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Caution: climate of Ft. Carson may cause undue military bloating
By Zoë Williams
williamz@mscd.edu

Nearly ten years ago, after conversations with the autonomous communities of the Zapatista resistance in Chiapas, Mexico, Kerry Appel made a name for himself in coffee. He created his company, Café Rebelión (formerly known as The Human Bean), to establish a market for fair-trade, organically grown coffee imported from the Zapatista communities to the United States. Café Rebelión is currently located in a space in North Denver. Appel has hired local activists to help him package coffee to ship across the United States to caffeine addicts, coffee shops and collectives everywhere. Appel has also produced numerous documentaries about Chiapas as well as imported flower, honey, and weavings.

After years of planning, Appel decided to take his solidarity with the Zapatistas one step further. He purchased land in Piñon Canyon and became the neighbor of several farmers, ranchers and others opting out of city life to establish his own autonomous territory that he named La Dignidad.

“This is a project to contribute to the foundations that make peace possible,” said Appel.

Appel explained that peace exists “when all people can live with dignity, when everyone has a roof over their head and enough to eat, when people are paid fairly for the work that they do, when the rights of all people are recognized including those of the minorities, when the production of the goods and services for our needs is done with respect for the Sacred Mother Earth and for the well-being of the future generations, and… the absence of aggressive wars and other violent policies of conquest, colonization, and empire.”

Setting La Dignidad as an example of environmental responsibility and independence rather than reliance on outside resources, Appel promotes the use of vegetable oil as fuel instead of petroleum, driving a converted school bus, motorcycle and late-model Mercedes. He also plans to have an alternatively-powered home, organic food production and a space that is welcoming for all wanting to turn their backs on a corporate and militaristic system.

That is, as long as his property is not taken from him in a current move by the U.S Army to expand military training bases in southern Colorado.

Appel’s next-door neighbor is the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) at which the military trains some 5,000 troops at a time in war exercises. The Army would like to expand the site more than 750,000 acres, making Fort Carson the largest training site in the country. The proposed expansion would devour 172 properties, independent ranches and farmlands that have been tended by the same families for generations, along with Appel’s La Dignidad.

The Fort Carson expansion would allow the site to cater to 10,000 incoming troops training for deployment around the globe, but mainly to Iraq and Afghanistan. They are to be trained in heavy weaponry, unmanned combat weaponry and war zone tactics. A military spokesperson told the Rocky Mountain News the climate of southern Colorado is similar to that of Iraq and Afghanistan, making it ideal for accurate training.

Piñon Canyon residents are not planning on giving up without a fight, though. The Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition (PCEOC) consists of about 200 ranchers, farmers, community members and public officials whose mission statement reads “We have strong core beliefs about environmental protection, humane animal care practices and private property rights. We also hold firm to the belief that our national security relies as much on our efforts to produce food as it does on a good national defense.”

The PCEOC has lobbied legislators on state and national levels as well as teamed up with organizations for agriculture, ranching and the environment to prevent the army from annexing the land.

“Leaving our agricultural land intact will be invaluable to this state, to agriculture and to the country’s security for as long as we continue to do so,” a PCEOC press release said.
Appel sees the struggle to oppose the PCMS expansion as his way to oppose militarism in general.

“The battle cry that will be heard on my land if we allow the army to take it will be that of our sons and daughters screaming ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ as they train for imperialistic wars; hardly a sentiment that bodes well for millions of innocent civilians worldwide or for those very same sons and daughters of ours, many of whom will be coming home in body bags,” Appel said.

This is by no means a struggle to be ignored or left to those who risk losing their land to the military expansion.

The working class of this country has paid enough for this war with the absence and sometimes blood of their children dragged into war by the poverty draft. Iraq has become a site for war crimes, Afghanistan is a bloodbath and there is no reprieve, not to mention peace, in the making by the military.

Enough is enough. Let those feeding us, caring for our land and constructing alternative lifestyles have the space. It is about time peacemakers are the recipients of privilege instead of the warmongers.