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We have updated the info for our affiliate groups in Durango, Colorado, and also added a new contact in British Columbia and one in the Phillipines. Are you part of a group campaigning against infrastructure that wants to be listed on our contacts page? Get in touch!

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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.

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.

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

The Root Force Strategy (taking down the system by fighting infrastructure expansion)

Infrastructure and Indigenous Sovereignty

Infrastructure and the environment

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

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.

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

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.

The city of Denver is planning either to widen I-70 through Denver from 6 to 10 lanes or to add a two-mile, 8-lane detour to the highway. The expansion would destroy more than 50 homes and workplaces, increase air pollution and gas consumption, and destroy more than 300 acres of wildlife habitat. As HCEF! notes, this would all occur in an area already plagued with dozens of major polluters including a coal plant and oil refinery.

“The I-70 expansion is part of the greater picture, one where poor people and communities of color are systemically oppressed by the state for the continued privilege of white people and the wealthy,” the HCEF! press release reads. “Infrastructure expansion doesn’t meet the needs of underserved communities and only furthers their destruction. The I-70 expansion is no different; a low income community of color would be disrupted and displaced to serve the needs of a capitalist white supremacy.”

To find out more about the I-70 Denver expansion plans, check out the Environmental Impact Statement. To get involved in the struggle, get in touch with HCEF!, which is listed on our Affiliates and Allies page.

On that note, we have also added our first Root Force Affiliate group in Colorado: Welcome to Animas Perdidas Root Force, of Durango!

HCEF banner 5-26-09

Healing the Earth

Rabble.ca

We talked about the Root Force analysis and strategy, how infrastructure projects are interconnected, how to oppose infrastruture in the climate of  “economic stimulus,” and more. Check it out!

The database currently contains information on companies involved in the expansion of I-69, I-10 and I-95, and we’re told that more information will be added in the coming weeks. There are a few glitches that still need to be ironed out, but the site is fully useable as-is.

To use the site, just enter your zip code to see if there’s a company or institution in your area that is involved in one of the included projects. You can also browse by specific company.

If you have information that you think should be added to the site, send it to rftargetshushmail (dot) com.

Note that there is no secure connection available to this site; if you want to browse anonymously, use a proxy server such as Tor (if you have your own computer) or Anonymouse (for public computers). For more information about Internet security, see here.

This database is hosted by targetdb.com. Please make sure the address bar in your browser starts with https:// instead of http:// when you visit the site so that eavesdroppers will not be able to know which targets you are specifically looking at. Unfortunately, the only SSL certificate available to targetdb.com is an expired one for a different domain, but it will still secure your connection.

Please make a donation, however large or small. Whether $5, $20 or $100, your money will go directly to the expenses necessary to keep this effort afloat.

You can send checks made out to “Root Force” (or well-concealed cash) to PO Box 1302, Tucson, AZ 85702. You can also donate online via Paypal by clicking this button:

Thank you for your support!

After a long process of discussion, reflection and consultation, we have decided to shift the focus of the Root Force campaign. As part of this change, we are creating a broader place within Root Force for autonomous anti-infrastructure organizing in the US, while maintaining the emphasis on Latin American solidarity. We are excited about this new direction, and hope you will read on to find out more about the changes and how you can get involved.

The Evaluation Process

In October, after a year of road shows, presentations, articles and other efforts at building Root Force, we began an in-depth analysis of the campaign. What had we accomplished in one year? Where did we need to put more effort? What were the strengths and weaknesses of our campaign strategy to date?

The clearest positive change that we have seen come from Root Force (as well as from allied efforts like the fight against I.-69) has been a sharp upswing in anti-infrastructure analysis and rhetoric over the past year and a half, particularly in radical environmental circles. In addition, we have repeatedly heard that Root Force’s articulation of a strategy designed to take down the system is both inspiring and empowering.

Inspired by Root Force, an affiliate group formed in Portland, Oregon, that has used a systemic anti-infrastructure analysis to tie together struggles against La Parota, dams in the US Northwest and corporate globalization.

