gibbs, Sophia Reuss — 2016-02-02T16:24:43Z

Sophia: Yesterday we spoke with a French political activist who talked about how the French classical political parties are not adapted to proposing political alternatives and no longer drive the political agenda. She expressed that hope for systemic social change must be vested in the emergence of new social movements that aren't linked to formal political parties and organizations. Could you speak about the situation with these so-called ‘invisible' social movements in India?

Satya: India has the second largest population in the world, which means that a bulk of people in India are outside of any organized sector, whether it's a political party or the Indian state. Formal institutions don't reach people in the same manner as they would in a more organized country. To give an example, we've had trade unions in India for almost one hundred years, but only 7 percent of the Indian working population is organized. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. From the point of view of formally organizing people, it looks dismal. Formal political movements in India reach a very small number of people. Of course, a lot of people take part in the elections, they vote once every five years for the national elections. The thing is, the majority of Indian people don't define themselves very clearly with x or y political party. What works in India are older, traditional systems of organizing. To put it more accurately, India is the land of the caste system, which is one of the oldest ways of organizing people into an oppressive hierarchy and operates irrespective of who comes to power. In the last twenty days, there has been a massive upsurge of student protests across the country over the suicide of a student activist who is from the dalit (the ‘untouchables' in the caste system) community. This student was expelled from the hostel he was staying in because of some incident and he, along with some other students, were thrown out of the hostel. He was sleeping out in the open with the others in protest, but at some stage he became overwhelmed with everything that he had gone through, which was all because of his dalit caste —from his economic situation and this, almost, racial discrimination against him, and his fellow students, and the family he came from—he committed suicide. This has sparked a very large movement. There are protests going on in a large number of university campuses and also outside the universities. So the nature of organization and protest in India is very deceptive.

There is a need for organizing people into movements to work toward an alternative paradigm—a different kind of economy and a different kind of political structure. But the formal structures have not been that successful, because they don't capture the realities on the ground.

I look at India as an ecosystem. It is complex, diverse, and there are layers upon layers of categories of people. There is class, there is caste, gender, linguistic groups, regional groups. This makes for a complex ecosystem. One of the failures of the Left was on the issue of caste. They thought of it as a remnant of the past, which would fade away as the class struggles intensified. But it didn't. And it didn't help either that the Indian Communist movements across the spectrum are all led by people from the upper caste. We have a situation in which the oppressed do not have positions of leadership within the organizations meant to liberate them.

A bulk of the Indian population is the dalit caste or the indigenous peoples or poor Muslims. None of these groups have representation in the top hierarchy of the Indian Left. So we have a situation where the party who is meant to be carrying out revolution for social transformation itself is blind to the social, racial, and other realities.

This does not mean that there are no social movements. Movements in India are around the issue of land acquisition, since Independence. For instance, while indigenous people in India constitute only 10 percent of the overall Indian population, they account for 70 percent of the people displaced since Indian Independence. So we're talking about 50-60 million people being displaced over the last 60-70 years.
The Indian state has promoted large mining companies and corporations, and the indigenous community pays a disproportionately high price for India's development.India, as I said, is an ecosystem. It's also a colonial system. So, the upper caste elites are in the upper economic, social, and political hierarchy.

Katrina: Has the Indian Left, whose larger project was social transformation, effectively address all the day-to-day issues of the common people? Did the everyday issues (like education, health, and rights) ever appear on Indian political agenda? What are the social movements that took every day issues as part of their work?

Satya: The record of the Left parties is quite spotty. They've played an important role in setting agendas and raising issues. And in specific parts of the country where they came to power through elections, they did make a some difference for land distribution. But, if you look at the record compared to other parts of the country that didn't have Left parties in power, land reform has also taken place. In fact, the most successful land reform, in terms of transfer of ownership, has happened in places like Kashmir, where there are no Left parties in power. But then even if we commend the Left for their work on land distribution record, on other fronts, as you asked, like health and education, the record is quite spotty.

In Bengal province, where the Left has had continuous rule for over 35 years, the record is very poor. There was land reform, but this benefitted largely the middle and richer peasantry rather than agricultural laborers. Out of the entire Indian population, there are about 500 million workers—both in the urban and rural sector—more than half of them are actually agricultural laborers. The Left to this day, the big Left like the CPI and the CPM, have no organized the agricultural labor at all. Only in the past 10 to 15 years have some of the smaller communist parties have tried to organize agricultural labor. Most of the emphasis has been on people who already have land. They are fewer, but politically more influential. So, unfortunately, the Left has tended to focus on electoral politics, and it is not always about real social transformation.

Bengal has a poor record on health, education, gender, right to food, basic infrastructure (like providing safe drinking water electricity, decent roads, or toilets). This implies a disconnect in the way that the Indian Left has imagined what its role is. In the early phase of the Indian Communist movements in the 40s and 50s, the Communist parties did a lot of very good work, a lot of very creative work—not just for mobilization of people, but of the party on the ground. The prestige of the communist movement internationally was very high. There was a need for the Communist movements and there were good leaders, so they spread very rapidly.

What was most critical though, is that they paid attention to detail at the time. They set up clinics, schools, and they provided relief work, like flood relief for example and on the issue of famine. So they were actually going to the masses, living with them, organizing them and paying attention to detail, but once they achieved electoral success, it became a totally top-down process. They became more and more cut off from the actual day-to-day needs of the people, and they did not even build up an information base needed to understand what was really happening on the ground. They looked down on any work that was not purely agitational, they looked at it as reformist. So a lot of the revolution was rhetorical—not tangible, hard, on the ground stuff.

That gap was filled by other organizations, including the Indian Right. One of the reasons that the Right has become very strong in India is that they have done the day-to-day work of running schools or clinics or providing relief work for the past 7 decades. They spread their poisonous ideology by doing work that the Indian Left should have done. The civil society groups, NGOs, and smaller movements who are also doing that work are competing with the Indian Right more than the Indian party Left. But they are too small. As the situation stands right now, the Indian Right is the most organized force. And when I say organized, it's seriously organized. It has state power: the government of India is run by the Indian Right. It has power at the level of the street: can mobilize people with very short notice. They have power at the level of subversion: they carry out terrorist attacks, which are blamed on other people, They have a militant wing: they have open display of arms at different times of year, they have processions of people with guns in the street.

Sophie: Given the failure of the Indian Left to “capture reality”, is there hope, then, in social movements that do not associate with formal politics?

Satya: It's a very serious situation here. And there is nobody, in that sense, organized enough to take on the Indian Right. But the hope is that India is such a diverse country that the sheer diversity of India is what prevents any one organized group in India from getting too strong. The Left has failed in India to organize these masses. One can only hope that the Right will also fail. There is a strong resistance. This comes from a diversity of small groups; they offer hope. I would not look at the absence of large organized resistance as necessarily an indicator of lack of hope.

What is happening is that, at the macro-level, there is fermentation in India: the country is constantly bubbling under the surface and once in awhile, it erupts. It is too rich and diverse a country to be controlled by any one group. But at the micro- level, the problems are immense. A way to understand India, I always say that India cannot have a Hitler, because there are too many of them already. What happens in India is that at the macro-level, all of these “Hitlers” balance each other out. In the Indian case, at least, it is a balance of terror between all of these different characters. None of them can accept another as their leader, so they cannot unify under one banner and take over. The inefficiency of our elite is our greatest strength.

Sophia: So, you said earlier that once that movement enjoys formal political or electoral success, the movement become hierarchical and therefore can't enact any real change. I want to ask about the Common People's Party in Delhi, which became a formal political party in 2013. Do you think that a similar trajectory will take place with the Common People's Party? And can you tell us more about what that party is doing? Will they be able enact substantial change?

