Power plant fumes fill the air. You and your children have asthma, emphysema, maybe even lung cancer, other cancers, or birth defects. The air was heavy with toxic particulates most days till they closed that murderous power plant that spewed fumes at you every day, all day, for so many years.

But now it's been gone only four months and they're already getting ready to build another and aim it straight at you and your family again. You fought that last power plant for so many years; do you have the strength to keep fighting these?

Every time anybody wants to dump or manufacture anything really unspeakable, they head straight for your backyard, for the empty lot next to your kid's playground, or maybe they barely bury it where the wind's blowing straight at you. Too many of you and your neighbors and children are dying young.

No one has enough work and most of the work that anyone has is casual, temporary, totally insecure, and often dangerously toxic. Employers don't warn your people about the dangers or give you any safety equipment till much of a generation has died of cancer.

The police harass you and harass your kids more; there are inexplicable shots in the dark, more than before, without any new internecine warfare to explain it. Yeah, your kids are in trouble, but they seemed to be trying to get it together and now there are mysterious shots in the dark. A tank rolls down your main street one night and a helicopter beams a light down from above; the excuse is a minor domestic spat that's over before a cop even gets to the door packing heavy armor.

Then the police gun down one unarmed child, or one unarmed, disabled homeless person, shoots them many times dead, for no reason that anybody can see. Every day you live with the fear that this might happen to someone you love and depend on too.

You had one of the most extreme, contaminating nuclear accidents in American history and nobody even knows about it. Most of the time it seems like nobody even knows you're there, bearing and dying from their toxic load. Not till you're in the way of something they want ... like your property, or the minerals on your land.

Nobody seems to notice you or remember all the toxics they made you ill with, the lousy schools they wasted your potential in, or the big pile of trash they dumped on your doorstep - not till you're suddenly in the way of something they want, because it's worth lots of money. Then, suddenly you're facing FORCED RELOCATION, maybe even at gunpoint. Bullies are pushing your 80-year-old grandmother around till she has a heart attack.

This is the worst, 'cause no matter how toxic and crappy and dangerous and emptyhanded you were, you had each other; you still had something like a community, far from perfect, but you had a community and a history; you had family nearby; you had some of the only things worth having, and where are you gonna go if they push you all apart now. How could you stand to live in a place where nobody else even speaks your language? Who will you be if you lose all your bearings, your favorite hangouts, or your sacred sites?

Is this New Orleans? Bayview Hunters Point? Or is it the Hopi and Dinéh Navajo community on Big Mountain/Black Mesa? It's all three. You're united by the oppression, you share a language and you know that the only people really havin' any fun are out in the Bayview or out on the rez. Lots of you would like to stick together, but here comes Redevelopment, Peabody Coal, or a 400-ton barge crashing right through the levee wall, right into your home and your community.

This week the Bay View received an urgent plea from the Hopi and Navajo communities. Even the elders are being brutalized so that Peabody can get to its oxymoronic linguistic mutation, CLEAN COAL. There is no such thing as CLEAN COAL.

The Hopi and Navajo on Big Mountain/Black Mesa had envisioned a solar farm there instead, one that would provide power to every stakeholder and become a community revenue source as well. They have lots of sun there, on Big Mountain/Black Mesa, just like in the Bayview, and sun is free fuel. Once you install your solar infrastructure, it's free fuel; it just shines down, free and warm and clean, all day.

The Navajo and Hopi vision is outlined in the Just Transition Petition now in a file at the CPUC, awaiting a January decision. Bayview Hunters Point should have a similar petition on file, for a solar farm, owned by the community, in the Hunters Point Shipyard, but Bayview Hunters Point isn't having much luck with petitions these days.

Nevertheless, there may be some way you can respond to this plea for help from the Hopi and Navajo communities on Big Mountain/Black Mesa. They say they need help more than ever right now, and if you can come, just to witness and help tend the land and livestock so that they're free to organize and defend themselves, they'll do their best to arrange transportation. Here are is what they're facing now, in their own words:

Black Mesa elders take direct action

Black Mesa Elder Rena Babbitt-Lane, who is about 80 years old, is in the hospital recovering from a minor heart attack and other injuries after an incident of harassment by BIA Rangers earlier this week. These are excerpts from her statement:

"My sheep herder had left recently, so I was home alone and I took the sheep out to a close area where they like to graze. This was Monday, Nov. 3. Three of the goats somehow ran through the partition fence and I could not get them back across. I cut the fence and herded the sheep through and put them all back together. Then they went to a nearby water hole on that side of the fence and were drinking. I lay down under a tree because I was exhausted.

