Sol2Sol Local Hosts and Local Tours

Community Solutions taking place at UrbanTilth Farm

Our Sol2Sol week is being held down by local organizations in occupied Ohlone Territory (the San Francisco Bay Area) and is rooted in the work of our host communities.

On September 9th, ITR members, allies, and friends will be joining our local hosts in local tours. This day will highlight local frontline communities, their struggles and work to defend against the compounded impacts of climate capitalism.

We will start the day in ceremony and training  at the Berkeley Shellmound Memorial, led by our Ohlone hosts and comrades Indian People Organizing for Change. We will then move to closed local tours,  hosted by It Takes Roots local partners. Tours  will make stops in Richmond, Chinatown, and Oakland/Bayview areas. Sign-up for tours is now closed. 

Participants will also have the opportunity to create radical resistance art at a art build at the Greenpeace Oakland Warehouse, or get their hands dirty and skillshare around urban farming, food sovereignty, reclaiming public lands, medicine making, reclaiming our health, and more at Hummingbird Farm with PODER.

We also welcome you to join us at the closing New Moon Ceremony at Cupid's Span.

Real Climate Solutions ARE Community Solutions!

Big thanks to our Local Hosts: 

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Communities for a Better Environment

Causa Justa Just Cause 

Chinese Progressive Association

Indian People Organizing for Change

North Bay Organizing Project

PODER

Richmond Our Power

Urban Tilth

And a big thanks to Greenpeace for hosting space for the Art Build


ITR Action Camp 2018: From Roots to Resilience

The It Takes Roots Alliances (Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Climate Justice Alliance, Right to the City Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network), held it's first It Takes Roots & The Ruckus Society, National Direct Action + Community Resiliency Camp at Wildseed Farm in Millerton NY from June 1-5, 2018. We trained our forces on an array of strategic + tactical & self and community based resilience skills to build across our alliances and prepare to continue to wage visionary opposition for our collective liberation.

What is an Action Camp?
A Ruckus Action Camp is an intensive 5 day, off the grid, full immersion training space that brings together leaders, organizers and community members from across many of our communities to do a deep dive into direct action skills, theory and practice. The camp created a space for participants to familiarize and practice and array of tactical skills, share collective community knowledge around strategy and provided opportunities for community members to share, practice and envision together.

Direct Action + Survival Skills - Resilience in the age of climate disaster
Together with Ruckus, this national camp was a groundbreaking and first of its kind. It provided in-depth training for our folks in both direct action skills and survival skills. As more and more of our communities are impacted by hurricanes, floods, fires and massive displacement, our need to deepen our capacities to survive amidst climate disaster is critical and move us toward a just transition.

Some of the skills & topics include: 

Direct Action Skills & Practice: 

  • Action Planning (all the roles and considerations of planning direct actions)
  • Scouting Skills during actions planning + survival scenarios (food, water, shelter)
  • Climbing Skills (in tree climbing and rescue settings. This also includes how to building platforms.)
  • Rigging + Knots (for banner rigging usage + as a survival skill)
  • Blockades (working with PVC Pipes, materials and preparing for blockades at actions OR to take control of our communities)
  • De-escalation during actions + time of community crisis
  • Affinity Group Structure (and neighborhood organizing structures)

Earth/Resiliency Skills:

  • Water Catchment / Purification
  • Plant & Food Identification
  • Passive Solar Cooking / Installing Solar Energy
  • Disaster Permaculture
  • Plant Medicine & Disaster First Aid
  • Physical Defense & Safety
  • Healing & Resiliency in times of trauma

The camp will also have deep political education, lots of team building and workshops to learn about each other’s work.

Much of the housing will be camping in tents, but there is limited cabin space available as well.

This camp will be one part of preparation for the Sol2Sol (Solidarity to Solutions) Week of Action from September 8-14 in the Bay Area. Click here to learn more about how to get involved!

The It Takes Roots Alliances (Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Climate Justice Alliance, Right to the City Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network), held it's first It Takes Roots & The Ruckus Society, National Direct Action + Community Resiliency Camp at Wildseed Farm in Millerton NY from June 1-5, 2018. We trained our forces on an array of strategic + tactical & self and community based resilience skills to build across our alliances and prepare to continue to wage visionary opposition for our collective liberation.

