nick estes

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22164/evo-morales-bolivia-right-wing-coup-united-states-media

article first appeared in FAIR.

Army generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup. And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia.

No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup; instead, President Evo Morales “resigned” (ABC News, 11/10/19), amid widespread “protests” (CBS News,/maxresdefault.jpg)) from an “infuriated population” (New York Times, 11/10/19) angry at the “election fraud” (Fox News, 11/10/19) of the “full-blown dictatorship” (Miami Herald, 11/9/19). When the word “coup” is used at all, it comes only as an accusation from Morales or another official from his government, which corporate media have been demonizing since his election in 2006 (FAIR.org, 5/6/09, 8/1/12, 4/11/19).

The New York Times (11/10/19) did not hide its approval at events, presenting Morales as a power-hungry despot who had finally “lost his grip on power,” claiming he was “besieged by protests” and “abandoned by allies” like the security services. His authoritarian tendencies, the news article claimed, “worried critics and many supporters for years,” and allowed one source to claim that his overthrow marked “the end of tyranny” for Bolivia. With an apparent nod to balance, it did note that Morales “admitted no wrongdoing” and claimed he was a “victim of a coup.” By that point, however, the well had been thoroughly poisoned.

CNN (11/10/19) dismissed the results of the recent election, where Bolivia gave Morales another term in office, as beset with “accusations of election fraud,” presenting them as a farce where “Morales declared himself the winner.” Time’s report (11/10/19) presented the catalyst for his “resignation” as “protests” and “fraud allegations,” rather than being forced at gunpoint by the military. Meanwhile, CBS News /maxresdefault.jpg)) did not even include the word “allegations,” its headline reading, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Resigns After Election Fraud and Protests.”

Delegitimizing foreign elections where the “wrong” person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media (FAIR.org, 5/23/18). There is a great deal of uncritical acceptance of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) opinions on elections, including in coverage of Bolivia’s October vote (e.g., BBC, 11/10/19; Vox, 11/10/19; Voice of America, 11/10/19), despite the lack of evidence to back up its assertions. No mainstream outlet warned its readers that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments. In 1962, for example, it passed an official resolution claiming that the Cuban government was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system.” Furthermore, the organization is bankrolled by the US government; indeed, in justifying its continued funding, US AID argued that the OAS is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia.

In contrast, there was no coverage at all in US corporate media of the detailed new report from the independent Washington-based think tank CEPR, which claimed that the election results were “consistent” with the win totals announced. There was also scant mention of the kidnapping and torture of elected officials, the ransacking of Morales’ house, the burning of public buildings and of the indigenous Wiphala flag, all of which were widely shared on social media and would have suggested a very different interpretation of events.

Words have power. And framing an event is a powerful method of conveying legitimacy and suggesting action. “Coups,” almost by definition, cannot be supported, while “protests” generally should be. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, a conservative US-backed billionaire, has literally declared war on over a million people demonstrating against his rule. Corporate media, however, have framed that uprising not as a protest, but rather a “riot” (e.g., NBC News,10/20/19; Reuters, 11/9/19; Toronto Sun, 11/9/19). In fact, Reuters (11/8/19) described the events as Piñera responding to “vandals” and “looters.” Who would possibly oppose that?

Morales was the first indigenous president in his majority indigenous nation—one that has been ruled by a white European elite since the days of the conquistadors. While in office, his Movement Towards Socialism party has managed to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%, cut unemployment in half and conduct a number of impressive public works programs. Morales saw himself as part of a decolonizing wave across Latin America, rejecting neoliberalism and nationalizing the country’s key resources, spending the proceeds on health, education and affordable food for the population.

His policies drew the great ire of the US government, Western corporations and the corporate press, who function as the ideological shock troops against leftist governments in Latin America. In the case of Venezuela, Western journalists unironically call themselves “the resistance” to the government, and describe it as their No. 1 goal to “get rid of Maduro,” all the while presenting themselves as neutral and unbiased actors.

The media message from the Bolivia case is clear: A coup is not a coup if we like the outcome.

https://www.huffpost.com/feature/culture-shifters

bad code

The Lakota historian is among those using the Green New Deal to raise a decolonization movement.Nick Estes Is Elevating Indigenous Voices In The Climate

Nick Estes Is Elevating Indigenous Voices In The Climate Justice Movement

The Lakota historian is among those using the Green New Deal to raise a decolonization movement.Written by Alexander C. Kaufman, Photography by Steven St. John

n December 1890, The New York Times cheered the police who killed Sitting Bull, the famed Lakota chief who resisted the United States’ invasion of his people’s land, as having “made a good Indian of him” by gunning down him and his fellow “savages” who resisted arrest.

To Nick Estes, not much has changed in the last 129 years.

The Lakota historian and organizer, whose book “Our History Is the Future” established him as one of the nation’s leading scholars on the burgeoning intersection of Indigenous rights and climate movements, said you only need to look at how the country’s newspaper of record covered the ouster of Bolivian leader Evo Morales in November.

The South American nation’s first Indigenous president, who made sweeping reforms to recognize and aid the country’s pre-colonial ethnic groups, resigned under pressure from the military following accusations of election fraud.

