Sierra Club and Indigenous Environmental Network sell-out on Tar Sands…

All of these organizations like the Sierra Club and the Indigenous Environmental Network selling-out should have been listed.

These foundation-funded outfits like the Sierra Club and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) have been getting away with these betrayals for years... they stir the pot just enough to get a pay-off and then they retreat from the struggle leaving the local people who are usually very impoverished to defend for themselves.

Here in Northern Minnesota we experienced this with the peat mining that is taking place in the Big Bog... the Indigenous Environmental Network, whose international headquarters is only a short distance from the huge peat-mining operation in the Big Bog, came in and completely disrupted the opposition to the peat mining... this same group is now "working" the movement to stop this terrible environmental destruction in the Tar Sands mining area and the length of the pipelines into the United States... ironically, the Enbridge Pipelines carrying these tar sands and its wastes are going through the very same Big Bog where the peat mining is taking place.

The Big Bog is the largest freshwater aquifer in the "lower forty-eight" and was described by Roger Jourdain who had been the long-time serving Chairman of the Red Lake Nation up here in Northern Minnesota as: "The life-blood of my Nation and my people; destroy the Big Bog and you destroy my people and our Nation."

The lesson to be learned here is that it is up to people in the locations where this environmental destruction is taking place to organize strong local organizations in the first place and keep these parasites looking for corporate hand-outs looking for a way to build their envelope-stuffing organizations who are always looking for tax-deductible contributions to pay their over-paid staffs at the expense of our ecosystems out of these struggles--- we don't need such "help."

In this past Mid-term Election, we defeated the three Democratic Party politicians most responsible for allowing both the peat mining operation and the Enbridge Pipeline carrying the Tar Sands dirty oil and even dirtier waste through northern Minnesota--- it just so happens that these three Democrats were racists and anti-labor, too.

The three Democrats we successfully worked to defeat are:

* Long-time (30-years) U.S. Congressman James Oberstar

* State Senator Mary Olson

* Minnesota State Representative Brita Sailer

The Sierra Club and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) supported all three of these candidates.

Among our next steps will be political and electoral initiatives to elect real environmental and labor friendly politicians to these positions through a combination of activities inside and outside of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party as the Democratic Party here in Minnesota is called... we will work towards electing people of the progressive and socialist "farmer-labor" thinking... if we can't accomplish this inside the MNDFL we will go outside of the MNDFL... most likely it will be a little of each.

Unfortunately, the Green Party and other "left" parties have stood aloof of these struggles on the environmental, labor and human rights fronts up here in Northern Minnesota but a new political party (Warriors for Justice which combines the thinking of Roger Journdain with that of some of the great leaders of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party like Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson and the late Rudy Perpich and Paul Wellstone) has been initiated which has accomplished quite a bit so far... including being the primary mover behind the election of Democrat Mark Dayton who was elected Minnesota's new Governor during the same Election where Oberstar, Olson and Sailer were defeated.