Utica's First Social Forum - December 3, 2005

The following is an overview of Utica's First Social Forum. On a cold Saturday morning, a devoted group of activists trekked to Utica, NY for the first Social Forum. The Forum was held at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, NY. Presentations addressed concerns about the Patriot Act, Gay Pride, The plight of the Oneida Tribe, Cop Watch, Democracy in Haiti, Racism and many others. <!--break--> <br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; TEXT-DECORATION: underline">The Lancet Study<br /></span><b><img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/5108_gewanter.jpg"><br></b><br /></div>Les Roberts presented a report on the study completed last year that present the statistics that were gathered on actual Iraqi deaths during the invasion and first 18 months of the war. The report was largely ignored or denied by mainstream media. The report was ranked by Project Censored as the second most important under-rated story of 2005.<br /><br />Roberts has a Masters degree in public health from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins. He did a post-doctorate fellowship in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he worked for 4 years. In 1994, he worked as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during their civil war. At present, Les is Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee, an NGO based in New York that provides relief to victims of war. He is a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering where he teaches each fall.<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; TEXT-DECORATION: underline">Indymedia Rochester<br /><br /></span></div>Our own Indymedia group presented an overview of what it is like to deal with the problems of being part of alternative media. Three members engaged participants in a discussion after a showing of a short clip of the film “This is what democracy looks like” which was the pivotal film in the development of Indymedia in Seattle.<br /><br />This film, shot by 100 amateur camera operators, tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organization summit being held there. Vowing to oppose, among other faults, the WTO's power to arbitrarily overrule nations' environmental, social and labor policies in favor of unbridled corporate greed, protestors from all around came out in force to make their views known and stop the summit. Against them is a brutal police force and a hostile media as well as the stain of a minority of destructively overzealous comrades. Against all odds, the protesters bravely faced fierce opposition to take back the rightful democratic power that the political and corporate elite of the world is determined to deny the little people.<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Haiti and Iraq<br /><br /></span></span></div>Dressed in duct taped hiking boots, Ed Kinane presented 2 talks on Haiti and Iraq. Kinane presented a short film that included an interview with Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman concerning the overthrow of democratically elected president Aristede after his 2004 abduction by the United States. Kinane was in Haiti this past April and had previously worked there with Peace Bridges International in the mid 1990s.<br /><b><img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/5108_roberts.jpg"><br></b><br /><br />Excerpt from a talk about Haiti by Kinane<br /><br />Wednesday July 20th, 2005<br />MinutemanMedia.org<br />Why the U.S. and France Hate Haiti<br /><br />Let’s begin with 1492. Since that year, when it was "discovered," no country in the Caribbean has suffered more pain per capita than Haiti.<br /><br />In the 15th century, according to Columbus, Haiti was an island paradise. Now it is an ecological disaster. In the 18th century, Haiti was the richest colony in the New World. Now it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.<br /><br />In the early 1500s, Haiti’s indigenous people, the Taino, were rendered extinct. Alien disease took its inevitable toll. But it was the Spanish obsession with gold and Columbus’ brutal ways of extracting and extorting what little gold there was that sealed their fate.<br /><br />Soon thousands of West Africans were imported every year to fill the labor vacuum. Africans, under the lash, were put to work raising indigo and then cane sugar. So savage was the slave regime, at first under the Spanish and then under the French, that a slave’s life expectancy upon reaching Haiti was only several years. Slaves didn’t live long enough to assimilate "Western civilization." To this day Haiti remains essentially an African country.