Maude Barlow- continued

To solve the ecological crisis we face and replace it with sustainable food and resource policies, we must disrupt the power of the world’s elite, a dominant social strata that Kempf accuses of having “no drive other than greed, no ideal other than conservatism, no dream other than technology.” I would not be so harsh. I think there are many in that elite wanting to be part of the solution. – I know the private sector in this room is deeply committed to a true solution. But to truly bring about meaningful and long term change, the private sector must help us to bring the rule of law to the free-for-all now called the global economy. Martin Luther King said, “It is true that legislation may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless.” The pendulum has swung way too far. It is time for sanity, balance and justice in our international and national policies.

Where will we find the answers? Where will we get the knowledge? Where can we begin? I say, from those not traditionally heard - the people at the bottom of the spectrum. All over the world, local communities are taking back control of their lives, asserting their rights to protect their land, water and livelihood. A fierce resistance to the destruction of water and watersheds and the inequitable distribution of water - the struggle I know best - has grown in every corner of the globe, giving rise to a coordinated and powerful global water justice movement. “Water for all” is the rallying cry of local groups fighting for access to clean water and the life, health and dignity that it brings. To the question, “who owns water?” they say, “no one – it belongs to the earth, all species and future generations.” The demands of the movement are simple but powerful: keep water public; keep it clean; keep it accessible to all. Many of these groups have lived under years of abuse, poverty and hunger. But somehow, the assault on the water Commons has been the great standpoint for millions and has been a catalyst for forging new alliances between groups in the global South and those in the wealthier countries who have not had to face these issues before. Without water there is no life and for many communities around the world, North and South, the struggle over the right to their own local water Commons has become a politically galvanizing milestone.

In Cochabomba Bolivia, after a fierce civil war with their own army, peasants kicked Bechtel’s private water subsidiary out of their country when it had the nerve to charge them for the rain they gathered in cisterns on their roofs. They now run the water company on a non-profit basis. In Rajasthan, India, local tribal people fought their own government to re-introduce ancient water harvesting methods to green the desert, freeing up girls who no longer have to spend hours with their mothers fetching water, to go to school. Last week, Bob Lovelace and the “K16” of the Ardoch Algonquins of Sharbot Lake were released from an Ontario jail for protecting their local watershed from uranium mining contamination. “I think I’m going to go out and put my feet in the grass,” said Lovelace. “It’s been a long time.”

In her wonderful book Hope in the Dark, California activist and writer Rebecca Solnit says the grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know whether they will have any effect, in the people we have not heard from yet. “In this epic struggle between light and dark, it’s the dark side – that of the anonymous, the unseen, the officially powerless, the visionaries and subversives in the shadows that we must hope for” she advises. “Turn your head. Learn to see in the dark. Pay attention to the inventive arenas that exert political power outside that stage or change the contents of the drama onstage. From the places you have been instructed to ignore or rendered unable to see, come the stories that will change the world.“

In closing, please hear the words of a Hopi elder.

“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. This could be a good time! Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Maude Barlow, June 2, 2008 (from CoC website)

http://www.canadians.org/about/Maude_Barlow/CEA2008-speech.html