February, 15 2021, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Annie Banks, Indigenous Peoples Day 5 Solidarity Coalition
anniembanks@gmail.com/510-631-4353 (media purposes only)
Over Fifty Community Organizations Call On Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli to Drop the Charges Against the "Indigenous Peoples Day 5"
WASHINGTON
At 9:30 am on Wednesday, February 17, the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco-Bay Area, the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Indigenous Peoples Day 5 Solidarity Coalition will hold a virtual press conference in support of the Indigenous Peoples Day 5 and the campaign to drop the charges. The National Lawyers Guild is representing two of the defendants in the case. The press conference will take place in advance of the next hearing in the felony case being pursued against the Indigenous Peoples Day 5 by Marin County. Register to join the press conference here. ASL interpretation and closed captioning will be provided.
The group of Indigenous women and Two Spirit people are being charged by Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli in relation to the toppling of a Juniper Serra statue at Mission San Rafael on Indigenous Peoples Day. The group of community members was detained by police after a large gathering at Mission San Rafael on Indigenous Peoples Day in 2020, where participants demonstrated against the genocidal actions of Junipero Serra. Despite widespread community support for the Indigenous Peoples Day 5, their place in the important history of political resistance in the Bay Area, and the removal of Juniperro Serra statues throughout the state, Frugoli is pursuing felony charges against the five and has even considered hate crime enhancements.
Speakers will include Corrina Gould of Sogorea Te' Land Trust, James Burch, President of the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco-Bay Area and the Policy Director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, Hasmik Geghamyan of the National Lawyers Guild, and Minister Cherri Murphy, Interfaith Organizer with EBASE.
"Lori Frugoli's decision to single out Indigenous Women and Two Spirited persons for prosecution is of great concern to community organizations across the Bay Area. We will continue this campaign until the charges are dropped."--James Burch, National Lawyers Guild San Francisco-Bay Area and the Anti Police-Terror Project.
Junipero Serra was the founder of the Mission system and a murderous abuser of Indigenous people, notorious for imprisoning and enslaving Indigenous people in what is now known as California. His canonization was and is vehemently opposed by many groups, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous; numerous statues of Serra have been taken down for this reason. The actions of the Indigenous Peoples Day 5 are part of a nationwide effort to remove symbols of violence, brutality, enslavement, and genocide. Many of these symbols have subsequently been removed by city and state officials themselves.
An open letter to DA Frugoli, signed by over 50 community organizations, urged her to "act in accordance with your own stated values - those of standing against racism in Marin, and drop the charges now against the Indigenous Peoples Day 5." A petition urging the same has collected over 75,000 signatures and will be delivered to the District Attorney's office this week.
Ahead of Thursday's arraignment, the Indigenous Peoples Day 5 Solidarity Coalition and Showing Up for Racial Justice Marin are asking supporters to call and email Frugoli's office to demand that she drop the charges against the Indigenous Peoples Day 5.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) works to promote human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests. It was founded in 1937 as the first national, racially-integrated bar association in the U.S.
(212) 679-5100LATEST NEWS
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The climate crisis will shrink the average global income 19% in the next 26 years compared to what it would have been without global heating caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, a study published in Nature Wednesday has found.
The researchers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said that economic shrinkage was largely locked in by mid-century by existing climate change, but that actions taken to reduce emissions now could determine whether income losses hold steady at around 20% or triple through the second half of the century.
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"That seems like… a lot," writer and climate advocate Bill McKibben wrote in response to the findings. "The entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the federal budget is about $6 trillion a year."
This means that the costs of inaction have already exceeded the costs of limiting global heating to 2°C by six times, the study authors said. However, limiting warming to 2°C can still significantly reduce economic losses through 2100.
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," Wenz said.
The damages predicted by the study were more than twice those of similar analyses because the researchers looked beyond national temperature data to also incorporate the impacts of extreme weather and rainfall on more than 1,600 subnational regions over a 40-year period, The Guardian explained.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected," PIK scientist and first author Maximilian Kotz said in a statement. "These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labor productivity, or infrastructure."
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Unlike previous studies, the research predicted economic losses for most wealthier countries in the Global North, with the U.S. and German economies shrinking by 11% by mid-century, France's by 13%, and the U.K.'s by 7%. However, the countries set to suffer the most are countries closer to the equator that have lower incomes already and have historically done much less to contribute to the climate crisis. Iraq, for example, could see incomes drop by 30%, Botswana 25%, and Brazil 21%.
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Wenz told The Guardian that the results were "devastating."
"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking," Wenz said.
Levermann said the paper presented society with a clear choice:
It is on us to decide: Structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on, will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas, and coal.
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The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a "flagrant act of retaliation" late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government.
The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract under which Google and Amazon provide cloud infrastructure and data services for Israel—without any oversight regarding whether the Israel Defense Forces uses the services in its occupation of Palestinian territories and bombardment of Gaza.
Workers have denounced Project Nimbus since it was announced in 2021, but Israel's killing of at least 33,970 Palestinians in Gaza since October and its intentional starvation of civilians led employees to escalate their protests.
No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement that Google officials called the police to both offices to arrest nine protesters—dubbed the Nimbus Nine—on Tuesday morning, before utilizing "a dragnet of in-office surveillance" to fire nearly two dozen other employees on Wednesday.
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Google accused the workers of "bullying," "harassment," defacing property, and physically impeding other employees—allegations No Tech for Apartheid rejected as it noted organizers "have yet to hear from a single executive about" their concerns over Google's collaboration with Israel.
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