In Melbourne we are organising a doco night in support of this international call.

Thursday October 15 - Doco night in Defense of Mother Earth and the Peoples
Trades Hall, corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets in Carlton South, victoria street entry, 7PM, Video on Mapuche (indigenous people in Chile-Argentina),Short videos on Ecuador and Peru

Take Action Oct 12-16: Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth and
the Peoples

On May 31, the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala
("America") called for a Global Mobilization in Defense of Mother Earth
and the Peoples from OCTOBER 12-16, 2009, "against [pollution], the
commercialization of life ... and the criminalization of indigenous and
social movements."

"We the peoples and our territories are one entity. [We resolve] to reject
all forms of land division, privatization, concession, predation and
pollution from extractive industries."

Root Force is supporting this call and encouraging people throughout the
Americas and across the world to answer it with actions targeting the
infrastructure of global trade. Infrastructure expansion projects such as
highways, mines, power plants, pipelines and telecommunications cables
form the front lines of the assault on indigenous peoples and the Earth.
They are the backbone of the system that is killing our planet and
enslaving its people.

For more information about the call to action and why we think
infrastructure projects are appropriate targets, see below.

For help planning and publicizing actions, contact Root Force: rootforce
[at] riseup [dot] net. You can find direct action, strategy and messaging
resources here: http://www.rootforce.org/get-involved/resources/

Send action reports to rootforce [at] riseup [dot] net. If you can't pull
together a direct action, consider holding events that promote
anti-infrastructure organizing and action.

BACKGROUND

On May 31, the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala
issued a closing declaration resolving, among other things:

"To proclaim that we are witnessing a deep crisis of the Western
capitalist civilization -- overlapping the environmental, energy and
cultural crisis, social exclusion, and famines -- as an expression of the
failure of Eurocentrism and the colonialist Modernity that was born from
ethnocide and which is now carrying all of humanity to its own slaughter.

"To offer an alternative lifestyle against the civilization of death,
rescuing our roots in order to project ourselves to our future, with our
principles and practices of balance between men, women, Mother Earth,
spiritual beings, cultures and peoples, all of which we call Good Living /
Living Well. We are a diversity of thousands of civilizations with over 40
thousand years of history, which were invaded and colonized by those who,
just five centuries later, are leading us to planetary suicide. ...

"To confirm the organization of the ... Global Mobilization in Defense of
Mother Earth and the Peoples, against the commercialization of life
(including land, forests, water, sea, agrofuels, external debt), pollution
(extractive transnationals, international financial institutions, GMOs,
pesticides, toxic consumption), and the criminalization of indigenous and
social movements, to be held from October 12 to 16, 2009."

Read the full declaration here:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/today-we-separate-from-cruelty/

WHY INFRASTRUCTURE?

There are three primary reasons to target infrastructure as a way to
defend the Earth and support indigenous sovereignty.

1. Infrastructure projects devastate ecologies and communities, whether
it's the massive fish kills caused by dams and oil spills, the stripped
land and poisoned air left by highways and mines, or the dislocation of
poor, rural and indigenous peoples caused every time a new dam, road, mine
or power plant moves in.

2. Infrastructure projects facilitate further exploitation above and
beyond their immediate effects: a road brings loggers and missionaries; a
power plant brings industry and sprawl.

3. Infrastructure forms the physical basis of the global economic system
-- a system that is killing our planet and cannot function without the
continued dispossession of indigenous land and destruction of Earth-based
cultures.

This civilization will not change its genocidal and ecocidal trajectory
willingly, and the Earth cannot be saved by half-measures. The system must
come down, and its reliance on infrastructure -- especially the
infrastructure of trade -- is one of its greatest weaknesses.

LEARN MORE

Taking down the system by fighting infrastructure expansion:

http://www.rootforce.org/what-is-root-force/strategy/

Infrastructure and indigenous sovereignty:

http://www.rootforce.org/factsheets/indigenous/

Infrastructure and the environment:

http://www.rootforce.org/factsheets/environment/

More infrastructure fact sheets (labor, global warming, etc.):

http://www.rootforce.org/factsheets/

TAKE ACTION!

Join people around the world on October 12-16 to say NO to the
commercialization of life and the criminalization of indigenous and social
movements, and YES to a world based on respect for all life. Join Root
Force in the struggle against the infrastructure of global trade, and help
us demolish colonialism at its foundations.