Call to Action: The Red Deal, Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth, June 19-20

Red Deal Poster.jpg — Download hi-res poster here.

The Red Nation (TRN) invites allied movements, comrades, and relatives to two days of action and planning on June 19 and 20. The first day is a listening session and workshop to draft and implement the Red Deal, a movement-oriented document for climate justice and grassroots reform and revolution. The second day we will take action against the continued leasing of Indigenous lands for oil and gas drilling in the Greater Chaco Landscape and in Dinetah.

Take Action

We are drafting a skeleton outline of a comprehensive Red Deal platform that we will discuss and debate in the course of several community-wide meetings. This will not be a regional- or nation-specific document, but a document that will encompass the entirety of Indigenous America, which includes our non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live here. This is a document so that our planet may live. We cannot expect politicians to do what only mass movements can do. Join us as we build this movement!

No skirts required. All are welcome. Skoden!

Day 1: Our first community meeting will be on June 19, 2019. We are hosting a listening session and workshop to draft and implement the Red Deal. The listening session and workshop will be held at the Larry Casuse Freedom Center, 1421 Central Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106 from 5 PM to 8 PM. Light refreshments will be provided.

Day 2: Stop Trump’s colonial land grab! Stop fracking Dinétah! The Rio Puerco BLM offices are selling 38 parcels – 37,000 acres of Dinétah – for oil and gas drilling and fracking; Farmington BLM offices are selling 2 parcels, 320 acres; Carlsbad BLM offices are selling 8 parcels, 2,878 acres; and Roswell BLM are selling 2 parcel, 320 acres. Join us on June 20, 2019 from 11 AM to 1 PM for a rally and prayer to protest the lease sales at the Rio Puerco BLM offices at 110 Sun Ave NE #300, Albuquerque, NM 87109.

Contact

Email: contact@therednation.org
Twitter: @The_Red_Nation
RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/297217001159399/

Background

The proposed Green New Deal (GND) legislation is a step in the right direction to combat climate change and to hold corporate polluters responsible. A mass mobilization, one like we’ve never seen before in history, is required to save this planet. Indigenous movements have always been at the forefront of environmental justice struggles.

Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the main proponent of the GND, is herself a Water Protector who began her successful congressional run while she was at Standing Rock protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thus, the GND and the climate justice movement in North America trace their origins to Indigenous frontline struggles.

With this background in mind, TRN is proposing a Red Deal. It’s not the “Red New Deal” because it’s the same “Old Deal”—the fulfillment of treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation. Ours is the oldest class struggle in the Americas; centuries-long resistance for a world in which many worlds fit. Indigenous peoples are best suited to lead this important movement. But it must come from the ground-up.

The Red Deal

The Red Deal is not a counter program of the GND. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives.

The Red Deal is not a “deal” or “bargain” with the elite and powerful. It’s a deal with the humble people of the earth; a pact that we shall strive for peace and justice and that movements for justice must come from below and to the left. We do not speak truth to the powerful. Our shared truth makes us powerful. And this people’s truth includes those excluded from the realms of power and policy-making.

In the spirit of being good relatives, the Red Deal is a platform that calls for demilitarization; police and prison abolition; abolishing ICE; tearing down all border walls; Indigenous liberation, decolonization, and land restoration; treaty rights; free healthcare; free education; free housing; full citizenship and equal protection to undocumented relatives; a complete moratorium on oil, gas, coal, and carbon extraction and emissions; a transition to an economy that benefits everyone and that ends the exploitation of the Global South and Indigenous nations for resources; safe and free public transportation; restoration of Indigenous agriculture; food sovereignty; restoration of watersheds and waterways; denuclearization; Black self-determination and autonomy; gender and sexual equality; Two-Spirit, trans*, and queer liberation; and the restoration of sacred sites.

Thus the Red Deal is “Red” because it prioritizes Indigenous liberation, on one hand, and a revolutionary left position, on the other. It is simultaneously particular and universal, because Indigenous liberation is for everybody.

Where will we get the resources to achieve these monumental tasks? We call for a divestment away from the police, prisons, and military (two of the largest drains on “public spending”) and fossil fuels and a reinvestment in common humanity for everyone (health, wellbeing, and dignity) and the restoration of Indigenous lands, waters, airs, and nations.

Areas of Struggle

We seek to divest from all carceral institutions and reinvest in healing our bodies and the earth. Our areas of struggle are:

End the Occupation: divest from the following police and military institutions

Defund Police/La Migra/Child Protective Services
End bordertown violence
Abolish incarceration (prisons, juvenile detention facilities, jails, border security)
End the US Military occupation everywhere
Abolish imperial borders

Heal Our Bodies: reinvest in the following institutions and services