USA

By Wadner Pierre-www.haitianalysis.com

In 2006 two struggles were going on in two different Catholic churches and in two different countries. At Saint Claire’s Parish, Tiplas Kazo, Delmas 33 (one part of Delmas County), Haitian parishioners, students, and community leaders stood up against the decision of the Archdiocese of Port-Au-Port to remove the late activist priest, Gerard Jean-Juste, who had been serving this parish for ten years. Simultaneously at Saint Augustine Church, in Tremé, New Orleans, a similar struggle was taking place. Students of different beliefs and backgrounds, civil right’s movement leaders and community leaders stood up against the unjustified decision of the New Orleans Archdiocese, to remove the elderly African-American priest, Father Jerome Ledoux, from the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States. To explain the meaning of the people’s struggle at Saint Augustine Church, it is important to understand the history of this church and why it is so important for the African-American Catholic community to keep this church from closing after Hurricane Katrina.

The History of Saint Augustine Church

A Place at the Table?
The Great Bear Rainforest and ForestEthics

from "Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River", a special report by Dru Oja Jay and Macdonald Stainsby.

Released September, 2009.

http://www.offsettingresistance.ca/

Nuxalk Nation hereditary chief Qwatsinas (Ed Moody) explains that logging was causing concerns for his people on the Central BC Coast around Bella Coola, and that resistance began because “In the boom of the 1960’s and 1970’s, a rush [for logging companies] to get all the timber they could” was already underway. In response, “There was action with the hereditary chiefs and the elder people, and eventually the band council.” In 1994, the Nuxalk Nation invited Environmental Non- Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) large and small into their territory to see large scale clearcut logging then well underway.

“We sat down and discussed the pros and cons of any kind of relationship, and we set up a protocol and signed a protocol agreement.” The alliance with Greenpeace and smaller ENGOs Forest Action Network, People’s Action for Threatened Habitat and Bear Watch, says Qwatsinas, “started out really basic. The key people signed the agreements and we had our goals and our objectives and what we want to do to protect the environment.”

“That was the common goal between the environmentalists and ourselves as the First Nation, the Nuxalk, still had the outstanding issue of the land question. There had been a process developed in British Columbia called the BC Treaty Process. We could see that it wasn’t what we wanted because it was very limited, was kind of corrupt and really bent towards the industry.”

Addiction to Death
July 11, 2009

Apparently Grouse Mountain near Vancouver will now install a giant wind turbine to produce new energy. While this begins I am resisting nicotine valiantly, creating a convergence of thoughts.

Addictions do strange things to the mind. An addicted mind will come up with all sorts of rationalizations-- all merely designed to allow the space for the addiction to live itself out. The raw justifications are endless-- feeding the addiction as a means of rewarding ones self for taking a break from feeding the addiction, for example.

I should state these thoughts are an interesting bunch for me, even closer than usual as I fight off the nicotine monster. “Monster”is a very apt term for it as well; human beings caught in the throng of a major addiction tend to negotiate in their thoughts as if the addiction were at the other side of a negotiating table. Worse, in the case of cigarettes-- you are essentially negotiating with something that will kill you.

Thoughts abound-- “Maybe I can smoke only after meals,” one might say. “I only smoke at the end of the day” is another. “I don't know how else to relax,” “I don't have the time to deal with the stress of quitting,” ad infinitum. Or, perhaps better said-- ad nauseum.

The majority of these mental twists include the idea that one can hold on to the addiction, and somehow not reap the 'rewards'. So too, then, are notions of the current fad: “Green shift”. The Green Shift supposes (much like smoking 'light' cigarettes) that an entire society can continue to consume energy, with little more than a few bumps as we slowly, surely shift towards 'green' energy sources.