Satya: People cannot live on the hope of revolution, they need something now. A thirsty man comes knocking on the Party door and he's not given water, but the promise of revolution—this doesn't work. So what the Common People's Party has done significantly, I think, has raised hope by addressing day-to-day issues: corruption, lack of electricity, lack of drinking water, high prices of basic goods. The Party's electoral success has been astounding in a time when the Hindu Right was seriously on the ascendent; it swept the election in an extraordinary manner. They are doing a fair number of straightforward things.

In the last 15-20 years, there has been a lot of privatization of public utilities—one of them being electricity in Delhi. The Party, the Party's leader, and some of the people at the top, they started out in the anti-privatization movement in Delhi, long before they started a political party. They had a grip on the issues, and one of the things they did was to slash electricity prices, made water almost free, and they are setting up clinics — primary health centers. The Party believes in solution-oriented policies, not ideology-driven policies. They accept the role of the private sector also in certain things.

Once upon a time, the Left was a magnet for young people who wanted to transform the country, very idealist, people willing to give up their entire life for the political cause. The Left doesn't attract those kinds of people anymore, not for the last two or three decades now probably.This new party, on the other hand, has been able to attract a large number of people working voluntarily with them. Indian politics, otherwise, is a ladder for upward mobility to gain benefits like influence, money, or power. This party, at this early stage, offer hope because they focus on tangible things, not rhetoric. There are problems with the party no doubt, but you can't expect any pure political party in a country as complex as India. It's an ecosystem. As I said, this is both good and bad, but this is the cultural matrix within which we are working, so we cannot expect the party to only have sincere, idealist people.

Turkey in Syria: A Web of Contradictions

Sophia Reuss — 2016-01-04T17:57:40Z

On November 26th, 2015, Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was arrested alongside Erdem Gul, the newspaper's chief Ankara representative, over their allegation that the Turkish national intelligence organization (MIT) illegally carried weapons and ammunition into Syria in January 2014. Erdogan vowed the journalists would pay a “heavy price”, and personally filed criminal complaints against the journalists for “divulging state secrets” and “taking part in a terrorist organization”. Dundar is currently detained in solitary confinement in an Istanbul prison.

Dundar's arrest carries a double significance. On the one hand, it speaks to Erdogan's recent heavy-handed censorship of journalists and the press. Since his electoral victory in November, Erdogan's government has cracked down on numerous news outlets, brought criminal charges against journalists, and raided publications' headquarters. Given this pattern of censorship, Dundar's arrest does not come as a surprise.

On the other hand, Erdogan's scramble to condemn and imprison Dundar speaks to the complexity (and contradiction) of Turkey's role in Syria. Dundar describes the January 2014 incident in a recent article written from prison and published in the Guardian: “Early in 2014, a truck understood to belong to the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) was stopped near the Syrian border. The gendarmerie and the intelligence officials in control of the convoy pulled guns on each other. This was the moment the two blocks vying to rule the state came face to face. The truck was searched. Beneath the camouflage composed of medicines boxes, weapons and ammunition were found. The truck was held for a while, but following the intervention of government officials a safe passage into Syria was granted.”

Shortly afterwards, the Turkish government suppressed information about the incident, arrested the prosecutor and gendarmerie, and issued a statement declaring the trucks contained “humanitarian aid”. The news reached the Turkish public and sparked concerns over Turkey's potential intervention in Syria, but the government ferociously dismissed the allegations.

However, in May 2015, Dundar and Cumhuriyet Daily received video footage of the MIT truck. Dundar writes, “it was clearly visible that the truck was loaded with arms. It was thus documented that the intelligence service was illegally carrying arms into the civil war raging in a neighbouring country. This was big news.” Dundar's team uploaded the video footage to the Cumhuriyet website, alongside photos of and details about the operation. Cue Erdogan's retaliation. Erdogan's desperate imprisonment of Dundar is only testament to the increasingly questionable Turkish involvement in Syria. Indeed, Erdogan's interests in the Syrian civil war and US-led fight against IS have come under much scrutiny after the Cumhuriyet incident.

