#buffer zones

Israeli Occupation Forces cheer as a Palestinian neighborhood is destroyed to make room for a so-called “buffer zone” that will permanently displace Gazans from their homes, and make room for more illegal Israeli settlements.

Whether it’s euphemistically called a “buffer zone” or a “purification” process, please understand that Israel is illegally displacing Palestinian families from their homes. Temporary buffer zones will eventually become permanent Israeli settlements. This is land theft, plain and simple. This is what settler violence + settler colonialism looks like.

How do I know this? Because clinics that provide abortion tried doing them, they were amazing and worked well to prevent harassment and targeted attacks against people going into these clinics.

That’s why they got tossed as ‘unconstitutional’ in 2014.

The meat of the matter is: there's a 10-mile no-drilling buffer around Chaco Culture Historic National Park, and the current vultures in residence want to get rid of that. To quote Alt National Park Service:

Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing over a thousand years of Indigenous history ancient ruins, sacred sites, and cultural landmarks built by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples.

In 2021, a protective buffer zone was created keeping 336,400 acres within 10 miles of the park off-limits to new oil and gas drilling.

That protection is now under threat. The Trump administration has proposed revoking it, which would open the land surrounding one of America’s most sacred cultural sites to new drilling and development. The damage wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Nearly 90% of the surrounding region is already leased for energy development, and existing drilling has already harmed Indigenous communities, destroyed cultural sites, and degraded air quality. The administration is fast-tracking the rollback with only a 7-day public comment window compared to the 150 days of public input that went into creating the protections in the first place. Tribal nations, conservation groups, and 71% of New Mexico voters oppose the move. None of that appears to matter.buffer zone was the last line of defense.

Public comment ends tomorrow, April 6. Please comment at either the official Bureau of Land Management site (use the green "Participate Now" button at the top of the page) or go to protectchaco.org to add your comment via Fast Action. If you can't comment, please signal boost the hell out of this.

Need a script? Alt National Park Service provides one:

I strongly oppose revoking Public Land Order 7923 and the removal of protections for the Greater Chaco Region. Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of irreplaceable cultural and historical significance. The buffer zone protecting it from new oil and gas development must be maintained. Seven days is not sufficient time for meaningful public input on a decision of this magnitude.

Green MSP, Gillian Mackay, is championing Buffer Zone legislation in the Scottish Parliament.

This will protect service users at family planning clinics from harassment, as anti-abortion protestors won’t be allowed to stand directly outside the entrance.

Fill in the survey via the link below to get this over the line. More info can be found there too!

“The decision by the city council comes one year after a group of citizensbelonging to an anti-abortion organization, Sidewalk Advocates for Life, sued to overturn a city ordinance that created a buffer zone between the one remaining abortion clinic in the state, Jackson Women's Health, and anti-abortion protesters. Among other safety regulations, the ordinance banned people from coming within 8 feet of someone attempting to enter an abortion clinic.”

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/2020/10/07/infant-maternal-mortality-abortion-opinion/3621682001/

“Mississippi's abortion rates have been declining over the past decade. Mississippi Department of Health data show a 22% drop between 2009 and 2018. In 2017, there were 4,289 abortions, but a considerable amount did not occur within the state. Forty-three percent of residents terminated their pregnancies in neighboring states: Tennessee (885), Alabama (672), and Louisiana (191). “

“Within the state, most abortions occur among Black women, whose rates are about four times that of white women. That is an alarming reproductive disparity, but so are the extremely high rates of premature births, infant deaths, maternal deaths, and poverty among Black babies and mothers, which are substantially higher than those of White infants and mothers.”

“ Black mothers are far more likely to experience death associated with pregnancy than are white mothers. According to the 2018 Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report, the pregnancy-related death ratio for Black women is nearly three times the rate for white women”