More than forty activists held signs, chanted, and shared information outside the US Forest Service office in ABQ today, voicing opposition to the proposed Canadian & Japanese Uranium mine near Mt. Taylor, east of Grants NM. Members from MASE, Native American Voter Alliance, Grants NM Idle No More, Laguna Pueblo, Free Leonard Peltier Campaign, Students for Justice in Palestine, UNM students, and many others joined (un)Occupy ABQ to pressure the Forest Service to reject the uranium mine.

Joe, an activist from the Laguna Pueblo said:

One of these mining companies is from Japan. Japanese people are thought to be deeply spiritual. I would like to ask them how they would feel if the US put a mine on their sacred Mt. Fuji?

Cooper, an activist with Grants NM Idle No More, shared with the crowd his experience of Mt. Taylor as a spiritual site for his people, especially the children, and how the mountain represents strength. Danya, a Palestinian American activist, expressed her solidarity with indigenous peoples fighting colonization and exploitation of resources, relating it to her family and communities’ common experience in Palestine.

The Forest Service has announced a 30 day extension to the public comment period on the mine, placing the deadline at Thursday June 13th. Details about the mine and how to file your comment are right here: indigenousaction.org/protect-holy-mt-taylor

The group decided to protest the local headquarters of the joint CA/JP mining company in Santa Fe on Tuesday June 25th, followed by a commemoration by the Free Leonard Peltier movement and a round dance with Idle No More Grants, NM at the Santa Fe plaza. Details to follow. Four press journalists covered the event, including the Navajo Times & New Mexico In Depth.

We also debriefed the success of our 2nd “Medicine for the People” event, and were pleased that so many practitioners were happy to be there and want to do it again, and that so many people (most without health care) got treatments and want us to organize it more than annually.

Discussed the campaign to stop the opening of a new uranium mine at Mt. Taylor and stop uranium mining in the Grand Canyon–a campaign organized by MASE, Havasupai and Dine activists.

This link to indigenous media makes it easy to send your comment opposing the mine: http://www.indigenousaction.org/protect-holy-mt-taylor
LET’S TRY TO GET 100 BURQUENOS TO CALL/EMAIL THE FOREST SERVICE OPPOSING URANIUM MINING BEFORE MAY 14!

One way we can help here in Albuquerque: it is the Abq Forest Service office on Osuna that is taking public comment until May 14th about whether they should allow a new uranium mine at Mt Taylor. We have planned a protest at their office so they can hear our opposition:

FRIDAY MAY 10TH AT 4PM at the Forest Service 2113 Osuna NE (west of Jefferson)

We have a local opportunity to really support this four corners movement to stop uranium mining! Please help us link with the many organizations who are opposed to uranium mining. We will stage another protest at the mining company’s headquarters in Santa Fe.

The protest May 10th is part of a long term campaign that we have been discussing for our summer activities.

We have a schedule for Sat. April 27th:
9AM arrive to help prepare the space, set up the kitchen, move furniture, get practitioners situated and help volunteers to understand what is needed
11:45 ceremony to open the event by Kalpulli Izkalli
12:00 begin signing in people
6:00 clean up

Amalia, Summer, Maria and Mollie from P&J will pick up food on Thursday AM and again on Sat. AM. We will deliver to Endorphin Power Co. on Sat AM. We are asking if folks have any time on Friday that they call Monica to coordinate cleaning activities during the day on Friday. Also food deliveries can be made on that day as well if you have stuff to drop off but can’t come on Sat. Santosh and hopefully others can come on Friday evening from 5-7PM for cleaning and furniture moving if you can’t make it during the day on Friday.

Tina will be going to COSTCO for some shopping items this week…she says she will see what the bill comes to and let the group know how we can share the expense.

We are asking for help in sign making on Thursday 6:30 PM at Yale Park.

If you have any children’s arts and crafts supplies, please consider sharing for the afternoon. We have volunteers set up for shifts:
12-2  Dahazi
2-4  Kate (maybe Camilo too)
4-6  Charmaine

Please bring some food to share: salad, fruit, vegetables or protein, enough for 8-10 people. Trying to keep it healthy and nutritious. Daniel has agreed to keep the kitchen moving again this year….volunteers will of course be needed.

If anyone has any shade/tents this would be very nice to have, it could be very sunny and shade coverings could be really useful. Please contact us and let us know.