Turkey's importance in and centrality to the Syrian conflict is evident: its very location makes the country a key location for refugees and those fleeing persecution in Iraq and Syria. Erdogan blames Assad for the refugee crisis, and has declared Assad's regime to have “mercilessly” killed up to 400,000 Syrians. Turkey, a country of 75 million, currently hosts over 2 million Syrian refugees, close to double the number of refugees the EU hosts, which comprises 510 million. Erdogan has thus assumed a sort of moral authority on the refugee crisis; he criticizes the EU's failure to effectively implement a refugee quota system and the American and European reluctance to commit to ‘safe-zones' (protected areas inside Syria along the Turkish border).

On November 29th, 2015, Turkey and the EU struck a deal to mitigate the Syrian refugee crisis. In exchange for €3 billion and the EU's promise to unfreeze accession negotiations, Turkey would stem the influx of refugees into Europe. Many see this deal as emblematic of the gross international failure to sustainably address the systemic causes of the refugee crisis; Erdogan has simply ‘bought' refugees from Europe in exchange for a Turkish spot at the EU table.

Erdogan is also highly critical of the American intervention in Syria, and he condemns Russia for backing Assad. Russian-Turkish relations, which grew icy in November when Turkey shot down a Russian Sukkhoi fighter plane that had flown into Turkish airspace, complicate the international involvement in Syria. Putin's military intervention and airstrikes aim to bolster Assad's regime, putting Russia at odds with other countries, notably NATO-member Turkey, that want Assad out.

Erdogan's seemingly proactive stance on allowing refugees to enter Turkey and his condemnation of Assad has not blinded his critics. Moreover, the government's failure to tighten the country's southern border with Syria has caused tension, both domestic and international. The Cumhuriyet allegations that Turkey is arming IS, however, stem from a long history of violent conflict with Turkey's Kurdish people.

While Erdogan's official policy in Syria is ousting Assad and fighting IS, the subtext is complicated. In September 2015, Turkey began airstrikes in Syria. In addition to attacking IS positions, however, the Turkish airstrikes targeted Kurdish positions in Northern Iraq, putting Erdogan at odds with Turkey's traditional ally, the United States. Unlike Turkey, the United States believes that the Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria are the necessary ‘boots on the ground' and are crucial to fighting IS.

The issue for Erdogan is that his interests are perhaps not as clear-cut as his official policy makes them seem. Ultimately, Erdogan's interest in Syria is in ensuring that Kurdish groups, like the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Syria, do not gain any traction, territory, or control now or after the conflict during reconstruction, since these groups are closely associated with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkey has waged war against the PKK since the early 1980s. More than 40,000 people have been killed in Turkey's conflict with the PKK, which began its armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984. While the PKK initially demanded a Kurdish state, the group dropped this goal in the 1990s and instead called for increased autonomy for the Turkish Kurds. In March 2013, the PKK's imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan called a ceasefire.

This summer, the ceasefire ended with renewed violence against the Kurds, sparked by a suicide bombing in the Kurdish town of Suruc that killed 32 people. While the Turkish government blamed the bombing on IS, the PKK claimed the Turkish military had collaborated in the attack. Since the Suruc bombing, the Turkish military has begun military operations against the Kurds, which has sparked condemnation from the Turkish left, as well as international groups.

Gabi Zimmer, chair of European United Left/Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament, recently slammed Erdogan for the brutality of his ongoing military campaign in southeast Turkey. "In the wake of the dirty deals agreed with the Turkish government on refugee policy, the EU and its member states have passively accepted Erdoğan's war against the Kurdish people. They have deliberately turned a blind eye to the ruthless violations of basic human rights. Kurdish men, women and children are paying for Erdoğan's tyrannical self-interest with their lives on a daily basis," she said.

The Turkish operation involves 10,000 troops led by six generals, and is one of the largest Turkish military operations inside its borders. The raids in Cizre and Silopi, which began in mid-December, have already left at least 62 Kurdish militants dead. Since December 2015, the Turkish military claims that raids and operations against the Kurds have killed 261 Kurdish militants. The Kurdish death toll continues to rise into the new year.

