Beyond the Pipeline: A Statement from Chili Yazzie on Dakota Access Pipeline

Chili Yazzie (Photo credit: Robert Esposito)

In struggles throughout history there is a positive and negative side, justice versus injustice, good against evil. The standoff at Standing Rock is such a story. The Energy Transfer Partners with its Dakota Access Pipeline and supporters on one side; the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and supporters on the other.  

Standing Rock and multitudes of people oppose inflicting more damage to the earth. The pipeline will destroy waters of life and further contaminate the environment. The permanent consequences of climate change will be inherited by our grandchildren.    

In this confrontation between the Destroyers and the Protectors; the Destroyers have the power of physical advantage and the Protectors have the power of spiritual advantage. The spiritual always prevails over the physical.   

The only recourse the Destroyers have is to exert more brute force which has its raw limitations. The arrogant taunting with massive and lethal physical force can do two things; intimidate its target into submission or provoke injury and possible loss of life. The show of force has failed in its intent, as the Protectors are not intimidated.      

It is clear who will prevail and who must back off. We want life; DAPL and such ‘developments’ across the world threatens all life. The confrontation is beyond the pipeline, it is a battle over the waters and earth that will sustain the life of our children into future times. It is an ultimate stand that may determine the future of life on the Earth Mother.  

--Chili Yazzie

Judge James E. Boasberg Earns $203,100, Per Annum: The Numbers Behind the Bio

DC District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, 53, is set to rule on the fate of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Friday. The clean drinking water of 20,000,000 of his countrymen hangs in the balance--an historic responsibility. 

But if history tells us anything, it’s that class allegiance is rarely, if ever, bucked.

As reported by Democracy Now “Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions have, combined, extended a $3.75 billion credit line to Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access.”

With such a significant investment from banks already designated “too big to fail" would a member of the monied class ever rule against his own?

James attended St. Albans, a private boy’s school in the nation’s capitol located in the shadow of the National Cathedral. The prep school's motto is Pro Ecclesia et Pro Patria, for Church and Country. Its tuition is currently: Grades 4–12: $42,484*, Boarding School for grades 9–12: $59,892*

*New students also pay a one-time, non-refundable registration fee of $1,850 in addition to stated tuition.

Student Ethnicities (per Zillow) reveal a negligible student participation by young First Nations Peoples.

White, non-Hispanic 75%; Asian 5%; Multiracial 4%; Hispanic 3%; Black, non-Hispanic 11%; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 1%; Native American or Native Alaskan 0.2%

 

James chose Yale, graduating in 1985 with an A.B. in History. Per Yale’s website: “Tuition and fees at Yale University are $45,800 without financial aid. With room, board, and other fees combined, total cost of attendance is $63,970.”

He crossed the Atlantic for Oxford where he earned an M.St. in Modern European History. The current fee for that program for overseas students is 17,555 British Pounds, or $23,548 per annum.

James then went to Yale Law School (his father had attended Harvard Law) where yearly tuition alone is currently $57,615. With the other ancillaries that figure rises to over $80,000 a year.

After receiving his J.D. he clerked for a year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where the 2016 typical Law Clerk salary is $68,173. (Per Glass Door)

He went back to San Francisco, where from 1991 to 1994 he was employed as a litigation associate at Keker and Van Nest; salaries currently range from $211k - $251k. (Per Glass Door)

Then he left San Francisco to return to Washington, DC, and from 1995 to 1996 was an associate at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans, which according to “Above the Law” pays base salaries that are well above market: $225K for the first two years at the firm, followed by $275K after that. All associates who join the firm get a starting bonus of $175K. 

He joined the Public Sector as an Assistant US Attorney in 1994. The current salary for that position is $137,086. (Per Glass Door)

He became a Superior Court Associate Judge in the District of Columbia where, according to a report in Legal Times, “judges have earned $174,000 annually since 2008, making them consistently among the highest paid general trial court judges in the country.” 

Now he's a District Judge, appointed by President Obama in 2011; his 2106 salary is $203,100. 

