Dec
Advocacy, Defending Natural Resources, Get Involved, Sister Cities
PICA Gold Campaign a Shining Success
Contributed by Power in Community Alliances (PICA)
The plans of U.S. and Canadian mining companies to begin mining gold in El Salvador continues to threaten Salvadoran rural communities. Salvadoran environmental and anti-mining activists have been assassinated and threatened. Through a free-trade provision closely resembling legal extortion, the Pacific Rim Mining Company continues its CAFTA suit demanding that the government of El Salvador hand over a hundred million dollars as punishment for refusing to grant the company a license to begin mining. Meanwhile the social movement in El Salvador continues to mobilize to keep the mining companies out of their communities, while lobbying the legislative assembly to pass a law that would make El Salvador the first country in Latin America to ban metallic mining.
So maybe it was the poetic justice aspect and the alchemy of using international solidarity to create a fund to help even the sides of a David vs. Goliath fight… (or maybe it would have succeeded anyway)…whatever it was, many people from the Bangor area and across the state generously responded to the Power in Community Alliances Gold Campaign request that they donate precious metals so they could be converted into “dollars for social justice” to support the Salvadoran anti-gold mining movement.
Into the PICA office in downtown Bangor poured gold rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, cuff links, and assorted other jewelry. We received silver cups, platters, silver dollars, and an entire set of sterling silverware. We didn’t ask, and no one told us, whether what we were receiving was stale memorabilia or valued possessions, or both. All we know is that a generous group of people have turned ounces of gold and pounds of silver into $4,133!
These funds will now be available for the use of the Salvadoran social movement’s organized communities in their continuing struggle against gold mining´s threats to the land and water critical to their survival.
PICA sends “mil gracias” to all who responded to the Gold Campaign’s request for their precious gift of solidarity that we can send to our Salvadoran brothers and sisters!