"Three rangers came up to me there. ... They immediately began to threaten me. The ranger was saying, 'You broke the law! You're gonna go to jail! You are not allowed to herd over here.' They grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me around. Pretty rough.

"I tried to tell them that they should not be pushing around an old lady like me, what kind of people are they? They took me back to my house and were trying to search around. I was trying to stop them. One picked up a stick and threatened me with it. They were heavily armed.

"I told them that they were a bunch of bullies, bringing all those guns around my house and being intimidating. They said, 'We're gonna come back tomorrow and either impound all your sheep or else maybe we will put you in jail and let the coyotes eat all of your sheep while you sit in there.' There were other things that they did to me too. I cannot remember all the details very well. Then they wrote a ticket or something and left.

"I was feeling very weak after that. I have no transportation so I walked three miles to the neighbors' house. They drove me down to my relatives closer to town. In the course of retelling the story, I realized that I was having a pain in my chest. They brought me to the hospital here and I have been here for four days now. I am very sad about what's happened here. I am not a bad person, I am a kind person. Just herding sheep and they treat me this way..."

This is not an isolated incident. Last month, an elderly Navajo man from Cactus Valley had reported that some sort of government official, possibly from the land management team, came right within a mile of his house and loaded up a pile of wood that he was gathering.

The elderly man followed the officials up the road and got them to stop. There was a heated exchange - the man demanded that the officials return the wood. They insisted that he was somehow in violation of his wood hauling permit and that they were taking the wood back to Hopi. They wrote him a ticket and gave him a court date. He went to court in Polacca, 50 miles away, on Oct.20. The charges were found to be false, and the judge dismissed them outright. The firewood was not returned.

A Big Mountain resident demands: "On behalf of my Dineh relations at Big Mountain and throughout the so-called HPL, I demand an immediate investigation into this federally-sponsored elder abuse and harassment of individuals who still have no understanding of the modern American laws.

"And I demand that the Navajo Nation make an inquiry to the BIA Hopi Agency and its Land Management Office about their justification for this incident of intimidation and physically shove or thrust a lone and fragile elder around, and I further demand that the Navajo Nation immediately convene its council members and the Office of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission to facilitate the much needed testimonies from the residents of the 'Hopi Partitioned Lands' and begin to address the escalating Human Rights violations within the aforementioned region.

"Let it be resolved that the traditional Dineh families and their elderly matriarchs and patriarchs are highly valuable for the future of the Dineh Nation and that honor is due to them for their years of defiance against the illegal mandates implemented upon their lives in the name of energy exploitation. Furthermore, if the Dineh continue to dismiss the situations at Big Mountain and throughout the HPL, a genuine part of Dineh-Hopi prehistoric experiences will be obliterated as their ancestral lands become the wastelands of energy developments.

Come support Rena and the elders at Black Mesa

Families are asking for help. Now is the time to come and stay with a family. Black Mesa Indigenous Support is willing to help you get to the land. Please check our website for specifics: http://www.blackmesais.org/what_can_do.htm.

BMIS needs your help!

Unfortunately we are unable to update our website at this time due to the loss of the critical laptop of our web designer. Members of Black Mesa Indigenous Support are all volunteers as we use our own funds and tools to do much of what we do. So, we are asking our friends and allies for help to front a new laptop until we can pay you back with our own money. Thank you! http://www.blackmesais.org.

PHOTO #1: Black Mesa

CAPTION #1: The Native people of Black Mesa, Arizona, are fighting back against energy companies that poison the environment and pit people against each other.

PHOTO #2: strip mining at Black Mesa.jpg

CAPTION #2: Like Lennar at the Hunters Point Shipyard, strip mining at Black Mesa makes a wasteland out of once beautiful land.

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