Wed.4.20.22ST-Shawnee.Roundtable

04/20/22 • 51 min

Three decades ago, in the summer of 1990, activists from Earth First! occupied the Fairview Timber sale site in the Shawnee Forest— which is located in Southern Illinois for 79 days — using their bodies to block the logging equipment and using legal strategies to challenge the harvesting of the lumber in court. This historic action has come to be known as the Shawnee Showdown. This relatively small group of activists were successful in stopping commercial logging in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois for 17 years. But in 2013, the Forest Service won a motion to lift the injunction. Currently, thousands of acres at the Shawnee National Forest are scheduled for logging operations. Shawnee is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they allow logging on public lands, wood is then sold to logging companies at a price that is below market value. The fight to save the Shawnee Forest continues today, with the most recent attempt by organizers to transfer the Shawnee National Forest out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s control and into the hands of the U.S. Department of the Interior, with a proposal that would establish Shawnee as a National Park and designate it as the nation’s first climate preserve. Today on Sojourner Truth, we continue our Earth week coverage with our round panel. Our guests are three ecologists: John Wallace, Steve Taylor and Orin Langelle, that took part in the Shawnee Showdown nearly 30 years ago, joining us today to discuss their experience and the present fight to establish the Shawnee Forest as the nation's first climate preserve.

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Sojourner Truth presents: Hoodwinked in the Hothouse Part 2

Today on Sojourner Truth we begin our Earth week coverage with Hoodwinked in the Hothouse Part 2: Frontline Voices of Indigenous Resistance beyond Climate False Solutions. This panel features Indigenous organizers from frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by false solutions to the climate crisis. From Anishnabeg communities in Canada fighting the contamination of water to Diné communities in Southwest Turtle Island, climate false solutions such as nuclear power, megadams, fracking, and many more continue to cause displacement, contamination of land, food, & water, and disaster in Indigenous communities worldwide. Todays speakers include :Kandi White representing the Indigenous Environmental Network Leona Morgan of Diné No Nukes and Lucien Wabanonik, Anishnabeg Tribe and Innu First Nations The panel will share stories from the frontlines about their efforts to stop the ongoing impacts of false climate solutions such as nuclear power and radioactive waste dumps, enhanced oil recovery for fracking in the Bakken Oil Shale, tree plantations and hydroelectric plants & mega dams built on the land of First Nations tribes in Quebec. Climate false solutions such as nuclear power, hydropower, biofuel, fracking and enhanced oil recovery, carbon offsets, carbon capture, biodiversity offsets, and nature based solutions are sold by corporations and NGOs alike as ways to combat climate change that also boost the economy. Solutions rooted in growth and profit will not solve the climate crisis and will continue to enact violence on the natural world and on frontline communities across the globe. This panel will focus on Indigenous organizations that are contributing to movements for systemic change and climate justice, led by frontline communities and nurtured through processes of resistance, resurgence and decolonization.

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Th.4.21.22 - ST - Rainbomb.Frenchelections.poetry

Today on Sojourner Truth the French Presidential Election will take place this Sunday. In response, on Monday, several dozen undocumented migrants, known as sans-papiers, and their supporters took over unoccupied apartments in the 9th arrondissement section of Paris to demand rights for all, citing the right to adequate housing and the plight of the undocumented migrant as two issues that have been absent in the French Presidential campaign. Protestors from the collective Chapel du vous, are using one of the occupied apartments as an embassy for immigrants, calling on the example of Ukrainian refugees who in a matter of weeks, had access to a system to facilitate accommodation, documents and free access to transportation. Activist and expatriate Benoit Martin joins us from France to discuss these protests and the forthcoming French Presidential Election. A recent rain bomb struck South Africa, killing and injuring thousands. We discuss this climate change catastrophe with ecologist and organizer Desmond D'Sa, for our weekly Earth Watch segment. We will also hear about the recent decision by the President Biden administration to resume oil and gas drilling on public lands, being condemned as a reckless failure of climate leadership. Lastly, as the month of April wraps up, we honor national poetry month with Boyle Heights-based poet Ron Baca.