Thanks,
Maria

May Day planning:
We had a good discussion on where we are at with the Walk to Cure Capitalism/Dying for a Living Wage event on Wed May 1st at 5pm starting at Central & San Pedro. We plan to walk past Wal-Mart and would like to do street theater or theater of the oppressed there. Critical Mass plans to join us on bikes. We don’t have an end point decided yet but it would be good if it was a place with restrooms. The San Pedro library is a possibility. We discussed the immigrant rights march planned also on May 1st at 5pm at Tiguex Park. Enrique reached out to staff at El Centro about doing something in solidarity but they don’t seem interested. We discussed the idea of having our march in the Intl District as planned then maybe going to Tiguex Park by bus or carpool. It would be good if we could do something at Tiguex Park like a discussion/teach-in on capitalism’s impact on immigration, immigrant workers and pay, trade agreements, etc. We would want to check with El Centro about doing that. Their event goes til 8pm. We also want to check with Enrique, La Raza Unida and others planning the May Day event. Next planning mtg is Tues April 23rd at 6:30pm at Banditos.

Medicine for the People Event:
Two weeks away (Sat April 27)! Volunteers needed esp for clean up at 6pm. Molly will help us with food and there is a chef willing to make things delicious. We need legumes and grains donated for the chef. Sayrah will ask friend who gets bagels from dumpster at Einstein to get a bunch for the day. Natalie has emailed out flyers and we can all help flyer.

Black Mesa, Arizona:
(Un)Occupy has been invited to support the efforts of Black Mesa elders to resist the coal mining company the first week in June. Amalia and Maria plan to go. Santhosh has been on the planning conference calls. Solidarity groups will be there including groups fighting coal mining in Virginia, Palestinians from California, and many others. (Un)Occupy and the other groups coming are asked to share info about their work. Great film called “Broken Rainbow” explains the situation in Black Mesa. Maybe show it in Abq.

Havasupai:
The Havasupai elders in Arizona are fighting uranium mining and are planning a 6 week encampment from June-July along the busiest tourist route to the Grand Canyon and are inviting people around the world to join the encampment. Wind, who was arrested at LANL last summer, is helping support the Havaupai resistance. Attached are flyers about it. There is a lot of interest to send carpools to help. We have funds we’ve raised and we could discuss if gas money would be a good way to use the funds. The weapons buried in Albuquerque are made from the uranium and we could have events here to educate.

Announcements:
John talked about the Keystone pipeline. Amalia shared that the new Wikileaks documents reveal the lying about the pipeline including pretending it will help American jobs. Sean shared that tuition has gone up again at UNM and some creative actions on campus to draw attention to it.

Endorsing Events:
We agreed to support the Stop the War Machine Mother’s Day Rally (May 11th) against drones and for Bradley Manning’s release. We would like to invite reps from WORD to speak with us about their work and see if we can support. We want to invite them to a GA that we expect good participation (next Sunday is Earth Day and the following Sunday is the day after Medicine for the People event which could reduce participation in GA).

Next meeting:
We’d like to share some writings from a booklet called “Unsettling Minnesota” to give ideas of what decolonization work looks like. We may want to move our Scholarship & Scheming meetings from Thursdays to Wednesdays to fit people’s schedules better.

So we can pull it off, we’re seeking volunteers to:
* make appointments
* work in the kitchen
* pick up food the day before/morning of
* help set-up @ 9am and clean-up @ 6pm
* help out at the kids art-space

and if you can help in some other way too, just say. We have plenty of practitioners, but if you know of anyone who may want to participate and donate their time please let us know.

If you’d like to volunteer, or have any other questions, just holler at unoccupyabq@gmail.com.

<3

Announcements

Cesar Chavez

Today is Cesar Chavez’s birthday. Two upcoming events this week to celebrate:

Thursday April 4th 6-8pm at the NHCC: There will be a one hour film about the farm-worker movement followed by a panel with a local labor leader, a minimum wage campaign organizer, a DREAM Activist, and an immigrant clergy member. Free.

