Koto Ward Forcibly Evicts Homeless Persons from Tatekawa River Bed Park: Please Add Your Voice to Petition!

Don't kick us out. Tents are the fortresses of life!
From our friend, student/translator/activist extraordinaire Rayna Rusenko:

Dear Friends,

The Sanya Welfare Center in Tokyo sent me the statement below, protesting a planned eviction, on the morning of February 8th. All individuals and organizations that support this statement should send their names to the Sanya Welfare Center (information given below).

I would also like to add an update. I was delayed in sending this notice because on the afternoon of the 8th, the planned eviction was carried out by guards, ward officials, and police. Homeless persons and their allies who had been protecting the space were forcibly pushed and carried out, and the tent structure belonging to the elderly man was destroyed.

This same man was “detained” in the park following the eviction, surrounded by guards and isolated from his friends. When folks from the Sanya Welfare Center tried to convince the ward officials and guards to leave him alone and let him join his friends, they refused to budge. Ultimately, due to the stress of the situation, a doctor and then an ambulance had to be called for the elderly man. Again, no one he knew was allowed to accompany him to the hospital. Instead, police rode with him in the ambulance. The man is in stable condition. His friends and allies are still in the park protesting the eviction.

If you would like to add your name and/or your organization's name to the petition below, please email the Sanya Welfare Center at san-ya@sanpal.co.jp with the below information.

1) (For Individuals) Name & Affiliation (if applicable):
----or-----
(For organizations) Name of Organization:
2) Can this name be made public? Yes / No

3) Personal message:

Anyone who would like to contact the responsible parties (the Koto Ward mayor and the Waterside and Green Parks Department) directly can reach them at:

Koto Ward mayor
Public Hearing Section
Public Relations Division, Policy Management Department
Tel: +81-3-3647-2364
Fax: +81-3-36474133
Email: https://www.city.koto.lg.jp/pub/req/mail.php?fcon_id=22032 (Online form only, see translated image below for fill-out instructions)

Waterside and Green Parks Department
TEL：03-3647-2538
FAX：03-3647-9287
Email: https://www.city.koto.lg.jp/pub/req/mail.php?staff_id=10371 (Online form only, see translated image below for fill-out instructions)



We also recommend sending your opinion to your local Japanese Embassy.

Feel free to forward/share this information.

(Original Japanese statement can be found here: http://san-ya.at.webry.info/201202/article_9.html

Warmest regards,

Rayna
r.rusenko@live.com

Statement Protesting Koto Ward’s Forcible Eviction of Homeless Persons from Tatekawa River Bed Park

Moves to forcibly evict homeless persons from Tatekawa River Bed Park in Tokyo’s Koto Ward are presently underway. Officials began paperwork for administrative subrogation (a legal procedure for eviction) against 15 structures located in the park at the end of last year and, on February 6th, an order to carry out the subrogation was issued against the last remaining tent, which belongs to an elderly man.

Last month, over 100 guards and workers were mobilized and violence was used to enforce the construction of a fence around the 15 structures belonging to other individuals who had already been forced out by the subrogation. Along with this, without any advance explanation, one-third of the park has been completely shut off. Confined by a fence, the remaining man has been unable to leave to go to work.

Living structures built by homeless persons in public areas such as along riversides and in parks perfectly encapsulate the paradox of unemployment and poverty in our society. They are a form of resistance, as well as a practical solution. Attempting to “reclaim” parks by simply evicting these structures without ever looking to the social and economic problems that force people to live on the street not only fails to create real answers, but also deprives countless numbers of poor people of what meager shelter they have, making survival that much harder. We, the undersigned, stand opposed to the evictions and make the following demands.

1. End the closure of the park immediately

Since January 27th, one-third of Tatekawa River Bed Park (comprising roughly 1km) has been sealed off so that no one may pass through. Homeless persons staying in the park have been locked in by a fence with only restricted entry and exit and, as a result, have been unable to go to work. Tatekawa River Bed Park covers approximately 2.5 km of land and serves as a very important community road for residents that live in the area. Numerous residents have been inconvenienced by the closure of this large portion of the park.

Furthermore, there is no legal basis for the closure whatsoever. The Head of the Waterside and Green Parks Department, Director Araki, has said that “I decided to go through with the closure at my own discretion.” Koto Ward has closed the park as a way of hiding the fact that they are in fact carrying out a hurried eviction of homeless persons from the park, and to hide the presence of the protesting homeless persons from the public. However, for the ward it is too late. The problem is already clear to anyone. The ward needs to immediately open the park to the public once more.

2. The ward must apologize for the violent acts of the guards and its ward employees

On January 27th, ward employees and guards acted violently as they oversaw the construction of a fence designed to close off one-third of the park. They lashed out against homeless persons and allies who were protesting and requesting an explanation for the sudden closure by punching, kicking, and dragging them to remove them.

In particular, the violence employed by one guard employed under Tosnet stood out; he went as far as to remove his uniform badge before engaging in abusive acts that clearly violate regulations set out in the Private Security Industry Act. Ward officials on site not only ordered the guards to act in this way but also displayed considerable malicious intent and initiated a number of violent responses of their own.

A majority of the guards are actually irregular workers burdened by poor labor conditions and low wages. The fact that the ward would use these impoverished workers to forcibly remove another group of impoverished persons from the park is extremely problematic.

The park must apologize for the violent tactics ordered and used by its staff and the guards.

3. Stop the administrative subrogation against homeless persons’ living structures

On February 6th, an administrative subrogation order was issued for the park premises—where only one structure remains. The subrogation date is given as between February 6-10. The man living in this structure is in his mid-60s and is not in the best of health. He is willing to relocate but making the preparations at his own pace and it is not clear whether he will be able to finish within the time frame given. It’s pointless to carry out the forcible eviction of this one man under these conditions.

Also, new warning letters were posted on structures left behind by the other individuals who had been forced out from the park at the end of January. Does this mean that the ward tends to carry out an eviction against these structures? What does the ward think that they are gaining by repeatedly using the same tactics? We demand that the ward puts a halt to the present subrogation and abstains from conducting any more in the future.

4. Stop using fear to negatively influence people’s opinions of homeless persons

On its homepage, Koto Ward explains the closure of Tatekawa River Bed Park as necessary “in order to protect the security of residents”. However, for a number of years already homeless persons staying within the park have developed friendly relations with local residents; greetings are exchanged and some residents share clothing and/or food.

To use violence to close the park and then blame the presence of tent structures for “the problem” threatens spoil the relationship between homeless persons and neighborhood residents. In Koto Ward, there are a number of incidents of youth attacking homeless persons.

On December 11, 2011 one man sleeping in a Koto Ward park was attacked and severely injured with three ribs broken. By engaging in acts like forcibly evicting homeless persons from the park and insinuating that homeless persons are “dangerous”, the ward is only stoking “anti-homeless” flames that underlie attacks on homeless persons. The ward needs to immediately put an end to such fear mongering.

5. The ward must be held accountable for the underhanded nature of this eviction, and agree to direct and serious discussion

Prior to this recent series of evictions, the Riverside and Green Department at the Koto Ward Office had repeatedly assured that they would hold talks and refrain from using force. Assured by these promises, homeless persons in the park had moved to a new location in the park so as to not get in the way of construction.

Little did anyone realize, procedures for the issuance of an administrative subrogation for an eviction were already underway. To act in such a way is extremely underhanded.

The ward must take responsibility and apologize for acting in such an immoral fashion. It must also engage in discussion regarding the current situation while assuring the public that it will never again undertake such deceitful practices.

6. We object to local re-development that drives out the poor

The eviction at Tatekawa River Bed Park is taking place as redevelopment is unfolding in surrounding areas.

In preparation for the opening of Sumida Ward’s Sky Tree in May, there has been a pronounced increase in evictions of homeless persons and environmental “upgrading” in Koto and other neighboring wards.

In Sumida Ward, guards are known to harass homeless persons by threatening, “We’ll have you out of here by the time the Sky Tree opens.” The construction that is currently taking place in Tatekawa River Bed Park is part of a concentrated effort to lure new tourists that will be brought by the Sky Tree.

The newly built Kayak & Canoe Facility at Tatekawa River Bed Park, entrusted to a private corporation, will charge recreation fees. In effect, as our traditional public commons is being chipped away and sold off to private corporations, the poor are being thrown out.

This is nothing more than an attempt to re-make the city for the wealthy alone. We are opposed to the exclusion of the poor and the creation of needless facilities purely for the sake of re-development.

February 9, 2012

The Association of Homeless People in the Tatekawa River Bed Park Area
Sanya Sogidan / Han Sitsu Jitsu
Sanya Welfare Center for Day-Laborer’s Association

Address:

Sanya Welfare Center for Day-Laborer’s Association
1-25-11, Nihontei, Taito, Tokyo
Tel/Fax: 03-3876-7073

Mail: san-ya@sanpal.co.jp
Blog: http://www.jca.apc.org/nojukusha/san-ya/

twitter @sanyadesu

We won't forget the violence used by Koto ward. Stop trampling on our lives!
(Photos Courtesy of the Mkimpo Ninja Blog)

Global World Food Sovereignty Day: "From Food Monopolies to Food Commons"

( Family garden on an island in the Inland Sea. Photo: JD)
Comprehensive analysis of the engineered global food price hikes, the global food crisis, and how to fix it (agro-ecology, food democracy) at Slow Food International. (The author explains why US Big Ag is pushing so hard to force open markets in Asia (and Africa)): "From Food Monopolies to Food Commons" by Eric Holt-Giménez, Ph.D.:

Calls for food sovereignty, food justice and even “food democracy” are ringing from fields to kitchens around the world. In the face of the recurrent food and diet crises plaguing our planet, farmers, farm and food workers, consumers—politically engaged citizens—are struggling to regain control over their food systems. Why?

Because the “solutions” to these crises offered by governments, agri-food monopolies and multilateral institutions—e.g., more “free” trade, genetically engineered crops and the spread of giant retail chains—brought on the crises to begin with. With a billion people “stuffed” and a billion “starved” on the planet, why do the G-8 countries, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization continue to prescribe catastrophic solutions to catastrophe?

The answer is simple: the oligopolies dominating our global corporate food regime are also in crisis. The record profits and massive wealth they accumulated during the 2008 and 2011 food price inflation crises must be re-invested in order to maintain a compound rate of growth... Where can they re-invest their vast amounts of accumulated wealth? The monopolies have what is called a crisis of over-accumulation.

Who will solve the crisis of over-accumulation for the monopolies? The poor.

The poor are not getting any richer, but as a group they are growing at the rate of 8% and because they make up nearly half of the world’s population they offer a vast, expanding market opportunity for the agri-food monopolies. With the promise of “saving the world from hunger,” these corporations are now busy leveraging public development funds of northern governments to open new markets in Africa and Asia. Foreign food and development aid—which is fuelled by public money—is being directed to poor countries so that they can buy GM grain, fertilizers, pesticides, and genetic engineered seeds from the northern monopolies.

Many studies and reports have shown that agroecology is the best answer to hunger and climate change in the Global South. Poor countries also have to be allowed to protect their own agriculture. The oligopolies controlling our food systems are not solving the problem of hunger—rather, hunger is being used to solve the problem of over-accumulation for the oligopolies...

Over the last three decades the waves of neoliberal globalization has not only ruined local and regional food systems...

Food sovereignty, food justice and food democracy are movements of people that seek other solutions. They seek to re-open public spaces of decision so that people rather than monopolies decide what we eat, how it is grown, and how the multi-trillion dollar wealth of our world food systems is distributed. How can our movements make sure that our public resources are used for the public good rather than monopoly interests? By re-establishing the public sphere within our food systems—by taking back the “food commons.”

A food commons is not only a physical place where food is produced, processed, sold or consumed; it is also a social space where decisions are made in the interest of the common good. Whenever food activists take back a part of the food system in the interest of the common good, they are constructing a food commons. This is why food sovereignty as an organizing concept and precondition for food justice, food democracy and the right to food is so important: it implies a space that is sovereign to the corporate food regime. It is a space in which people—not corporations—decide...

The social construction of food commons is taking place around the world in the nooks and crannies of the existing corporate food regime. Little by little, the different experiences of community gardens, fair trade, community service agriculture, food policy councils, farmer’s movements and consumer movements are slowly converging in their efforts to build a better food system.

Read the entire article here.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars showing at theatres throughout Japan

Water, water every where,
nor any drop to drink...

This epic line from the Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes the ironic doom of sailors lost at sea, surrounded by water, none of which can quench their deadly thirst.

We, too, are like those very crew members, lost to thickening seas of polluted, plastic soup, due to our negligence and abuse of the mother of life as we know it--Water. This way of life is leading us to a global water crisis.

Award winning, Blue Gold: World Water Wars takes us straight to the source of the water crisis by exploring how U.S., Canadian, British, French, and Japanese multinational corporations--by trying to privatize water as a commodity--are polluting and diverting water resources at the expense of local communities, resuling in large-scale desertification and wars fought over the most precious resource on our planet.

According to Michael Quinion at World Wide Words, "water wars" are:

...a type of conflict (most probably a form of guerrilla warfare) due to an acute shortage of water for drinking and irrigation. About 40 per cent of the world’s populations are already affected to some degree, but population growth, climate change and rises in living standards will worsen the situation: the UN Environment Agency warns that almost 3 billion people will be severely short of water within 50 years. Possible flash points have been predicted in the Middle East, parts of Africa and in many of the world’s major river basins, including the Danube. The term has been used for some years to describe disputes in the southern and south-western United States over rights to water extraction from rivers and aquifers.

Yet, there is hope. Including interviews of New Delhi-based environmental activist and author, Vandana Shiva, Oscar Olivera, the industrial worker and spokesperson for Coalition in Defense of Water and Life who led the Bolivian uprising against US multinational Bechetal, and countless other inspiring individuals and organizations, Blue Gold provides us with realistic examples of how we can reverse the water crisis if we act now.

By taking the viewer into the lives of those struggling, often successfully, for their basic rights to water, the film challenges us to critique and challenge economic and political systems that forfeit our lives to global corporations. As Blue Planet Project founder, Maude Barlow proclaims: “This is our revolution, this is our war”.

Blue Gold will be showing in theaters all throughout Japan in April.

Click on the link to each theater for more information:Kanazawa @ Cine Monde (4/17-23 at 12:30pm)

• Kobe @ Art Village Center (4/17-19 at 8pm; 4/ 21-23 at 8pm; 4/3-5 /1 at 820pm)
• Kyoto @ Minamikaikan (4/5-9 at 11am; 4/10-14 at 12:35pm)
• Osaka @ 7th Art Center (4/4-9 at 4:55pm; 4/10, 12-16 at 6:55pm)
• Tokyo at Uplink (3/27-4/ 7 at 10:45am & 2:55pm; 4/10th- ? at 11am)
• Toyama at Forza (4/4-9 - 3:35pm; 4/10-16 -5:50pm)

Understanding the need to spread knowledge about the water crisis, producer Sam Bozzo, who created the film at his own expense, has agreed to allow the film to be downloaded as a DVDRip from the Pirate Bay and One BitTorrent. However, this blogger requests that downloaders support his work with a donation that can be made through the Blue Gold website.

For more on water resources:

• Watch The Story of Bottled Water and 'take back the tap!'
• Read the pdf: BLUE GOLD: The Global Water Crisis and the Commodificatin of the World's Water Supply
• Visit Water Justice Now! The Blue Planet Project, Water Wars World Wide
• Follow Blue Gold Water News Daily
• Take control back of your watershed with the Blue Gold Action Plan

Gavan McCormack on a clash of civilizations: Nuchi du takara (Okinawan sanctity of life) versus violent militarism

In "Okinawa's Turbulent 400 Years," published at Japan Focus in January of this year, engaged scholar Gavan McCormack, author of Client State: Japan in America's Embrace,writes about the value conflicts underpinning citizen resistance to US militarism in Okinawa. He interweaves his analysis with background on the US military occupation of Okinawa and insights on related short-sighted, short-term, destructive capitalistic growth processes that threaten not only the well-being of Okinawans, but also the survival of everyone on our planet.

McCormack says the reason for Okinawans' passionate resistance of US militarism (and Japanese militarism before that) stems from the culture's pacifism rooted in a life-affirmative ethos:

Throughout Okinawa’s 400 years, two sets of contradiction have persisted: between Okinawan deep-seated peace orientation and the imposed priority to war and subjection by force, and between Okinawa’s multicultural and open, Asia-Pacific universalism on the one hand and “mainland” Japan’s dominant identity construct, defined by rejection of Asia and assertion of superiority, in forms often constructed around the emperor as divine, on the other.

According to one story, probably apocryphal, as King Sho Nei in 1609 chose non-resistance to the superior force of Satsuma, he uttered the words Nuchi du takara. Whether or not he ever spoke them, these words have come to be understood as a statement of Okinawan value. Sho Nei’s submission did not mean surrender. Facing physically superior opponents, submission was unavoidable, but conscience and value were not to be appropriated by force.

In two particular respects, this essay explores the contradiction between Nuchi du takara, the affirmation of the supremacy or sanctity of life, as the expression of Okinawan values and the competing principles imposed from outside: the priority to force (in the extreme form war, and therefore death over life) on the one hand, and the priority to growth, expansion, conquest, extended under fundamentalist capitalism to involve the appropriation and exploitation of nature itself over stability and conservation, on the other.

The US bases on Okinawa only contribute to 5% of the prefecture's economy.  They're not needed, and, in fact, impede the development of tourism and other industries.  Moreover, The US and Japan have repeatedly told Okinawans that the next new agreement means the end of bases. But after a string of broken promises, Okinawans now see through the US tactic of "bait and switch." In 1972, the US and Japan promised the "reversion" of Okinawa to quiet protests. This resulted in no change. And the latest, moving Futenma to Camp Schwab doesn't do away with pollution, noise, and assaults in Okinawa, it just moves them to another part of the island that has been relatively untouched since the US began their occupation:

Okinawans had imagined that “reversion” would bring them under the constitution, release them from the parameters of force and restore something of their ancient ideal of demilitarized, peaceful islands. It was not to be. The Okinawan people would never have chosen a permanent military identity, so the political challenge facing the Japanese state has been to neutralize the opposition to militarization and to secure the compliance of the Okinawan people to an agenda whose core is priority to the US alliance over the constitution, to military over civil or democratic principle, and to the interests of the Japanese state over those of the Okinawan people. Reversion, therefore, had to be built on deception and trumpery, bribery and lies. The post-reversion state used smoke and mirrors to try to create a theatre capable of deceiving and persuading on a mass scale.

The deceptions were thinly concealed. What was called “reversion” was actually purchase, at a cost greater even than Japan had paid a few years earlier to compensate South Korea for four decades of colonialism; “return” was also “non-return” since the bases remained (and Japan would pay the US to continue occupying them) and those who attempted to expose the truth of the deal were pursued mercilessly and their truths denounced as lies (continuing to this day, despite the emergence of proof of their truth from the US archives). When mass discontent against the bases threatened to boil over, a new round of “reversion” was promised, but again deception was the keynote: “reversion” actually meant substitution, modernization, expansion; the scale of the new works was concealed by calling them a “heliport,” and the expression “seiri shukusho” (base reduction) was chosen to try to convey the impression that overall that was what was happening.

Since Nago was the centre of opposition and the popular struggle centred there was able to block and frustrate the state design for a full decade, 1996 to 2005, money was poured into it to try to divide, weaken and corrupt it. Nobody, even the Governor, could openly state a preference for construction of a new base for the US over preservation of Oura Bay, with its newly discovered blue coral and its dugong colony, or the adjacent Yambaru forest and its creatures, so the Governor adopted the tortuous logic of arguing that the planned Cape Henoko structure would not really be a “new” base because it would in part be constructed on the site of an existing one.

US military bases in Okinawa (click on it for a larger version.( Image: Japan Focus)

McCormack charges that "Chicago-style" neoliberalism as the ultimate cause for Okinawa's continuous occupation for over 400 years:

Capitalism in 1609 was in its very early, mercantilist stage, but that same ruthless drive, expansionism, and search for profit that drove the European exploration, conquest, and colonial expansion has continued to morph through different phases, eventually becoming the dog-eat-dog neo-liberalism whose bankruptcy has become so plain today. The Edo state tried in vain to resist it and to preserve intact its own social and economic order. With the modern, Meiji state, Japan launched full pelt into its own version of expansion at all costs, first colonial, then post colonial...

In its most untrammelled, pure, market and profit-driven mode, “Chicago”-style capitalism has brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. Even more importantly, it has stretched the fabric of the earth to breaking point, putting at risk our survival as a species. The earth warms, the polar ice caps melt, the glaciers and the coral reefs shrink, the seas rise, the deserts advance, the polar bear, the tiger (and countless other species of land, sea, and sky) are endangered. Our present trajectory offers the prospect of gradual decline into chaos, punctuated by water wars, oil wars, food wars, and epidemics.