“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

standing-rock

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

~ John Lennon

Great news :) The largest bank in Norway, DNB, has announced that it has sold its assets in the Dakota Access Pipeline, accounting for 10 percent of the total funding for the project.

pipeline-street-art

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that DNB was “reconsidering its participation” in the financing of the pipeline if “concerns raised by Native American tribes against its construction are not addressed.”

“We have initiated an independent review of how indigenous rights are safeguarded in this process,” Even Westerveld of DNB said. “In addition, we have intensified the dialogue with our customers to use our position as a bank to influence a solution to the conflict.”

“It is great that DNB has sold its assets in the disputed pipeline, and it is a clear signal that it is important that people speak out when injustice is committed,” Martin Norman, Greenpeace Norway sustainable finance campaigner, said. “We now expect DNB to also terminate its loans for the project immediately.”

This news follows the delivery of 120,000 signatures gathered by SumOfUs.org to DNB by Greenpeace Norway and others urging the bank and other financial institutions to pull finances for the project. “The writing’s on the wall for the Dakota Access pipeline. People power is winning,” Norman continued. “The news that DNB has sold its assets and is considering terminating its loans is a victory for the water protectors who are fighting to stop this disaster of a project. All financial institutions with a stake in the pipeline must quickly realize that financing this project is toxic. It would be smart for them to get out ahead of the growing movement of customers looking to divest from banks that finance the destruction of our planet and ignore Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Citigroup, TD Securities, Wells Fargo, SunTrust, and the other banks backing this project should see this as a sign to get on the right side of history.”

Source: EcoWatch

Street Art by Tyler Read, “How The Protectors Defeated The Black Snake” -Art Alley, Rapid City, SD

Front Range Farmers Support Standing Rock Water Protectors. So beautiful.

mark-ollin-farms

Rod Brueske, of La Joyia Farm and Mark Guttridge, of Ollin Farms, both in Longmont, have joined forces with other local farmers to provide fresh produce to the water protectors in Standing Rock in North Dakota.

Guttridge “A lot of the farmers down here were talking and I think we can definitely understand the motivation that the protectors have up there to lead these sort of gatherings and we just want to show support and what better way than to send up some of the good food that came from us, tending the earth in Boulder County and given our effort down here to have the healthiest soils and healthiest water possibility and so we just want to show support.”

Over 100lbs of winter squash along with winter radishes and carrots and pie pumpkins were loaded onto Brueske’s truck at Ollin Farms to deliver to Standing Rock. Guttridge says that throughout the week, customers at the farm have donated blankets, batteries and gas money as well.

Before setting off for North Dakota, Brueske stopped by the farmers market at Union Station in Denver on the last day of the season and loaded even more fresh produce from 10 farmers for the Standing Rock protectors. “Mark got us a good start but my objective is to at least take…I’d like to see 2,000 lbs of food to go up to support our protectors.”

In all, close to 1,000 lbs of food was delivered to Standing Rock. Brueske says that he hopes to continue to deliver food throughout the winter.

Mark Ruffalo delivers Mobile Solar Trailers to Standing Rock Camps in preparation for harsh Winter. Love him.

ruffalo

In a show of kindness and solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux, actor Mark Ruffalo and Native Renewables founder Wahleah Johns presented Sioux tribal elders with mobile trailers equipped with solar collection arrays. The trailers provide a clean energy source for the protest encampment where over 500 Native American tribes have taken a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the largest gathering of American Indians in modern history.

“This pipeline is a black snake that traverses four states and 200 waterways with fracked Bakken oil,” said Ruffalo, co-founder of The Solutions Project, a venture that works to transition society to clean and renewable energy.

“We know from experience that pipelines leak, explode, pollute and poison land and water. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

The solar trailers will allow for medical tents and numerous other critical facilities to be powered with clean energy, and represent exactly the healthy/abundant future of energy for which the Standing Rock Sioux are currently fighting.
“Water is life,” said Johns, a Navajo leader. “By leading a transition to energy that is powered by the sun, the wind and water, we ensure a better future for all of our people and for future generations.”

 

The reality of the situation is that the Standing Rock tribe is fighting to protect their source of clean water. The Dakota Access Pipeline puts the tribe’s clean water supply, as well as that of millions of others, in danger, as the pipeline is scheduled to go directly under the Missouri River.

