Add your name: Protect Oak Flat

Oak Flat is one of the most holy places in the Apache religious tradition. Will you sign the petition to protect this sacred site from Resolution Copper?

Dear MoveOn member,

My name is Reverend William J. Barber II, of the Poor People's Campaign. I'm a preacher—and I've dedicated my life to the pursuit of social and economic justice as part of my faith and a moral obligation to counter injustice.

I'm writing to you because, unless we act, one of the most sacred places of the Apache Nation in Arizona will be destroyed by Resolution Copper, a corporation that is planning to create a crater below Oak Flat two miles wide and 1,000 feet deep.¹ To Christians and Jews, this would feel like a desecration of Mt. Sinai.

Will you sign the petition in solidarity with the leaders of the Apache-Stronghold and demand Congress do everything in its power to stop the destruction of Oak Flat?

We demand Congress return the full rights and religious protections to the Apache of Oak Flat in recognition of their religious freedom and stop the destruction of Oak Flat.

When I first visited the Apache Nation in Arizona years ago, I heard how the Apaches, a people who had lived in the hills, were forced onto a reservation down in the river basin. And then the Army, at night, opened the river, flooded the river basin, in an attempt to wipe them out.

Their story—and their trauma—is not isolated. First Nations, the indigenous Nations who once populated this land, were almost wiped out in the Indian Wars of the first two hundred years of what would become the United States. And these attacks, despite the resiliency of First Nation tribes, continue today.

Oak Flat is a sacred place to the Apache people. But the U.S. Forest Service has moved forward with an environmental impact statement on this proposed plan from Resolution Copper—and has refused to consider the Apaches' religious freedom claim, which would stop this destructive mining project.²

I'm writing to you as a preacher, hoping you will join me in demanding Congress stop this sale and condemn this immoral, racist, and unconstitutional seizure and sale of Oak Flat.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thank you.

–Rev. William J. Barber II, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Sources: 

1. "The Forest Service Ignored Apache Religion in Its Review of Oak Flat Copper Mine," Phoenix New Times, October 15, 2019
https://act.moveon.org/go/113021?t=10&akid=250062%2E10220574%2Et_hIb9

2. Ibid.

You're receiving this petition because we thought it might interest you. It was created on MoveOn.org, where anyone can start their own online petitions. You can start your own petition here.

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?

Click here to chip in $3, or whatever you can afford.

Contributions to MoveOn Civic Action are not tax-deductible for income tax purposes. This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on November 8, 2019. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. If you'd like to receive less frequent emails from MoveOn, you can click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.