Taking the ripple effect of our work evermore far and wide our grantees are making big splashes with prodigious accomplishments and progress;

• The Tar Sands Blockade is galvanizing direct, non-violent action in clever ways to oppose the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline,
• Haymarket Books has a boldly diverse line-up of book releases this month, including several books by Howard Zinn, Göran Olsson’s Black Power Mixtape:1967-1975, and Tariq Ali’s The Stalinist Legacy: It’s Impact on Twentieth Century World Politics,
• The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in partnership with Drilling Mora County accomplished the unprecedented goal of passing the first U.S. ban on fracking and oil drilling in Mora County, New Mexico,
• Project Survival Media is developing a catalogue of climate solutions from youth documentary teams around the world,
• The Yes Lab is tinkering away in the edit room on their new titillating film, The Yes Men Are Revolting. They are also working their fannies off on their Action Switchboard, a dynamic platform connecting tools and change agents. Both projects are sure to whet your civil disobedience appetite.

There’s an endless number of methods and practices that we can use to respond to the social, economic, and environmental concerns of our time. This season’s grantees, both new and alumni, are taking on solutions based approaches with a combination of youthful tenacity and tried and true wisdom.

Kindle Project Fund of the Common Counsel Foundation is pleased to introduce you to our lineup of inspiring change-makers for our Spring 2013 Grant Cycle.

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Agriculture Implementation Research & Education is working to cultivate as many fields and gardens with as many crops and as many people as possible in various communities throughout the Middle and Upper Rio Grande. For schools, service corps, and community groups we offer sustainable agriculture presentations, demonstrations, and workshops. To address our contemporary context of climate change and food insecurity, we also maintain a “living seed library” of locally adapted seeds for agricultural expansion and success.

Be Present, Inc. empowers individuals to build strong communities together, supporting collective and transformative leadership. For the past 30 years, we have used our Be Present Empowerment Model® to train people from diverse backgrounds to be more effective leaders and communicators for the well being of themselves, their families, schools, organizations, workplaces and communities. The result is sustainable change at the individual, organizational and societal levels, in communities around the US.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund assists people and communities to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance and sustainability, and to recognize the rights of nature.  Through grassroots organizing, our Democracy Schools, ordinance drafting, and legal counsel, we have assisted over 140 communities across the countries to develop first-in-the-nation laws banning fracking, factory farming, sludging, water privatization, and industrial-scale energy development.  Through this work, we have become the principal advisor to communities struggling to transition from merely regulating corporate harms to stopping those harms by addressing the key legal barriers – including corporate constitutional “rights” – that stand in the way of local self-governance and sustainability.

The Community Midwifery Fund makes high quality, culturally competent midwifery care more available, especially for low-income women and women of color. Its goal is to improve birth outcomes for mothers and babies and address racial disparities in maternal and infant health. Since its founding in 2011, the Community Midwifery Fund (CMF) has awarded over $200,000 to 11 organizations and projects that: increase the number of new midwives and doulas of color, expands access to quality, community-based midwifery care for low-income women and women of color, advocate for the inclusion of midwife and doula care in state health care exchanges, reclaim and support traditional birth practices within different cultures.

On stage, using pre-recorded voice overs and video interaction, Dynasty Handbag is a performative exorcism of deranged characters and failures born from a patriarchal, consumer-driven society. Dynasty Handbag is the alter ego of performance/video artist, Jibz Cameron. She has been heralded by the New York Times as “the funniest and most pitch perfect performance seen in years” and “crackpot genius” by the Village Voice.  Her work as ‘Dynasty Handbag’ has been seen in such esteemed institutions as The New Museum NY, The Kitchen, DTW, MOMA PS1, Joe’s Pub, PS122, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and also in international dives both great and small.   She is the recipient of numerous awards, and an adjunct professor of Performance and Theater studies and comedy theory at TISCH NYU. Her unique and obscure work is best understood through first hand witnessing. Check out her website to get a taste of her flavor.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) was created in 1977 in response to White House scandals. Our mission is to ensure government and corporate accountability by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers and empowering citizen activists. GAP serves as a lifeline to employees of conscience and helps them release critical information that serves the public interest and the common good. Now in our 34th year, GAP has advanced to become not only the nation’s leading whistleblower support organization, but also an important government and corporate accountability organization both domestically and internationally. GAP’s change-oriented methodology includes representing whistleblowers, creating an effective advocacy agenda surrounding their concerns, and developing, then implementing, broad whistleblower protection policy reforms with extraordinary reach in the United States and abroad.

Haymarket Books was founded in the year 2001 to publish original progressive nonfiction works of interest to scholars, activists, and readers interested in books related to the history of movements for social change in the United States and engaged in contemporary political debates. Among our authors are Wallace Shawn, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Amira Hass. We take inspiration and courage from our namesakes, the Haymarket martyrs, who gave their lives fighting for a better world. Their struggle for the eight-hour day in 1886 which gave us May Day, the international workers’ holiday, reminds workers around the world that ordinary people can organize and struggle for their own liberation. These struggles continue today around the globe. Haymarket Books, a nonprofit publisher, is a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change

Founded in 2001, High Mayhem Emerging Arts is a not-for-profit emerging arts facility, record label and multimedia production collective based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We challenge the homogenizing effect of pop-culture groupthink by providing opportunities for and fostering collaborations with underrepresented “experimental” artists.  High Mayhem curates performances and organizes workshops year-round with musicians and performance artists who come from near and far. We seek out other brave explorers (and welcome those who have discovered us) to join us in producing innovative and thought-provoking experiences for our communities. Further, we encourage and organize collaborative experiments across disciplines; new forms emerge from mutated traditions and pure invention.

Honest Appalachia is a website and resource for whistleblowers in Appalachia who wish to reveal proof of corporate and government wrongdoing. Our mission is to use web-based technology to support and defend whistleblowers, journalists and other citizens in Appalachia as they seek to hold powerful institutions and individuals accountable to the public. The website, which was inspired by Wikileaks, is focused on local and regional issues in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Its efforts will focus on a broad variety of institutions, from coal and gas companies to banks and zoning boards to local and state governments. Honest Appalachia is operated by a team of freelance journalists, computer programmers and transparency activists in Appalachia and beyond.

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research was founded in 1985 to further public involvement in and control over environmental problems through the democratization of science. IEER provides policy makers, the media, and community and grassroots leaders with technical training and scientific and policy analyses on environmental, energy, and security issues. IEER work has made important contributions to campaigns to stop nuclear weapons production, improve cleanup of nuclear weapons production sites, help get justice for sick nuclear weapons workers, and stop commercial nuclear reprocessing and the use of plutonium fuels in commercial nuclear power plants.

MIX is a structure for interaction and collaboration among inspired individuals, entrepreneurs, innovators, businesses and organizations. Through monthly events that showcase talent and local re- sources, MIX provides an avenue for personal contact and networking. Through innovative web tools, social media and micro- stimulus, MIX provides a mechanism for the development of ideas, businesses, and projects with corollary opportunities for promotion, recognition and start-up funding.

Planned Parenthood of New Mexico’s Santa Fe Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Project empowers youth to avoid teen pregnancy by increasing access to accurate sexual health information and providing more channels for youth to be involved with their families and community. This multi-pronged initiative uses multiple programs to ensure that students have the information and support that they need to avoid teen pregnancy and succeed in their academic and professional careers.

Project Survival Media is a global youth media network producing short photo and video documentaries on survival and ingenuity in the face climate change. We assemble media teams around the world, empowering and training young people on the art of powerful story telling. Currently, we work a team in India and a team in Kenya, but we hope to add 5 more teams in: Burundi, Chile, Egypt, Ireland, and Mongolia. We also work in the US with young people who are passionate about media and climate change to provide photography and videography to environmental justice organizations.

Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of affected Texas and Oklahoma residents and organizers using nonviolent direct action to physically stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

United Roots was created through the convergence of several Oakland organizations that provided safety net, arts, media, environmental awareness, leadership, and workforce programs for youth in order to connect them to education and employment. Founded in 2010, United Roots engages and supports Oakland youth by providing: arts and media training to instill confidence and develop talents; career and workforce development to cultivate professional skills; community engagement to connect youth to service providers and employers; and wellness services to allow youth to heal and grow.

