Cover of Movement Generation’s Summer 2024 Newsletter, published July 2024. Image features collective members Mateo Nube and Deseree Fontenot walking up a grassy hill on Movement Generation and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust’s rematriated land site in the East Bay hills. Subhead reads: Free the Land. Updates on MG’s Just Transition, Land, and Culture Shift programs.
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Table of contents
The Return of MG’s Justice & Ecology Retreat – 2
PROPA: Arts, Education & Ecological Justice in East Oakland – 5
More Just Transition Updates – 7
One Year on the Land – 8
Fire Resilience – 14
Spring Land Care Day – 15
Permaculture Design – 16
Land Tending With North Bay Jobs With Justice – 18
Creative Wildfire – 21
Palestine Solidarity – 25
The Path to Ecological Justice Runs Through a Free Palestine – 26
Imagining a Palestine Without Occupation – 32
Love Letter to Student Encampments for Palestine – 33
Podcast: That’s How the Light Gets In – 37
Closing Image – 38
Cover photo by Dana Viloria, featuring Mateo Nube and Deseree Fontenot on Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Movement Generation’s rematriated land in the East Bay hills
{Section: Just Transition}Justice & Ecology RetreatMG’s ecological justice retreat returns with a focus on bioregional governance
{Image of a map of Salmon Nation along the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska}
Movement Generation is so excited to host the return of our Justice & Ecology Retreat! This 5-day gathering has long been a transformative space for our collective and allied organizations, activists, and cultural workers mobilizing on a broad range of social issues, from climate justice to Black liberation.
The Justice & Ecology Retreat convenes a selected cohort of folks from racial, economic, and environmental justice movements to build a shared understanding of the cause and effects of the ecological crisis we face both as a broad social movement and as people of this earth in this time. As we study ecological principles, we grapple with the scale, pace, and implications of the crisis through multiple lenses, such as water and food sovereignty, climate science, labor, democracy, race, and biocultural diversity. We hold space for the grief, healing, and connection that’s needed as we navigate these terrains.
Our 2024 J&E Retreat will focus on Bioregional Governance: remembering our way forward to govern our places at scale across cultural and ecological boundaries. We will explore ecologically-based responses to ecofascism, such as land justice, energy democracy, and more.
The current moment demands us to more effectively respond to shocks (such as severe hurricanes or fascist leaders rising to power) and slides (such as droughts or increasing costs of housing leading to displacement) as we simultaneously work for the shifts we need: a Just Transition from the extractive economy to regenerative economies.
Why bioregional governance? In the face of multiple genocides, a tumultuous election year, and climate catastrophes, we must cultivate ecological resilience, social equity, and movement strategy by remaking governance to directly involve people in the decisions that affect their daily lives in the places where they live. Instead of oppressive colonial and political borders, we must actively practice collective governance across interdependent ecological boundaries that encompass, for example, diverse and overlapping watersheds, trade-sheds, and energy-sheds. If we’re not prepared to govern, we’re not prepared to win.
This year’s powerful Justice & Ecology Retreat cohort includes organizations, activists, earth workers, artists, and healers working towards bioregional governance, land justice, energy democracy, and other strategies to resist ecofascism. All work within the Salmon Nation bioregion—from the San Francisco Bay Area up the Pacific Coast all the way to Alaska. We hope that this cohort can build mycelium networks across Salmon Nation.
MOVEMENT GENERATION IS HONORED TO HOST ORGANIZERS, HEALERS, ARTISTS, CULTURE KEEPERS, AND EARTH WORKERS FROM THESE organizations AS PART OF OUR JUSTICE & ECOLOGY RETREAT 2024 COHORT:
Bay Resistance · Center for Cultural Power · Center for Political Education · Climate Justice Alliance · Communities for a Better Environment · Crip Survival Network · Disability Justice Culture Club · Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities · Energy Democracy Project · Freedom Community Clinic · Front and Centered · Frontline Catalysts · Gil Tract Farm · Health Justice Commons · Lavender Phoenix · Malcolm X Grassroots Movement · Narrative Initiative · Native Movement · New Economy Coalition · North Bay Jobs With Justice · North Bay Organizing Project · Reclaim Our Power · Shelterwood Collective · Sins Invalid · Sogorea Te’ Land Trust · Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project · The Callegory · The Young Warrior Society · Washington State Coalition of African Community Leaders · We Rise Production · Youth Organize CA · Youth Vs. Apocalypse.
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PROPAArts, education & ecological justice in East Oakland
Over the past two summers, Movement Generation, Oakland educators, Civic Design Studio, Castlemont High School Farm, and Fab Lab have brought together local organizations, community members, educators, and youth to weave our dreams of the East Oakland the community wants and deserves.
Our pilot gathering in June 2023 took place at Castlemont High Farm and Fab Lab, where MG introduced the Just Transition Framework to support an analysis of Deep East Oakland from an ecological perspective.
In Summer 2024, we decided that we really needed to feel “Eco Means Home.” So we went out to get to know our local watershed, specifically the Arroyo Viejo and San Leandro Creek watersheds, where Deep East Oakland resides.
