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CAPITOL FOR "PEOPLE POWER" Seek Stop to Corporate Mine, Water and Power Projects |
The Students/Youth Rally brought together different ages and races to stop four proposed corporate projects:
Rally organizer and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student leader Dana Churness declared that "the power of profit is taking over the citizens' voice." U.W.- Stevens Point student Lora Clem (another member of the Progressive Action Organization) put the Wisconsin rally in the context of growing links between people around the world protesting corporate "globalization." Echoing the international protests, U.W.-Madison students carried huge colorful puppets depicting corporate figures, and mock fish and dragonflies symbolizing company threats to the environment.
Churness introduced speakers as part of a "Journey Around Wisconsin," representing the communities near proposed projects. From northeastern Wisconsin, speakers opposed the Crandon metallic sulfide shaft mine, planned by Toronto-based Rio Algom Ltd. to operate next to the Mole Lake Chippewa Reservation (famed for its wild rice beds), and upstream from the Wolf River and the Menominee Reservation. Native nations and sportfishing groups--former adversaries in treaty rights conflicts--have joined together to protect the fishery from a "threat" of acidic contamination that would for last thousands of years.
The Mole Lake Drum opened the rally, honoring elders who have fought the Forest County mine proposal for 25 years. Menominee Treaty Rights and Mining Impacts Office Director Kenneth Fish said, "Earlier I noticed there was an eagle flying in the sky....Northern Wisconsin is going to be a nesting ground for corporations to take our natural resources. When they are all gone, we're going to be looking at Superfund sites. We're going to leave a legacy to our future generations of not being able to swim in this water."
College of the Menominee Nation student government representative Elizabeth Warrington said, "The youth are the building blocks of our nation...We need to support each other in every effort if we are going to bring this state back to the people." Menominee musician Marissa Tucker also sang her song "Back in the Evergreen"* (see bottom), about mining by the Wolf River.
Chairman Chuck Sleeter of Nashville Township, which includes Mole Lake and half of the Crandon mine site, described his efforts to overturn the previous town board's "Local Agreement" with the mining company. "The company came to Nashville and took democracy away from the people," he said. "These are some of the bravest people you have ever met; they have been under siege...." Sleeter also praised the diversity of the rally, which he said "doesn't happen that often."
Langlade County resort owner and Trout Unlimited chair Herb Buettner said, "For decades we have been fighting to keep the Wolf River clean, and it is still one of the last watersheds of pristine groundwater....People power is the final power of democracy. We don't have democracy now; we have government of the special interests."
Other speakers criticized the DNR's "undermining" of the state's 1998 Mining Moratorium Law, by opening loopholes that allow the company to present examples of "safe" metallic sulfide mines that cannot prove the safety of its Crandon operation. Speakers also noted that the mine would be the largest toxic waste dump in state history, and use 18-20 tons of cyanide per month in ore processing.
Milwaukee student artists carried huge banners backing a ban on cyanide in mines, much as Montana voters have enacted. They also erected "headstones" representing rivers around the world that have been "killed" by cyanide spills from mines. Milwaukee Steelworker Gerry Gunderson, of the Committee of Labor Against Sulfide Pollution (CLASP) and Mining Impact Coalition, also read union local and federation resolutions opposing the Crandon mine.
While most speakers addressed how mining companies would pollute northern Wisconsin's clean water, one speaker described a plan by one company to actually "mine" pristine water in central Wisconsin. Rosemary Carlson, of the Committee to Protect New Haven's Water, opposed Perrier's proposal to pump groundwater from Big Springs, in Adams County, and build a "football field-sized" bottling plant near Wisconsin Dells. "They are bulldozing their way through our community because they want our water in the worst way," Carlson said. "I don't think we should give our pristine waters to a Nestle-owned multinational."
Perrier has come under intense local opposition in three counties, but the DNR may soon permit its plan because state law does not protect rural wells from being pumped dry.
In northwestern Wisconsin, farmers and others along the proposed Duluth-to-Wausau route of a 345-kilovolt transmission line have formed the new grassroots group Save Our Unique Lands (SOUL). Rural residents fear the health effects of stray voltage on cattle and human beings, and defends the property rights of landowners who do not wish to sell land to utility corporations. SOUL President Tom Krueger said "It's about time Wisconsin went back to the people. Let's use the alternatives we know exist, but the PSC and utilities think we're too stupid to know."
Ann Stewart, U.S. representative of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Cross Lake, Manitoba, described how hydroelectric dams--a source of electricity for the proposed line--have damaged rivers in the northern region, causing Indigenous cultural destruction and a high suicide rate.
