Exxon/Mobil, the RNC & Widespread Nonviolent Militancy

quoted from: Resistance to War, Occupation, and Empire
Ward Churchill Speaks in Vancouver

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=6088

"Every square inch of terra firma of Turtle Island that purportedly forms this corporate structure, the geographical integrity, the territorial integrity of these mega-States is land that was taken directly from Native people. That consolidation of an internal colonial empire is what it is that makes the outward power projection known as globalization possible now. Of course, it is in itself a part of an earlier phase of globalization. We used to call globalization by its proper name: we called it imperialism. We called it imperialism and we fashioned ourselves to be anti- imperialists, and we took that as a priority, a basic formative aspect of our consciousness."

"So what I'm suggesting to you right now is that in order to combat in an effective fashion this process that now goes under the name of globalization we have consciously to restore our understanding of the necessity of being - as a first priority - anti-imperialist. But we need to be anti-imperialists who have learned from the past mistakes of anti-imperialism, and that is: you don't find the symptoms when you are approximate to the cause. If you want to stop globalization you have to stop it where it lives. You do not purport to be a revolutionary in the context of an internal colonial construction. To be a revolutionary is to overthrow the existing apparatus of the State and replace it with yourselves. If you do that you perpetuate the problem. The State is contingent on its existence both in the United States and in Canada, upon the perpetual colonization, subjugation, subordination, exploitation, expropriation, of Indigenous peoples, it will continue to be illegally occupied territory until the principles of anti-imperialism are applied here not only analytically, but forcefully. The decolonisation of North America is the absolutely essential ingredient in halting the process of globalization and making it impossible ever to resuscitate it again. See it clearly for what it is, and understand the implications."

"You say that this is privileging Native rights, perhaps, beyond that of others? You say I am opposed to sexism as a first priority; you say I am opposed to ageism as a first priority; you say I am opposed to classism; I am a good Marxist, dialectical materialist; I am opposed to something else as being prior in importance to native rights? In the restoration of territory though Native rights, you place things back under Native governance in accordance with the Native tradition, and we were not ageist, we were not sexist, we were not classist, none of these 'isms ' or 'ologies' pertained. In defeating one you defeat the other and that cannot be said by reversing the order and priority of things. First Nations, first priority, first always, that has to be the rule if we are going to understand the beast and ultimately defeat it."

"That said, we are going right to the nerve centre of what makes the thing function and it will not stop functioning painlessly; it will resist. There is not a petition campaign that you can construct that is going to cause the power and the status quo to dissipate. There is not a legal action that you can take; you can't go into the court of the conqueror and have the conqueror announce the conquest to be illegitimate and to be repealed; you cannot vote in an alternative, you cannot hold a prayer vigil, you cannot burn the right scented candle at the prayer vigil, you cannot have the right folk song, you cannot have the right fashion statement, you cannot adopt a different diet, build a better bike path. You have to say it squarely: the fact that this power this force, this entity, this monstrosity called the State maintains itself by physical force, and can be countered only in terms that it itself dictates and therefore understands. That's a deep breath time; that's a real deep breath time."

"It will not be a painless process, but, hey, newsflash: it's not a process that is painless now. If you feel a relative absence of pain, that is testimony only to your position of privilege within the Statist structure. Those who are on the receiving end, whether they are in Iraq, they are in Palestine, they are in Haiti, they are in American Indian reserves inside the United States, whether they are in the migrant stream or the inner city, those who are 'othered' and of colour, in particular but poor people more generally, know the difference between the painlessness of acquiescence on the one hand and the painfulness of maintaining the existing order on the other. Ultimately, there is no alternative that has found itself in reform; there is only an alternative that founds itself - not in that fanciful word of revolution - but in the devolution, that is to say the dismantlement of Empire from the inside out."