For three days we gathered, starting at the top of the watershed, the headwaters of Lisjan Creek on the rematriated site that MG co-stewards with Sogorea Te Land Trust. We moved down into Oakland to greet the several tributaries that run through the Town, and ended our week at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Shoreline, where all the creeks gather as they head out to the Bay and ocean. In our dream weaving, we planted a seed to organize together around our Arroyo Viejo Creek watershed through developing a Homies of Arroyo Viejo.
{Photo of a group of mostly Black, Indigenous, and people of color posing together by the San Francisco Bay. Photo by Dana Viloria}
Now, we are in the midst of a beautiful vision that asks what happens when we organize around restoring our watershed? What happens when we weave our dreams together and become solution oriented? We know what the problems are; we are reminded of them daily, and that narrative has had a chokehold on the Deep East Oakland community.
Yes, the work to fight those things needs to continue, AND when we put our labor, our time, our energy, our love, and relationship building to create something, to restore a watershed together, we are being visionary while being oppositional. We are stopping the bad to create and bring back knowledge of our place, which is the basis of Indigenous knowledge. We don’t have all the answers, but together we can pull together resources, knowledge, and networks to support all of the transformational work that has been happening in East Oakland through a project and worldview focused on ecological justice; more specifically, through the cultural shifting mediums of traditional ecological knowledge, education, and arts production.
Through organizing around our watershed, we are re-organizing ourselves, our work, and our hearts and minds along ecological boundaries. And we are designing and building a just transition towards a vibrant ecological justice cultural zone and living well for all our relations in the deep.
{Photo of a group of students at Castlemont Farm}
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More Just Transition Updates
In Fall 2023, members of MG co-facilitated two separate multi-day Just Transition Strategy Retreats in the Pacific Northwest. One was a partnership with Front & Centered, an alliance of frontline Climate Justice organizations in Washington state. The other was hosted by the Oregon Just Transition Alliance.
In Spring 2024, a group of Water Equity organizers and funder allies spent a full-day with MG staff immersed on our land site: learning about the Just Transition framework, studying the ecology on our site, and visiting the largest creek restoration project in the SF Bay Area – an inspiring initiative by the East Bay Parks District which just took place right next door to our land project.
In Fall 2023, members of MG co-facilitated two separate multi-day Just Transition Strategy Retreats in the Pacific Northwest. One was a partnership with Front & Centered, an alliance of frontline Climate Justice organizations in Washington state. The other was hosted by the Oregon Just Transition Alliance.
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{Section: LAND}One Year on the Land
{Image of a group of people standing on a grassy hill with wildflowers beneath a blue sky. Photo by Aspen Dominguez}
It still feels unreal to drive through the redwoods, just a few miles from Oakland, and find ourselves at home among old oak trees, native grasslands, bobcats, and waters flowing to Lisjan Creek.
It’s been over one year since we closed on the purchase of 43 acres of land in the East Bay and rematriated the land in partnership with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. We spent a lot of that first year in observation mode, building relationships with the land and learning what it needs of us. We’ve experienced all the seasons. We’ve made offerings. We’ve welcomed guests, some of whom have helped us tend the land already.
To reground in why Movement Generation took on a land project and what it means that we’re here: We believe that land is central to a just transition and the liberation of all of our peoples. After years of developing and teaching theories and frameworks of ecological justice to organizations and activists, we now have a place to put those theories and frameworks into praxis, rooted ecologically, locally, and in community.
To be a collective of radical Black, Indigenous, people of color, and queer/trans folks practicing resilience, land care, and collective governance, within an urban context, in one of the most expensive and extractive markets in the country, at a time when we are facing severe climate disruption and a rise of fascism—it is both a huge privilege and an epic responsibility. We hope to inspire and support more land projects like this to happen everywhere, whether they are Indigenous women-led land rematriations, Black land reparations, or other forms of land justice. We can do this through sharing lessons learned, sharing resources, and staying sharp together on the ecological principles and practices that help us remember our way forward to a resilient future.
Huge thanks to everyone who has supported us this past year, whether through making a gift to our Free the Land Campaign to build the Justice & Ecology Center, getting your hands in the dirt with us, or singing us some songs. Of course, infinite gratitude to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust for making this possible.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane and share a bit about our experiences through the seasons in our first year on the land.
Winter 2023
Atmospheric river times! We got a good glimpse into how the water flows abundantly through this land on its way to Lisjan Creek. We started dreaming of rain gardens and swimming holes. On the slightly less glamorous tip, one of our first big undertakings was grading the dirt road leading up to our site. This improved road access, but we still have a ways to go to make this a fully accessible space; we’re committed to doing that and are drawing inspiration from the ongoing work of Shelterwood Collective on the Sonoma coast and the brilliance of the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley.
As we began to have some of our first staff meetings at our new home, we fully smudged our space. This was much needed, y’all. The land had been held for more than 100 years. We also swept some chimneys, making way for more good fire to keep us cozy through the winter. Lots of goal setting, planning, and dreaming.