What is an Action Camp?
A Ruckus Action Camp is an intensive 5 day, off the grid, full immersion training space that brings together leaders, organizers and community members from across many of our communities to do a deep dive into direct action skills, theory and practice. The camp created a space for participants to familiarize and practice and array of tactical skills, share collective community knowledge around strategy and provided opportunities for community members to share, practice and envision together.

Direct Action + Survival Skills - Resilience in the age of climate disaster
Together with Ruckus, this national camp was a groundbreaking and first of its kind. It provided in-depth training for our folks in both direct action skills and survival skills. As more and more of our communities are impacted by hurricanes, floods, fires and massive displacement, our need to deepen our capacities to survive amidst climate disaster is critical and move us toward a just transition.

Some of the skills & topics included:

Direct Action Skills & Practice:

  • Action Planning (all the roles and considerations of planning direct actions)
  • Scouting Skills during actions planning + survival scenarios (food, water, shelter)
  • Climbing Skills (in tree climbing and rescue settings. This also includes how to building platforms.)
  • Rigging + Knots (for banner rigging usage + as a survival skill)
  • Blockades (working with PVC Pipes, materials and preparing for blockades at actions OR to take control of our communities)
  • De-escalation during actions + time of community crisis
  • Affinity Group Structure (and neighborhood organizing structures)

Earth/Resiliency Skills:

  • Water Catchment / Purification
  • Plant & Food Identification
  • Passive Solar Cooking / Installing Solar Energy
  • Disaster Permaculture
  • Plant Medicine & Disaster First Aid
  • Physical Defense & Safety
  • Healing & Resiliency in times of trauma

The camp also included deep political education, lots of team building and workshops in which we learned about each other’s work.

This camp was one part of preparation for the Sol2Sol (Solidarity to Solutions) Week of Action from September 8-14 in the Bay Area.


What’s hot and what’s not at Paris COP21: It Takes Roots In New Internationalist's Hot List!

In a provocative feature listing all that was hot and all that was not at the Paris COP21, the New Internationalist highlighted It Takes Roots in its hot list for "serving frontline fierceness inside and outside the COP. Slick production values for some very real people." Read the full list!

 

 


Democracy Now! Interviews It Takes Roots Delegates

In their COP21 spotlight of the Dec 12 march, the widely watched independent news show Democracy Now! took to the streets of Paris and spotlighted a diverse array of activists and groups who came together for the final march to the Eiffel tower. Watch It Takes Roots delegates spotlighted in their COP21 special, including Sarra Tekola, Derek Mathews and Shawna Foster.

 

 


Cindy Wiesner on Telesur News: "Our global leaders have failed us"

“I think for us, Grassroots Global Justice, Indigenous Environmental Network, and the Climate Justice Alliance as grassroots and impacted communities in the United States and Canada, I think our global leaders have failed us, and I think that's what is clear is that they did not do an ambitious enough negotiation to really save the planet..." noted It Takes Roots delegate and national co-ordinator of Grassroots Global Justice, Cindy Wiesner, in an interview with Telesur News. Read the whole interview.

 


New Internationalist: Why We Should Feel Positive About Paris

In their wrap up analyses of COP21, the New Internationalist shines a light on why despite the dismal failure of the #COP21 agreement, there maybe hope - thanks to a massive people-led mobilization for climate justice that refuses to back off - including It Takes Roots delegation. They write: "Indigenous representatives from the incredible It Takes Roots grassroots delegation opened the Paris demonstrations with a powerful healing ritual. Alongside other Indigenous and frontline representatives they held a series of events and actions throughout the fortnight, including a flotilla of kayaks challenging fossil fuel extraction. Read this inspiring analysis.

 

 


CALL TO ACTION: The COP21 Paris Accord Failed Humanity

The COP21 Paris Accord failed humanity, and impacted communities must take things into our own hands and push at all levels of government

As impacted communities, we are deeply aware of the imperative of the climate crisis.  Our waters are being poisoned from fossil fuel extraction, our livelihoods are threatened by floods and drought, our communities are the hardest hit and the least protected in extreme weather events.  The climate crisis is a reality, but the COP21 Paris Accord is not based on that reality.

The atmosphere within the COP21 meeting was one of business instead of saving Mother Earth.  World leaders were in deep negotiations not over climate policy, they were in negotiations about commercialization of nature.   The result is a Paris Accord that is based on a carbon market that allows developed countries to continue to emit dangerously high levels of greenhouse gasses through shell games, imaginary technofixes, and pollution trading schemes that simultaneously let big polluters to continue polluting and result in land grabs and violations of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

When Obama says we are doing out best, it is simply not true.  From cap and trade in California, to the carbon trading requirements of the Clean Power Plan, the US came into Paris with a predetermined model based on false solutions and bullied other countries to jump on board.  The commitments they made ignore the overwhelming historic responsibility as a leader greenhouse gas emitter, and are far too low to stop the burning of the planet.