Contrast Judge Boasberg’s lifelong financial privilege with the reality of the members of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. From Page 9 of the tribe’s Strategic Plan:

POVERTY: Widespread poverty is a major issue at Standing Rock, and is related to every obstacle addressed thus far. Both Corson and Sioux counties are “persistent poverty” counties, meaning that 20% or more of their population has lived in poverty over the last thirty years. The average 30-year poverty rate for the two counties is 42%. This kind of continuous cycle of poverty can be difficult to address.

OPPORTUNITY: Following a carefully considered Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy such as this one, which addresses many factors of the poverty cycle including employment, health, education, housing, infrastructure, and environmental concerns, will help begin to combat the cycle of poverty at Standing Rock.

The numbers presented by the American Indian Relief Council offer even more detail: 

Many residents live in remote areas, far away from medical care and healthy food. Housing, both in remote areas and in towns, is in short supply, forcing many families to live in overcrowded conditions. Two out of three tribal members are jobless and residents’ annual income averages only $4,421.

Dissonances which beg the question:

In the case of Persistent Privilege v. Persistent Poverty, who will prevail?

Give Efrén Paredes Back His Natural Life

When Efrén Paredes Jr. was only 15 years old, he was dropped down the rabbit hole of injustice in Michigan--the first teen there to be sentenced automatically to Juvenile Life Without Possibility of Parole known as JLWOP. Even the acronym elides possibility.

Next week on July 28 a federal judge in Michigan will rule on his own temporary restraining order entered into earlier this month that disallowed the continued use of JLWOP. There’s every likelihood that having come so far he will in fact make the restraining order permanent. I reached out to Efrén, who is one of the five prisoners featured in Natural Life, a film by Israeli documentary maker Tirtza Even, recently shown as part of the Experimental Documentary Series curated by Paul Marcus at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe. Efrén was also recently named in Latina Magazine as one of four Latinos deserving clemency right now. 

In the movie we're told that Efrén was already home when the manager at the restaurant where he worked was murdered, in fact the manager had driven him home. His whole family consistently and ardently swears it—they ate pizza, the tv was on, he said goodnight, they all went to sleep. There is a Facebook page that describes his ongoing efforts for liberation, which is how I originally contacted him. 

After a brief correspondence I've now spoken with Efrén, who was able to phone me from the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility on a prepaid debit card. 

I asked him for his thoughts about US District Court Judge John O’Meara’s temporary restraining order.

A step in the right direction; I believe that it’s long overdue. Almost two dozen states have said the JLWOP sentence is unconstitutional; 192 foreign countries have said the same thing. I’m hoping for a nationwide ban by the U.S. Supreme Court within the next two years.

What about your feelings?

I think that I felt…I was…feeling very, really good about the decision. Everyone deals with things differently. For me, I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m very reserved, because it’s been a roller coaster ride. I’ve been waiting for victory, waiting a long time. It’s emotionally taxing, very difficult. Four years ago with Miller v. Alabama, that should have ended it. So it’s difficult to get excited. But I  definitely had a good feeling, and my family had a good feeling too.

When you first saw the completed film, what did you make of your words appearing at the bottom of a blackened screen?

That was Tirtza’s artistic perspective, rather than just show a face frozen in a photograph. For many years we’ve been silenced and our voices have not been heard, so this film is an opportunity to talk about our human rights violations. The blackened screen represents that we’ve been silenced, not seen. We’ve been viewed as a surplus population. One that’s expendable.

In the film, your former high school teacher confesses on screen that she experienced societal pressure to self-censor, and was silent while you were transformed in public perception overnight from the hard-working honors student that you were to a murderous monster of the media’s making.

It’s not surprising. At the time I didn’t understand it the way I understand it now. I was the first juvenile to fall under the automatic waiver provision. I was sent to adult court, without a juvenile hearing. Previous to JLWOP, a kid in my position would’ve been sent to juvenile court for a hearing, and then if necessary to adult court. I went straight to the county jail,15 years old, I was the youngest person in the jail, possibly to this day the youngest ever to be incarcerated in that jail. 

