LANL trials:
Janet went back to court last week after she refused to pay the fine and Amalia accompanied her. The judge fined her another $50. Summer will be in court tomorrow (Mon April 15) and Amalia plans to accompany him.
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.