{photo of an old decommissioned pool filled with brown water and surrounded by trees and shrubs}
We were grateful to get to spend some quality time with our friends at Sogorea Te’ as we began to discuss what collective governance of the space could be like, with lots of great support from our friends at the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC).
Spring 2023
{Photo of a group of people studying grasses. Photo by Brooke Anderson}
After the rains, we took on some urgent repairs and renovations. Lots of lessons learned about foundation, roofing, solar, insurance, wildfires, and more. We spent lots of time exploring the land. We did a mushroom walk! And we geeked out on a botany walk with JoeJoe Clark! There’s an abundance of native plants here, from purple needlegrass to black walnut trees to California poppies. We had our first staff land care work day where we did some weed whacking and mulching. Fuel reduction work began in the spring as well.
We brought in a tiny home! Our collective member and land team lead Desi moved in so she could spend lots of time on the land as we plan for our future dreams. A major highlight was Sogorea Te’ coming by for our first visit all together on the land since we rematriated it. We broke bread and made sun prints and cedar bundles on a most beautiful day.
{Photo of a chartreuse-colored tiny home with a red door. Photo by Dana Viloria}
Summer 2023
At the summer solstice we finally let the broader world know about this little land project we’re working on. After a few months of building our relationship with the land and grounding in our relationship with Sogorea Te’, we felt good about starting to come out with this wonderful news. We were excited to see our land project on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle—love to see examples of land rematriation in mainstream news! We also launched our Free the Land Campaign to raise $1 million to build our dream: The Justice & Ecology Center.
{Photo of a Black man and an Indigenous Xicana woman, Movement Generation collective members Quinton Sankofa and Angela Aguilar, smiling together while holding an issue of the San Francisco Chronicle with a front page headline that reads: Trust wins return of Ohlone property. Photo by Quinton Sankofa.}
Fall 2023
{Images featuring lots of people gathered at a celebration at Movement Generation and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust’s rematriated land site. Photos by Abbas Khalid.}
So many incredible homies came through last fall: organizers, activists, architects, ecological designers, as well as some coyote and bobcat neighbors! We were super geeked to host a visit with Kendall and Brock from Occidental Arts & Ecology Center. They brought tons of permaculture wisdom and showed us that a big role we will be playing in this ecosystem is tending to the grasses.
Our collective member Angela’s danza Azteca group also held ceremony here; so grateful for that blessing for the land.
Our big moment happened in October when we celebrated with homies and supporters of our Free the Land Campaign! This was our first time hosting that many people on the land at once, and it was a truly magical day of song, food, and nourishing relationships.
Towards the end of the year, CAL FIRE conducted a prescribed burn on part of our site and adjacent land. Can’t wait to see what grows! We’re learning so much about the land—who lives here, the path of the sun through the seasons, where the water flows. After a year of observation, we’ve already started to dig deeper into design in 2024.
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Fire ResilienceThe first prescribed burn on MG and Sogorea Te’s rematriated land site
Historically, Indigenous peoples like the Chumash, Ohlone, Miwok, Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, and hundreds of other California native tribes have understood intimately the role of fire in the bioregion of what we now call Northern California. They have acted accordingly by tending the forest, thinning the brush, and burning fires in a regenerative way that enriches soil and brings dormant seeds to life. This is what people do when they are a part of the Web of Life. When one is in a sacred relationship with fire, fire is not something to be feared.
Thanks to the fierce advocacy of Indigenous peoples and ecologists, fire departments are now practicing controlled fires, or prescribed burning. When done by native people, we refer to it as cultural burning.
In November of 2023, we had our first prescribed burn on 3.7 acres of our rematriated land site. The fire department is excited to be working with residents who want to participate in our fire ecology in this way. In addition to reducing the fuel load that can cause out-of-control fires and threaten homes, burns also help to restore the native flora and fauna since many fire-dependent seeds lay dormant for years under the soil. It has been fun and healing to watch ancestral native plants such as soap root, lupine, and the California poppy emerge after the first prescribed burn.
We are anticipating at least one more burn this year, and we are hoping to bring native cultural burn practitioners together with the fire department for a cultural exchange.
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Spring Land Care
Our spring work party on liberated land went off! We have deep gratitude for old and new homies who came out a on a sunny Sunday to tend the rolling hills that came to life with the turning of Spring.
A mighty little team of weed-whacking volunteers helped clear away Italian thistle, poison hemlock, and wild oats while carefully preserving purple needlegrass, our native bunch grass whose roots can grow as deep as 16 feet! We worked on creating defensible space by putting some cool new tools to work (weed wrench, anyone?!) and pulled out Scotch broom, a non-native and highly flammable shrub.
Another crew worked together laying down cardboard to sheet mulch an area that will soon be our medicinal and culinary garden! Some folks even took time to drop in with the land, taking in our epic views that always seem to down-regulate the nervous system…which is work, too.
Thank you to everyone who gave to the land, and we hope more homies can join us at our next work party!