The European Union, United States, and other Turkish allies have turned a blind eye to this massive human rights violation, while within Turkey, tensions mount. On January 3rd, 2016, the peaceful pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) organized a demonstration against the Turkish crackdown on Kurdish cities; more than 200 people gathered in Istanbul to peacefully protest the curfews imposed on mainly Kurdish cities and towns across southeastern Turkey.

Turkey is playing a perilous game in Syria, and the Cumhuriyet allegations that Erdogan is directly arming IS only prove that Erdogan's real interest in Syria is fighting the Kurds. "The Turkish claim they are fighting Islamic State… but in fact they are fighting the PKK," Cemil Bayik, leader of the PKK, told the BBC.

Erdogan cannot continue to uphold the pretense that the Turkish airstrikes are targeting IS. Not only will this allow the international community to ignore patterns of censorship and violence, but it will certainly impede progress towards a peace settlement in Syria. Ousting Assad, fighting IS, and fighting the Kurds are mutually exclusive. Erdogan must halt Turkey's military operations against the Kurds. Until then, Turkey will continue to weave a tangled web of contradictions that will encumber the international coalition in Syria.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/world/europe/thousands-protest-arrest-of-2-turkish-journalists-on-spying-charges.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33818282
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/18/more-than-60-kurdish-militants-now-killed-in-turkish-forces-crackdown

There is No Planet B: A Short Note on COP21

Sophia Reuss — 2015-12-01T15:12:40Z

The Global Climate March, which comprised more than 2,000 civil society mobilizations in over 150 countries, took place on the eve of the two-week UN climate change talks, COP21. Despite clashes with police in Paris, despite the perhaps underwhelming turnout in American cities, these marches demonstrated civil society's responsibility to ensure that the delegates, heads of state, and officials at COP21 recognize the urgency of radical action. Sure, COP21 seems our best, and currently, our only, chance at a formal global agreement to limit global warming and address climate change. But even if nations follow the pledges currently on the table, global warming this century will still amount to somewhere between a 2.7C or 3C rise. This is well above the 2C or below limit that scientists have called for.

The French government's ban on protests and marches during COP21 reveals the skewed priorities and limitations of the conference. With this ban, Hollande has declared that French national security trumps the livelihoods and security of those who will suffer most from climate change. As Naomi Klein remarked in a recent Guardian article, “the people facing the worst impacts of climate change have virtually no voice in western debates about whether to do anything serious to prevent catastrophic global warming.”

COP21 presented a rare exception. Events like the Global Climate March on November 29th, the Climate Action Zone, a hub for civilian mobilisation, demonstrations, symbolic actions, and artistic happenings in a working-class Parisian neighbourhood, and Coalition Climat 21's December 12th “Largest Mass Action for Climate Justice”, promised a voice to those not represented by the 20,000 people formally credited to attend COP21. These parallel spaces, events, and protests are an integral part of the movement to collectively address climate change. It is impossible to hold governments and heads of state accountable if robust grassroots movements are considered a security threat and prevented from organizing.

Thus far, 166 countries have submitted national commitments to reduce their emissions. There exist, therefore, 166 versions of an inadequate response to climate change. 166 individual agreements with individual standards, levels, policies, and frameworks that will ultimately fail to meet the mark. What is needed is a global, rallying cry for immediate, radical action. And civil society mobilization is key to ensuring that this cry is heard.

Certainly, vigilance is in order in the wake of the Paris attacks. But, as Klein remarks, if Paris felt unable to ensure adequate security at both the conference site and on the streets during COP21, the conference should have been postponed, or held elsewhere. The parallel mobilizations are not just parallel, they take precedence.

Despite the French state of emergency and ban on protests, Coalition Climat 21 maintains their call for global mobilization on December 12th, the day after the end of COP21. Civil society must have the last word at COP21. There are no options left, there is no planet B.

Mass Mobilization and COP 21: An Interview with Roger Rashi

Sophia Reuss — 2015-11-05T16:12:24Z

I interviewed Roger Rashi, long-time social and political activist in Montreal, on October 28th, 2015 to discuss the impending COP 21 conference in Paris and the parallel mobilizations planned.