The Yes Men are an international band of rogues best known for their exploits in “identity correction” — impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. They do this (a) in order to demonstrate the absurd logic that keeps bad people and rotten ideas in power, and (b) because it’s absurdly fun. Their main goal is to focus attention on the dangers of economic policies that place profit before people and the environment. The Yes Lab is a think tank and training for activist groups to develop high-impact media projects, of the sort the Yes Men have doing for the last 12 years. Yes Lab sessions help small groups of activists, campaigners and organizers to conceive and execute disruptive, productive events that keep people reminded of what’s wrong, what could be right, and what’s in store if we don’t change our ways.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) first became of interest to us when we heard about their Democracy School program. The Democracy School is an accessible and in-depth training for participants to become competent in the rules and regulations around building their own healthy, self-governed communities. For those whose lives and lands are under serious threat by laws that favor corporations over people and nature the CEDLF Democracy School is one of the most important and invaluable resources we’ve come across.

Last year, two Kindle Project staff members attended a Democracy School in New Mexico. They came back with a wealth of knowledge, but also with a greater understanding of the kinds of barriers that most of us face when acting as community and environmental advocates.

The video below tells the story of how the Pennock family lost their sixteen year old son, Daniel, to health complications from walking past fields of toxic sludge on a daily basis. Daniel’s father described the need for the Democracy Schools in a perfectly succinct way: “People don’t understand what their rights are.”

Paving the way for personal, community and collective empowerment and decision-making, CELDF’s work is truly a revolutionary offering.

Below, you’ll read a more in depth explanation of their programs and a special interview between CELDF’s Emelyn Lybarger and Alexis Eynon, who attended a Democracy School in New Hampshire. They share a compelling and personal testimony to the importance and effectiveness of CEDLF’s work.

If your community, or the community of someone you know, is facing serious land and health threats due to corporate interests in fracking, hydrocarbon extraction, and toxic sludge (to name a few) you will want to visit the CELDF website. There are ways that they can help!

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The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is a public interest law firm that conducts grassroots organizing to advance community rights and sustainability.  Their mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.  They work with communities across the country facing corporate threats such as shale gas drilling and fracking, unsustainable agriculture, and unsustainable energy development, providing assistance in grassroots organizing, public education and outreach, and the drafting of ordinances.

As part of their work, they teach Democracy Schools, which are weekend workshops that lay the educational groundwork for their organizing.  As the only organization assisting communities to ban harmful corporate activities by addressing our larger structure of law that elevates corporate “rights” over community rights, the Democracy Schools are central to CELDF’s work.

In the Democracy Schools, CELDF examines why corporations, hand-in-hand with government, are able to override local, democratic decision-making even on activities as harmful as drilling and fracking.  They explore how it is that we live under a constitutional structure of law that purposefully places the rights of property and commerce over the rights of people, communities, and nature.  And further, they examine why communities facing unwanted corporate activities such as fracking, find that their state environmental agencies, rather than helping them stop fracking, are instead issuing permits to corporations to frack.

The Democracy Schools also explore what other communities are doing as they come to understand how our structure of law and governance puts the interests of corporations over and above the interests of people, communities, and nature – standing in the way of community self-governance and sustainability.

Whether a community faces drilling and fracking, the privatization of its water, sludging of its farmland, factory farming, or a host of other corporate harms, the structural barriers in place preventing the community from stopping such threats are the same.  So rather than fighting individual “site fights” again and again, CELDF’s work has evolved to concentrate on building a grassroots movement aimed at changing our structure of law and governance from one that protects and promotes commerce and corporations, to a structure that secures and defends the rights of people, communities, and nature to achieve environmental sustainability and local democracy.

The Democracy Schools help reveal how this structure of law works, and from there, help communities “re-frame” the threat they face from a solitary “site fight,” to a broader structural problem whereby our legal system protects fracking and the rights of corporations to frack (or sludge, factory farm, etc.) over the interests of communities and nature.

Unsustainable Energy: A Community and Civil Rights Issue

An interview by Emelyn Lybarger of CELDF

CELDF’s Emelyn Lybarger

Alexis Eynon, from Thornton, NH, learned about CELDF and our Democracy Schools from neighboring communities organizing to stop the Northern Pass – an energy development project including 180-miles of high transmission wires and steel towers reaching 140 feet in height, creating a permanent scar on some of New Hampshire’s most pristine locations.

Alexis teaches art at a middle school near her home. Like many others, she moved to Thornton – into a home she built herself – because of the area’s stunning landscape and easy access to the outdoors. Home for 1,800 residents, it’s a small New England town, with a local economy based on tourism. The Northern Pass would be devastating to the community.

Alexis Eynon

Alexis recognized the threat Northern Pass posed, and began educating herself so she could help stop it. In November 2011 she listened to Democracy School on-line and attended two more Schools.

We interviewed Alexis to ask her about the impact CELDF and Democracy School had on her and the organizing she did in Thornton.

CELDF: Why did you attend a Democracy School?

Alexis: I heard about the Northern Pass and began researching it. What I learned did not bode well for our community—we are already seeing property values plummet, and a realty office recently closed nearby.

I heard about rights-based ordinances being presented and adopted in surrounding communities, like Plymouth, Sugar Hill, and Easton. Those ordinances established community rights to clean air, water, local self-governance, and a sustainable energy future. I wanted that for Thornton.

CELDF: How did attending Democracy School impact you?

Alexis: What I learned in Democracy School certainly wasn’t Social Studies I learned in 7^th grade! It became clear why we don’t have a democracy and why corporations get away with causing harm to our communities. It was eye-opening: This is how our society operates, and this was the intention of the “founding fathers” all along – a society based on commerce, regardless of cost.

As I watched other communities trying to stop Northern Pass through traditional regulatory avenues, such as attending hearings, and compared that to communities focusing on rights-based organizing, I could see what Democracy School taught, playing out.

The impact it had on me was that I had to do something – and CELDF’s rights-based organizing is actionable and challenges the status quo in a way that traditional organizing does not.

Campton Pond/Dam & Welch-Dickey – Part of the beautiful region that Alexis is working to protect

In my town, I witnessed folks speaking against Northern Pass, but doing nothing to stop it. I had to run a rights-based ordinance because otherwise Northern Pass will kill our town! I began working with our Select Board and walking door to door. Some folks were very supportive, while others just didn’t seem to care. It was frustrating. But CELDF was helpful in educating and strategizing with us, and we received support from neighboring communities who have done this work.

Our ordinance didn’t pass at Town Meeting last month. But I think it’s paved the way for next year—it brought a lot of attention to the issue, and our reframing it from being just about one project to actually being a civil rights issue has gained traction.

CELDF: What were the top two things you learned in Democracy School?

Alexis: This unsustainable development, costing us our communities, is intentional. And today, haven’t we come full circle? Aren’t we now in the place the revolutionaries were in when they threw off the yoke of England?

Also, this IS a civil rights issue! Why can’t we say NO to what we don’t want and YES to what we do want? Why do corporations have more “rights” than we do? It’s NOT RIGHT!

CELDF: Why are you committed to doing this work?

Alexis: This is my home – I care about this place and the people here. I care about the injustices happening to communities across the country, and they are unacceptable to me and must be stopped. It won’t be stopped, though, until hundreds of people like us stand up and make it stop. I’m adding my voice to the collective yell.

Tecumseh, NH at sunset–more reason for Alexis’ work

CELDF: What do you envision for your community?

Alexis: I envision conversations in Thornton about our values, what we care about, why our energy future is so critical. I want us talking about what things are going to look like in seven years and in twenty years. What do we want? What are we willing to fight for? Let’s put the rubber to the road and start moving and start doing something about this.