{Images of people, including youth, at Movement Generation and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust’s rematriated land site, surrounded by forest, grassy hills, and a big sky. Photos by Abbas Khalid.}
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Permaculture Design
{Photo of a group of BIPOC, including Movement Generation members Angela Aguilar, Desiree Fontenot, Gopal Dayaneni, and Carla María Pérez, hold up hand-drawn design maps.}
Permaculture (stemming from “permanent culture”) is a design methodology for creating human settlements that are aligned with the systems and rhythms of the Web of Life. This work is based in ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, with an emphasis on collaboration, as opposed to competition, and taking responsibility for our actions. It is inspired by the patterns observed in Indigenous lifeways. (When not referring to the official standard Permaculture curriculum, we also refer to this methodology as Resilient Community Design.)
Within Movement Generation’s ecological justice analysis, we see permaculture/resilient community design as an important part of our overall solutions framework for a necessary and just transition from a consumption- and profit-based economy to the regenerative, participatory and just society we envision for the future. Permaculture is also an important application of MG’s central strategy for liberation: Resilience-Based Organizing. This design methodology has become incredibly relevant in today’s rematriation and reparations movements, as new stewards of sacred lands seek ways to design and steward their land sites in a regenerative, non-extractive way.
Under the leadership of one of our resident permaculturalists, Carla M. Pérez, and in collaboration with Brock Doleman at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC), through the years we have certified over 40 MG political homies in permaculture design!
This past March, three MG collective members—Carla, Deseree Fontenot, and Angela Aguilar—joined a special advanced Permaculture Design Course offered by OAEC that invited land stewards from several new and emergent land-based rematriation and reparations projects. At this special course, we not only had an opportunity to practice teaching some of our skills, and brush up on the design methodology overall, but we were also able to hone in on certain skills that are needed and desired by these new and important land justice projects.
The course also included a visit from North Bay Jobs With Justice’s resilience workforce—vineyard workers who have been training/transitioning to do land-based fire mitigation and restoration work, which is a direct example of our Resilience Based Organizing model!
We were also blessed with a panel of organizers from three different land justice projects breaking down the joys and lessons from their journeys as new land stewards.
We are incredibly grateful for our ongoing relationship with OAEC and the Homies holding down the land justice movement in such a beautiful and committed way.
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Land Tending With North Bay Jobs With Justice
Photos by Davida Sotelo Escobedo
{image of a group of people standing in a circle outdoors. The back of their t-shirts reads: La tierra gabla, el pueblo respalda}
At the center of Movement Generation’s strategy development work is a deep curiosity about when, where, and how humans tended away from being an integrated part of all ecosystems over the course of our time on earth. When did some human communities start seeing themselves as separate from the rest of creation, and acting like it? We are curious about this because it is clear that one of the root causes that is threatening the livelihood of earth’s ecological systems is having removed our labor from tending the web of life to serving the chains of the capitalist market. Therefore, we see organizing that supports a shift in people’s labor back into tending the web of life rather than fueling the extractive economy as a huge victory for all!
In May 2024, MG had the incredible opportunity to bring a crew of fire mitigation experts to our land site—a crew that has worked together for years, some even decades, in the vineyards of Sonoma County. Some of them started organizing as members of North Bay Jobs with Justice (NBJWJ), a grassroots coalition of labor and community organizations in Sonoma, Napa, and Marin Counties.
NBJWJ’s director and other staff members have attended MG’s political education retreats over the years and have studied our theory of change; specifically, the Just Transition Framework and the long-term power-building model that actionizes the framework, Resilience-Based Organizing. They saw a true opportunity to put this vision and strategy into action with North Bay vineyard workers who were suffering immensely from forced exposure to intense smoke from local wildires (vineyard bosses still required them to work during fires or forgo receiving any income for weeks), as well as the general condition of being exploited as grape pickers.
NBJWJ and the vineyard workers made this shift possible together by partnering with Resilience Force (RF), a dynamic and groundbreaking company that acts as a fiscal sponsor of sorts for crews of “resilience workers” that are hired to repair and rebuild after a climate/ecological event such as a hurricane or wildfire.
RF arranges for complete training for workers to learn building and construction, forest management, fire mitigation, and other skills that are needed in the aftermath of these events. RF employs the worker crews with a guaranteed thriving wage (including paying workers for their time training in new skills). Community partners such as NBJWJ connect the workers to meaningful recovery and rebuilding projects that serve climate justice.
In their own words, Resilience Force is “…also working to rewrite the rules of recovery, so that the billions we spend after disasters don’t deepen inequality, but become an engine of racial and economic equity.”
MG spent a hard-working and delightful day on our land with a crew of 16 fire mitigation workers, mostly from the states of Oaxaca and Michoacan, México. We heard their stories of how and why they had to leave their homelands behind, about their relationships with the land and plants where they came from. And we also heard them express the joy and dignity they experience in being able to work the land towards regenerative ends while being respected and honored in the way they are treated and the way they are paid. This was medicine for our hearts as much as for the forest that was thinned that day to reduce fire risk. Returning to our role in the web of life is possible, and needed, at this time on the clock of the world in order to birth the new world that is on its way.