It was heartbreaking that she couldn’t tell the truth. But to be honest it’s still difficult to get the facts out in certain communities. Where I was arrested is 97% white; everyone involved was white—the arresting officers, the prosecutors, judge and jury. The younger people involved pled guilty and received 6 months in a juvenile facility. One was not charged at all. The two Asian-Americans who pled guilty got 18-45 year sentences for murder and robbery. I was the youngest person, with the darkest skin, and received the most punitive sentence of all.

So it’s in that context that I now understand the self-censorship; the place was plagued with a pervasive racism. The treatment of people of color has been outrageous. All of the juvenile lifers from my county were of color. All of them.

I understand from your wife that you’ve recently been transferred to a new prison. Can you tell us what that’s like—if it’s any kind of improvement?

I’ve been transferred to a number of facilities over the years; it’s stressful to adjust to a new population, to lose friends, acquaintances of almost 30 years. I just left a guy who was with me when I was first a prisoner in 1989; we shared six months in the last facility. We reconnected; those separations are difficult to deal with. The ties you make in prison, they become part of your family, they see you more than your own family. Those relations…the separation can cause anxiety, bouts of depression. You’re not known. 

And you’re not given notice, it’s just one day they tell you to pack up and you’re transported somewhere new.

Do you dare to dream about being released, about living with your wife and three daughters as a free man, husband and father?

I plan for that every day, I work for that every single day. I strive to educate myself, and to continue to evolve and grow as a person. I always hope to use my stewardship, my place among peers, to be the light for others. I plan on speaking out in the free world to at-risk youth, to mentor them, to encourage literacy, and show them how to stay out of trouble, which could have a profound effect on the rest of their lives. My dream is to help our youth especially to deescalate racial tensions. Of course I long to reunite with my family, be productive. Is it possible? I hope so.

I urge people to contact their legislators in the 28 states that have not yet banned JLWOP. I ask people to do that, to make JLWOP unacceptable in a civilized society, in a nation that speaks to other nations about children's rights. JLOWP is diametrically opposed to that. 

A call, a letter would be helpful. 

Director Roxanne Tapia Closes Teatro Paraguas' 2015-2016 Season with Comedic Charmer 'Welcome to Arroyo's'

Who's arresting who? Daric Gutierrez playing Officer Derek taking in Amalia (Molly) Arroyo played by Alix Hudson (Photos by Carla Garcia, courtesy of the production)

Even more amusing than swinging a big blunt stick at the head of a Donald Trump piñata, director Roxanne Tapia's joyful production of Welcome to Arroyo's cracks open Kristoffer Diaz's playful and comedic exploration of (some of the important) edgy divides in Manhattan's Lower East Side Nuyorican culture. Forgive me for being a bit dazzled by the show: I belly-laughed my way through the 90 minutes, which delivered if not Aristotelian catharsis, the kind of relief that can come from laughing oneself silly.

The play is set in 2004, though it's unclear why Diaz picked that year and not another. There's no mention in the play of the main event that year: no reference to the NYPD giving protesters to the Republican Convention a taste of Guantanamo on the Hudson. But it was a year in which there was a marked uptick in the number of Latinos harassed by the NYPD's bogus-to-the-max Stop and Frisk Program. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, 89,937 Latinos were stopped and frisked that year, up from 44,581 in 2003. In 2005 the number would swell to 115,088. In 2006 147,862. The number peaked in 2011, a year in which 223,740 Latinos were stopped and frisked by the NYPD. As law enforcement policy Stop and Frisk was completely illegitimate, and has been acknowledged as such. But as an effective means of social control, huge hassle and painful distraction to Latinos who were losing more and more ground to developers gobbling up prime LES real estate--very effective.

I mention this because early on there's a moment in the play when Diaz's graffiti-art-appreciating NYPD beat cop (played by Daric Gutierrez) busts Amalia “Molly” Arroyo (played by Alix Hudson) for tagging the back of the police station, a provocative grief response to the recent loss of her mother. The nakedly frightened look in Hudson's eyes when he approached her put the truth to those statistics. And the dialogue is informed. Molly's only 18, but clearly she knows the drill:

Officer Derek: Stay right there, drop the can, hands on the wall.

Molly: You're like two steps behind, son. Should be up to frisking me already.

Officer Derek: Are you carrying any weapons and/or narcotics on your person at the current moment?