Alexis is one of the founders of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network, a statewide organization established to bring together coalitions across the state doing rights-based organizing. This network of communities will drive community rights into the New Hampshire state constitution.  To learn more about CELDF, Democracy School, and the Community Rights Networks, visit our website:  www.celdf.org.

Simultaneously, the food justice movement has gained leverage and expanded exponentially, and the timing and setting could not be more primed for broadcasting their message. With Community Supported Agriculture continuing to gain in popularity and the work around California’s Proposition 37 in 2012, to name just a couple examples, the movement has a broad reach. The culture of food and the need to pay attention to its transformations is at the forefront of the mission of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy (CGG). By capitalizing on both the trends of the foodie movement and the urgency of the food justice movement they are raising awareness about the hazards of biotechnology in our food system in amazingly creative ways.

By taking a systems approach to food, and combining that with their background in biohacking, the brains behind the CGG are nudging us to consider food in ways we never have. They have taken this weird science under the microscope, and broadcast its gritty truths with social and environmental relevance.

The CGG’s work is exceptional, in that it encourages us not only to think about and understand the effects of the potentially hazardous and altered food we’re eating, but to actually eat it. In their TEDXDublin talk, CGG co-founders said, “when you change people’s tastes, you change their assumptions and expectations.” By combining art, food and technology in such phenomenon’s as glow in the dark sushi, these folks are breaking the barriers of food justice education and information sharing in ways that we’ve never seen.

In this video we get a glimpse into how to interact with some of CGG recipes.

Below, one of the CGG’s co-founders, Zack Denfield, explains to us their latest endeavors and projects. The bizarre and fascinating works of this group are constantly asking us to question the origins and the futures of the foods we eat.

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FoodPhreaking & Cobalt-60 Sauce
by Zack Denfeld

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is an independent research institute that explores the genomes and biotechnologies that make up the human food systems on planet earth. Our mission is to map food controversies, prototype alternative culinary futures, and imagine a more sustainable, just, biodiverse and beautiful food system. The Center presents its research through public lectures, publications, meals and exhibitions.

So far in 2013 we have been primarily conducting research, and are now starting the process of bringing this new body of research out of the studio and into the world. In addition to running a pop-up food hacker lab in Portland, Oregon in May and June we are currently scheduled to exhibit our projects publicly at the Portuguese Architecture Triennale in September and the San Jose Museum of Art in October.

What follows are snapshots of two projects. The first project, Cobalt-60 Sauce, documents an historical food controversy that is not very well known. The second project, FoodPhreaking, is a new publication we are releasing that looks at current food practices as a guide for imagining open source food cultures of the near future.

COBALT 60 SAUCE

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is very interested in documenting and reexamining the hype, hope and controversies that surrounded food & biotechnology in the recent past. Cobalt-60 Sauce is a project that examines mutation breeding, and documents some of the radiation-bred plant varieties that are served as food on a regular basis. We have written a bit about mutation breeding, and have created work with and about mutagenic varieties, but this is the first time that we will bring together many mutagenic plants to grow an cook with.

The hype and hope surrounding mutation breeding in the 1950s and 1960s parallels more recent developments in the life sciences, including transgenics and synthetic biology. Starting in the 1950s novel plant varietals have been created by exposing plants to radioactive materials such as Cobalt-60, with the hopes of inducing “interesting” mutations, and thereby speeding up the slow process of selective breeding. After being exposed to radiation, mutagenic plant varietals were chosen based primarily on observable phenotypical characteristics. Compared to synthetic biology and transgenics, this process of designing life was much less instrumentalized and precise.

Today, many mutagenic plant varieties have been approved for sale as food but their history is largely unknown by the general public, and even by contemporary biotechnologists. Luckily, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) keeps records of the many mutation bred varieties that have been created by different countries. The Center’s project, Cobalt-60 Sauce, is a barbecue sauce made exclusively from mutation bred plants that were exposed to Cobalt-60 and which can be found in IAEA’s META database.

We are bringing this research to the public in the form of an installation. The Cobolt-60 Sauce installation has four main components. On one table, mutagenically bred plant varieties (such as Todd Mitcham’s Peppermint) will be growing. The second table will showcase a 3D landscape model of a larger demonstration garden proposal. The third table will exhibit a crate of the Cobolt-60 Sauce. The packaging lists the mutagenic plant varietals that are used to make the sauce and points to the IAEA’s META database. A warning label explains that the mutation-bred plant ingredients have not gone through the rigorous human or environmental health testing that many commercialized transgenic plant varieties undergo. Is this risk acceptable? Lastly, there will be a screen on the wall showing a film that presents the history of mutagenic breeding.

We are interested to see how collecting these disparate plants in one demonstration garden, and one sauce leads to new conversations and critiques. The idea of trying to ‘Engineer Biology’ is not a new one, and Cobalt-60 Sauce offers an opportunity to pause and consider one historical precedent as we continue to debate emerging biotechnologies.

FOODPHREAKING

One goal of our organization is to make connections between gastronomy, ecology and open culture. The FoodPhreaking journal is a publication that aims to connect foodies who care about sustainability with scientists and hackers who care about open culture. For the first issue (Issue #0) we decided to collect 40 concise examples of what FoodPhreaking might be, and what it most definitely is not. Regular readers of the Center’s blog supplied us with links to examples of critical amateurs and hobbyists obsessed with exploring the food system, and recent failures in the global food system. These examples have been grouped into themes such as Culinary Civil Disobedience and Proprietary Food Science.

FoodPhreaking issue #0 is currently being printed using a 2-color risograph process with gold and neon pink ink. We love well crafted print publications that inspire readers who are moved by flipping through ink on paper. However, for ease of use and distribution a creative-commons-licensed digital version of the book will also appear on our website later this month.

Here are a few of the page spreads:

We hope you are in touch if you run into interesting examples that we should include in future issues of the FoodPhreaking journal.

Cobalt-60 Sauce looks at a controversy from the recent past and FoodPhreaking examines the present to imagine a better food future. These are just two of the projects that are migrating from research phase to dissemination phase. You can follow many more upcoming projects by visiting our website or joining our mailing list.

Yansa’s mission is to provide communities with the means, tools and training to operate their own wind farms. Providing technology, training and capital, they help communities to invest in and use their own sustainable energy sources. The electricity generated from the wind farms is sold to the national grid of the host country, bringing profits straight back to the community. Yansa, has figured out how to solve problems on multiple levels. Through their intelligent and effective pairings of mixing environmental sustainability, responsible investing opportunities, and helping to build strong social structures, Yansa is a true champion of innovation across sectors.

Below, Yansa’s Development Coordinator, Amy Spellman, shares her personal narrative of how she came to work for such a special organization and the professional and personal revelations she’s had along the way being a part of this group. Her awareness of this multi-layered approach and her thoughts on why they are so important point straight back to Yansa’s mission.

Yansa’s projects are humble in scale, authentic in spirit, and immense in impact. Check out their website for more information.

Reflections and Updates from the Field
by Amy Spellman

When a group of friends that shared a concern for social, economic and environmental justice issues came together to form Yansa, their vision was to use it as a vehicle to drive a just transition to renewable energy through community-based projects. These projects would serve to empower marginalized communities through a model that expanded economic opportunities and emphasized social impacts. From the beginning, our team has been ever expanding and includes many different types of people; indigenous activists, wind development experts, social impact investors, academics, and it’s our diversity that enables us to create successful partnerships and sustainable projects.

I joined the team in 2011 after stumbling upon a job board post for summer interns at Yansa. I had little free time but Yansa’s profile matched so perfectly with my background and passions that I applied anyway. Writing this blog as Yansa’s Development Coordinator, I have managed to expand that two-month internship opportunity into two years of experience and engagement that have been pivotal to my own growth. I am fortunate to be involved with each Yansa project, in cultivating the rich relationships that come along with this work and in seeing some of the original goals of our founding members translate into concrete successes.