{Image of a person working with a weedwhacker outside of a horse corral surrounded by forest}
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Section: Culture ShiftCreative WildfireThis year’s movement artist cohort collaborated with frontline organizations to explore hidden histories
{Image of the Creative Wildfire artists, stewards, and New Economy Coalition, Climate Justice Alliance, and Movement Generation staff smiling in front of a wall with wallpaper featuring a jaguar and monstera leaves at Understory restaurant in Oakland}
What happens when social movement artists gather together in a remote forest cared for by Black, Indigenous, and queer folks? Pure magic. Movement Generation, Climate Justice Alliance, and New Economy Coalition closed out our Creative Wildfire 2023-2024 artist cohort with a dreamy Earth Day weekend that included an artists retreat at Shelterwood and a showcase at Understory. This was the culmination of 10 months of deep relationship building and collaboration between seven artists and seven environmental and economic justice organizations doing impactful work across Turtle Island and the Pacific. It was such a joy to welcome the artists to California; some were visiting for the first time! What a whirlwind to land in Oakland and be swept off into the lush forested hills of Cazadero to Shelterwood, a Black- and Indigenous-led land project on 900 acres of unceded Kashia and Pomo lands. Our comrades Layel and Julia welcomed us with a ceremonial fire where we introduced ourselves to the land.
For two days we were nourished by homecooked meals and lots of storytelling. We hiked to waterfalls and vistas and dipped into the cold waters of the nearby creek. Chamorro artist Roldy Aguero Ablao taught us how to weave bracelets with dried pandanus leaves harvested by Fijian aunties. And we had long, generative talks about art and artists as instrumental to all of our liberation movements. Our time together affirmed the importance of restoring relationships with land to tap into community healing and nourish our spirits as we simultaneously resist the extractive economy and militarism and reimagine and rebuild liberatory futures.
After a rejuvenating time in the forest, we returned to Oakland for our Creative Wildfire showcase at Understory. Huge shoutout to Understory for hosting us and feeding our bellies and our souls!
Here we got to see Lily Xie’s dazzling stop-motion animated short focused on Black love, narrated by Boston Ujima’s community; Ashanti Fortson’s visionary zine dreaming of food sovereignty in Buffalo with Food for the Spirit and the Buffalo Food Equity Network; kai lumumba barrow’s spectacular tricycle built from repurposed materials to broadcast an abolitionist pirate radio program to the community with Cooperation New Orleans and Cooperation Gumbo; Adamu Chan’s powerful short film spotlighting the community of Las Deltas in Richmond, CA, made in partnership with Communities for a Better Environment and Richmond residents; Lizzie Suarez’s soulful and strategic poster collab with Climate Justice Alliance, envisioning a Just Transition for Florida; Roldy Aguero Ablao’s gorgeous printed textiles inspired by the Mariana Islands and the work of Micronesia Climate Change Alliance; and Trinidad Escobar’s captivating comic about inclusive disaster strategies, made with the Crip Survival Network and Sins Invalid.
{Images of some of the art from Creative Wildfire: screenprinted wrap by Roldy Aguero Ablao; still shot from Lily Xie’s animated film; illustration by Lizzie Suarez; still shot from kai lumumba barrow’s video; booklet accompaniment to Adamu Chan’s film (Ashanti Fortson and Trinidad Escobar’s comics were in process at the time of publishing this newsletter.)}
We are so grateful to our Creative Wildfire stewards Ebony Gustave, Robin Bean Crane, and Micah Bazant—all alums of our Creative Wildfire cultural strategy program! They have graced us with so much expertise in organizing and holding relationships with artists and cultural workers. We are forever transformed by the phenomenal artists and humans of this cohort!
Stay tuned in the coming months as we dive deeper into the beauty and complexities of each of the Creative Wildfire artists’ creations and the life-affirming work of their partner organizations.
Meet the artists: AdamuChan.com AshantiFortson.com KaiLBarrow.com Lily-Xie.com LizzieSuarez.org instagram.com/hafaroldy TrinidadEscobar.com
Visit CreativeWildfire.org
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Palestine Solidarity
Nine months into the latest escalation of the genocide in Palestine at the hands of the US-backed apartheid state of Israel, we continue to stand for Palestinian life and the culture shift that is needed to end the occupation, restore Palestinian rights to return home, and liberate the lands, waters, and people of Palestine. Along with the ecological crises expressed in the interconnected struggles in Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Oakland, and many other places in the world impacted by extractivism and imperialism, the catastrophe in Palestine has weighed heavily on our collective hearts. Solidarity is a balm.
Movement Generation has humbly offered our perspective, analysis, and platforms when called on to amplify the demands to end the siege and genocide, while uplifting the resilience and steadfastness—sumud—that Palestinian people have been showing the world for generations.
From writings to webinar graphic recordings produced in partnership with Hoodwinked in the Hothouse and Illustrating Progress, the following pages are dedicated to some of our offerings in the face of this unprecedented cultural and psychic shift towards land justice and collective liberation.