Molly: You sound all young. And you don't want to frisk me?

…

Officer Derek: Young lady I understand that you're frightened. You've probably never been in trouble with the law before. But don't worry, it's my job to get you back on the right track.

Molly: You gotta be fucking kidding me.

And then because it's a comedy, they fall in love. And then because it's a fantasy, she punches him out. I don't usually laugh at acts of violence, but I roared at that slug.

Latina cultural historian Lelly Santiago played by Cristina Vigil

Arroyo's has other concerns on its mind—interesting questions about the role of art in the service of strengthening community, about the importance of recovering exemplars of Latina feminist cultural history for a more complete and robust communal identity, about the crucial role of intellectuals in community building, and ultimately about who gets to get their hands on the mic and what do they do with it once they get it?

Tapia makes sure that none of these considerations are overshadowed by the show's party-like atmosphere and improbable love stories. They're integrated into her direction as she deftly moves the characters around the multi-level set she designed with Hudson. Starting with Lelly Santiago played by a bespectacled Cristina Vigil.

Bursting the confines of the proscenium from the get-go, Lelly's practically in the audience herself bursting with excitement at what she's on the verge of discovering. Standing outside of Arroyo's, which until recently was a bodega but is now a bar, she's in a heightened state. In a kind of thrall to the narrative she's spinning in her hopeful imagination, she clues us into what she's investigating—Is an originator of Latin Hip-Hop, a woman named Reina Rey who, Rimbaud-like, vanished from the scene in 1980, the recently deceased mother of Alejandro and Amalia Arroyo? And more personally, was Rey the lady she bought candy from when she was a little girl living in the LES? Are her scholarly worlds and personal worlds about to collide?

These are questions that have all kinds of redemptive possibilities for Lelly who escaped tenement life for the Ivy League and the suburbs, and who now wonders if the skills she's bringing back to Loisada are even welcome at all. Is she a boorish over-intellectualizing intrusive freak, or a talented persistent hands-on cultural historian whose gifts will come to be valued by her former neighbors? Vigil, who recently appeared in the Vortex Theater's production of Bless Me, Ultima, expresses her character's struggle bodily: the lovely young actress becomes in these soliloquies a kind of centaur--half-woman half-thoroughbred filly chomping at the bit, reining herself in, straining against the starting gate of her own high stakes race to clarity.

There's this running joke in the play about the officer who ridiculously is named Derek Jeter (yeah, that's the cop's name, and he's no Yankees fan), and it got me thinking about names: why Welcome to Arroyo's and not Santiago's or Garcia's or Lopez's?

From Wikipedia

Arroyo. It's a gulch, a marker in the dryness where the wet will be when the rains come. But how to bring the rain, or in the case of the bar/lounge, the customers? Trip Goldstein and Nelson Cardenal (played respectively by the superbly comedic Jonathan Harrell and Matthew Montoya making his low-key funny-as-hell Paraguas debut) have the answer—local live performance. Deejaying at Arroyo's...well, it's okay, but these homeboys want to rap. In fact, they want to rap with every fiber of their being, and Tapia makes sure we feel it. Like two school boys squirming in their seats, hands raised and waving down the teacher standing only feet away from them, their irrepressible need to rap has them spinning like the lps on their turntables.

Harrell, who in Arroyo's somehow looks a full decade younger than his actual age, is especially beautiful to watch in this regard--arms in the air, torso twisting, dancing to the art form his character passionately wants to be part of. His control over the volume and speed at which the outrageous jokes issue from his fresh mouth lands somewhere between the borders of impressive and phenomenal. Whooosh, whooosh, the words come flying out through his smile, and astonishingly are always intelligible. He doesn't just talk fast, he communicates fast, and the show wouldn't be half as much fun were he not in it.

Matthew Montoya, Jonathan Harrell and Rick Vargas

Matthew Montoya plays Nelson as Trip's affable more subdued partner who nonetheless wins his share of laughs. There's a bit when he flicks the lights on and off to pretend they have strobe effects. It's funny but telling—Nelson will make do with whatever he's got to work with, but oh he wants more. But Trippy Trip and Nelly Nel are up against Alejandro's closed-mindedness, and they can't budge him from his magical thinking and the mantra that affirms it:

Alejandro: A bodega needs to be a bodega. A bar needs to be a bar. We do what we're supposed to do the way we're supposed to do it. The customers will come....It worked for my mother.

