Water is Life
Channel: The League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Date: 2021-03-30

For every one of us, globally, water it is a matter of life or death. What has happened to Flint, MI over the past 6 years has brought to the forefront of US consciousness how government officials betray the interests of the people.  Going back generations, the indigenous peoples of the Southwest have experienced this as government-sponsored uranium tailings pollute their water.  As millions of people from Texas to Mississippi boil their water to drink as a result of privatizing public utilities in the wake of the latest winter storms. As native American water protectors fight to stop oil pipelines crossing waterways from the upper Mississippi to Lake Huron. And as water affordability becomes a major question in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago. We are going to focus on Chicago, at the tip of the Great Lakes Region, to address a matter of our survival globally;  we are going to look at how a public resource is increasingly becoming subject to the control of the corporate private property. People active in battles at the grassroots will bring their experience to the table, in order to think about the next steps and solutions.  If anything has a capacity to unify us it is the common requirement that water is life. At a rally commemorating the oil spill at Line 3 near Grand Rapids, MN, a water protector said “with the approaching trial of Derek Chauvin, we uplift the interconnectedness of the struggle to protect treaty rights, clean waters, sacred space, and Indigenous sovereignty with the right of all people to live in a world free of oppression and destruction of the earth.”