Our initial Yansa project began in the city of Ixtepec, an indigenous community in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Before the formation of Yansa, co-founder Sergio Oceransky had lived in Denmark and Germany, where he witnessed the success of community-base wind farms in Europe. He was instantly convinced of the potential for viable community wind projects in indigenous and other historically oppressed communities and founded Yansa to realize this idea. During a trip to Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, he saw how wind corporations were violating indigenous peoples’ rights and taking over their land. He moved to Oaxaca to provide access to information and support to communities fighting to regain control over their land. Community leaders then approached Sergio, proposing a partnership to building a community-owned wind farm in Ixtepec.

For its part in the partnership, Yansa provides the technical, managerial, and financial assistance required for the wind farm. In return, the community would be the backbone of the project, engaged in every step and eventually taking over full operation. They would direct the process throughout all phases of development and implementation, which would include social and economic programming supported by profits from the wind farm.

This distinct collaborative development model, defined by partnership and long-term sustainability is what truly inspired me when I joined Yansa and it is what has kept me dedicated and engaged ever since. Community partnership and localized ownership are essential components of our projects and differentiate them from others in the wind development field. Our community partnerships foster trust and transparency while ensuring the fundamental economic, cultural and political rights of the community members we work with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6prYIiA5CtQ

Community collaboration has been a rewarding and successful process but it has not come without challenges. In the early stages of our project in Ixtepec, we discovered a strikingly low rate of participation by women in decision-making processes or governing bodies, especially associated with land use. This was in part due to land ownership historically being passed through men who have traditionally worked the land. To make our process truly inclusive we insisted on finding a way to engage women in the project without disrespecting the existing norms and social fabric. Segio was adamant that the wind was a collective resource that belonged to everyone, not just those who own the land.  He insisted that in order to proceed with the partnership, all stakeholders, including women and other non-landowning groups, must have an opportunity to participate in the process.  To address this, we proposed the creation of the Women’s Forum that would convene regularly to discuss issues connected to the project making their voices heard in decisions involving the wind farm. The male dominated governing bodies were receptive to this and together with Yansa, they helped commence the very first meeting of the Women’s Forum.

The forum is the first independent women’s organization ever formed in Ixtepec outside of religiously or politically affiliated groups. This represents an important transition to a more inclusive process of participation for women in the community. Initially driven and guided by Yansa’s staff, the forum is now completely self-sufficient, with a core group of dedicated women meeting every week to ensure their involvement within the decision-making and community collaboration process continues.

Reflecting on the success of the Women’s Forum in writing this blog has been inspirational. My work from home can sometimes feel isolated from events on the ground. I can get bogged down in emails and deadlines and forget why I have committed myself to this collective effort. I am appreciating, perhaps for the first time, that what seem like small victories are actually concrete, tangible changes that my colleagues and I hope to inspire. Our original mission was to support a ‘just transition’ to renewable energy but to really achieve such a monolithic goal we need to support many small ‘just transitions.’ Transitions that allow once marginalized voices to participate fully in decision-making processes that effect their lives, making partnerships more equitable and fair; these are the small advances that can catalyze larger, structural change and build a foundation that supports durable and sustainable models for change in the future.

The issue of access is particularly pressing. In the case of this week’s grantee feature we hear from the Women on Waves (WOW) Director, Rebecca Gomperts, about the issues around internet and information access for women.

WOW’s work is all about bringing access to women – access to safe and legal abortions, access to accurate information about medical abortion, and access to support and sexual health information. In addition, they spread many of these messages through direct action campaigns.

Last autumn, WOW held a campaign in Morocco in which they brought their ship (which offers safe medical abortion services) to the port in Smir. Though they faced severe resistance and scrutiny (and were ultimately not able to offer direct services on the ship because of this controversy) they took it upon themselves to use the opportunity to bring more awareness and education to these essential women’s health issues by creating a safe abortion hotline. Their nimbleness, and astute knowledge of international law, human rights and media tactics are in large part of what allows them to be as successful and influential as they are.

One of WOW’s ship campaigns: http://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/2582/ship-campaigns

Those that work at WOW are some of the most impactful and empowering risk-takers we know. They are true champions of social and reproductive justice.  When we know that thousands of women every day all over the world are having abortions and often in very unsafe conditions, it astounds us that more groups like WOW don’t exist, that there aren’t more people willing to take these risks to protect the rights of women internationally. Moreover, in this internet age, access to accurate information about women’s health is an essential right to protect. We are grateful to learn more about this timely and extremely relevant work from Rebecca below. She illustrates a very clear picture of the current global movement for women’s reproductive rights and how the access to information is an essential piece needed in order to continue to move things forward for women everywhere.

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Reflections on Internet Access, Medical Abortions and Women’s Rights
by Rebecca Gomperts

After medical abortion was invented in France, France’s Minister of Health, Claude Evin at that time, declared it the moral property of women in 1988 after the pharmaceutical company tried to take it off the market under pressure from anti-abortion groups.¹

A medical abortion with a combination of two medicines, Mifepristone and Misoprostol is a very safe and effective method of abortion and has a success rate of approximately 95% to 98%. Very few serious complications result from medical abortions (World Health Organization (WHO), 2012). Mifepristone and Misoprostol have been on the list of essential medicines of the WHO since 2005.

Unfortunately, Mifepristone could not be registered in most countries where abortion is illegal (in almost all South American, African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries but also in three European countries – Poland, Ireland and Malta).  However women in Brazil discovered that a medical abortion could also be done with Misoprostol alone. Although the use of Misoprostol alone is safe, the failure rate is almost 10% to 15%. But ever since, home use of medical abortion with Misoprostol alone by women themselves is increasing in countries where abortion services are unavailable. Misoprostol is registered in almost all countries for use against gastric ulcers and prevention of heavy bleeding after giving birth.

It is well documented that in countries where abortion is illegal, women risk their health and their lives to obtain clandestine abortions from unqualified persons in unhygienic conditions. According to the World Health Organization, 19 million women experience an unsafe abortion every year and 48,000 women die from complications of unsafe abortion each year. The development of medical abortion has been very important because it gives women the possibility to take their lives in their own hands again, independent of the legality of abortion and the availability of trained abortion providers.  The health consequences are similar to a spontaneous miscarriage and most women deal with these themselves. In the rare case of a complication, this is almost never life threatening. The use of medical abortion is safer than the use of Penicillin or Viagra. Access to information about the medicines to do an abortion is lifesaving.

Coincidently the public start of the Internet (1991) happened at almost the same time as the introduction of medical abortion (1988).  In the past 20 years the Internet has grown exponentially and has become a major source of information for people all over the world.  This also spurred the practice of telemedicine and later attempts to regulate it.  So it is not surprising that women around the world started to use the Internet to access information about abortion services as well. This is reflected in the many discussion forums and online sales of Misoprostol and/or Mifepristone. Unfortunately there are many sites that provide wrong information and/or sell fake medicines without any information. These kind of fake services severely abuse women’s vulnerability and put women’s lives at risk.

Screenshot of Women on Web site: www.womenonweb.org

In 2004, Women on Waves (a Dutch non-profit organization) was the first to publish instructions for women about “how to safely do an abortion yourself” with the use Misoprostol alone on its website. Although Misoprostol is registered in most countries, the organization learned through its email helpdesk that a lot of women cannot easily obtain Misoprostol or in some cases the abortion attempt failed. A new project called Women on Web was initiated to support women in countries where there are no safe abortion services. On the Women on Web website, women can do an interactive web-based medical consultation. The answers to the online consultation are reviewed by a doctor.  If there are no contraindications, a woman with an unwanted pregnancy till nine weeks can receive a medical abortion that is delivered by courier or mail to her home address. Women are closely guided in the process through a helpdesk in 12 different languages.  The helpdesk now answers over 100,000 emails per year. Scientific research about the Women on Web service showed that outcomes of care are in the same range as other medical abortion services. Internet and medical abortion were both revolutions in support of human rights.

While the Internet has the potential to support the freedom of information, the abortion pill has the potential to improve the health and lives of women. Unfortunately, as after every revolution that increases people’s freedoms, governments immediately started adapting and implementing regulations to keep it under control.

In most countries very strict regulations apply as to where and by whom the abortion pill can be provided.