Rick Vargas, who was trained in theater at Northwestern, thoroughly embodies Alejandro, the sturdy and dignified barkeep displaced by grief who's struggling to manage this unfamiliar place he's created in a blur in the month since his mother died—is it a bar or a lounge and what the heck's the difference? Fully present, Vargas is an actor's actor who conveys more with the placement of his suspenders than many others do with an entire costume change. The distracted way he handles the receipts as he tries to lose himself in accounting chores lets us know business is not what's primarily on his mind. Contrasted with the very touching moment when he reaches for Lelly in an embrace of acceptance; he enfolds her completely, pulls her to his heart, and they both regain a sense of equilibrium.

He plays Alejandro with an acute sensitivity to the character's condition as a son in the throes of deep loss. He's weighed down by his filial responsibilities; they keep him locked in ritualistic routines of hope. But few customers appear, no matter how briskly he wipes down the bar and polishes the already pristine stemware. He clocks in and out just as his mother did--he's holding a place for her. In time, he'll let it go.

Rick Vargas as good listener Alejandro Arroyo warming to Lelly Santiago played by Cristina Vigil

These serious emotional meanderings through the arroyos of grief and renewal are punctuated by moments of high camp and hilarity. None so much so as when Daric Gutierrez draws his roller brush from his gun holster to aim his desire at Molly's tag on the police station wall. It mimics DeNiro's classic “You looking at me?” moment in Taxi Driver, but it's hysterically funny in its sheer inspired goofiness.

Which brings me to his love object, the rebellious Molly Arroyo played as a hell raiser on steroids in a very fine and moving comedic performance by Alix Hudson. 

Alix Hudson playing Molly talking to her big brother Alejandro played by Rick Vargas

 Hudson, who dyed her hair dark for this role, gives her versatile all: from her perfectly polished Nyurican accent...her full-throated head-thrown-all-the-way-back laugh of sisterly derision...her shoulders-hunched-forward ferocious charging through “the streets” to paint, come what may...the way she holds the can in her almost trancelike, prayerful miming of the act of spraying an imaginary wall...the ardent first kiss instead of a poke in the eye she lays on Officer Derek Jeter --in all of these she breathes puffs of poetic breath into Amalia's contours, and finds (and exposes) the many tender, raw parts of her homegirl's innards, the wounded loneliest places that she's healing in her art. It's a beautiful, striking and vulnerable performance. Somewhere Dionysus is smiling.

Viva Vela!

Tapia's painterly use of color  is subtly sophisticated. Because of the liveliness of her actors one never notices the monochromatic palette until it's replaced with the vivacious brightly-colored panels by muralist Sebastian "Vela" Velasquez, and the vitality that has always been there, hiding in some realm of potentiality, is discovered and revealed.

There's a fantasy scene in which Reina Rey (also played by Hudson) kicks the boys out of the deejay booth and takes the mic. Tapia's direction here is pared down, minimalist, the action plays out almost in slow motion, relaxed but not casual. When Rey takes the mic it's with a deliberate purposeful sense of inevitability, of cultural history being made even if it remains underground. The moment is now, you were either there or you weren't.

Director Roxanne Tapia has taken the mic. It feels like a fulfillment for Teatro Paraguas, maybe even a turning point. In the program's Director's Notes, she writes:

I love that Arroyo's lounge is a place where the Lower East Side community can come together. A place that unites them and gives them something they can't get anywhere else. Teatro Paraguas is that, here in Santa Fe!

That's it. That's all I got. Enjoy the show!”

Welcome to Arroyo's will play through April 24^th, Thursday – Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. At Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, Santa Fe, NM (505) 424-1602 www.teatroparaguas.org $18 general, $12 limited income Pay-what you wish Thursdays

Imagine That: Leonard Peltier Wrongfully Incarcerated for 40 Years

Photo Credit: Kerri Cottle Photography

 Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination...
Doing time does this thing to you. But of course you don't do time.
You do without it. Or rather, time does you.
Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of yours
day by day, night by night.

 — Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance

Leonard Peltier could not be present at the exhibition of his artwork at the second Indigenous Fine Arts Market (IFAM) in Santa Fe, NM, held on August 20-22, because he's been incarcerated in the U.S. federal penitentiary system for the last 40 years. He's currently in Coleman (Florida), a known “gang prison,” a brutal and violent place subject to frequent lockdowns lasting not uncommonly for as long as a month.

Maybe next year?

While the primary focus of this article is not the case for clemency, the reality is that presidential intervention is his only remaining avenue to freedom. Barring the appearance of some staggering new piece of evidence, all appeals for a new trial have been thoroughly exhausted. The feeling among his inner circle is that a new president, whoever it may be, is unlikely to risk involvement; but a lame duck president just might quack Peltier's way. The mere fact that this show has almost miraculously manifested whets the appetite for hopefulness.

 Thus began an article I wrote for Red Wedge Magazine last autumn. Sovereign Imagination: The Art of Leonard Peltier

Interviewing Leonard Peltier by phone that day was a personal turning point. It reconstituted me, made me rededicate myself to my own commitments, which are many and deep. Freeing Leonard is one of the most important ones. If Leonard were to die caged behind bars, a part of all of us would too. It would fall in the category of unforgivable offenses.

He needs our help.

Just a few days ago the International Committee to Free Leonard Peltier issued this health advisory about Leonard's deteriorating condition, an emergency even more pressing than clemency They wrote:

Two weeks on and still no relief for Leonard Peltier! Leonard Peltier is faced with a very life threatening, fast growing aortic abdominal aneurysm. Have you sent a letter to the federal Bureau of Prisons? You may send a letter or fax daily asking them to transfer him to a proper hospital capable of handling this sort of emergency. Please, in the name of common decency and human rights, write today. To fax, you can use these free online faxing services: https://faxzero.com (US) or https://faxzero.com/international (International). Please make reference to Leonard Peltier #89637-132, currently at USP Coleman I.

Warden Tamyra Jarvis
USP Coleman I
846 NE 54th Terrace
Sumterville, FL 33521
Fax: 352-689-6012

Helen J. Marberry
RO Southeast Regional Office
3800 Camp Crk. Pk. SW
Bldg 2000
Atlanta, GA 30331
Fax: 678-686-1229

Office of the Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First Street, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Fax: 202-514-6620

Leonard's condition does fuel urgency to the events planned worldwide on February 5th and 6th to demand clemency for Leonard Peltier. I hope you will join me at the New Mexico actions:

* Albuquerque, New Mexico *

STAND-OUT to Demand Clemency for Leonard Peltier

Pete V. Domenici United States Courthouse
Albuquerque, NM  87102
Friday, February 5, at 3:30 p.m. (MT)

https://www.facebook.com/events/626897144115790

***

And on February 6th:

Saturday, February 6 at 10 AM MST

ENDORPHIN POWER COMPANY
509 Cardenas Dr SE, Albuquerque, NM 87108

https://www.facebook.com/events/1740335449518586/

The FreeSpook Movement invites you to join us in supporting the incarcerated. We will be writing letters to folks around New Mexico and around the country, particularly to those identified as political prisoners, although most of us consider all prisoners to be political prisoners.

Letters and messages of solidarity may not abolish prisons but are a good way of supporting our incarcerated family and friends.

Supplies will be provided. Bring food and non-alcoholic beverages.

And:

First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque
3701 Carlisle Boulevard NE, Albuquerque, NM  87110
Saturday, February 6 at 3 p.m. MST

Please join us to commemorate the 40th year since Leonard Peltier’s arrest in Canada on February 6, 1976.

Potluck – Please bring a dish to share if you are able.

Featuring:

• La Mesa Middle School-Shawl Dance
• Peltier News/Update
• Panel Discussion and Q&A with Radmilla Cody, John T Nez, Jean Whitehorse, Lenny Foster
• Performances by Def-I, Anthro and Lady Yazzie

Solidarity groups, please contact us for table space and arrangements at 505-217-3612.