Everyone's Downstream

I: Tar Sands Realities and Resistance

II: Stop Playing Games With Our Lives

Everyone's Downstream II (2008) Was held last November 21-23rd and has it's homepage here [EDS II].

Tar Sands Realities and Resistance took place November 23-25th, 2007.

Tar Sands Realities and Resistance
Conference was held at:
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
November 23-25th, 2007

Everyone’s Downstream was a conference designed to explore the links between oppression and self-determination on many levels: indigenous land rights, gender, ecological rights, workers democracy, anti-racism and anti-border perspectives as they relate directly to the tar sands of Northern Alberta. Speakers from a multitude of indigenous nations, social justice groups, and environmental organizations will discuss the social impacts of the tar sands on workers, women, indigenous nations, ecology, migrant populations, homelessness, and the anti-war movement.

The conference included:

November 23rd
Dominion Launch of Tar Sands Special Issue
with Dru Oja Jay ed., brought to you by APIRG.
6:30p.m, Business Building 1-05
(APIRG/Dominion Event with help from oilsandstruth.org)

November 24 9:00a.m-5:00p.m
Engineering, Teaching and Learning Complex, UofA,
Room ETLC 1 001
A series of panel discussions led by our guests.

November 25th 9:00a.m-5:00p.m
Telus Building, UofA Campus
Room TEL 217-219
A chance for the multitude of groups and individuals attending to sit down and discuss a collective way forward.

The size of the tar sands issue can seem daunting, but in reality few issues have presented an opportunity for a social justice movement to truly articulate a different vision of organizing the world that has as many entry points, and can provide as large of an impact. The scale and scope of the tar sands is huge and has tremendously deep implications for the way we approach questions that span the social justice spectrum. With a coordinated response involving all sectors of North American social justice movements currently impacted by the largest industrial project in human history we have the possibility to change the course of human and ecological fate like nowhere else.

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Conference schedule was:
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November 23rd
Dominion Launch of Tar Sands Special Issue
with Dru Oja Jay ed.
6:30p.m-9:30p.m, Business Building 1-05
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November 24th
Engineering, Teaching and Learning Complex, UofA,
Room ETLC 1 001

Leila Darwish, Sierra Club, Tar Sands 101
George Poitras, Mikisew Cree First Nation
Allan Adam, Chief, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Herb Norwegian, Grand Chief Dehcho First Nations
Question and Answer Session
Tom Keefer, Peak Oil, Class Struggle and the Thermodynamics of Production
Petr Cizek, Mapping the Tar Sands
Question and Answer Session

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November 25th, 2007
Telus Building, UofA Campus
Room TEL 217-219

Clayton Thomas-Muller, Indigenous Environmental Network
Sharmeen Khan, the Whiteness of Green
Jocelyn Saskiw, Adamant Eve: Gender and the Boom
Julio Garcia, Albertans Demand Affordable Housing: the boom and the housing crisis
Q and A
Peter Kulchyski, Indigenous People's Solidarity Movement
Colin Piquette, Friends of the Lubicon Alberta
Jocelyn Cheechoo, Rainforest Action Network, solidarity with Grassy Narrows
Question and Answer Session

Coverage on CJSR