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The Path to Ecological Justice Runs Through a Free Palestine
Originally published November 2, 2023 at MovementGeneration.org
We the people have been in continuous spirals of grief for so much of our history. Some of us have lived through war. Some carry the trauma of our ancestors who were stolen from our lands or had to flee or defend our homes. Some continue to experience daily violence on the streets we call home—from East Oakland to the West Bank, from police brutality and military occupation to climate disasters that lead to displacement and disconnection. These spirals of violence that make the extractive economy go round will collapse on the oppressed and can only end justly through our intentional reorganization. In this moment of collective grief over the tragedies across all of historic Palestine, our lineages of resistance and resilience give us the power right now to fight for collective liberation and just futures.
{Graphic by Victoria Garcia of a hand holding up a watermelon slice with beneath the words “Freedom for Palestine” in Arabic and English. Background is black with white keffiyeh patterns bordering the image.}
Ecological justice is the state of balance between human communities and healthy ecosystems based on thriving, mutually beneficial relationships and truly democratic, participatory self-governance. There is no ecological justice in a world in which Palestinians are bombed, starved, displaced from their lands, and have no freedom of movement or agency over their lives. For generations we have seen the British colonial occupation and the subsequent 75-year occupation by the apartheid state of Israel wreak ecological havoc on historic Palestine and its people; these are textbook examples of the extractive economy in full force.
Whatever fantasy the ideology of zionism fabricates, we know that the ongoing war on Palestine is about land and resources. It is a settler colonial project by its own definition. Enclosure is the mechanism by which the settlers control access to needed resources, including land, water, food, labor, and knowledge. All enclosure is based on entitlement and acquired, enforced, and expanded through violence, which is foundational to colonialism, imperialism, and extractivism. This unrelenting violence is waged against peoples and the ecosystems they call home. As apartheid Israel forces Palestinians further south while leveling homes, hospitals, and holy places, its war on Gaza is another violent land grab. Palestine was never “a land without a people.” Palestinians are inextricably linked to their lands. Indigenous sovereignty is key to ecological justice.
Ecological warfare on Palestine
Once an agricultural place within the Fertile Crescent, Gaza’s soil, water, and air are now contaminated by chemicals from 16 years of endless bombardment. In a recent teach-in, a representative from the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in the West Bank said that even if Palestinians in Gaza survive the bombings, they will be condemned to a future without sustenance. Much of the most fertile farmland in Gaza today is near the so-called border in the north, which is a vulnerable target of Israeli air strikes, making it dangerous for both access and soil health.
In the West Bank, even before October 7, 46% of agricultural land was inaccessible to Palestinian farmers due to a blockade, military occupation, and the use of “special military zones” to annex more land from the West Bank. Right now during the olive harvesting season, an important time for Palestinian livelihood, farmers are experiencing escalating harassment from Israeli settlers and military, further blocking their access. Yet, the power of enclosure is not simply the ability to restrict access. The real power is the ability to control the terms and conditions under which people have access to the resources that are enclosed.
Following Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza in June 1967, one of the first policies the apartheid state enacted was taking complete control of Palestinians’ water resources and infrastructure. Issa Nijoum, a former citrus farmer from Al-Auja said to Amnesty International, “In 1967, when they [the Israeli authorities] started taking the water it was like a sickness in a body… slowly the land dried up.”
Apartheid Israel’s draconian water policies have not only robbed Palestinians of their water sovereignty, it has also had terrible consequences on the ecosystem and taken countless Palestinian lives. We often hear about Palestinian deaths by airstrikes (more than 9,000 and counting in Gaza between October 7–November 1); though deaths by water-borne diseases, while harder to account for, are significant. Ninety-seven percent of the water in Gaza is undrinkable, by World Health Organization standards. According to the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON), Israeli settlers use Palestinian land as a dumping ground for 90% of Israel’s waste water.
A 2021 UN report shows that 75% of sea water off the Gaza coast is contaminated with chemicals from weapons and sewage. Already, Palestinian fisherfolk were heavily restricted from accessing the sea—three to six nautical miles offshore only or risk being shot. With the water contamination decimating fisheries, it is even more difficult for fisherfolk to sustain a living, let alone feed the people. On top of that, apartheid Israel recently granted exploration licenses for natural gas off the Mediterranean coast to six companies—disaster capitalism in the midst of genocide.
From the river to the sea
All of the food, water, and environmental issues are, of course, exacerbated by apartheid Israel’s current siege and war on Gaza. Not only does relentless bombardment immediately pollute the air, water, and soil; long-term, imperialism inherently leaves a legacy of ecological destruction on the land, human bodies, and spirits that is felt for generations to come. For all of these reasons and more, the path to ecological justice must run through a free Palestine.
The irony of it all is that borders are constructs. You can’t stop the waters from flowing together; all people from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea breathe the same air. Destruction of the land in Palestine condemns current and future generations of Palestinians and those who are there through the settler-colonial project to suffer the ecological destruction of this war and genocide, just as the land does.