The Internet is now used by governments for surveillance; breaching the human right to privacy of its citizens instead of guaranteeing the freedom of information. Fortunately, initiatives like Wikileaks can still also hold governments accountable for their actions.

Access to information on the Internet is now controlled by big companies like Google, which censors the available information. In 2008 Google wrote a notice that they had revised policy and would stop ads about safe abortion information that we used to reach out to women. We were surprised. This was information about life saving medicines. It turned out that Google decided to ban all ads with the word abortion.

The Health Equity and Law Clinic, Faculty of Law of the university of Toronto decided to take action and they wrote Google a letter expressing concerns about the adverse effect of the Revised Policy for women seeking safe and lawful abortion services. We argued that by restricting access to information, the Revised Policy may contribute to unsafe abortion in a manner inconsistent with human rights principles.  Access to information – the right to seek, receive and impart information on health issues – is a key determinant of access to health care. The Internet is a primary health information source. It is of particular importance to individuals who lack access to traditional sources of health information, require confidential and timely access to information, and seek services outside of their communities. Online advertisements that promote abortion services can improve access to information on the legal status of abortion and the availability of lawful services, and can thereby reduce recourse to unsafe abortion. In the letter we also respectfully requested the policy be reviewed and rescinded. Of course we never received a response.

(Full letter can be read http://www.womenonwaves.org/en/page/2310/pdf-letter-google)

Just a few weeks ago we decided to try again to place an ad in Arabic to be able to reach women in the Middle East with life saving information. But again Google disapproved the ad.

So to protect our freedom to information we all need to seriously start looking for alternative browsers and other Internet services on a large scale. We need to take our violations of the rights to privacy by governments very serious. We should all start using Tor to anonymize our Internet use.  Just as a principle. Because only if we all start doing that, the Internet will still have the capacity to support our human right to freedom of information.

¹http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/29/world/france-ordering-company-to-sell-its-abortion-drug.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm 

www.womenonwaves.org

Meshing a Native American method of problem solving with the contemporary court system, CCI’s unique modus operandi intrigued us. How could this work? What judge would agree to this? Could lawyers really be trained in peacemaking? These questions were not skeptical in nature, but rather came more from a place of genuine curiosity.

By training community members as peacemakers to offer their services to court cases involving young adults and teens, CCI practices this alternative adjudication process publicly, demonstrating a model of healing and community restoration within a system accustomed to models of power and opposition. With one formal process already underway, the CCI’s program is making big headway in the Brooklyn community. All involved participate on a voluntary basis, and this in itself an alterative model to traditional justice systems.

Below, CCI’s Peacemaking Program Director, Erika Sasson, has shared with us her story of transitioning from being a criminal prosecutor in Canada to her current work spearheading this unique project. Erika’s words serve not only as testimony of how we can bring peacemaking into court systems, but also as a testament to how effective these methods are. This work is breaking the molds of what we imagine justice to be, and is reshaping them.

Red Hook Peacemaking Program: A different voice
by Erika Sasson

I’m currently sitting in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. Once a catholic school, the building is now home to an innovative courthouse, one that specializes in applying new solutions to some age-old problems. One of the newest solutions we’re testing is our Peacemaking Program. It’s a Native American-inspired approach to conflict resolution that we’re using to resolve criminal cases. Our program came into being after years of work with Native American tribes in the United States, and through the mentorship and generosity of many tribal judges and peacemakers who encouraged us to pursue the study and implementation of peacemaking.

Over the course of many months, we trained local volunteers to become peacemakers, and those volunteers are now working on their first cases. If the case has a victim (i.e. an assault between brothers or neighbors), our peacemakers will bring the conflicting parties together to discuss what happened and seek a consensus resolution; or, if it’s a crime against the community (drug sale, prostitution, etc.) the peacemakers work with the defendant to develop strategies for moving forward and out of a life of crime. At the start of each session, everyone is invited to share a light meal, in order to relax our participants and bring everyone together.¹ The peacemakers then open the discussion with a non-religious ceremony to set the tone, such as a moment of silence. The peacemakers ask questions in order to understand the incident, as well as the background and any underlying issues. Each person is given the chance to speak, and slowly the peacemakers help the participants move towards a concrete resolution by way of consensus.

Peacemakers in Redhook, Brooklyn. Leader of the program, Erika Sasson is pictured on the bottom row second from the left.

Although we’re just at the beginning of this journey, our peacemakers have already demonstrated the extent to which they have internalized the approach to peacemaking taught by our Navajo mentors, including listening, showing empathy, sharing personal stories and scolding when necessary. Our peacemakers are also committed to the notion that the solution must originate with the participants–defendants and victims–for it to be long-lasting.

Although I find this work intuitive, my own path to peacemaking actually began in the conventional adversarial courtroom. My first job out of law school was for the Canadian federal government, where I eventually became a criminal prosecutor, mostly dealing with drug cases, and often involving small to medium-sized gangs, as well as guns. I worked in a very busy courthouse and learned to process cases as fast as I could. Even though the volume was tremendous, I was lucky to have a supervisor who instilled in her front-line prosecutors the importance of doing the right thing (as quickly as possible, of course).

Spending days and nights in a courthouse, I learned about how we organize our society and the inflated role played by the criminal justice system. Many of us suffer from a host of social ills, personality conflicts, physical and mental illness, addiction, power and abuse, and somehow these issues are packaged and rolled up into a singular notion of crime, and sent to the courts to solve. Needless to say, our criminal justice system can only do so much. Despite the best of intentions, it is necessarily limited in the types of remedies at its disposal, and in its ability to penetrate the surface, especially given the high volume.

In the course of prosecuting, I also learned about myself, and the kinds of interactions that appealed to me. I was, on the one hand, seduced by the power dynamics of the courthouse, especially the degree of power exercised by the prosecuting authority. But, as time went on, I began to seek different types of interactions with the people whose lives were being affected by our criminal process.

The courtroom is designed for the prosecutor to speak directly to a judge, most often with her back to the defendant. I started to feel that like I couldn’t keep talking about someone without even making eye contact. I began to give my back ever so slightly to the judge, in order to face the defendant when speaking about her. I began to ask defense counsel to hear more about the people they were representing, and subsequent to sentencing, I would want to know how people were faring. I started to realize what a small piece of the picture I was getting, and I felt that the process placed too much emphasis on separation.

A few years later, and before embarking on the peacemaking project, I came by Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice. I had read the book a few years earlier, but I had a new opportunity to revisit it, and the words jumped out at me. In the book, which examines young Amy and Jake and their perceptions of the world around them, Gilligan wrote that Amy’s world was “a world of relationships and psychological truths where an awareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognition of responsibility for one another, a perception of the need for response.”²

Program Participants

Since joining the Center for Court Innovation’s Tribal Justice Exchange in 2011, I can finally incorporate into my work with the courts “an awareness of the connection between people.” Peacemaking is, in a sense, that different voice. It allows our communities to recognize the connections between people and the responsibility we have for one another. By seeking to respond as a community to the problems we share, to restore relationships that have been damaged by crime, to resolve problems using consensus, to focus on listening to the stories underlying the issues, we allow an opportunity for different types of solutions. Although I’m still a firm believer that the courtroom is necessary to establish boundaries for certain types of cases and offenders, I’m grateful to be working with a different voice.

¹ We are indebted to the Kindle Project for providing the funds to ensure we can provide food at each peacemaking session.
² Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982) p.30

http://www.courtinnovation.org/ 

It is only natural for human beings to take an interest in collecting tokens of matter that have fallen from the sky, real and tangible pieces of natural history. However, what happens when our fragile planet is marked not only by out of orbit incidences, but by what we do to our planet ourselves?  What about the relics that get left behind from our experiments? And not only what happens with them, but what can they teach us about the past and about where we’re headed?

Enter the field of Aviation Archaeology, a fascinating emerging field of study exploring the connection between land and sky, and how aviation experiments from the past have impacted and been documented in the planet’s landscape. The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a self-ascribed “research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues”, is making a public display of Aviation Archaeology’s findings in their most recent exhibition, Down to Earth: Experimental Aircraft Crash Sites of the Mojave, taking place in Los Angeles, CA.

