I feel some relief this morning by two newsletters from U.S. activists that arrived in my email.
One is from “Stop The Coup 2025,” a campaign to fight Project 2025 (the Republicans’ plan for the next Trump administration). It has a toolkit for community organizers that includes a section, “Spotlight on Risk Preparedness/Criminalization/Underground Survival Tips.”It discusses the importance of organizations and individuals taking steps now to prepare and assess their vulnerability to Project 2025’s agenda and learning from LGBTQIA+ activists in other places who have been forced to live and organize under the radar due to state-sanctioned criminalization.
Here’s a bit more information about Project 2025:
Project 2025 has a radical anti-democracy, anti-diversity, anti-gender agenda to:
systematically dismantle the federal government – a soft coup
give the next Republican president new “supreme powers” – an autocracy
use Executive Orders to “legally” reverse many of our civil rights
use the military to help clamp down on domestic dissent
criminalize & erase gender & LGBTQIA+ identity from government protection
reverse racial equality, attack diversity, and reverse environmental gains
replace secular education with Christian theocracy and a pro-life agenda
recruit and train 20,000 conservatives for government jobs
Use “Schedule F” to remove 50,000 civil servants
Require government “Loyalty Pledges” to an extremist right-wing agenda
Reverse historic US defense policy of deterrence to offense
Require US foreign policy, USAID to align with pro-life agenda
LAUNCH THEIR 180-DAY ADMINISTRATION TAKEOVER ON January 20, 2025
The other newsletter that brought hope to my inbox today came from Codepink, the U.S. network of feminist peace activists. I’ve worked with them in the past to counter the harm caused by U.S. sanctions in Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere, and some of my colleagues have worked with them for peace in the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. Part of the message today:
We don’t want to waste your time with platitudes about how everything will be okay or even talk about the breakdown of the election. We think it’s more useful to go off what we know for certain now: Donald Trump is going to be president in January.
But, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. support for Israel, and don’t want their tax dollars funding weapons that murder innocent people and destroy the earth. A greater majority of Americans oppose the U.S. starting new wars. It’s okay to feel deflated and discouraged, but don’t forget that the people are on our side – all we have to do is reach them.
We will continue to do what we have always done: educate by exposing horrific violence carried out by those in power, activate a movement for peace, and cultivate local communities that represent the world we want to live in. Solidarity is our best friend. Finding new and creative ways to scratch at power is our path forward.
Political signs of the times at a rest stop near Junction, Texas.
Last time, and this time: concern for rights of refugees
Back in 2016, I was in Antofagasta, Chile, when I learned that Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton and won the U.S. election. The news was unexpected, just like now.
I was in Chile’s far north to meet and show solidarity with Chilean Methodists who were working with migrants who had come from Colombia and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Haiti.
Indeed, a great deal of my personal and professional life has been devoted to work with refugees and other people who are forced to flee their homelands because of various political, economic and environmental causes.
Caravans of migrants from many countries continue to cross Chiapas on their way north, holding out hope that they might score a formal U.S. refugee application before January 20 when Trump, who promises mass deportations, will take power. (Images: La Jornada, Mexico).
Now I am in north-western Chiapas, having crossed in recent weeks several of the “red states” where support for Trump is strong.
In the wake of the election, pundits point out that Trump weaponized ‘fake news.’ He played to machismo and racists and to people who haven’t a clue what being Trans even means. That he won over a smart, articulate, experienced woman of colour after being convicted of crimes and successfully sued for sexual assault is an indictment of U.S. democracy.
Some, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, point as well to the Democratic Party establishment which again defended the status quo. “It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
As ever, don’t expect the Democratic Party to save us. Now is the time for grassroots action.
For Natasha Lennard, writing in The Intercept, the answer is radical action from the grassroots:
“Far-right policies and parties tend to win the day when so-called centrists take up conservative platforms to purportedly capture disaffected white voters and thus keep the far-right at bay; the upshot is treating conservative nationalism as the fulcrum of all politics. This is what the Harris campaign did, particularly when it came to immigration. At best, as with Britain’s currently ruling Labour Party, the Tories might have lost, but right-wing politics have been reconfigured as the normalized center.”
The office of El Salvador’s Attorney General has decided to appeal the acquittal Oct. 18 of five community leaders, a move quickly rejected by their community and by Salvadoran and global organizations that have worked in solidarity for more than two decades to reject a proposed gold mine that threatened water resources.
