New Clear Vision

Direct Action to Protect Holy Peaks Continues

by Klee Benally

On Saturday, August 13th 2011, after a prayerful gathering on the Holy San Francisco Peaks, my friends Mary Sojourner, Rudy Preston and I were arrested by “law enforcement” agents for standing against desecration and eco-cide caused by the Arizona Snowbowl ski area. Since June 16th, 26 arrests have been made during protests when Snowbowl started its current desecration of the Holy Peaks.

As a Snowbowl-hired excavator operator tore into sacred earth, plants, and boulders to extend the wastewater pipeline trench further up the Holy Mountain, 40 people gathered in prayer in a meadow directly across from the excavation. At times, bulldozers and the excavator were no more than 200 feet from the gathering, so the machinery made it nearly impossible for elders to speak. The noise completely disrupted statements and prayers made by those in attendance. (more…)

Then and Now: A Month Before the RNC (2004)

by Victoria Law

Taking New Clear Vision editor Randall Amster up on his challenge to dig up and dust off an old piece of writing, I recently found this essay that I wrote a month before the Republican National Convention was due to hit town in 2004.

I had been feeling paralyzed by the news, by the draconian security measures promised by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, by the added fears as the mother of a small child. I had also been invited to read at a political cabaret in Baltimore that summer. Putting pen to paper reminded me of the importance of struggling to transform the world, especially as the mother of a child who will inherit and live under the policies made (and left unchallenged) now. It also inspired me to push past my fear and, with my daughter in tow (or rather, in stroller), join the week of protests once the Republicans came to town.

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(August 2004, New York City): I have been listening to the news all day. That, in itself, is an unusual occurrence. (more…)