In his place, a right-wing Christian nationalist from

the country’s white minority declared herself

president and began a brutal crackdown on

Indigenous protesters. Yet even as the civilian

death toll rose, the Times and other major U.S.

media outlets resisted watchdog groups’

https://inthesetimes.com/article/22164/evo-morales-bolivia-right-wing-coup-united-states-media

calls to LINKS

use the word “coup,” going as far as to declare in

one analysis that “the Cold War binary of ‘bad’

coups and ‘good’ popular revolts no

longer applies.”

“This is not just how the U.S. views Indigenous

movements; it’s also how the media views

Indigenous movements,” Estes said on a call

coincidentally on the anniversary of Sitting Bull’s

irreverent obituary. “This is the reason it’s

important to think about it as an Indigenous person

living in the United States, the belly of the beast.”

Estes, 34, has made a name for himself as an

unabashed critic of the other two C-words on the left: capitalism and colonialism. His 320-page book, published in March 2019, traces a throughline from the Lakota tribe’s attempt to halt Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition down the Missouri River in the early 1800s, to the Red Power movement of the 1960s, to the fights against oil and gas pipelines in the 2010s.

“Especially in the wake of Standing Rock, his voice as an intellectual, organizer and leader on the increasingly diverse and growing left is a really important one,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, a climate activist, writer and member of the Secwépemc Nation. “Nick is the real deal.”

The book and associated podcast

https://therednation.org/podcast/

https://therednationdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/red-deal-final.pdf

made Estes a prominent name in the climate justice movement that went mainstream in late 2018 as policymakers started rallying behind the Green New Deal, a policy framework to dramatically reduce emissions and embark on the largest expansion of the federal social safety net in a generation. Estes and his New Mexico-based activist collective Red Nation saw the movement as an opening to address devastating poverty on Native American reservations. A report published in November on the so-called water access gap found 58 out of every 1,000 Native American households lack plumbing, compared to 3 out of every 1,000 white households. Closing that gap and granting more autonomy and opportunity to Indigenous groups would be part of his proposed Red Deal.

“We decided to use the platform of the Green New Deal as a way to talk about what we would envision as an anti-colonial and decolonization movement,” he said.

Estes started focusing heavily on fossil fuels nearly a decade ago, when the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline divided members of his tribe. He wrote “Our History Is the Future” mostly from his aunt’s couch after Lakota tribes launched a high-profile effort in early 2016 to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline under a sacred water source.

But Estes fell into politics as a teenager growing up in the punk and skater scene of his hometown of Chamberlain, South Dakota. It was the early 2000s, and the United States had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in what seemed even then like the start of a multi-theater war with no end. He attended rallies in his small town and accompanied skater friends to antiwar demonstrations in larger cities.

“That really politicized me,” he said. “That’s really where I learned politics.”

He went on to attend the University of South Dakota, where he hoped to become a political organizer. While there, he studied earth science and interned for a federal program monitoring illegal dumpsites and vegetation. After taking a class that made him question the ethics of working for the federal government, Estes pivoted to history. It was a natural shift for the grandson of two Lakota historians who wrote books about their people in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“It was always something I grew up knowing,” he said. “They were publishing books in 1963, when Indians weren’t supposed to be anything but drunk, stupid or dead.”

Unspooling the context of that racism is key to upending the social structures that keep Indigenous people in poverty and polluters in power, he said.

“There are three things the colonizers aspired to,” Estes said, his baritone voice softening as he shifts to a pedagogical tone. “God, gold and glory.”

The Bible supplanted many Indigenous religions long ago. Stolen “wealth, land and labor” built an empire that spans a continent and beyond. But the fact that statues of those who committed genocide are coming down, racist mascots are being reconsidered and language is evolving to respect the experience of nonwhite people is a reminder that “the one thing that’s always under question is the glory,” Estes said.

Yet, as the adage goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The fall of Evo Morales was “a teaching moment for a lot of us in the Indigenous movement, to see how easily people in the United States will demonize an Indigenous leader” whose 13 years in power laid much of the groundwork for what is today being recast as the Green New Deal.

“He doesn’t become a symbol of climate justice and yet a white Swedish girl does,” Estes said, referring to teenage activist and 2019 Time Person of the Year Greta Thunberg. “This is, fundamentally, an Indian-killing empire.”

see

links

theintercept.com › 2019/03/07 › nick-estes-our-history-is-the-future-i...

Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement

Nick Estes, ‎Jaskiran Dhillon - 2019 - ‎Social Science

Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement Nick Estes, Jaskiran Dhillon ... against hydrocarbon expansion is further conjoined to the global climate justice movement.

wesscholar.wesleyan.edu › cgi › viewcontent

Indigenous Activism in the Anthropocene: Three ... - WesScholar

PDF

by CNE Scott - ‎2019

Apr 16, 2019 - produce movements that confront histories of violence and oppression ... effects of such an elevation in global temperatures and the “human fingerprint on ... 4 Kyle Whyte, “Indigenous Experience, Environmental Justice and Settler Colonialism. ... 5 Nick Estes, "Newsletter 1: What We Are into Is Revolution," ...

keweenawnow.blogspot.com › 2019/09 › nick-estes-to-speak-on-stan...