As Occupy Wall Street — OccupyWallSt.org — begins its fourth week, OccupyTogether.org reports there are “occupy” meetups in over 1,100 cities. Roving live video at: livestream.com/globalrevolution
KENT LEBSOCK, oweakuinternational at me.com
Lebsock is coordinator of the Owe Aku International Justice Project. He will be speaking at Occupy Wall Street at 5 p.m. ET today. He said today: “Corporate greed is the driving factor for the global oppression and suffering of Indigenous populations. It is the driving factor for the conquest and continued suffering for the Indigenous peoples on this continent. The effects of greed eventually spills over and negatively impacts all peoples, everywhere. Indigenous peoples feel the pain first, but it eventually reaches all people. Understand our suffering to understand yours.” Lebsock notes that Wall Street in New York City actually originated as a wall in what was then New Amsterdam to, among other things, keep out indigenous people.
ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, rdunbaro at pacbell.net
Author of the forthcoming “Myth and Empire: Indigenous History of the United States,” Dunbar-Ortiz said today: “The Wall Street protesters could not have predicted that a massive movement would reach a crescendo at the time of the Columbus holiday, but it could not be more fitting: Columbus represents the foundation upon which globalized capitalism was built, requiring non-food cash crops and slave labor to work the factories in the fields, the land taken through endless genocidal wars and the African bodies not only as labor, but objects of exchange that built the surplus wealth for industrialization. The arc from 1492 to the present contains within it the fruits of that original corruption. The protestors may not make the connection consciously, but their passionate actions are for the liberation from the market that now enslaves the 99 percent of the world peoples.”
Dunbar-Ortiz’s books include “Roots of Resistance: History of Land Tenure in New Mexico,” “Indians of the Americas” and “The Great Sioux Nation.” She is professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University East Bay in Hayward, California.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