Like all enclosures, borders fragment human communities and ecosystems, asserting extractive, violent governance systems rather than systems based on bioregional relationships of collective care, sacredness, cooperation, and consent. “From the river to the sea” refers to the ecological boundaries of historic Palestine and all its peoples and all their diverse cultures. It is a call to freedom, true democracy, reparations, and restoration. What does a free Palestine look like, from the river to the sea, where borders are nonexistent and the land and all people are liberated?
Where do we go from here, and how do we get there?
Clearly a culture shift is desperately needed. We can return to the Just Transition framework to reaffirm that the extractive economy—upheld by a colonialist worldview that fuels extraction and exploitation towards the enclosure of wealth and power, enforced by militarism—is the worst possible way forward for a vast majority of us. A worldview centered around caring and sacredness, where regeneration and cooperation lead to ecological and social well-being, bolstered by true democracy, is necessary and possible.
So how do we get there? We don’t have all the answers, but for starters we can commit to honoring Palestinian self-determination and take our guidance and leadership from Palestinians in Palestine—many of whom are courageously documenting the atrocities via social media, even as journalists in the region are targeted and killed by the apartheid state of Israel. We also look to Palestinian-led organizations that are supporting people on the ground, such as Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, as well as global organizations like Grassroots International, Arab Resources and Organizing Center, Adalah Justice Project, Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Palestinian Youth Movement.
The peoples’ immediate demand is a ceasefire now and an end to an end to the siege on Gaza. This requires our urgent political pressure on US elected officials, as well as direct actions such as mass protests and boycotts. And we must continue to be visionary while oppositional. A ceasefire is imperative to stop the bad, but the battle will not end there, leaving Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the status quo of cyclical violence. Moving in the same direction as the ongoing movement to end Israel’s occupation, genocide, and apartheid gives us a pathway to restore Palestinians’ right of return, self-determination, sovereignty, and land back.
Because all ecological and human rights disasters are rooted in the political economy, we must make economic interventions. Here in the belly of the beast of the US empire, we spend $3.8 billion of our tax dollars each year on military aid to apartheid Israel. Cutting off this aid so that it can instead fund our basic needs such as housing, health care, and education will be an uphill climb and a critical goal.
We cannot underestimate the power of engaging in generative conversation and conflict within our communities; talk to your people and learn together. Make space for grief and connection in this intense time; hold your loved ones close and stay rooted in deep love for people and the land. As our ancestor Grace Lee Boggs said, “Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.”
Liberation is possible and, we have to believe, inevitable. Palestine will be free. In our lifetime.
{end of story}
Palestinian Liberation and Climate Change: Imagining a Palestine Without Occupation
{Graphic notes with text that reads: Palestinian Liberation and Climate Change: Imagining a Palestine Without Occupation
Fighting colonialism goes hand in hand with the fight for climate resilience.
Facing a land grab for water and agricultural control, genocide, terror, and ecocide.
At least 40,000 people murdered + 76,000 injured since Oct 7th.
46% of agricultural land taken in settlement and making agricultural land unusable to displace Palestinians.
In the last 16 years, Gaza has been an open air prison dependent on aid relief. Producers forced to be consumers. Olives, figs, wheat, barley, livestock, citrus, and more!
Ongoing Nakba.
De facto hydro annexation military orders drained the swamps
Climate injustice including: Mass ecological destruction; rooted in colonialism and quest for fossil fuels; Israel exporting surveillance tech used against climate justice.
Israel has squared people into populated enclaves without resources.
Palestinians currently have access to 18% of historical Palestine.
Facing food apartheid and water apartheid.
Intersectionality: This is a global issue of the global system.
Facing a war with prayer. Hope.
It is the will to life that is the embodiment of Palestinian resistance.
Mutual aid is how we show up for each other. The door is open! Work in solidarity!
The true solution is ending the occupation and allowing the people and the land to live and be free!
With water sovereignty and food sovereignty.
Benefit from each drop of water.
Equitable water sharing.
Restore the Jordan River.
Sustainable consumption.
After occupation…re-cultivation.
3.5 years of rehabilitation to produce food again.
Imperialism power ends.
Soldiers withdraw, separation wall is broken.
Geographic continuation with access to all land.
Bioregions, not borders.
Take a breath after the war.
Return to original villages.
Co-hosted by: Hoodwinked Collaborative, A Growing Culture, Movement Generation, Global Justice Ecology Project, National Farmers Union Canada.
Illustrated by Haley McDevitt, Illustrating Progress, from a webinar produced with Hoodwinked in the Hothouse.
{end of graphic notes}
Love Letter to the Student Encampments for Palestine
Originally published May 16, 2024 in Convergence Magazine
{pullquote} The participants in the student encampments “have rejuvenated us after months of steadfast protest, taking bold action for our transgenerational, collective vision of liberated peoples and lands across the world.”