But the effectiveness of the Root Force campaign has been hampered by two serious shortcomings. First, in spite of our efforts to disseminate contact information for the companies involved in La Parota and the Anillo Periferico, not much action against those targets has taken place. Without a lot more action, there is no way to generate enough pressure to have an effect on these companies, let alone on the projects themselves.

The second problem has been the difficulty of maintaining reliable communication and getting up-to-date information from our allies in Mexico and El Salvador. This makes it hard to know what is happening with the projects on the ground, and if the companies involved are changing.

So, based on feedback from supporters around the country and our own internal discussions, we have come up with a plan to refocus and restructure Root Force.

The New Root Force

The core of Root Force is an emphasis on strategic direct action against the expansion of global trade infrastructure. As those of you who have seen our presentations or read our literature know, the global economic system cannot maintain itself without expanding this infrastructure.

Yet for a variety of logistical reasons, we have found it difficult to focus direct action against projects not happening in the US. For this reason, we are broadening our emphasis from La Parota and the Anillo Periferico to global trade infrastructure in general. We will no longer disseminate contact information about the companies involved in these two projects, based on the ineffectiveness of this strategy to date.

We are not giving up on the struggles against La Parota and the Anillo Periferico, and information about these projects will remain on our web site, along with contact information for the government agencies involved in spearheading them. We have been in contact with the communities resisting these projects to explain that our efforts so far have not been effective, and we will continue to pass on any specific requests they may have for active solidarity from people in the US.

Root Force will now focus on four main areas:

1. Promote anti-infrastructure analysis and action, based on the recognition that infrastructure expansion is a weak point of the system. We will continue to articulate the Root Force analysis and strategy through presentations and other public venues.

2. Provide resources to anyone fighting infrastructure. We aim to make our literature more accessible and useful to anyone opposing infrastructure expansion. In addition, we will make our presentation easy to adapt and provide the resources so that anyone can feel empowered to use it.

3. Make it easy for people to plug in to anti-infrastructure organizing, even if there is no current anti-infrastructure campaign nearby. As part of this, we hope to provide an extensive directory of anti-infrastructure groups and campaigns on our web site. We will provide resources and suggestions for incorporating an anti-infrastructure analysis into any campaign or struggle.

4. Facilitate connections and information sharing between groups and campaigns that are working against infrastructure. As part of this, we will have a regularly updated section on the front page of our web site that people can read for action reports, news stories, analysis and campaign updates related to the struggle against infrastructure expansion.

We will also be making a concerted effort to reach beyond the circles where we have done most of our outreach so far. This will involve not only giving presentations to different groups of people, but also direct approaches to other organizations and movements that are working against infrastructure, to see how we can assist in their struggles.

To keep the concept of “infrastructure” from becoming too abstract, we will continue to use La Parota and the Anillo Periferico as examples of infrastructure projects in Latin America. Within the US, we will focus on the the 6 interstate highways that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has designated as “Corridors of the Future” (I-5, I-10, I-15, I-69, I-70, I-95). The DOT has identified congestion on these roads as a major threat to trade and (seriously) “the American way of life,” so it’s pouring tons of federal resources into expanding them. This includes not only widening, but also building entirely new roads and bridges. In the case of I-69, the DOT wants to build new highway all the way from Michigan to the Mexican border.

We will provide more specific resources for those opposing Corridors of the Future.

Get Involved

There are lots of opportunities to get involved in shaping the new Root Force. We are still looking for feedback on other ways to achieve the four goals listed above. We are actively looking for groups that are working on infrastructure issues and would love to add information about your campaigns to our web site. We are seeking news sources and other resources about infrastructure, global trade infrastructure in particular.

Are you interested in getting more information to help you organize your own anti-infrastructure campaign? Are you interested in giving a presentation about how infrastructure is a weak point of the system? Want to combine the two by forming a Root Force affiliate group? Get in touch!

And of course, we are always still looking for researchers and translators, and we can always use monetary donations to help us cover our costs. You can make checks out to “Root Force” or donate via Paypal:

Everything we have said about the system is still true. It is destroying everything that we love, and killing the very planet we depend upon for life. Defending ourselves against it is not enough — we must identify the weak points and attack. And it is still a house of cards. A strong enough push in the right places can bring the whole thing crashing down.

Let’s push.

Tear it Down,
The Root Force Collective