Broken Canoe

My niece still has a week off from school, so I guess it’s not too late to be publishing my 2017 New Years blog entry! I’ve been pretty inconsistent since I started two years ago, anyway, but one must never give up. Since my key word for this cycle around the sun is “communication,” and not “perfection” or even “discipline,” I will go forward bravely into this new phase, forgiving myself, forgiving others, and trying doggedly to even begin to understand some others.

I started this blog as a bridge between my lives in Brazil and the US, and so far have written all of my other entries from Brazil, but I am now here in California, and it has taken me a long time to get this one out, so although I would like to focus on events in Aracati, where we live in Brazil, I find it appropriate to start out by expressing the growing pains I feel as I am stretched between these continents. I tend to dwell on the differences between the two places, but would just like to share how eerily similar it's been to experience a flat out coup in Brazil, and then to come here to this recent “election" and the political war taking place on my home turf. I heard that Webster’s official word for 2016 is “surreal,” which feels very appropriate to me, and I'm compelled to add - thank God for Meryl Streep!

I’m realizing how privileged I’ve been to dream this dream of equality, democracy, and social and environmental justice. I had my eyes popped open wide recently as I supported a friend’s campaign for representative in the local elections in Aracati, genuinely hoping that maybe a grass roots, popular candidate could bring some hope to the region, when just the opposite was true. The elections there are bought with cash, practically pocket change. The winning candidates had precise budgets for buying just the right amount of votes that they needed, about R$150/vote, (less than US$50.) My friend never had a chance. We are living in a fractal universe. The micro reflects the macro, and vice versa.

But enough doom and gloom. Now, a drop of hope! A few months ago the Fórum Comunitário de Aracati hosted a march for water, in support of a new law and two amendments designed to build a foundation of protection for the local aquifer and guarantee water as a right to local citizens, reinforce a law protecting local preserves, and most significantly, BANNING FRACKING in the county of Aracati. Our Marcha da Agua, planned months in advance and which joined together various local communities, was scheduled to coincide with a city council meeting in which the representatives were to vote on them. We worked with a member of the council who presented them for us, one of three women on the council, and who has recently been elected vice mayor.

The original march was scheduled for August 15, a Monday, as the council always meets on Monday evenings. We made a sweet video inviting people to participate, and called on support from all of the groups associated with the Fórum Comunitário. The Thursday before our march, we were in Aracati and noticed a bunch of people around City Hall, with several police standing guard, and the whole area taped off. A local radio host, who had done his show earlier, was found hanging inside the council chamber in the late morning. As upsetting as it is when someone supposedly commits suicide, I found it particularly upsetting that he had chosen to do it inside City Hall. I tried not think much of it, but have seen too many movies and documentaries to not start making up stories in my mind. Here, I am trying to simply report the sequence of events so that I don’t find myself too far down any rabbit holes, but the following Monday as we were preparing to gather for our March, we found out around noon that the city council meeting that evening had been cancelled as an act of respect for the deceased.

We were able to pull off the march the following week and although some of the people who originally committed to being there were not able to come, we had about a hundred people, many of them students and members of several local kilombolas, communities with a history of resistance in the era of slavery. We marched from one square to another in the city of Aracati, about four blocks away, chanting and displaying our banners. At the square outside of City Hall we had a microphone and various people came up and spoke, some about hardships that they have already faced in their communities from lack of water, others about the political corruption behind this, claiming that the problem is not so much lack of water, but criminal water management, and some young students talking about concern for their future and the need for community involvement and participation. The votes were all unanimous and all three of our proposals were eventually approved, although the law banning fracking took a little while longer as more research was done.

​​It was a positive and educational experience to be involved with these actions, though it feels like a baby step in the grand scheme of things. A friend of ours from 350.org who is fighting globally to ban fracking on all levels, going county by county as well as country by country, and making an appearance at all international climate conferences, told us that if we want to really be sure that fracking doesn’t come to the area, we actually have to find ways to block access on the ground level. If the roads are good enough, they may come and frack anyway. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend watching the films of Josh Fox, who does an excellent job bringing this reality home for us, and even offering suggestions for how to not fall into the deep, dark abyss of pessimism in the face of it all.

Now the Fórum Comunitário is involved with the planning of a larger march which will happen in Fortaleza, a city of more than 2.5 million people about a hundred miles from Canoa Quebrada and Aracati. Joining with Ceará no Clima, a two year old science based organization with whom we worked together participating in a march at a thermoelectric plant earlier in 2016, many will come together to demand justice and protection for our water. As the water protectors in North Dakota hunker down to make it through the freezing winter, people in Ceará, Brazil will be sweating in the streets for the same, basic cause. Ultimately we’re all in the same, big canoe, and it’s pretty clear by now that it’s broken. Our spirits, however, are free to soar, and hope, for all of its audacity, must never die.

#350Brasil #anaflecha #aracati #fracking #forumcomunitariodearacati #thebridge #canoaquebrada