Editor’s Note: OLB invited poet and activist Margaret Rozga to reflect on her experience in DC at the women’s march, which she attended with her daughter, Christine Groppi. The following is her account of the march, among other points of resistance and solidarity that fill her life. As a small group assembled for a recent … Continue reading Cold Feet, Warm Hearts: Reflection on Women’s March
Editor’s Note: OLB invited writer, veteran and medic Jacob Thomas to document his work with veterans who have served in the U.S. military, but were subsequently deported to Mexico. There are true American patriots in the world. There are people who believe in the principals set forth by the founding fathers, believe in the inalienable rights of … Continue reading Twice Betrayed: Deported Vets Struggle to Belong
Editor’s Note: OLB invited writer, veteran and medic Jacob Thomas to reflect on his experience at Standing Rock in early December, 2016. He sent this manuscript en route from Tijuana, MX, where he is working to document deported veterans’ oral histories for the Library of Congress. For more information on this oral history project see the GoFundMe … Continue reading Listen More & Talk Less: A Veteran’s Reflection on Standing Rock
This has been a year of intense activism focused upon water and indigenous rights in general, and we at the Overpass Light Brigade have tried to use our visibility to give focus to these issues. Last January hit hard and cold and the freezing weather was a match for the frozen hearts of our state … Continue reading A Year of Water and Indigenous Struggle
Last night, Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot Tour” came to UW-Milwaukee, hosted by a student front group, also responsible for the somewhat lame exercise in neo-McCarthyism, the “Professor Watchlist.” For over a month, faculty, staff and students have been expressing concern about the known dynamics of Milo Y, a kind of sly and slick performance of … Continue reading Hate’s Insidious Face: UW-Milwaukee and the “Alt-Right”
Overpass Light Brigade invited Margaret Noodin, an Anishinaabe poet, to write a piece about the struggle at Standing Rock for this blog. This is what she has to say: This poem was written in the midst of the historic show of support for land, water and indigenous life and culture. We all need to raise our … Continue reading The Long Knives and the Seven Fires
Writing and above photo by Barbara With Today, Chief Arvol Looking Horse held a ceremony around the sacred fire. The purpose was to hear a report from the UN representatives who have been investigating the allegations of human rights abuses and to bless the belongings of the people who had been jailed. The UN representative, … Continue reading News From the Sacred Fire
By Barbara With, October 29, 2016 All photos by Barbara With, except “Boys On Horses,” by Joe Brusky Today I made my first visit to the Sacred Stone Camps, the now-famous water protector settlement in Standing Rock, North Dakota. I arrived at Standing Rock casino well past midnight and arose early the next day to get to … Continue reading Standing Rock Will Prevail
Memory is long in Indian Country and histories get obscured through the haze of stories untold or skewed in the telling. By the late 1800s, the nomadic Sioux had been relegated to 320 acre plots, their children sent to boarding schools for assimilation into Christendom, and the great buffalo herds all but extinguished. Their once … Continue reading Echoes of the Ghost Dance
The Madison City Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline on Tuesday night. “WHEREAS, the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline would carry as many as 570,000 barrels of fracked crude oil per day for more than 1,100 miles from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Illinois, … Continue reading Madison City Council Passes Resolution Expressing Solidarity with Resistance Against the Dakota Access Pipeline