CLUI is a champion of questioning and documenting the United States’ terrain.  They look at the landscape of the country and dissect it. They take forgotten fields and locations and make them known. They investigate the bizarre places that we, as humans, have altered, and make them part of the American landscape. They are creating a map for the seen and unseen oddities of this transforming planet, a map of human impact on Earth, in our country.

CLUI’s mission and how they execute it is nothing short of a wonder. Their website’s incredibly interactive Land Use Database is just one example of how they effectively educate the public of their work in ways that are at once creative, engaging and historical. Supporting them felt so important to us because we had never heard of anything like it. They’ve taken on the arduous task of being archivists in ways that few others are. They are also the point at which independent historians and archeologists (like Peter W. Merlin, described below) can converge to share their unique work. As we continue to need to ask the questions about what we’re doing to our planet, why we are doing it, and what the consequences will be, CLUI is helping us find these vital and obscure answers.

Below, Matthew Coolidge (Director, CLUI) writes about the Down to Earth exhibit, and teaches us why Aviation Archaeology is an important field to pay attention to.

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Down to Earth: Thoughts on Airplane Crash Sites and Aviation Archeologists
by Matthew Coolidge, Director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation

The Center for Land Use Interpretation addresses a wide range of topics. Since all human activity plays out on (or over, or under) the ground, everything humans do can be considered from a “land use” perspective, if you consider the term very literally, as we do. From this infinity of possibilities, we select themes to explore through our programming based on a number of criteria, some objective, some maybe less so, but always because they seem relevant to the conditions and times we are in, as a society, today. They often deal with the technologies of the modern world that sustain our way of life, and examine their effects on the land, culture, and collective psyche, hopefully revealing new perspectives and notions about things we take for granted, or do not think about much at all.

Aerospace, and the “sky/land” interface, is one of a few dozen recurring subjects for us, since its direct and indirect impacts are one of the dominant features of contemporary life in a global world. It’s a technology that can seem abstract and esoteric, so we often try to bring it “down to earth,” as they say, to address it by finding actual, physical places, which can be visited, that can be “ground truthed,” to tell the story. And we try and find new and unusual ways in to a subject, often by finding experts in the field who are driven more by passion, then by economics.

Crash sites are usually remote, and sometimes have an area that is noticeably bare, like this one, near Harper Dry Lake, west of Barstow, California, where a supersonic B-1 bomber prototype crashed in 1984. CLUI photo, 2012.

A good example is a new exhibit we just opened at our space in Los Angeles, about experimental aircraft crash sites in the Mojave Desert. The exhibit depicts and describes eleven incidents, selected to represent the range of advanced technology over 70 years of jet-powered flight, from a 1948 crash of a “flying wing” to a 2009 crash of an advanced fighter plane, now part of the US Air Forces. The show is about technology, but more about the poetic implications of these “high impact” land use sites, arbitrary drop points from above, that happened, literally, by accident. And why some people find them interesting enough to devote much of their free time to seeking them out, an activity known broadly as “wreck-finding,” and more officially, now, as “aviation archeology.”

Since the “Right Stuff”- era, Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles, has been the principal place for testing experimental aircraft. As a result, the landscape around it is peppered with crash sites – more than 600 in the western Mojave Desert alone. While many of them occurred inside restricted military spaces, many more occurred on private and public land outside the reservations. Some crashes occurred next to homes, and state highways. Sometimes the pilot ejected safely, sometimes not. These are complicated and often tragic places. In all cases though, despite having been cleaned up by authorities immediately following the crash, fragments of the planes can still be found on site. They are monuments of disintegration, dissolving back into the ground.

The exhibit has been something we have been wanting to do for over a decade. It is based on the work of Peter W. Merlin, someone who I met in the mid 1990s, when I was working on an exhibition about the Nellis Range in Nevada, and a book about the Nevada Test Site. Though still quite young, Peter was already well on his way to becoming one of the nation’s experts on exotic aircraft development, and failure, and the history of the most secure aviation test site in the nation, popularly known as Area 51, located inside the Nellis Range. Even then he was one of the go-to guys for Discovery Channel producers to interview about what was “really” going on inside this notoriously secret place. The thing was, he knew about that place as well as anybody who wasn’t sworn to secrecy, so he could talk about it. And he found out by sleuthing through non-classified sources.

Peter Merlin shows Aurora Tang of CLUI some of the small plane fragments still on the ground from a crash of an experimental high-performance jet, the X-31, less than half a mile from a house and a public highway, near Boron, California in 1995. In this case the pilot safely ejected. CLUI photo, 2012

Unlike most people who were drawn to that place though, it wasn’t the conspiratorial secrecy and the UFO theories that motivated him, it was a fascination with aircraft, and the missing chapters of aviation history that these secret test sites concealed. While access to the site and to official records was largely out of the question then, he found that visitation to crash sites outside the restricted areas was possible and provided material evidence of what landed there.

Over the past 25 years, he, often aided by his friend Tony Moore and others, has located and visited more than 100 crash sites of historic aircraft, flown out of Area 51, and Edwards Air Force Base. In nearly every case he was told the site was “lost” and that everything had been removed anyways, so there was no point in trying to find it. But he found them, using clues from interviews with pilots, FOIA requests, and research in archives. Mostly though by days of repeated searches in the field, wandering around, lining up historic photos with subtle geographic features, like hills the distance, or small desert washes, while looking at the ground for incongruous fragments.

There is an established subculture of wreck-finders, some of whom publish books on small presses, and blog about their discoveries on the web. Pat Macha, for example, has been leading excursions into the mountains and deserts of California to find wreckage, mostly of civilian and old military training aircraft, for decades. Pete is not only interested in trophy hunting, and the personal thrill of discovery, though that is no doubt a factor – his backyard in Palmdale has a shed full of carefully bagged and logged pieces of hundreds of planes, including U2s, Blackbirds, and Russian Mig’s – a fragmentary history of aviation indeed. The best pieces he finds though go to museums, such as the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards, where his partner, Tony Moore, now works.

Titanium fragments of an A-12 “Oxcart,” found by members of the CLUI at a crash site near Wendover, Utah, in 2011. The Oxcart, one of the most advanced aircraft ever made, was a flying camera, built by the CIA to replace the U2, and flown out of “Area 51″ between 1962 and 1968. It was later developed into the more familiar SR-71 Blackbird. This crash occurred on public land, in 1963, when the plane’s existence was still a closely-guarded secret.

Pete, who met Tony while he was working as a baggage handler at Burbank Airport, also works on base now, as one of two archivists and historians at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, still the nation’s leading location for experimental aircraft testing. He is now a respected member of the aviation history community. He is a great example of how impassioned “amateurs” are often the experts, especially on subjects that lie beyond the well-worn paths, and the confines of academia.

For more about the CLUI exhibit Down to Earth: Experimental Aircraft Crash Sites of the Mojave, go to http://www.clui.org/section/down-earth-experimental-aircraft-crash-sites-mojave

For more information Peter W. Merlin’s work, see http://www.dreamlandresort.com/team/peter.html

And his books: X-Plane Crashes – Exploring Experimental, Rocket Plane and Spycraft Incidents, Accidents and Crash Sites (Specialty Press, 2008), Breaking the Mishap Chain: Human Factors Lessons Learned from Aerospace Accidents and Incidents in Research, Flight Test, and Development, (NASA, 2012), and Crash Course: Lessons Learned from Accidents Involving Remotely Piloted and Autonomous Aircraft (NASA, 2013).

Citizen Koch illustrates the twisted and powerful influence that the Koch brothers have had on voter suppression in the United States at large. The film takes an in depth look into the lives of individuals in Wisconsin uncovering truths and stories from people where these brothers’ deep and creepy pockets and the Supreme Court’s decision had the greatest impact.