What is the Paris COP 21 Conference, and what are some of its objectives?

The meeting is a yearly meeting organized by the UN and has been going on for 21 years, hence the name COP 21. This year's meeting is thought to be the last meeting before climate change is irreversible. The official aim is to reach an international agreement on limiting global warming to hopefully under 2 degrees for this coming century. The problem with the negotiations for at least the past six years is the fact that there have been no compulsory agreements; so in other words, it is up to the member countries to establish their own goals and see whether they can comply with these goals or not. There are no international mechanisms to impose these goals, and there are no international limits or targets. So the problem with these negotiations is that this weakness is not dealt with. COP 21 will not result in a compulsory agreement, and since the targets are left to specific countries, every change in government can bring a change of targets. Furthermore, COP 21 fails to attack fossil fuels and extraction of fossil fuels. As long as this question is not tackled, and as long as there's no binding, international call to limit the extraction of fossil fuels, which are the main driver of climate change and global warming, it is unlikely that this conference will yield any positive results.

More specifically, what are these limitations of COP 21?

So far, about 150 out of 190 countries participating in COP 21 have put out voluntary targets. According to studies, if these targets are complied with, at best, global warming will be 3 degrees this century. Which is way beyond what is required, necessary, and needed. Global warming has to be limited to 2 degrees and below. If we base ourselves on these voluntary targets, and remember that there's no compliance mechanisms for these, the outcome will be insufficient.

The most important limitation is that there is absolutely nothing being said at COP 21 about keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and this is a big criticism that civil society groups will put forward. Unfortunately, there are a lot of corporations participating in the climate negotiations of COP 21, and the UN has not taken a position on limiting extraction of fossil fuels. This is a second big limitation and big failure of the process.

The third one, which is in discussion currently, relates to the setting up of a Green Climate Fund to help countries from the global south deal with climate issues. As of 6 years ago, the UN claimed that the fund should have at least 150 billion dollars pledged to it; so far, there are less than 10 billion dollars, which is less than a tenth of what is needed. Many of the countries from the global north, the wealthier countries, that should participate, are holding back on it. These sorts of negotiations are not likely to produce anything significant.

The fourth issue, which is an issue that concerns us all, is that one tax likely to be explored in Paris is called carbon pricing, especially putting forward carbon markets. We don't think, and a lot of the grassroots organizations don't think, that this is a viable solution to the problem we have. All it does is lead to possible financial speculation on the price of carbon, or the setting up of carbon markets, but not really any meaningful impact on the problems we're facing. So, at least on four levels, the negotiations seem to be leading, if not nowhere, not anywhere close to what is needed.

How will the new Liberal government under Justin Trudeau change Canada's involvement in COP 21?

The new canadian government has set no targets. Justin Trudeau has said that eventually Canada should have targets that comply with maintaining global warming under 2 degrees, but he will not set them before Paris, and he was hoping to set them in the 3 months following Paris. This is typical of the double speak that we see of the new liberal government.

How are civil society groups mobilizing parallel to COP 21? What stances are these groups taking?

Around this issue you have two elements, say two currents of thought. One hopes that indeed the governments will reach some kind of an agreement that will lead to a limitation in terms of greenhouse gas emission and therefore global warming. And a second category, espoused mostly by grassroots organizations, believes that nothing can really come out of COP21, and the only path forward is to continue mobilization on the ground: to stop pipelines, to stop the Tar Sands, to halt big projects that will have a negative impact on global warming. These are the two currents of thoughts, and it's around these two currents of thoughts that most of the civil society organizations that are participating in COP21 find themselves dealing with.

What specific organizations are mobilizing? How are they negotiating these two currents of thought?

The most interesting aspect which I've seen develop over the past year is that a big umbrella organization was set up to lead and organize civil society groups around the negotiations. This umbrella group is called Coalition Climat 21 (Climate Coalition 21). It was set up primarily by French groups, around a year ago, and it has around 130 organizations participating: everything from trade unions to big green organizations to local grassroots organizations. What this coalition has put forward is that while putting pressure on the negotiators to adopt the best possible deal, they will not limit themselves to only this institutional goal; and that above and beyond climate negotiations at the UN, the team must continue mobilizations going forward.