<br /><br />An excerpt from his diary during his stay in Iraq<br /><br />Voices in The Wilderness<br />Baghdad<br />October 14, 2003<br /><br />PRESS CONFERENCE<br />Around 11am Ghareeb takes me and Neville to Nejaf, a two-hour drive. Once there it takes us an hour to find the press conference. The site has been moved from the announced location. We park at a traffic barrier in the old city and walk a carless block along an arcaded commercial street, past numerous men with guns, toward the main mosque. Ghareeb seeks the office of Muktate Al-Sadur’s organization to get access and directions to the press conference. In an alley, Ghareeb is searched by a clot of armed men before being escorted to the office. Two men are detailed to accompany us as we drive to the site, maybe a couple miles away. When we arrive there are numerous men with guns keeping watch, some on neighboring rooftops. No uniformed authorities are present. We don’t have to show any ID or press pass. We are patted down and wanded before being let through a narrow door into a dwelling. We head upstairs onto a roof packed with journos and I find a chair to stand on. Both Neville and Ghareeb take photos. Neither of our two visitors yesterday are there. Nor do we recognize any US media. In the center of the throng at a table sits Sayed Muktate, holding forth before a bank of microphones. I get only a few fragments of translation and so miss the substance of his remarks.<br /><br />The Sayed is bearded, in his early thirties. He’s the son and nephew of renowned Shia clerics, executed by Saddam. Unlike our visitors yesterday, he doesn’t look “presidential” (or “papal”!). He seems edgy. He gets annoyed when a journo asks him if his new government will force women to wear the hijab. He responds that everyone–Jew, Christian and Muslim–should respect their own traditions. He keeps shaking his index finger. Maybe he’s riding a horse he can’t control. I wonder how long he’ll remain alive.<br /><br />Later when I ask , a non-Shia, what kind of man Muktade is, he says, “He’s a killer, a leader of assassins.”<br /><br />The Patriot act is an acronym for the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001.<br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br />The Un-Patriot Act<br /></span></span><b>#file_4#</b><br /><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br /></span></span></div>Barrie Gewanter from the central NY Chapter of the ACLU spoke about the Patriot Act and other Government actions that have eroded civil liberties in the United States. Gewanter spoke of the legislation pending in Congress that would lift the sunset provisions on the Patriot Act making it possible for the Patriot Act to be extended and new restrictions to be added to it.<br /><br /><br />

<p>The following is an overview of Utica's First Social Forum. On a cold Saturday morning, a devoted group of activists trekked to Utica, NY for the first Social Forum.</p> <p>The Forum was held at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, NY. Presentations addressed concerns about the Patriot Act, Gay Pride, The plight of the Oneida Tribe, Cop Watch, Democracy in Haiti, Racism and many others.</p> <!--break--><p> </p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; TEXT-DECORATION: underline">The Lancet Study<br /></span><b><img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/5108_gewanter.jpg" /><br /></b></div> <p>Les Roberts presented a report on the study completed last year that present the statistics that were gathered on actual Iraqi deaths during the invasion and first 18 months of the war. The report was largely ignored or denied by mainstream media. The report was ranked by Project Censored as the second most important under-rated story of 2005.</p> <p>Roberts has a Masters degree in public health from Tulane University and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins. He did a post-doctorate fellowship in epidemiology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he worked for 4 years. In 1994, he worked as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during their civil war. At present, Les is Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee, an NGO based in New York that provides relief to victims of war. He is a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering where he teaches each fall.</p> <div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; TEXT-DECORATION: underline">Indymedia Rochester <p></p></span></div> <p>Our own Indymedia group presented an overview of what it is like to deal with the problems of being part of alternative media. Three members engaged participants in a discussion after a showing of a short clip of the film “This is what democracy looks like” which was the pivotal film in the development of Indymedia in Seattle.</p> <p>This film, shot by 100 amateur camera operators, tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organization summit being held there. Vowing to oppose, among other faults, the WTO's power to arbitrarily overrule nations' environmental, social and labor policies in favor of unbridled corporate greed, protestors from all around came out in force to make their views known and stop the summit. Against them is a brutal police force and a hostile media as well as the stain of a minority of destructively overzealous comrades. Against all odds, the protesters bravely faced fierce opposition to take back the rightful democratic power that the political and corporate elite of the world is determined to deny the little people.