Madison, Wisconsin, 2011. Photo credit: Matt Wisniewsk

While we haven’t yet seen the whole film, many noteworthy reviews have acknowledged the importance of this project and its effective contribution to the arduous task of overturning the Citizen United ruling. This compelling piece of authentic storytelling by those directly engaged with the dramatic erosion of democracy in the United States is beyond a wake up call, it is a call to action.

Though the film’s incredibly busy crew was still buzzing with the success of their premier at Sundance, we were lucky enough to catch up with one of the Director’s, Tia Lessin, this month. She shares with us about not only their revelatory experiences at Sundance, but also their pressing and personal motivations in making this film, and where she sees the movement going from here. We are so honored to share her experience with the Kindle community and bring your attention to Citizen Koch, a brilliant example of social and economic justice education. Get involved here. 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9F6T8B9Mk

Reflection on CITIZEN KOCH
by Director, Tia Lessin

Last month we premiered our film CITIZEN KOCH at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. What an adventure! We are so grateful to Sundance for giving us a chance to introduce this new documentary to the world, to the Kindle Project and other supporters for making the film possible, and to the audiences who attended the first screenings and so enthusiastically responded to the film.

One of the more memorable and satisfying experiences of Sundance are the Q and As after the screenings—an opportunity to engage in person with some of the best audiences in the world—and ours were especially lively.  And you never know who will turn up.

A woman approached us after our second screening and told us that she had been an invited guest at one of billionaire Charles and David Koch’s biannual fundraising retreats–a secret convening of the country’s wealthiest conservatives, Tea Party-aligned politicians, and right wing pundits –plotting how to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the outcome of elections. I took a step back. But instead of taking issue with the film, this stylish well-dressed woman told me: “you have it right—it is indeed a state by state strategy they are undertaking.” I asked her if she would take me as her plus one to the next retreat, but she declined with a laugh. I hadn’t been joking.

Outside the Koch retreat in Palm Springs, CA, January 2011. Photo credit: Tia Lessin

In January 2011, the Koch’s private security goons kicked me out of the gathering in Palm Springs, California. But that didn’t shut us down, in fact that experience compelled us to make CITIZEN KOCH. While the beginning of the money trail that corrupts democracy hides behind well-guarded banquet halls in private resorts, its corrosive consequences are glaringly apparent in workplaces, at family tables and in statehouses across America. And that is where CITIZEN KOCH begins.

Shortly after being ejected from the Koch fundraiser, we got a call from Carl’s brother, who works as a public university professor in Wisconsin. He told us “you should be filming what’s about to go down here.” Newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker, bankrolled by corporate money including the Koch fortune, had proposed eliminating collective bargaining rights for public employees, and tens of thousands of Wisconsinites were storming their statehouse in protest. Carl and I grabbed our gear and set out for Madison.

We came to understand the political drama unfolding in Wisconsin to be part of a concerted and nationwide strategy by extremists to super-enfranchise the wealthiest people and corporations through allowing unlimited (and undisclosed) donations, and to undermine the already diminished power of working and poor Americans with the passage of voter ID laws and efforts to break unions to diminish their ability to spend politically. Wisconsin was at the cutting edge of this strategy: we repeatedly heard Republican operatives say that Gov. Walker’s Wisconsin was “a model for the country,” that his moves against organized labor would help pro-business Republicans gain control of elected offices throughout the country.

Following this story also gave us a chance to make sense of why so many working class Republicans support an agenda promoted by America’s wealthiest. We have long wondered what it would take to change that dynamic, and in Wisconsin, we found out.

As protesting crowds rattled Madison’s Capitol rotunda, we were struck by the widespread outrage Gov. Walker had provoked. It was coming not just from the usual activists, but from a groundswell of citizens who understood that Walker was betraying Wisconsin’s legacy of democratic values. We met state workers—staunch, life-long Republicans—who had concluded that Walker’s radical policies would undercut their families’ modest standard of living and dishonor their life-long commitment to public service.

Neither of us live in Wisconsin. Carl grew up in the Midwest, I grew up in Washington, DC. But as we watched and listened to a growing chorus of politicians and strategists like Tim Phillips from the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity cast aspersions on public employees, it felt personal. My parents were both federal civil servants — my father at the EPA regulating carcinogens, my mother at the justice department administering federal funding to state and local law enforcement agencies. Carl’s father was a public university librarian, and his mother taught in an elementary school. They all chose government service for the security it brought to our families, and also because on some level for them it fulfilled a sense of commitment to the common good. When did they become the enemy? When did WE become the enemy?

In our first feature length film, TROUBLE THE WATER, we documented the aftermath of the breaching of the levees in New Orleans. Making that film, we saw first-hand what an America with no government services looks like—not just in the days and weeks after the disaster, but in the years leading up to it.

Today, the dismantling of the public sector and the vital services it provides has become the cornerstone of a political ideology embraced by the Kochs and others on the extreme right. Looking back, post-Katrina New Orleans now seems a logical extension of their vision for America.

The most frequent question we encountered during our Q and A sessions was whether or not we thought outside spending in electoral politics was still an issue: after all, Barack Obama withstood a barrage of corporate money in November 2012.  We believe that Obama’s victory was a false positive. Moving beyond 2012, we expect money to become an even greater influence as Koch Industries and other corporate interests continue to move aggressively to neutralize the Democrats’ ground game (ie take out organized labor) and pour money into state and local races where the laws that define how our Democracy functions are passed. The big spenders are doubling down for the next election, and beyond.

In December 2012, as we were finishing CITIZEN KOCH in preparation for Sundance, the Kochs made an announcement that they were postponing their next fundraising retreat: “We are working hard to understand the election results, and based on that analysis, to re-examine our vision and the strategies and capabilities required for success…it will be several months before the state data necessary to complete this analysis is available.”

As Dee Ives, a nurse at a veterans home in Wisconsin and a lifelong Republican, told us the morning after her Governor was re-elected after outspending his opponent 8-1: “Watch out America, they’re coming for you next.”

When I spoke with Mariel Nanasi, NEE’s Executive Director, about the evolution of this project, she explained a complex and powerful fusion of grassroots organizing, activism and art. At the point when the coalition of many organizations and individuals working to protect the Rio Grande had been so immense and enduring that many of the involved parties were close to a state of burn out, a seemingly unlikely suggestion was made.  As these organizers were considering the various legislative strategies they may employ to implement the monument status, a funder approached Mariel and proposed they make a book about the people of New Mexico and their love of the land to help their cause.

I must admit, at this point in her story I had a quick moment of skepticism wondering how a book could have an impact on changing legislation, especially a book that was essentially a love letter from the people of the region to the land. I loved the idea, and I love the book, which can be viewed online here, but wondered about the kind of impact it could have.

As Mariel told me more, my skepticism was instantly washed away. Her accounts of being on location and the tales of the people she photographed showed me that this was no ordinary project, and gave me confidence in the power of this unique collection of human sentiment to move the hearts of the politicians who would come to see it, including President Obama himself.

Having a river and a region considered for National Monument status is indeed a serious task. In Mariel’s words, “I have never worked on a project that was more about love of place.” To learn more about how this love of place was transformed into this vast accomplishment, read Mariel’s testimony below. Join us and the NEE team in waiting with anticipation to hear the decision of our county’s legislators on the future status of this precious land.

New Energy Economy has been a part of the Kindle community since 2010. Their work spans from placing solar panels on local business to advocating at the legislative level for clean energy standards in New Mexico to empowering Native communities to make clean air decisions. Their website is filled with information and resources, be sure to check it out.

newenergyeconomy.org

Protecting the Rio Grande del Norte
by Mariel Nanasi

I was approached by a friend who had been working in coalition for years to bring about the permanent protection of the Rio Grande del Norte. He was worn-out and asked me if we could work together and strategize anew.

Biologically diverse and spectacular, the Rio Grande del Norte is a swath of northern New Mexico wilderness spanning 236,000 acres. It is a rich wildlife habitat that offers a paradise for backcountry hiking and fishing, traditional land uses like hunting and gathering, an outstanding place for observing nature in all of its splendor, and a refuge offering solitude and spiritual rejuvenation. Multiple attempts to advance legislation over the past 10 years in the House of Representatives and Senate to conserve this vital area had died.