Saturday April 6th 10:30am-3pm NHCC: Marcha y fiesta to educate, celebrate and continue the struggle for farmworkers. Special guest Dolores Huerta, now 84 yrs old, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar. Free concerts with Ivon Ulibarri y Cafe Mocha and B-Side Players, kids activities, dancing, food for sale.
More info at cesarchaveznm.org

May Day Planning

Group met this past Wed. at O’Neill’s and 2 new people joined in planning. Humorous theme incorporating zombies and “dying for a living wage”. Sienna and Bill plan to make giant puppets. May Day is Wed. May 1st and activities will be in the International District starting at 5pm. Next planning meeting is Tues. April 9th 6:30pm at Bandito’s Hideout on Central across from UNM. Local union Intl. Workers of the World want to join in planning. Sean suggests we invite ABQ Critical Mass and the MEChAs from UNM & CNM as they have a more radical approach to immigration issues.

April 27th Medicine for the People

Working group is regularly meeting to plan this 2nd annual event at the Endorphin Power Co. in the Intl. District to provide free healthcare and alternative healthcare. Lots of volunteers are needed. A list of volunteer tasks is right here. Help at the end (around 6pm onward) would be especially appreciated since clean-up can take hours and will go faster with more people.

Students for Justice in Palestine

Sean attended SJP mtg. Danya of SJP attended to the MEChA national conference where the representatives voted to encourage chapters to work with and support SJP groups. Sayrah noted similarities, explaining plight of Palestinians who get deported to Israeli prison if they lose status in the US, as well as special immigration laws for all Arab immigrants and Arab Americans with ancestors in 22 Arab countries, as well as root causes of migration for Mexicans and Arabs.

There will be no Mock Wall this year but SJP is organizing a Israeli Apartheid Week. They will show 2 films: Slingshot Hip Hop and 5 Broken Cameras. Also they are organizing a workshop called “Palestine 101″ for allied student groups (MEChA, ALOT, KIVA, etc.) wanting to learn more about Palestinian issues, and hopefully start a series of sessions so can learn about each other’s subjects.

Sayrah asks what came of the meeting at the Peace & Justice Center about their stance on the occupation of Palestine? No one knows if the P&J board has met and reviewed notes from that meeting.

Los Jardines Institute

We discussed at our GA last Sunday that we’d like to volunteer as a group at Los Jardines Institute (803 La Vega SW) a community based farm/education/environmental justice/racial justice center in the South Valley. Proposal to volunteer 4 hrs a month to start, possibly on Saturday mornings. There is a monthly banned book group meeting on Saturdays there too. We would want to start in April and get more people in (un)Occupy ABQ interested to see if we can commit time.

May 14th speaker Arun Gupta

We agreed at last GA that we would organize a simple gathering to hear him speak since he’s in town about his reporting of the Occupy Wall St movement nationally. Sayrah still needs to reserve the P&J Center that night for his talk. He is trying to find Wal-Mart workers to interview about their working conditions but having a hard time getting interviews, even though they will be anonymous. Anyone know Wal-Mart workers? We talked about the problem of Wal-Mart and its corporate welfare. Maybe we should target them on May Day.

Future GAs

Its possible Loren will violently disrupt future GAs so we discussed if there were other places to have GAs as a Plan B. We’d like to stay on the bus line in a visible place around Rt 66 if possible. Maybe in the International District? We’ll think about parks or spaces to have as a Plan B. Today we moved to the patio at Satellite across from Yale Park.

• Occupy the FEC and Occupy Wall St. folks this week have sued every federal regulator on Wall St.
• Stop Violence Against Women March and rally 2PM Sat. March 9th at the UNM Bookstore. Called by a group of women under A.N.S.W.E.R. who wish to continue organizing with other like minded women beyond this called action.
• Harvest of Empire last day of showing at the Guild Sunday March 3rd
• Medicine for the People By the People working group meeting Monday 3/4 10 AM at Flying Star Nob Hill.
• May Day working group meeting 3/7 at 6:30 Frontier Rug Room.
• April 6th Cesar Chavez Day – Dolores Huerta is confirmed keynote speaker. March begins at 10 AM. Fiesta at noon.

Report-backs

P&J gathering on Friday: A P&J board member resigned because he felt the P&J was not properly “neutral” on issue of Israeli apartheid and genocide. Thus, discussion. Majority of the room were in solidarity with human rights/standing by oppressed people…discussion was in the form of talking circle. There was a guiding principle decided in the past regarding Israeli/Palestinian conflict but no one could locate that agreement, so at the end of this meeting the governing council would take the statements made as a guide and issue a statement on how the P&J would proceed. (un)Occupy had 3 people attend this meeting.
Dylan Rodriguez spoke at UNM regarding prison abolition. His organization is called Critical Resistance. He is a professor at UC Riverside.
Black Mesa: dates set for June 6-9th plus 2 days before or after for homestays. Another conference call is being scheduled.