Images: ACAFREMIN (the Central American Alliance Against Mining) and CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador)
The office of El Salvador’s Attorney General has decided to appeal the acquittal Oct. 18 of five community leaders, a move quickly rejected by their community and by Salvadoran and global organizations that have worked in solidarity for more than two decades to reject a proposed gold mine that threatened water resources.
Leonel Herrera, a journalist covering the case for Diario Co Latino, calls the decision to appeal “reprehensible.” Authorities should use their time and resources “to investigate true war crimes, beginning with the massacres committed against Santa Marta which took the lives of hundreds of civilians—mostly women, the elderly and children.”
This was never a true criminal case, Herrera added, but rather “a spurious accusation invented to persecute a group of former guerrilla fighters not for war crimes, but rather for what they do now: care for the water, protect the ecosystem and attain the continuity of lives gravely threatened by the possible re-activation of mining projects.”
We reject the appeal of the Attorney General’s Office and demand that the acquittal of our environmental leaders be upheld
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) remains determined to prevent legality and justice from prevailing for the community leaders of Santa Marta and ADES, who were definitively acquitted last October 18 by the Sentencing Court of Sensuntepeque, Cabañas. For this reason, an appeal has been filed before the Criminal Chamber of Cojutepeque. Despite multiple calls to respect the acquittal of the environmental activists of Cabañas, the Prosecutor’s Office seeks to reverse Sentencing Court’s ruling, which is in accordance with the law and congruent with the principles of due process. The appeal is characterized by a lack of valid legal argumentation and by the disrespectful way in which the representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office refer to the honorable sentencing judges. In this sense, we ask the magistrates of the Criminal Chamber of Cojutepeque not to admit the appeal and to ratify the decision of the Sentencing Court of Sensuntepeque, which has acted independently, in accordance with the law and without being pressured by extrajudicial factors that conspire to condemn the defenders of water, the environment and life threatened by the possible reactivation of mining. In this regard, it is worth remembering that the ruling of the Sensuntepeque Sentencing Court responds to the mandate of the Cojutepeque Criminal Chamber, which on two occasions transferred the decision of whether or not the alleged acts constituted crimes against humanity or war crimes to the Sensuntepeque Sentencing Court. In accordance with this mandate, the sentencing judges analyzed the case and unanimously determined that the alleged crimes presented by the prosecution did not meet the definition of a crime against humanity or a war crime, as established in the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions, respectively. Therefore, they ruled that the criminal action was inadmissible due to the statute of limitations of the alleged crimes and decreed a definitive dismissal for the defendants. We alert the country and the world of this attempt by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office to continue using the judicial system to persecute environmental activism and manipulate restorative and transitional justice to criminalize environmental defenders who warn about the serious dangers of mining extractivism.
Definitive freedom for the community leaders of Santa Marta and ADES! Yes to Life, No to Mining!
Sadly, it’s not unusual for peace activists and the defenders of ecology or Indigenous rights to find themselves facing trumped-up criminal charges. It’s a bit weird when it happens to members of a modest community development organization in rural El Salvador.
But that’s what has happened to five people whose organization, the Santa Marta Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES). They’re people that I have know for more than 20 years.
This past week, five ADES members have been on trial, accused of a murder that supposedly occurred long ago during El Salvador’s civil war. No one, except zealous defenders of the government of Nayib Bukele, believes they are guilty of that crime. Rather: they built an alliance that reached around the globe, preventing a gold mine from operating in their Cabañas department and eventually winning a ban on metals mining in the whole country. While it is true that the five defendants were FMLN combatants during the 1980-1992 civil war, they are protected by the internationally-recognized Peace Agreement and the National Reconciliation Law, both signed in 1992.
Defence lawyers will present final arguments on Monday (Oct. 14) and a verdict could be issued as soon as Tuesday (Oct. 15). The next few days are a CRITICAL time to raise the visibility as much as we can to try to avoid a grave injustice.
Here below you will find a statement from observers of the trial and some suggestions about how you can show your solidarity.