How could we spice up the organizing efforts? How could we reach the people in power to act quickly and effectively? We figured out that the key to shaking the political stagnation out of its legislative gridlock was to touch the hearts of our sympathetic Congressional delegation and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, and have them ask President Obama to invoke his powers under the Antiquities Act to declare the Rio Grande del Norte a National Monument.

Our first idea was to create a photography book that depicted the way a diverse people interact with and love the Rio Grande del Norte. The breadth and depth of bi-partisan support for preservation of the Rio Grande del Norte transcends age, ethnicity and profession. I wanted to communicate how despite our individual differences that our lifestyle, traditions, livelihood and culture are all tied to this land.

We took photographs of Hispanics, Native Americans, and Anglos. We showcased anglers in the water, a falconer, hikers, veterans, artists, a health insurance agent, a stock broker, farmers, business owners, students, a brewer, ranchers, tourists, writers, a bank teller, hunters, and more. We pictured them in the place they love doing what they love. It was one of the most fun projects I have ever been engaged in because people were unabashed advocates for the place they treasure.

A collage was made of the people photographed and we bought advertising on the outside of buses that featured the collage with a bold and simple message: “Join Us and Protect The Rio Grande del Norte.” We sent a delegation of three people featured in the book to Washington to hand delivery the book to our Senators and Congressmen. We got unanimous Resolutions passed by the City of Santa Fe and the County of Taos in support of permanent protection, and those governing bodies sent their Resolutions to the Congressional delegation. We were strategic in choosing key stakeholders to meet with and show up at events (even tennis tournaments and parties) and intercept the Congresspersons and let them know how much we wanted the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.

You can see for yourselves if we were successful in getting our message across. In a joint letter to President Obama, Congressmen Heinrich and Lujan referred to the book by saying: “The Rio Grande del Norte: One Hundred New Mexican Speak for a Legacy showcases the faces and voices of 100 New Mexicans who work, play, cherish and live near the Rio Grande del Norte; and they share, in their own words, why these public lands must be protected.” Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar’s response to the Congressmen, on behalf of President Obama, called the book “an excellent representation of the magnificence of this special place.” The book is prominently displayed in Senators Bingaman (ret.) and Udall’s offices and when Ken Salazar autographed my copy he wrote: “Thanks for the dream.”

People noticed, the coalition was reinvigorated, and the whole campaign was much better off. We interacted meaningfully with those we photographed and in turn they became advocates. We took creative and artistic risks, and leveraged the umph that we generated.

The Rio Grande del Norte is a national treasure and we expect it will be declared a National Monument under the Antiquities Act by President Barack Obama any day now.  On the hundredth year anniversary of the State of New Mexico, a National Monument designation is a fitting way to honor our people, our state.

You can see The Rio Grande del Norte: One Hundred New Mexican Speak for a Legacy at: http://newenergyeconomy.org/protecting-the-rio-grande-del-norte/

From the moment we first heard about this project, we were absolutely sure it was a perfect fit for Kindle. Long time fans of Jeremy Scahill and Big Noise Films, we were certain of their collaborative capacity as investigative journalists and filmmakers to uncover the most pressing and alarming details behind America’s covert wars with expert quality and utmost integrity.

Dirty Wars Still: Jeremy Scahill in Somalia

Kindle has always been a believer in the transformative power of documentary. Whether a strong doc transforms personal belief or policy, or transforms what we thought we knew about any given issue, the documentary medium is one we’re perpetually interested in supporting. Dirty Wars was especially compelling to us not only because of its stellar producers, director and characters, but also because its subject matter will likely inform one of the most important conversations about war, justice, human rights and international relations this year.

Below, the film’s Director, Richard Rowley, talks about the project on the Sundance site. His last words in this short interview describe the project’s purpose: Dirty Wars “will show people a war that is being fought in their name that they know next to nothing about.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5-XIt45EVs

I was fortunate enough to see some of the footage of Dirty Wars some months ago. I sat at my desk too shocked to cry, and too disturbed to move. I fancy myself an informed person, but what I was seeing was not only atrocious but I also had next to no previous notion of it. Through Jeremy’s writing in The Nation, I was beginning to learn about some of the regions covered in the film and America’s duplicitous involvement there. However, the footage from Dirty Wars exposed me to a wealth of information that I had not been aware of and led me to deeply question what I thought I knew about American’s involvement abroad. Not only was the footage beautifully shot and narrated, but the distressing stories will surely create a groundbreaking film with an absolutely essential message.

Bringing its’ viewers new information, intelligence, and on the ground reporting, Dirty Wars is nothing short of a documentary feat. Below, the film’s producers, Brenda Coughlin and Anthony Arnove, give us a deeper understanding of what goes into making a film like this, the challenges they faced, and the vital importance of funding documentary productions.

•••

On Dirty Wars
by Brenda Coughlin and Anthony Arnove

When we heard the news that the film Dirty Wars had been accepted to the US documentary competition for the Sundance Film festival, which is taking place later this month in Park City, UT, one of the first people we wanted to share the good news with was Kindle Project.



Kindle Project had been with us from the earliest stages of the project and had given us support at a time when we were just setting out on the process of making a film that posed a series of new challenges for us. Among them: how do we secure kidnap, ransom, and dismemberment insurance for our filmmaking team.



In Dirty Wars, Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America’s expanding covert wars. The journey took Scahill and our director and cinematographer Richard Rowley to Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Kenya. While they are both experienced unembedded journalists, and have reported from war zones for years, the security risks were significant. We also had to protect footage — and protect sources, including an anonymous insider from with the secretive world of U.S. Special Forces who appears with his identity disguised in the film.

Dirty Wars Still: Jeremy Scahill in Afghanistan



In the end, we were able to get insurance through a bank in England, but not after other insurance companies had turned us down.

Kindle Project also made it possible for us to finance our film entirely independently. As producers of the film, one of our main goals was to give Scahill and Rowley complete editorial independence, allowing them to tell the story how they wanted to tell it, without compromise. We also wanted to ensure that whenever we were in a position to bring the film out in the world — as we will be doing in 2013 — we can make decisions based on how we can reach the widest audience and have the greatest educational impact, not based on financial considerations.



Filmmaker Richard Rowley of Big Noise Films (Fourth World War, Zapatista) first met investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill when they were working in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both had worked for independent broadcast outlets and international networks reporting on overlooked stories in the wars there and in other countries. After the breakout success of Scahill’s book Blackwater, which became a New York Times and an international bestseller and thrust Scahill into the media spotlight, Rowley and Scahill collaborated on a short film, Blackwater’s Youngest Victim, about the deadly Nisour square Shooting in Baghdad in September 2007, in which mercenaries of the Blackwater company killed seventeen civilians, including nine-year-old Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani.

Around the time of the film’s release, in 2010, Scahill was in the planning stages of a new book-length project, exploring the expansion of covert wars and the rise of the secretive extremely powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Scahill had been approached by filmmakers about making a feature film or documentary based on Blackwater after the release of the book in 2007, but this time, Scahill didn’t want to wait until the end of the book writing process to explore the filmmaking possibilities. He turned to Rowley to working alongside him from the outset in the course of his investigation.

Many fine documentaries have been filmed as a companion or interpretation of a work of nonfiction writing. But Scahill and Rowley set out with a different goal: not to make a documentary based on the forthcoming book Dirty Wars, which will be published in April 2013, but to make a film that stood entirely in its own right, using all of the power of the documentary form. This is not a film of a book. Nor is the book based on a film. They are different lenses into a compelling, complex story that cannot be fully explored in either genre alone.

As Rowley notes, “The film that will premiere at Sundance looks and feels nothing like the film we set out to shoot.” But in the end — thanks to the help of Kindle Project and a few other vital allies — all of us who worked on Dirty Wars feel we have found a way to tell the story we wanted to tell.

filmguide.sundance.org/film/13073/dirty_wars
dirtywars.org/