Action Brainstorming

Drones: Anti Drone Action – Controlled from Kirtland, Holloman (Alamogordo) Cannon (Clovis) among others. Action Ideas: Billboard plastering/pasting (Dronestagram IRL), sound installation, life size outlines of drones.

Sandia Labs Landfill: Water quality & radioactive dumping. Citizen Action organized a protest last week.

Medicine for the People By the People: April 27th

• Need food coordinator to handle logistics of food donations and storage the week before the event. We already have someone to lead food prep the day of.
• Refrigerator/freezer space needed for the week before (Sayrah offered)
• Discussion about who we know and we could ask. Molly does P&J Cafe on Thursdays, Amalia will ask.

May Day: May 1st

• Looking for muscians/DJ’s that would share music with message of resistance, working class solidarity.
• Looking for a place to end the march, ideally somewhere in the SE Heights.

A.N.S.W.E.R.

W.O.R.D. (Women Organized to Resist and Defend) is a new group of women afflilated w/ANSWER who will continue to organize beyond the action this weekend. They are asking for input and endorsement from (un)Occupy. We condensed to endorse the event, and discussed the importance of turning the discourse to be more about women’s resistance and not a passive stance regarding rape being inevitable or a woman’s problem; putting the responsibility on men to stop rape.

W.O.R.D. is asking for sign slogans and they are inviting folks to their office this Friday 3/8 @ 7PM (305 Washington SE) to make signs.

Some slogans were: Listen to Women/A Woman’s Place is in the Revolution/Men Can Stop Rape

Announcements

Henry who works with Citizen Action had announcements on
calls to state legislators and a demonstration on 2/27 about the mixed waste
landfill and the unsafe nuclear waste stored there. These announcements were sent out to the listserv earlier this week.

The Larry Casuse Memorial will be held in the UNM SUB Grand Ballroom on March
3rd at 2PM

Agenda

May Day

The initial meeting was held at the Frontier. The May Day event
will be on May 1st 2013 at 5 PM. Details still need to be worked out.
Ideas include the themes of working Class Solidarity, and a March to Cure
Capitalism. It will be important to message on decolonization. Next
Meetings will be March 7th and March 21st at 6:30 PM at the Frontier Rug
Room.

Medicine for the People

The Health Fair will be held on Saturday April
27th at Endorphin Power Company. Volunteers will arrive for training and
set up at 9 AM and the Health Fair will begin at 12 noon. The event still
needs translators (Spanish, Vietnamese, etc), volunteers, practitioners,
food donations, someone to do childcare and children’s activities,
videographers, and people to contact and publicize the event to the press
and media. People can also contact Monica or Maria for more info if they
can’t make the meetings.

Idle No More/DeBeers Mine protest in Canada

Amalia briefly filled us in on current situation. Briefly, there was a blockade of the road leading to
the mine. One woman who has cancer took a stand and continued the blockade
after the council decided to allow the mine to reopen and to try to
negotiate with the company. Amalia probably knows more about this issue
and could be contacted if anyone wants more info or has questions.

Restorative Justice

We will read the articles sent out by Tina and
Santosh (thanks!) and continue our discussion of this important issue at a
future GA when we feel more prepared.

Announcements

Medicine for the People

The health fair is scheduled for Saturday April 27th from 9am-6pm at the Endorphin Power Company. Positive that they invited them back for a second year. The gym will be open, and trainers will be present to help out. Music as Healing session. They are looking for Vietnamese speakers and healers, as well as sign language translators. If you know anyone that would be useful, let us know. The next meeting is Monday, at 10 am at Flying Star in Nob Hill. They are also looking for a Media team to do outreach and record the event.

Sandia Labs & KAFB Vigil

Chuck Hosking, a life-long fellow activist, will be marking the 30th anniversary of his peace vigil that he has held every Friday. If you’d like to come, it will be held at the Wyoming Gate (Take Central East, and take a right on Wyoming until you see a man holding a huge banner… it’s hard to miss). 3:30-5:00 pm this Friday the 15th.

