New Clear Vision

Sustainability and Community Autonomy in Urban Gardens

by Pancho McFarland

In the September 2012 issue of Z Magazine, Robert Hunziker reports that a climate change-induced food crisis in the Middle East was the central cause of the Arab Spring of 2011.  In Syria, the drought of 2006-2011 left 75% of farmers from the northeast and south with total crop failure. He writes that: “According to the UN, 800,000 Syrians had their livelihoods totally wiped out.  One researcher notes that ‘the single factor that triggers riots around the world is food.’”  In 2007, 48 countries experienced food riots.

Meanwhile, in the US, the 12-month period between July 2011 and June 2012 was the warmest on record.  The Midwestern drought has destroyed the corn, soy and wheat markets causing prices in the US and around the globe to rise rapidly.  Hunziker concludes the article with this thought: “As certain as riots are expected in many underdeveloped countries in the world, a North American Spring is not out of the question.” (more…)

Reclaiming Our Bodies Means Restoring Indigenous Wellness Practices

by Lorena Hernández and Vanessa García

As Mexicanas living in a Western society, it has become very easy for us to observe and realize that women are increasingly losing autonomy over their bodies. Coming from a culture of women that take pride over understanding and healing their own bodies, we have seen a movement away from this ideal.  Presently, we see ourselves and other women succumbing to the Western medicinal and governmental bodily regulations without any resistance.

Recent bills in action have made us wonder, “What is going on with society?” The proposed House Bill 206 in New Mexico “would charge a rape victim who ends her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for tampering with evidence.”(1) This outrageous proposal not only attempts to reduce the seriousness of the emotional trauma caused by rape, but it also undermines the rights of women and the freedom to do lo que se les de la gana (whatever they want), with their own body. How did it become acceptable for the government to mandate corporal regulations? How did we lose autonomy over our own bodies? To fully understand this issue, we need to take a look at the evolution of healing and medicine in Mexican and Mexican-American culture. (more…)

Notes on ‘Idle No More’ and the State of Exception

by Devon G. Peña

The Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt made two observations that are useful to fully understand the nature of white settler colonialism and its calculated brutality against First Peoples. The first idea, which of course has been taken up as the point of departure of the work of Giorgio Agamben,[i] is that after the Jewish Holocaust every parliamentary and liberal democracy exists in a permanent state of emergency/state of siege. The second point is that under such a regime, not only is there a suspension of the rule of law, the constituted power of the sovereign is focused on the ability to decide,[ii] and especially to determine who lives and who dies — hence, the concept of biopower as developed by Foucault and his protégés.

The end of the rule of law is surely by now a more familiar condition to most citizens in the U.S. and Canada who are dealing with the collapse of the Bill of Rights in the aftermath of 9-11 and the advent of the never-ending ‘War on Terror’. (more…)

End of Life Doesn’t Have to be Drawn-Out and Meaningless

by Curtis Johnson

I’m spending my final days among the Monarch butterflies in Pacific Grove, CA. Their life cycle dictates that they will die here in February. They have no choice. I too will die soon.  For I have rapidly progressing ALS.  There is no cure in sight and it is 100% fatal. Yet, unlike the Monarchs, I have a legal choice as to the timing of my death, at least in the state of Washington.  That choice, however, is seriously compromised in my case.

That I have a qualified choice at all is because a few years ago compassionate, progressive liberal and libertarian voters in this state approved an initiative allowing for assisted suicide, or Death with Dignity (DWD) for individuals with terminal illnesses.  Problem is, the level of assistance is minimal. It has to be self-administered. So ‘assisted’ is a misnomer.  It renders the law completely useless for those who most need it.

In those few states, neighboring Oregon being one of them, statistics show the annual exercise of DWD to be in the low single digits.  Most people with terminal illnesses don’t consider it out of ignorance or for religious reasons. (more…)

Connecting Indigenous Autonomy and Immigration

by Devon G. Peña

A recent poster prepared by Michigan State University assistant professor and artist,  Dylan Miner, asks that we “decolonize immigration through indigenous and migrant solidarity.” On seeing this beautiful artwork, I was compelled to once again reflect on the perverse nature of U.S. immigration law. The struggle to decolonize immigration law and policy challenges an unjust, racialized, and convoluted history, and reveals the highly problematic qualities of modern state sovereignty in the policing of borders across a region that remains a resurgent indigenous homeland.

I recall the sorrow and discrimination provoked by Arizona’s SB 1070 when numerous Native American elders were suspected of being “illegals” because they could not produce birth certificates to prove otherwise. Imagine that: natives seen as “illegals” and deemed subject to deportation under the state of exception for failure to provide documentation of their right to live on their native land. A deeper injustice and more banal contradiction is not possible, since the authors of 1070 arrived in Arizona but a mere night ago and are now dictating the legal status of peoples inhabiting the bioregion for tens of thousands of years. (more…)