The COP21 agreement is a failure, condemning humanity to a slow and painful death.   In imposing a market strategy, global leaders, particularly those in the US and Canada, are choosing a course of inaction that is blind to the stark realities of climate crisis.

Our Movements Represent Life

d12-2The Paris Accord failed humanity and now we have to take things into our own hands and push at all levels of government. We know that the extraction of fossil fuels must end completely by 2050 to keep the earth from warming more than 1.5 degrees.  The Paris Accord will now be moved into implementation at the national, regional, and local levels and we need to be organized to remain vigilant around the demand to keep fossil fuels in the ground, because anything short of that equals destruction.

 We join the call for System Change, Not Climate Change because we know that the fundamental driving force behind the climate crisis is capitalism, and the very nature of the extractive economy as a whole.  Climate justice is not only about the environment.  It is tied to jobs, housing, poverty, migration, food security, gender equality, access to health care.  System Change requires fundamental respect for human rights, particularly the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the rights of Mother Earth. System Change requires that we reject the corporate driven, free trade and investment agreements and how that is linked to also harmonizing the trading regimes, and investment regimes, and trees, and nature itself.  We are building new alternative economic models based on an internationalist strategy ofJust Transition toward renewable energy, cooperative economies, and community control.  We will continue to resist extraction at the local level in all frontline communities.

We had no illusion coming into this COP.  We knew that the fossil fuel companies had already hijacked the UNFCCC process.  We leave Paris only more aligned, and more committed than ever that our collective power and growing movement is what is forcing the question of extraction into the global arena.   We will continue to fight at every level to defend our communities, the earth and future generations.  As Franz Fanon wrote, “the magic hands are the hands of the people.”


AJ+ Spotlights It Takes Roots Delegates At Dec 12 March

On the big day of the march on December 12, Parisians and local activists joined forces with diverse global environmental justice organizations and activists who had converged in Paris for COP21. AJ+ crew followed the march and tracked down some of It Takes Roots' delegates and live streamed-interviewed them in this hugely popular video.  Watch and share this video posted on AJ+ Facebook.


Ananda Lee Tan in CommonDreams: Decrying Draft Deal that 'Fails Humanity,' COP21 Protesters Draw Red Line

Even as people led mobilizations stages protest inside the COP-21 summit, and plan to march in the thousands on Saturday, It Takes Roots delegate and organizer with Climate Justice Alliance, Ananda Lee Tan, breaks down the serious issues with the current draft agreement: ""Once again, world leaders have shown they lack the political courage, decency, and integrity to stand up for the needs of the most impacted communities around the world in the biggest ecological crisis of our time." Read the full article.

 

 

 


Global Justice Now News Blog Celebrates It Takes Roots Yet Again

In another incisive analysis by Global Justice Now fellow Kevin Smith, It Takes Roots' delegation got a memorable mention as one of the amazing things happening at COP21 despite the bans on protest and restrictions on freedom to mobilize. Read the full article.

 

 


It Takes Roots: Community-Led Solutions to Global Climate Change

Global Sisters Report writes of It Takes Roots as "an example of the growing "intersectional" movement uniting grass-roots organizations across peace, social justice, civil/human rights, gender, indigenous, and environmental issues. Its focus is on community-based and community-led solutions to addressing climate change you could try this out.  Read the full article


Dec 10 Action Highlight In TruthOut: Combating the Climate Counterrevolution in Paris

TruthOut Highlighted It Takes Roots Delegation's December 10 Human Rights Day Action at the Peace Wall, and spoke to Jihan Gearon, one of our delegates: "...here have also been strongly led by people of color working to center environmental justice issues and calling out environmental racism, especially Indigenous peoples protesting the omission of Indigenous rights from the accord.

A lot of the most pristine, biodiverse places that exist now are because Indigenous people live there; they protect those areas," said Jihan Gearon, who is Diné, from the Navajo Nation in Arizona. She is the executive director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, a part of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "And if the UN doesn't protect us, then those places are just going to go away." Read the full Article.