1 Billion Rising

Thursday Feb. 14th: Noon at the Albuquerque Civic Plaza, and @ 6pm, outside Popejoy Hall
On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

For more info on events happening in NM:
onebillionrising.org

Report Backs

Leonard Peltier Event

Went smoothly, good turnout. (un)Occupy raised $40 to go towards our fundraising for Black Mesa. $100 was also raised for Leonard’s commissary. One of the things that was a concern was the lack of women speakers, especially since the woman from Idle No More sadly couldn’t make it due to weather.

Peabody Coal

Action was held at Peabody coal headquarters in St. Louis. A few Dine elders spoke. The activists had letters to hand to Peabody but no one came and accepted them. It was a great action for Alliance building, between groups back east in Appalachia and groups in the west, like Black Mesa. This is a pretty cool website around this: http://rampscampaign.org

Agenda

Restorative Justice

Loren did not show up at this meeting. We continued the discussion about what we should do in terms of Loren and anyone who is violent and disrespectful. We agreed that we will ask Loren to not come back for 6 months, which then gives us time to research and discuss restorative justice and other alternative ways of handling these issues, as well as upholding our camp agreements. Some questions that came up were: How do we decide when one is worthy to come back to the group? Should it be a time frame, or a “judgment” of behavior? How does one judge this?

May Day

The initial planning meeting will be NEXT Thursday, the 21st of February at 6:30 in the Rug Room of Frontier Restaurant. This will be a brainstorming opportunity to what the march will look like (Encuentro is not organizing it this year). We need to contact different groups that would like to be a part of the planning process and in order for them to plan for attending.

Black Mesa

The caravan for coalition building will take place end of May. We need to start thinking about fundraising… Bake sale, t-shirt making, Info booth at Yale park?

Tar Sands Blockade

We had a new person come to the meeting who has been a part of the blockade and was looking to perhaps get an action together on the week of the 16th-27th of March, which many groups all around the country will be doing actions at TransCanada headquarters. What could we do here in Albuquerque, and how can we connect this issue locally? One idea: The pipeline will run over the Oglala aquifer, which provides water to eastern New Mexico.

Camp Agreements

Continued discussion. We would like to have a non-violent/diversity of tactics discussion when Sayrah and John are present, because they seemed to express importance in this discussion.

Announcements

APS and CNM School Board Elections will be this week. Sayrah & Tina will share personal recommendations.

February 14th: One Billion Rising, an international day to break the violence chain against women. There will be events in Albuquerque, including a flash mob at UNM and a silent walk in Nob Hill.

Lottery Scholarship: The scholarship that enables many students in NM to go to college is slated to run out of money by this Summer, unless something is done. The proposed changes are v. neoliberal, and would most hurt the students who need it. This item will be talked about later. Sienna and Sean will find more info about this. Maybe think of actions to do around this.

César Chavez Day is April 6th. Harry Belafonte as a speaker, hopefully!

Students for Justice in Palestine are planning an Arts Festival this semester, in legacy of the Mock Wall Campaign.

Report-backs

Omar Bargouti talk: About 10 of us from (un)Occupy attended. Talked about boycotting corporations that affect both New Mexico and Palestine. (I.e. The corporation that is building the Israeli/Palestinian wall is the same that is building the Mexico/U.S.) Linking indigenous struggles everywhere. For future discussion: Strategies/Tactics that will affect both Palestine and NM.

Agenda

Movement Agreements

We had much discussion over these, and will need to continue to be discussed as it gets to some core issues of our movement.

Working from the previously posted draft:

We consensed to delete the three agreements, “We have no spokesperson or
Leader”; “We do not accept monetary donations”; and “We take care of our personal belongings” due to inconsistency with our actual practice, or contextual irrelevance.

We also consensed to delete positive from “We are positive and
proactive.” Some expressed that “positive” was ambigious, and besides, saying “No!” is good. We also replaced image with prescence in “We are mindful of our public image” since image is shallow.

We condensed to keep “We are non-hierarchical.”

We still need to discuss the two agreements to rework, but the general sense was
that they could incorporate what was left of the “proactive” and “public
presence” agreements.

We also unanimously agreed to make time in the near future for a robust
discussion about non-violence & diversity of tactics.

Leonard Peltier Event

This Saturday, February 9th 5-9pm at the Center for Peace and Justice.

Potluck, Music, Speakers, all around wonderfulness!

Volunteers

Merchandise and info table: Hershe and Amalia
Kitchen: Sienna, Summer, and Amalia
Laptop: Santhosh
Clean-up: Anyone?

Peter will come at 3:30 to set up.