[Ost-announce] Everyone's Downstream: Tar Sands Realities and Resistance

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Everyone's Downstream:
Tar Sands Realities and Resistance

Conference to be held at:
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
November 24-25th, 2007

Everyone’s Downstream will be a conference designed to explore the links 
between oppression and self-determination on many levels: indigenous 
land rights, gender, ecological rights, workers democracy, anti-racism 
and anti-border perspectives as they relate directly to the tar sands of 
Northern Alberta. Speakers from a multitude of indigenous nations, 
social justice groups, and environmental organizations will discuss the 
social impacts of the tar sands on workers, women, indigenous nations, 
ecology, migrant populations, homelessness, and the anti-war movement.

The size of the tar sands issue can seem daunting, but in reality few 
issues have presented an opportunity for a social justice movement to 
truly articulate a different vision of organizing the world that has as 
many entry points, and can provide as large of an impact. The scale and 
scope of the tar sands is huge and has tremendously deep implications 
for the way we approach questions that span the social justice spectrum. 
With a coordinated response involving all sectors of North American 
social justice movements currently impacted by the largest industrial 
project in human history we have the possibility to change the course of 
human and ecological fate like nowhere else.
November 24th will be a series of panel discussion led by our guests. 
November 25th will be a chance for the multitude of groups and 
individuals attending to sit down and discuss a collective way forward. 
Suggested donation $10, NO ONE turned away for lack of funds.

Conference panels & delegates include:
"Literally Downstream"
• Leila Darwish, Sierra Club
• George Poitras, Mikisew Cree First Nation
• Allan Adam, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
• Herb Norwegian, Grand Chief Dehcho First Nations

"Heading out West"
• Lubicon Lake Nation/Little Buffalo (invited, unconfirmed)
• Morris Amos, Gitamaat Village Haisla Nation, Tar Sands Tanker Traffic 
on the West Coast
• Brenda Brochu, Peace River Environmental Society: Nuclear to fuel tar 
sands?
• Oscar Dennis,Tahltan Nation, Klabona Sacred headwaters
• Tara Marsden, Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. Enbridge Gateway Pipeline

"What, where and why: Peak oil and mapping proposed pipelines"
• Tom Keefer, Peak Oil, Class Struggle and the Thermodynamics of Production
• Petr Cizek, Mapping the Tar Sands, The Bigger Picture

"Tar Sands & Human Rights: Exploiting migrants and fueling war”
• Julian Castro Rea, Associate Professor, political science, U of Alberta.
• No One Is Illegal-- Vancouver, migrant rights organizing
• Presenter on connection between tar sands and Middle Eastern wars
• Presenter on direct actions to take against war profiteers

"The human face of the tar sands and resistance"
• Clayton Thomas-Muller, Indigenous Environmental Network
• Sharmeen Khan, the Whiteness of Green
• Jocelyn Saskiw, Adamant Eve: Gender and the Boom
• Albertans Demand Affordable Housing (Adah): the boom and the housing 
crisis
• Representative from Labour in Alberta

"Healthy Relations: practicing solidarity with indigenous struggles"
• Peter Kulchyski , Friends of Grassy Narrows,and working in Denendeh
• Colin Piquette, Friends of the Lubicon Alberta
• Tom Keefer, working in solidarity with Six Nations of the Grand River

"Ongoing organizing: What can we do together?"
planning, networking and organizing together, meeting with one another 
and discussions involving any and all participants and organizers who 
attended or spoke over the prior two days. Getting down to brass tacks.

• Geeta Seeghal, Greenpeace Stop the Tar Sands Campaign
• Clayton Thomas-Muller, introductions and organizing now and in the future

Check back regularly for more details, possible changes and new 
confirmations.
If your organization would like to endorse the event, please get in 
touch with OilSandsTruth.org via the contact form on the website or 
email info at oilsandstruth.org

Brought to you in part by CJSR FM 88, The Parkland Institute, Alberta 
Public Interest Research Group (APIRG) and OilSandsTruth.org

-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
Coordinator, http://oilsandstruth.org
--
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
    --Bertholt Brecht.