US Activists Demand Real Action From Obama on Climate Change

Watch A Powerful Video Of the It Takes Roots' delegation's Dec 10 Human Rights Day Action @ the Peace Wall in Paris:


On Human Rights Day, US Impacted Communities Denounce US Leaders

Media Advisory
December 10, 2015

Grassroots Groups Say Climate Policies Violate Human Rights
& the Rights of Indigenous People

Human Rights Day Action (Paris, FRANCE) Grassroots leaders from climate-impacted communities in the US rallied at the Paris Peace Wall to denounce the role of the US delegation for a legacy of environmental racism and in undermining the possibility for genuine climate justice coming out of Paris COP21 accord. Over 350 people participated in an action in front of the Peace Wall in Paris, a venue chosen to symbolically challenge the grave and violent implications of the current COP21 Agreement.  Massive banners, signs, fierce chanting, singing, and street theatre marked the It Takes Roots delegation-led action for Human Rights Day.

“Here in Paris, as with every COP before now, we see the role of the US in holding back any efforts at real mandatory emissions cuts, and accepting true historic and current responsibility as a leading greenhouse gas emitter. The US has been leading other member states in a strategy of pollution trading that allows big oil to continue to pollute our communities and also threatens the livelihoods of indigenous communities from the Global North to the Global South.  The decisions coming out of COP21 will lead to massive violations of human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples,” read Edgar Franx, from the It Takes Roots statement to President Obama on Human Rights Day.

"The prosperity of fossil-fueled societies has been built on the backs of historically marginalized communities: Indigenous Peoples, coal miners, fisherfolk, working class communities across the world -- all of whom have paid the price of our "cheap fuels" and will suffer the consequences of global climate chaos disproportionately. Solutions that protect the welfare and rights of these communities will prove more durable, more equitable, and safer - for all of us. Indeed, on December 10 Human Rights day, there can be no better demand of COP21 - to be accountable to all people," noted Dallas Goldtooth, with the Indigenous Environmental Network, and an
It Takes Roots delegate.

Sarra Tekola @ Human Rights Day ActionRepresentatives from Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander organizations have united under the banner, It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm, representing communities living alongside fracking wells, coal power plants, and oil refineries and already facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

Today’s peace action called out the US and other countries of the Global North whose invasive foreign policies have played a large role in the current devastating and vicious refugee crises, conflicts, and resource wars due to land grabs and displacement triggered by neoliberal globalization.

Check out the list of media spokespeople from the It Takes Roots delegation:

Check out updates about our events/actions the delegation participated/co-organized:

Visit Our Flickr Photostream (please credit photos to: It Takes Roots)

Watch a quick video highlight of today’s action by Indigenous Environmental Network

To schedule interviews with our media spokespeople, and to get video clips from today’s action contact:

Dallas Goldtooth: [email protected] ; Ph:+1 708-515-6158
Preeti Shekar: [email protected] Ph: +33 751 401 911


Sarra Tekola: Police Are Racially Profiling COP21 Attendees

It Takes Roots delegate Sarra Tekola shared her disturbing experience of racism from the police while in Paris for COP21. Read the full article.

 

 

 


TruthDig Highlights Dec 10 Action: On Human Rights Day, African Women Call for Climate Justice

Outside the confines of the conference being held in Le Bourget, a Paris suburb, hundreds of activists gathered next to the Peace Wall at the Eiffel Tower to mark International Human Rights Day and draw clear links between human rights and climate justice. The gathering, organized by the It Takes Roots Delegation, consisted of people from indigenous and other communities of color from all over the world. Read the full article.


Just Transition Assembly

One of the first big assemblies of the Climate Action Zone was the Just Transition Assembly put on by the It Takes Roots delegation. The event kicked off with a panel of climate leaders talking about the connections between labor and climate, and the importance of local economies in a just transition. Grassroots Global Justice board member and delegate Jose Bravo started off the discussion by talking about the history of a just transition. Workers and "fenceline" environmental justice communities are both impacted by irresponsible and global production at all levels.

Following the panel, participants were given the opportunity to talk about the vision and challenges of achieving a just transition in their communities. To learn more about work around a just transition, visit Our Power Campaign or Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

For live coverage of the event via Twitter, check out Our Storify Feed.

 


Dec 9 Migrant Justice Action Update: Over 200 Activists March In Solidarity

On Wednesday, December 9, nearly 200 grassroots activists converged and marched, chanted, and sang with colorful banners, posters and outside the Vincennes detention center in Paris where several immigrants are illegally detained by the French government.

