Double actions against the g8 in Portland, Oregon

ACTION #1: Anti-Borders Action

The Leaders of the 8 most powerful countries, who maintain global inequality, war, and starvation will meet behind closed doors to plot
our future for us at a luxurious health resort in Germany June 6th thru 8th. There has been a call out for international days of action
across the globe to coincide with the mobilization against the G8. Hundred of thousands of people from around the world are converging on
Germany, even some of our neighbors in Portland.

We hear that call and come together in Portland as decentralized and autonomous groups to say No to the G8, No to there Lies, and No More
Tricks. They are eight, we are six billion...lets start acting like it and reject their chaotic system of exploitation and control.

We meet at the INS Office to say No to the Border fence being built, ICE Raids, and to reject the idea that multi-national corporations can
freely cross borders to exploit people and steal land. While the people are being contained by borders, forced off lands and controlled
by militarization.

Friday, June 8th at 5:30pm
INS Office
NW Broadway

Supported by: Cascadia Rising Tide, Portland Sin Fronteras, Food not bombs, and Students for Unity.

ACTION #2: Anti-Dam Action

On Friday, Stop La Parota PDX launched its campaign to pressure companies with ties to the financing of La Parota Dam to sever all connections to the destructive project.

Activists held a colorful demonstration in front of the Lloyd Center Sears to demand the Sears Holding Corporation cut all ties to Grupo Carso. Grupo Carso is the financial umbrella of Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim Helú, who has publicly declared that Grupo Carso subsidiaries will be involved in every aspect of La Parota.

La Parota, a 765-megawatt hydroelectric dam slated for the Papagayo River in Guerrero, Mexico, is a classic infrastructure expansion project resulting from trade agreements like NAFTA and the FTAA in the worst of ways. The dam would submerge 43,000 acres of forest and farmland along the river’s banks, displacing at least 25,000 mostly indigenous campesinos (subsistence farmers) from the Communal Lands of Cacahuatepec. Already, indigenous resistance to the dam has been met with imprisonment and murder.

Far from being a renewable energy source, sediment accumulation limits the electricity generating capacity of dams to 50-100 years. Meanwhile, large dams are significant contributors to global warming. As the tremendous biomass of a tropical forest decays beneath a reservoir, it gives off greenhouse gases. Dams in tropical regions have been shown to produce anywhere from two to 40 times as much carbon dioxide as an equivalent coal-fired plant.

The reason for this blatant exploitation and ecocide? Electricity generated from La Parota would be incorporated into an international energy grid and used to power factory-centers, maquiladoras (export-oriented sweatshop corridors). The phenomenon of seizing indigenous lands and then forcing inhabitants into working for suboptimal wages is not ‘economic development,’ but a modern version of colonialism.

The CFE made no attempt to include the campesinos in the decision-making process regarding La Parota. In July 2003, without giving notice or seeking permission, the commission simply sent in machinery to build two tunnels to divert the flow of the Papagayo. Farmers from surrounding communities responded with road blockades and encampments to keep CFE equipment out of the area. The ongoing roadblocks have been largely successful, and the CFE has been forced to pull out most of its equipment In Chilpancingo, the state capital, the protesters were 30,000 strong. Their message was clear: “We are ready to die for the land.”

The demonstration was held both in solidarity with the resisting campesinos as well as the resistance in Germany to the G8. La Parota is a manifestation of the global system of oppression created by organizations like the G8 to further the interests of transnational corporations at the cost of people and environmental integrity.