{image of a student encampment with a banner that reads “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” with handdrawn hearts in the background.}
Dear courageous students for a free Palestine, In Spring 1985, when UC Berkeley students pitched their tents on the steps of Sproul Plaza to demand the University of California divest from apartheid South Africa, they felt the same struggles and grappled with the same contradictions that you do today. To be real, sh*t gets dark when you’re in the trenches. We know you are overwhelmed and underslept. We know that connections with others can feel tenuous when we exist in a surveillance state and political battlefield. But here’s the truth: The world is shifting thanks to you. Please keep going. We got you.
As young people in this time on this Earth, you have the power and the spirit to move millions of people and win material victories. For generations, student movements have dared to face off against the Herculean power of colonial institutions and state-sponsored military force, changing the course of history. Right now you are at the frontlines of our intergenerational battle for a free Palestine—for collective liberation—yet the rest of us must also meet the moment to fortify your movement.
In the Bay Area and in many places across Turtle Island, movement elders and experienced organizers have faced these same threats before. Students, we honor your leadership and stand ready to support you in all the ways you need, from political education to healing resources to hot meals. And across imaginary borders, even when encampments are dismantled, remember that mycelial networks stretch between every student movement—from UC Berkeley to San Francisco State University (SFSU), from UCLA to Columbia, from the University of São Paolo to the Sorbonne—to replenish resources, knowledge, and spirit.
The Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strikes of 1968, initiated by a coalition of Black, Latinx, Chicanx, Filipinx, Native American, Chinese, and Asian American students at San Francisco State College and UC Berkeley, were among the longest student strikes in US history—and are the reason the schools have ethnic studies today. Lasting a total of five months, the San Francisco State strike was sustained because the students’ families and community members showed up day in and day out, feeding the people, providing mental health support, keeping each other safe, sharing tactics, exchanging culture, and more.
More than 140 student encampments across Turtle Island have not only righteously demanded divestment from Israeli apartheid and freedom from political repression; they have also given communities an opportunity to practice the experiment of collective governance, rooted in true democracy, that we need in order to embody the liberatory futures we’re building. Collective governance is not the air we breathe normally, but we do have the skills to do it; in fact, we’re always doing it. In the moments when we bring our friends soup when they’re sick, or divide up our chores, or help each other problem solve when things don’t go as planned—we’re practicing collective governance. And we need to resource ourselves by reclaiming our own labor to do it at scale.
Not only do we have the lived experience of collective governance, but we also have genetic memory of it. Our ancestors practiced it long before our lands and peoples were colonized. While colonization and racial capitalism have continually tried to force us to abandon ourselves, each other, and our relationships with the lands and waters—we are still here standing for our people and our lands after all this time. Just imagine the ancestral knowledge and intergenerational healing we’ll activate as we remember the practice of collective governance through caring for one another.
As we watch the genocide in Palestine and invasion of Rafah being livestreamed and show up week after week to mass mobilizations and direct actions, it can feel as though we are losing our minds and our spirits. Our relationships and our bodies are dysregulated and stressed to the max. But remember that we do have each other. We draw inspiration from the Muslim and Jewish and other allied students who are protecting one another and creating deep community across cultural fronts. They remind us that our target is not Jewish, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian identity; it is the US-backed apartheid system created by Israel and the political ideology and colonial project of Zionism.
We will continue to struggle through difference, and we can do so in principled and disciplined ways. Living into the culture shift that we’re trying to move is what will actually get us to liberation. Right now, you, the students, are primed to make this shift. It will be a lifelong commitment, and a worthy one.
Back to 1985 and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa: After holding camp for six weeks, UC students won, forcing the UC system to divest $3 billion from South Africa-related stock holdings. By 1990, anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and the formal process to end apartheid began. Boycotts and divestments played a key role in advancing this victory.
Courageous students, you have rejuvenated us after months of steadfast protest, taking bold action for our transgenerational, collective vision of liberated peoples and lands across the world. Thank you for all the ways you are showing up. Please keep going. We got you. Palestine will be free in our lifetime.
Love, Movement Generation
{end of story}
That’s How the Light Gets In Podcast
{Image featuring Movement Generation collective members Quinton Sankofa and Angela Aguilar—Black man wearing a blue patterned shirt and beaded necklace, and an Indigenous Xicana woman wear a keffiyeh and beating a drum—with a headline that reads “That’s How the Light Gets In”}
In her new podcast, social movement photographer Brooke Anderson converses with artists and cultural workers in the SF Bay Area and beyond who make our movements relentlessly creative and irresistibly fly, root our actions in the wisdom of our elders and ancestors, and create and defend culture to hold us and future generations through the best and the hardest of times.
Each episode explores the idea ”If it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic,” a pillar of Movement Generation’s just transition framework. MG was honored for collective members Quinton Sankofa and Angela Aguilar to open this series with our dear homie Brooke.
Listen to the podcast at linktr.ee/thatshowthelightgetsinpodcast and follow the pod on IG @ThatsHowTheLightGetsIn.
{end of story}
PEACE!
{closing image featuring a racially and culturally diverse group of East Oakland organizers and educators walking down a paved path at Martin Luther King, Jr. Shoreline. Photo by Dana Viloria}