</p> <div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Haiti and Iraq <p></p></span></span></div> <p>Dressed in duct taped hiking boots, Ed Kinane presented 2 talks on Haiti and Iraq. Kinane presented a short film that included an interview with Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman concerning the overthrow of democratically elected president Aristede after his 2004 abduction by the United States. Kinane was in Haiti this past April and had previously worked there with Peace Bridges International in the mid 1990s.<br /><b><img class="dada-image-center" src="http://rochester.indymedia.org/sites/default/files/migrate_dada/5108_roberts.jpg" /><br /></b></p> <p>Excerpt from a talk about Haiti by Kinane</p> <p>Wednesday July 20th, 2005<br />MinutemanMedia.org<br />Why the U.S. and France Hate Haiti</p> <p>Let’s begin with 1492. Since that year, when it was "discovered," no country in the Caribbean has suffered more pain per capita than Haiti.</p> <p>In the 15th century, according to Columbus, Haiti was an island paradise. Now it is an ecological disaster. In the 18th century, Haiti was the richest colony in the New World. Now it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.</p> <p>In the early 1500s, Haiti’s indigenous people, the Taino, were rendered extinct. Alien disease took its inevitable toll. But it was the Spanish obsession with gold and Columbus’ brutal ways of extracting and extorting what little gold there was that sealed their fate.</p> <p>Soon thousands of West Africans were imported every year to fill the labor vacuum. Africans, under the lash, were put to work raising indigo and then cane sugar. So savage was the slave regime, at first under the Spanish and then under the French, that a slave’s life expectancy upon reaching Haiti was only several years. Slaves didn’t live long enough to assimilate "Western civilization." To this day Haiti remains essentially an African country.</p> <p>An excerpt from his diary during his stay in Iraq</p> <p>Voices in The Wilderness<br />Baghdad<br />October 14, 2003</p> <p>PRESS CONFERENCE<br />Around 11am Ghareeb takes me and Neville to Nejaf, a two-hour drive. Once there it takes us an hour to find the press conference. The site has been moved from the announced location. We park at a traffic barrier in the old city and walk a carless block along an arcaded commercial street, past numerous men with guns, toward the main mosque. Ghareeb seeks the office of Muktate Al-Sadur’s organization to get access and directions to the press conference. In an alley, Ghareeb is searched by a clot of armed men before being escorted to the office. Two men are detailed to accompany us as we drive to the site, maybe a couple miles away. When we arrive there are numerous men with guns keeping watch, some on neighboring rooftops. No uniformed authorities are present. We don’t have to show any ID or press pass. We are patted down and wanded before being let through a narrow door into a dwelling. We head upstairs onto a roof packed with journos and I find a chair to stand on. Both Neville and Ghareeb take photos. Neither of our two visitors yesterday are there. Nor do we recognize any US media. In the center of the throng at a table sits Sayed Muktate, holding forth before a bank of microphones. I get only a few fragments of translation and so miss the substance of his remarks.</p> <p>The Sayed is bearded, in his early thirties. He’s the son and nephew of renowned Shia clerics, executed by Saddam. Unlike our visitors yesterday, he doesn’t look “presidential” (or “papal”!). He seems edgy. He gets annoyed when a journo asks him if his new government will force women to wear the hijab. He responds that everyone–Jew, Christian and Muslim–should respect their own traditions. He keeps shaking his index finger. Maybe he’s riding a horse he can’t control. I wonder how long he’ll remain alive.</p> <p>Later when I ask , a non-Shia, what kind of man Muktade is, he says, “He’s a killer, a leader of assassins.”</p> <p>The Patriot act is an acronym for the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001.<br /> </p><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br />The Un-Patriot Act<br /></span></span><b>#file_4#</b><br /><span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><br /></span></span></div> <p>Barrie Gewanter from the central NY Chapter of the ACLU spoke about the Patriot Act and other Government actions that have eroded civil liberties in the United States. Gewanter spoke of the legislation pending in Congress that would lift the sunset provisions on the Patriot Act making it possible for the Patriot Act to be extended and new restrictions to be added to it.</p> <p></p>