Nashville Chairman Sleeter noted that a 115-kilovolt "feeder line" is proposed from the main transmission line to power the Crandon mine. He observed, "On one end of the line in Manitoba, a tribe has been devastated. They want to connect the line to another tribe and devastate it as well. That is unacceptable." Some of the 120 SOUL members at the rally carried signs reading "No Line, No Mine."
The PSC also came under criticism from opponents of the proposed RockGen power plant, in eastern Dane County. Christiana Township resident Sharon Hutchinson observed that even though the township and two counties have questioned the environmental effects of the plant, the PSC is moving forward with a permit. Other speakers agreed that rural people are often "shut out" of the democratic process by state agencies that enable companies to bypass local zoning codes, ignore local referenda, and gain exemptions from state laws (such as exempting mine waste from hazardous waste rules).
Yet corporate opponents also pointed to significant victories, including successful town and county codes and resolutions, the slowing of Local Agreements in court, and strengthened tribal environmental regulations backed by federal agencies and non-Indian neighbors. The lead attorney for both SOUL and Nashville, Ed Garvey, observed that "We've got these companies on the run, and they can't figure out what's gone wrong....As people look to government and it does not respond, they have to take matters into their own hands....We're not going to turn our Dairyland over to the multinational corporations. This is a state where people come first." Garvey, a former candidate for Governor, viewed the rally as a part of Wisconsin's populist and progressive historical tradition.
U.W.-Madison graduate student Zoltan Grossman, a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network, observed that companies often accuse rural activists of having a Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) philosophy. He replied that the grassroots groups at the rally instead held a Not In Anyone's Back Yard (NIABY) philosophy, which questioned the underpinning rationales for corporate projects and overall state policies. He added: "Whether our issues are mining, transmission lines, Perrier, agribusiness, genetic engineering, union-busting, job discrimination, welfare reform, or new prisons, we all have a common denominator. We are all defending our local democracies, economies, and cultures against corporate plans being shoved down our throats, with the collusion of government officials. Just as corporations and politicians work together, we should begin to act together as a single Wisconsin anti-corporate movement. Only together can we win."
College student representatives spoke in support of the rally's demand for "environmental justice," as necessary to protect the environment for everyone. Jon Greendeer, U.W.-Marathon County student and a Ho-Chunk tribal member, stated: "We don't have to be Native American to know that these issues are affecting people. You don't have to live on the Wolf River to know that an environmental disaster is at hand. You don't have to have children to know that our future is in jeopardy." U.W.-Milwaukee student Sara Garcia spoke of her anger that "the Governor is making us waste our time and money fighting these projects."
College students also attended from U.W. campuses at La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stout, Oshkosh, and elsewhere, Lawrence University (Appleton), the Madison Area Technical College, and other campuses around the state. The April 29 rally culminated a year-long WWEP speaking tour which reached many colleges and high schools around the state. Rio Algom spokesman Dale Alberts criticized the WWEP for "exploiting" students to advance its anti-mine cause. Sleeter retorted, "How dare he insinuate that students are stupid...or blind."
High school and middle school speakers also joined the rally's call for passage of a Seventh Generation Amendment to the State and U.S. Constitutions. As devised by the late Chippewa environmental leader Walter Bresette, the Amendment would define the natural environment as the "common property" of all citizens, and require that environmental decisions be made with a view ahead of seven generations--or about 150 years.
Madison West High student Dustin Moriarity announced the formation of the Student Environmental Action League (SEAL) to organize area high school students. A Watertown middle school group calling itself Students Against Vanishing Ecosystems (SAVE), presented the WWEP with a $300 check to continue its anti-mine work. Science teacher Peter Watts pointed out that dozens of 7th-graders signed the check, and noted that the mining company has started a schools speaking tour of its own.
Rally emcee Dana Churness told the crowd near the closing: "We have speakers from 8 to 80 years old. Isn't that beautiful?" Eau Claire grade school student Joseph Theo, 8, told the crowd from his father's shoulders: "My grandpa lived in the Northwoods; he hunted and fished there for many years....I want to be able to take my grandchildren to the beautiful Northwoods."
Rusk County farmer and long-time Ladysmith mine opponent Roscoe Churchill, 80, said, "When you get older you wonder if your fight will be carried on, and I feel it is being carried on....We are here to say to Governor Thompson, the DNR and PSC that the people have spoken, and it is time that they listened!".
For more information or to get involved on mining and other Indigenous/environmental issues in the western Great Lakes region, contact the Midwest Treaty Network at (800) 445-8615, or log on its website. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to "MTN/PC Foundation," and sent to Midwest Treaty Network, 731 State Street, Madison WI 53703.
*--On Marissa Tucker's CD "If I Had a Penny," Midland
Records, Prime Productions, 1997. Call 414-697-7706 to order.