The Vincennes detention center where grassroots communities  gathered is of particular significance, as it was the site of an historic uprising after the death of a Tunisian man while in custody in 2008. This uprising brought national attention to the inhumane treatment of migrants and refugees in detention in Paris.

It Takes Roots delegates participated in this march in solidarity with thousands of impacted refugees and migrants, detained by the French government. Local community leaders and activists working at the intersections of migrant and refugee rights joined our delegation.

This action was in deep solidarity with refugees fleeing situations of grave conflict, and made vital connections between migrant rights, Indigenous rights, gender equality, and climate change. Check out a few photos from our action today below and visit our photos page for more visual updates.

Key spokespeople at the march highlighted how social and environmental justice are deeply linked, and the largely US delegation expressed their solidarity with migrant rights, especially activists working with immigrant communities along the US-Mexico border, and Indigenous activists, who highlighted how colonialism is not really dead, but alive in new and dangerous ways. Watch a video highlight of this action!

Media Coverage:

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_cop_21_climate_conference_in_conversation_with_an_activist_for_migran

http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/migrations-and-rural-workers-mainmenu-41/1932-cop-21-dec-9-2015-migrant-justice-action-over-200-activists-march-in-solidarity


It Takes Roots Memes

The It Takes Roots delegates have real, community-based solutions to combat the climate crisis. They have come to Paris to present these solutions and move away from the climate crisis. Here are some memes to highlight the amazing work of these frontline leaders.


GGJ_ELIJAH_WILLIAMS
Elijah William, Cooperation Jackson, cooperationjackson.org

GGJ_Rossmery_Zayas_FINAL
Rossmery Zayas, Communities for a Better Environment, cbecal.org

GGJ_Seena_Chhan
Seena Chhan, Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, ejlri.org

Post:

"Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island is fighting against National Grid to stop their LNG facility project from being placed in the Port of Providence where it is mainly populated with people of color, next to the state hospitals, the only trauma center and so much more medical facilities. This is environmental racism and it needs to stop now. This is why we are here with the #ItTakesRoots delegation, to demand that LNG is not a solution, that corporations like National Grid creates more pollution!
-Seena Chhan


GGJ_Sacajawea_hall
Sacajawea Hall, Cooperation Jackson, cooperationjackson.org

GGJ_ahmina_maxey
Ahmina Maxey, Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives, no-burn.org

 

GGJ_Molly_ICC
Molly Greenberg, Ironbound Community Corporation, ironboundcc.org

 


 

GGJ_Sarra_Tekola
Sarra Tekola, Got Green?

"Climate change is an extension of colonization. The colonizers of the Global North came into the formerly colonized countries of the Global South and stole their natural resources, the main one being fossil fuel. Now the pollution from these resources being burned is coming back to kill those in the Global South in the form of climate change. When people try to flee climate chaos, they are not allowed to leave. Currently, when people flee because of climate change they are not given refugee status and left to drown in the Mediterrean Sea or get shot on the US border. The Global North has a responsibility to take in all climate refugees because they are responsible for destroying their country causing them to flee."

-Sarra Tekola, Got Green?


 

GGJ_Shina_APEN
Shina Robinson, Asian Pacific Environmental Network

"APEN members in the Bay Area are standing up to Big Oil and the extractive economy while building community power--in six languages at a time. We reject militarization of the police and security forces, and the displacement and corporate land-grabbing they enforce from the Bay to our homelands. We fight for a new energy economy, good jobs on a living planet, and our right to build the better future we all deserve."
-Shina Robinson, APEN'


GGJ_Derek_Matthews
Derek Matthews, Iraq Veterans Against the War

 


Vermont Workers: System Change, Not Climate Change

Shela Liton and Senowa Mize-Fox, representatives of the Vermont Workers Center in Brattleboro and Burlington, are also attending the Paris climate talks. Linton and Mize-Fox are part of the 100-plus person delegation called “It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm,” a collection of grassroots leaders from dozens of communities in the U.S. and Canada that have been impacted by climate change.

“From Paris to Montpelier, we’re seeing politicians push false solutions to climate change like fracking and carbon trading,” Mize-Fox said in a news release. “We need to recognize the leadership and strategies coming from social movements at the grassroots, who understand the interconnections between racial, gender, economic and climate justice and are calling for system change, not climate change.”

Read entire article here.

More media coverage of Vermont Workers here.