What sorts of mobilization efforts and organizations are planned for the upcoming months?

There are four things which Coalition Climat 21 has put forward in terms of mobilizations for civil society organizations around COP 21.

One: mass demonstrations on November 28th and 29th across the globe. There are at least 40 cities participating; all the main cities in Europe, as well as others around the globe: New Delhi, in Australia and New Zealand, and in Canada, in Ottawa, which will be held November 29th. This is the first vast mobilization. The idea is to say: civil society organizations want a true transition away from fossil fuels and real means taken to combat global warming.

The second set of activities planned in Paris is a summit, what they call a Civil Society Summit on climate change, that will be held December 5th and 6th in Paris, in a suburb called Montreuil.

This will be followed by what they call a ‘climate space' in another part of Paris, which will be held from December 7-11th. This second space, the climate space, will concentrate on having more people's participation. Whether it's cultural, activity-based, or discussions, the idea is to bring in as many people from the public as possible.

The fourth set of action is on December 12th. A big mobilization is planned in Paris, and the idea is to have the last word of the conference, to say: what has been accepted is not enough, and we need to continue to mobilize on the ground going forward.

These are the four types of activities planned in Paris. Internationally, it'll be essentially November 28th and 28th, but people will follow the discussions and follow what is happening in Paris.

What are alternative measures that civil society groups are proposing?

At this stage, what we've seen develop over the past three or four years in Quebec and around Canada is a whole discussion and debate about the question of transition. How to transition out of fossil fuel extraction. There are very interesting initiatives that are happening. In Quebec, there's a Common Front set up of about forty different green and ecological organizations, it was set up in September and Alternatives is part of this group. The objective is to say that by 2050, Quebec should be completely out of fossil fuels, and by then have developed a whole set of renewable energy sources, so as not to rely on fossil fuels. This is a very interesting debate.

What is being put forward: 1) developing public transport on a mass basis, much wider than what we have now, so as to get people to move away from transport by individual cars based on internal combustion engines. 2) investing massively in renewable energies, hydroelectricity, geothermal, wind energy, and others. I think parts of the programme that Justin Trudeau is putting forward is this development of renewable energy and investment budgets for these. It remains to be seen if it will be applied, but that is one aspect that has to be put forward and developed aggressively. 3) the question of transitioning to green jobs. In other words, moving out of highly polluting industries, such as refinery, for example, and moving into more sustainable green energies and developing a plan for green jobs. Interestingly enough the trade unions are beginning to look at this in a meaningful and serious way. This is quite a change from what we saw 3 or 4 years ago. The concentration on ending fossil fuel extraction, developing renewable energy, moving into mass transit, and hopefully a plan for a conversion of industry around green jobs, these would be the main goals in order to be able to come out of the present system into a more sustainable system.

Given the limitations of COP 21, and the alternatives that civil society groups advocate for, what is the viability of an internationalist approach?

The viability of this kind of international negotiations have been questioned for many years, and the whole process has been really going nowhere since 2009, since Copenhagen. Absolutely nothing has been achieved of any note, of any impact on the environment. It's hard to say where the process will lead. The next COP is planned for Morocco, in 2016. Already civil society organizations are beginning to mobilize around the issue. Personally, I don't see much use for these negotiations going forward. I don't think they have achieved much. I don't think that given the kind of relations of forces internationally that we can expect any breakthrough at any time soon. But, unfortunately, there are quite a few people in the movement that still believe in internationalist approaches. Part of the approach has got to be a bit of an inside-outside approach. While hoping that something does happen at these negotiations, we cannot center our activities and our own mobilizations around them, but center them on continuing, for example in Canada, efforts to block the Tar Sands. I think if we're able to block the Tar Sands, if we're able to begin pushing the government into developing renewable energy, this is the primary role we have a responsibility to pursue.