New Clear Vision

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…)

What Will It Take to Accomplish Real Change?

by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher and Jamphel Yeshi, the young Tibetan monk who recently set himself on fire, are more alike than might first meet the eye.

DeChristopher, one of the founders of the group Peaceful Uprising, took direct action to disrupt the sale of wilderness to mining companies in a closed Federal auction.  He ended up in prison, but he also did a tremendous amount to raise public awareness about the issue of land sales to corporate industry, and inspired the PeaceUp folks to greater activism.

Jamphel Yeshi also took a dramatic personal action at huge cost to himself — he lost not just his liberty, but his life. He and the 30 other monks who have taken this drastic step in the past have succeeded in letting the world know how deeply the Tibetan people are suffering under Chinese repression, and how passionately they yearn for autonomy to practice their religion and preserve their culture. (more…)

Closing the Door and Keeping the Rabble in Check

by Priscilla Stuckey

We learned in grade school about the Constitutional Convention, right? That summer of 1787 when the founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to write the US Constitution? Many of us would be shocked to learn that what the framers of the Constitution did was roll back democratic gains of the American Revolution. They were frightened of too much democracy.

Why does this matter? Because the pressures against democracy today — the interests of the 1 percent of the wealthiest, most powerful Americans who make corporate decisions that threaten the health and well-being of people and Earth — are the same pressures that led to limiting democracy at the start of this country.

The delegates who wrote the Constitution were the 1 percent of their time — white men of means who were merchants and landowners and slaveholders, the majority of them lawyers and a few of them, like Washington, extremely wealthy. They had been living in a democratic experiment for eleven years under the Articles of Confederation, and most of them didn’t like it. They’d seen social upheaval — poor farmers revolting because they were losing their land on account of taxes levied against them to pay for the revolution. Slaves growing more numerous, in some states threatening to outnumber whites. How could elite interests remain safe? A strong central government was needed to keep the rabble in check. (more…)

Reflecting on the Delusions of the Corporate State

by Evaggelos Vallianatos

August 2011 marked 50 years since I left Greece for the United States.

In 1961, in Greece, I was a high school graduate with dreams of becoming a doctor. My beloved physician grandmother Demetra had shown me the way. Now, 50 years later, in the United States, I am not a doctor of medicine, but a doctor of philosophy caught in a time warp.

My American college education was a Renaissance for me, a moment of discovery and self-confidence. In a metaphysical sense, I became Greek in America. However, the moment I left the university looking for a job, I felt I had entered an alien realm. I developed a blurred vision.

The world now is more complicated and dangerous than the world of 1961. Communism is almost gone, but capitalism in America has evolved into a toxic system of poisoning and devouring the earth for profit while, for the Wall Street oligarchy, it is a method of enrichment. In 2008, this oligarchy precipitated one of its periodic national, financial meltdowns in order to reverse progress toward equality and democracy. The Wall Street bankers wrecked the lives of millions of Americans. And yet, the government did not punish the Wall Street bankers. In fact, the government itself is under their sinister influences. (more…)

Voting with Our Actions, Every Day

by Robert C. Koehler

Maybe they’re trying to remind us that democracy isn’t merely a matter of casting that little vote once every Leap Year — but, far, far more significantly, it’s about getting that right to vote in the first place, keeping that right, and having it matter.

Every one of these rights is in jeopardy as 2012 opens and another presidential election season gets serious. But this is nothing new.

After all, democracy is nothing if not a perpetual nuisance to the powerful. It asserts that public policy is everyone’s business, and that the concerns of even the most financially and socially marginal citizens are equal to those of the most elite. Indeed, no one is marginal in a democracy — a concept we embrace as a nation but don’t believe. And thus citizens are marginalized all the time. (more…)

Keeping Lit the Fires of Peace, Justice, and Democracy

by Kathy Kelly

Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Our apartment doesn’t have indoor heating or hot tap water. We bundle up, overnight, in blankets, quilts and sleeping bags, and the Westerners, unaccustomed to the indoor cold, wear at least five layers of clothing during the daytime. Tap water is contaminated, electricity shortages are frequent, and internet access is spotty, but compared to those who live in Kabul’s refugee camps, we’re ensconced in plenty of creature comforts. (more…)

Taking Money Out of Politics and Restoring the ‘Public Option’ of Democracy

by Robert Reich