Source: thefreethoughtproject.com

Wow. A Golden Eagle Landed at Standing Rock and allowed water protectors to touch him. So beautiful.

Another Avatar moment at Standing Rock. This is a Golden Eagle that landed for about an hour. Natives gathered around it and were able to touch it. Scott Bunn American Indians see the eagle as a sacred messenger that carries prayers to the Creator and returns with gifts and visions.Freedom is vital to the survival […]

via White Wolf : Eagle Lands On Standing Rock, Allows Water Protectors To Touch Him ~ Scott Bunn — Our Shifting Perspective

“Today is a historic day: the Supreme Court made marriage equality for same-sex Americans the law of the land in all 50 states and all U.S. territories. It is a landmark victory in the movement for equal rights—one that wouldn’t have been possible without the courage and tireless efforts of activists across our nation.” ~Congressman Jared Polis

Love marriage

Love and sanity prevail. Yay!

IMAGE CREDIT: IGOR VOLSKY/THINKPROGRESS

On this day, 142 years ago, the prominent American suffragist Susan B. Anthony was sentenced and fined for “illegally voting” as a woman in the 1872 Presidential Election. Prior to her trial, she spoke in all 29 towns and villages of Monroe County, New York, where her trial was scheduled to be held, on the topic of “Is it a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?” She called upon women to exercise their right to vote, with or without formal recognition: “We no longer petition legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected ‘citizen’s right’.” At her trial near Rochester, the judge refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf and, after she was convicted, he read an opinion that he had written before the trial even started. After the verdict was given, Anthony was at last permitted to speak and gave what Ann Gordon, an eminent historian of the women’s suffrage movement, called “the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage.” During it, she protested “this high-handed outrage upon my citizen’s rights … you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.” The judge ordered Anthony to pay a $100 fine for her ‘crime’ of illegally voting to which she declared, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” True to her words, she never paid the fine for the rest of her life!

Susan B

Always inspiring to hear about the fearless, powerful women who came before us.
Susan B. Anthony was a badass!

Partial Source: A Mighty Girl

Thirty years ago Wales kicked off a protest which lasted for 19 years. The Greenham Common Peace Camp was started in September 1981 by a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, who travelled to RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire to protest against the decision of the British government to allow Cruise missiles (nuclear weapons) to be sited there. The Women for Life on Earth group walked 120 miles from Cardiff to Greenham Common and on reaching their destination they chained themselves to the perimeter fence. They were joined by women from across the UK and during the height of the protests, thousands of women blocked the entrances to the base, cut through perimeter fences and formed human chains around the site. There were some huge demonstrations during the tenure of the Peace Camp. In December 1982, 30,000 women joined hands around the base at the Embrace the Base event. On 1 April 1983, some 70,000 protesters formed a 14 mile human chain from Greenham to Aldermaston and the ordnance factory at Burghfield. Another encircling of the base occurred in Dec 1983, with 50,000 women attending. Sections of the fence were cut and there were hundreds of arrests. The women were ultimately successful as the Cruise missiles were removed in March 1991. The airbase was closed in 1993 but the peace camp remained until 2000. The attention they received prompted the creation of other peace camps at more than a dozen sites in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

Human chain

Source: Hiraeth

One of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroes, Sophie Scholl, was born on this day in 1921. As a university student in Munich, Scholl, along with her brother, Hans, and several friends, formed a non-violent, anti-Nazi resistance group called the White Rose. The group ran a leaflet and graffiti campaign calling on their fellow Germans to resist Hilter’s regime. Scholl first became involved in resistance organizing after learning of the mass killings of Jews and reading an anti-Nazi sermon by Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Münster. She was deeply moved by the “theology of conscience” and declared, “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” In 1943, Scholl and the other members of the White Rose were arrested by the Gestapo for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich and taken to Stadelheim Prison. After a short trial on February 22, 1943, Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christop Probst, all pictured here, were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. At her execution only a few hours later, Scholl made this final statement: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?” Following the deaths of the White Rose’s leaders, their final leaflet was smuggled to England. In mid-1943, Allied Forces dropped millions of copies of the “Manifesto of the Students of Munich” over Germany. Scholl is now honored as one of the great German heroes who actively opposed the Nazi regime.

Sophie

Thanks to A Mighty Girl for this post.