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Dear John,
During this week of mourning we remember those who we have lost, we hold our suffering close, and we transform our grief into a call for collective action. We mourn the politics of death that have plagued our nation and demand a politics of life.
On Monday, the Poor People’s Campaign organized caravans to mourn the nearly quarter-million Americans who have died from COVID-19, demand a smooth and open transition of power and lift up the moral policies we need immediately and in the first days of the new administration. This was accompanied by a powerful program online that held up reports and testimonies from each of the participating states. If you missed it, it will be broadcast tomorrow Friday November 27th at 2:30pm ET/ 11:30am PT. You can tune in at vote.poorpeoplescampaign.org
As we honor this Thanksgiving, a day already marked by many Indigenous peoples as a National Day of Mourning, we ask you to support the struggle of the Apache Stronghold at Oak Flat, an Apache sacred site currently managed by the U.S. Forest Service, who was just given the green light to transfer the land to Resolution Copper, a joint venture owned in part by Rio Tinto, one of the largest metal and mining companies in the world. |
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On Thanksgiving day one year ago, former chair of the San Carlos Apache, Wendsler Nosie Sr, began his return to the Apache holy site of Oak Flat (Chi'chil Bildagoteel). In the Apache tradition, the waters at Oak Flat are the source of all life. Generations of Apache have come to pray for thousands of years at this most holy site.
Resolution Copper’s proposed extraction will use 6.5 billion gallons of water annually - as much water as a small city - which would then be polluted with sulfuric acid, to process the copper ore thousands of feet below the surface. These operations would replace the holy ground with a gaping crater, two miles wide and a thousand feet deep.
The threat has just grown more urgent, as the federal government recently certified the project’s Environmental Impact Statement which would allow the company to mine on what is currently public land. While the environmental impact of this extraction will be devastating, this is also an encroachment on the religious liberty of the Apache people. Wendsler Nosie Sr. says, “To defend the land is a must. We are in a crucial period, it is going to take everything we can give to stop this land exchange.”
The Poor People’s Campaign now calls on all of the people in our movement to support our brothers and sisters in the Apache Stronghold in their struggle for religious freedom and the right to their sacred lands at Oak Flat. Learn more at their website: http://apache-stronghold.com/ |
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You can hear more from Wendsler Nosie Sr. in his own words in the latest installment of We Cry Power: Stories from the Moral Revolution series. Here he speaks on the need to go back and rebuild the foundation of this country, the need for each of us to decolonize, and the healing that will be necessary to birth a new beginning. |
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Forward together, not one step back! Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis Co-Chairs, Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival |
