The recent turmoil over the Trans-Texas Corridor brings strange questions to the surface, questions about what land is, who land really belongs to. Does it belong to a state hoping only to pave it over, to make something organic and living into a straight line of concrete speeding transit from one metropole to another? Does land belong to people who demand to turn it into a "flyover" zone? Or does it belong to people who respect and revere it, who carve their lives and history from it, who see life in inherent quality where others see only a convenient arterial?
In 1998 in Minneapolis, something unusual happened. The Minnesota Department of transportation had decided to run a major highway through an old working class neighborhood, destroying the neighborhood, a city park, an old-growth oak savannah, several holy sites sacred to the Mdewakanton Dakota, and the only remaining cold water spring in the Twin Cities. The community had fought this road for 40 years, yet the state was intransigent.
Then something happened. The community invited Earth First! to fight the road through nonviolent direct action. Thus began the longest urban land occupation in US history. The Earth First!ers invited the participation of the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community and the American Indian Movement, and the occupation took on recognition of treatied Native American land as a demand.
Here is their declaration, arrived at by consensus, embracing participants from the Dakota community, local residents, and Earth First!:
# We came here on August 10th, 1998 to protect Minneapolis Green Spaces and to Stop the Reroute of HWY 55 through Minnehaha park.
* We established the Free State on the principles of nonviolence and group consensus.
* We demand that HWY 55 not be rerouted through the park and that any "safety improvements" do not increase the road capacity. More road capacity only increases traffic without reducing congestion. We must end our addiction to cars.
* We demand the preservation of all current green space.
* We demand the recognition as a sovereign community the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota.
* We support the demand of the Mendota Mdewankanton Dakota for the repatriation of their land as laid out in the Act of Congress of 1863.
* We will not voluntarily leave this site until the rerouting of HWY 55 is canceled, the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota community recognized as sovereign, and all land claims are upheld.
On the morning of December 20th, 600 troopers evicted the occupation, using helicopters, tear gas, pepper spray, and beatings.
This is an amazing story, one told in this book through letters, photographs, notes and interviews with the participants. This is a very little known moment in recent history, one that might give a little inspiration to activists as to the power of group cooperation. Though they were defeated, they put up one helluva fight.
Who knows, this turn out to be an inspirational story for the good people of Texas...