Statement of the international observer delegation on the ongoing trail of the Santa Marta and ADES water defenders
October 11, 2024
Following three days of observing the trial of the five Santa Marta and ADES environmentalists, the international delegation convened by International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador releases the following statement:
San Salvador, we are international observers from King’s College Western University in Canada, Dartmouth College and UCLA Law School in the United States, and the Autonomous University of Mexico City in Mexico. At the conclusion of the third day of the trial, we offer the following observations:
We witnessed a trial that, formally, appears to have followed most international standards of due process, however, the proceedings transgressed those standards on numerous occasions. We agree with the defense that sufficient proof was not presented to convict the five defendants. Based on what was presented in the courtroom, we believe that the only just resolution is the acquittal of all five defendants. Failure to acquit signals the lack of presumption of innocence and, therefore, the lack of an independent judiciary in El Salvador.
For example, the Attorney General´s communications team violated the gag order imposed by the judges, exposing the identities of witnesses and observers, as well as depicting the defendants in ways that assumed their guilt across social media. We fear that this violation of the gag order without a court reprimand represents a lack of procedural impartiality. Additionally, while journalists were allowed to access court grounds on the final day of the trial, we believe this was a last minute measure to rectify the earlier breach of the gag order by the Attorney General. We lament that the measure was not announced widely to members of the wider press who were respecting the gag order. Throughout the proceedings, the independent press was not allowed to take photos or videos inside the courtroom.
Additionally, we observed an overly aggressive strategy by the lawyers representing the Attorney General that included berating and a using of their bodies to put pressure on witnesses. For this behavior, they were repeatedly cautioned and corrected by the tribunal. Despite warnings and requests by the judges, the Attorney General´s lawyers ignored directions, interrupted procedures, and failed to respect courtroom decorum.
At least one defendant was mistreated by the police who deprived him of sleep and food. Rather than transferring him directly to his residence following the day’s proceedings, he was held at a police substation and verbally abused, only to arrive home hours later underfed and exhausted. The following morning, police arrived at his home unexpectedly early and denied him a proper breakfast. We witnessed the visible fatigue and inability to focus on the proceedings from all of the accused. Mistreatment remains a concern as the defendants are of advanced age with a variety of preexisting conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. The well-being of the accused must be prioritized to ensure a fair trial.
Outside of the courtroom, we witnessed overwhelming support for the defendants from international human rights organizations, the Santa Marta community, Salvadoran civil society, and social movement organizations. Many have concluded that the case is an attempt by the Salvadoran government to intimidate the environmental movement that resulted in the landmark national ban on metallic mining in 2017. For us, the incessant pursuit of a conviction by the Attorney General’s lawyers despite a lack of evidence, cannot be unlinked from these broader politics and concerns against communities resisting the encroachment of extractive projects.
While we await the closing arguments and the tribunal’s decision, and based on our observations, we maintain that justice can only be served by a ruling that affirms the innocence of the accused. The community of Santa Marta too, aggrieved and impacted by this lengthy ordeal, must be presented with restitution and steps must be taken to ensure lasting transitional justice.
Given the mistreatment described against one of the defendants above, we recommend that the rest of the proceedings, particularly the logistics of transportation, are monitored by the Office of the Ombudsperson for the Defense of Human Rights in El Salvador (PDDH) to ensure their personal and physical integrity.
Aideé Tassinari, Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México
Yvette Borja, Faculty of Law, University of California Los Angeles
Jorge Cuéllar, Dartmouth College
Bernie Hammond, King’s College, University of Western Ontario
What you can do:
Check out these suggestions from the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES):
Social media solidarity posts: Make the case visible on social media & make sure the community knows we have their back! As the trial approaches, one of the most important things we can do is show the Salvadoran government that all eyes are on them. You can show your solidarity with the Santa Marta 5 by participating in the international social media campaign!
Write a brief statement of solidarity like:
Drop the charges against the Santa Marta 5!
¡Retiren los cargos contra los Santa Marta 5!
International solidarity is with the Santa Marta 5!
The diaspora is watching! Free the #SantaMarta5 of all charges!
Keep El Salvador metallic mining-free!
Take a picture OR make a short video with your sign
Post on social media with the following hashtags: #SantaMartaNoEstaSola #ComunidadSantaMarta #ADESNoEstáSola
Tag the following orgs on Twitter: @stopesmining @acafremin @CSantaMarta1987 @ades_sm@no_mineria_sv @cispes_solidarity (On Facebook: @ComunidadSanta Marta, @Mesa Nacional frente a la Minería Metálica en El Salvador, @International Allies Against Mining, @acafremin, @ADES Santa Marta)
Unwrapping Development 