by DGR News Service | Feb 7, 2022 | ANALYSIS, Strategy & Analysis
We’ve covered Vince Emanuele’s work before, and this piece is a useful call to realistic organizing. Effective resistance will not emerge because we wish it to be so. It will only emerge as the result of hard, disciplined work and political organizing to take us from where we are now (A) to where we need to be (Z) via a series of intermediate steps. Emanuele calls for us to learn the difference between organizing vs. mobilizing, and apply those lessons.
We must also note that this piece contains elements we disagree with. This includes a critique of anti-civilization politics. The point is well taken, but if the ecologically necessary is politically infeasible, we must change what is politically possible. The other way around is impossible. We also find Emanuele’s critique of Chris Hedges to be unnecessary; again, his point is well taken, but Hedges has done a great deal to raise awareness of and to support movements for change. This piece will be controversial in other ways as well, as it was meant to be, but it is worth reading. Diversity of thought will produce more effective outcomes than ideological conformity.
By Vincent Emanuele
In 2006, I attended a sizeable antiwar protest in Washington D.C. Tens of thousands of activists filled the streets as far as the eye could see. Office buildings and monuments became our only reliable geographical coordinates. At the time, large protests were the norm: millions of Americans were in the streets opposing Bush’s illegal and immoral war in Iraq (but we couldn’t get many people to speak out about Afghanistan).
A couple of years later, I testified at the Winter Soldier Hearings in Silver Springs, Maryland, where dozens of veterans shared stories about war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I arrived at the venue, an older Vietnam veteran came up to me and said, “Vinny! We’re gonna end this war! Those fuckers in the White House will have to respond to us now. No way they [the media and politicians] can ignore the vets!” He believed in the power of narrative and symbolic protest, a victim of the post-1968 left political culture.
Unfortunately yet predictably, in hindsight, the powers that be did ignore the Winter Soldier Hearings — as did 99% of Americans who never even knew the event happened. Tens of thousands of dollars spent (perhaps hundreds of thousands). Leftwing media abound. The results? Some new donors and members. The strategy? There was none. The whole event was a performative and symbolic spectacle meant to “shift the narrative” — typical NGO babble.
Years later, Occupy kicked off, and the same dynamics played out. Tens of thousands of Americans took the streets and engaged in prefigurative politics. In those days, consensus decision-making and participatory everything was all the rage. Of course, we accomplished very little during Occupy’s heyday. We remained stuck in Mobilizing Mode, speaking only with like-minded people who already self-identified as progressives and radicals. We never expanded our base. Yes, the narrative shifted from austerity to inequality, but actual political power (the state, capital, the courts) moved to the right.
The Tea Party took the house in 2010. Republican governors across the U.S. passed anti-union ‘Right to Work’ legislation and stripped public unions of their ability to bargain collectively. The Supreme Court became dominated by right-wing conservatives. The same in the lower courts and state legislatures. Voter rights were turned back, with hundreds of thousands of black voters disenfranchised. Whistle-blowers were attacked and jailed. NSA surveillance programs expanded. ICE became more powerful, as did the CIA. The drone program expanded, as did the never-ending wars. Fracking, off-shore drilling, and tar sands became the norm. Republicans took back the U.S. Senate in 2014, and Donald Trump was elected POTUS in 2016 — hardly a good period for the left, though some leftists disagree.
Indeed, some of my friends argue that the post-9/11 era has seen a resurgent left. To some degree, that’s true: more organizations, movements, and leftwing electoral campaigns exist today than did in the 1980s or 1990s, and the Democratic Party is surely less neoliberal than it was ten years ago, but that’s a pretty low bar. Many of these efforts are hollow (lacking large numbers of ordinary people) and incapable of wielding substantial power. Unions are on the ropes. Black Lives Matter (BLM) remains amorphous, at best. And groups like DSA, OurRevolution, the Greens, the People’s Party, and various other progressive-left NGOs face the problem every self-selected political group, small or large, faces: namely, the question of how to build and employ power in a non-structure.
In this strategic and methodological vacuum, many leftists opt for a fictional approach to politics. Here, I’m thinking of the anarcho-syndicalists, anti-civilization activists, online leftists, and various others whose politics bear no resemblance to our political and social composition and material conditions. It’s as if people have spent so much time socially alienated that they’ve forgotten that we do, in fact, live in a society (contrary to Margaret Thatcher’s absurd sentiments), one that’s shaped by existing systems and institutions, networks, and relationships.
Many leftists treat politics no different than a role-playing game (RPG). In RPGs, players control a fictional character who navigates a fantasy world defined by specific regulations, settings, norms, and rules. As Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams write in their book, On Game Design, “The [RPG] game world is often a speculative fiction (i.e., fantasy or science fiction) one, which allows players to do things they cannot do in real life.”
Leftists who advocate for revolution, insurrection, or massive uprisings (all common suggestions from left commentators who have virtually no experience organizing actual working-class people) are not only irresponsible and unserious, engaging in a political form of RPG— they’re dangerous and counter-productive.
At its core, politics is about power. And power is wielded through force, coercion, or social control. Since the existing left can’t implement any of those approaches, it makes little sense to suggest that working-class Americans “take to the streets.” Again, calls for people to engage in “mass resistance” usually come from commentators who have little connection to actual working-class political organizations. For example, in a recent article, Chris Hedges writes:
Yet, to fail to act, and this means carrying out mass, sustained acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in an attempt to smash the megamachine, is spiritual death . . . The capacity to exercise moral autonomy, to refuse to cooperate, to wreck the megamachine, offers us the only possibility left to personal freedom and a life of meaning. Rebellion is its own justification. It erodes, however imperceptibly, the structures of oppression. It sustains the embers of empathy and compassion, as well as justice. These embers are not insignificant. They keep alive the capacity to be human. They keep alive the possibility, however dim, that the forces that are orchestrating our social murder can be stopped. Rebellion must be embraced, finally, not only for what it will achieve, but for what it will allow us to become. In that becoming we find hope.
Engaging in “mass, sustained acts of nonviolent disobedience” is a tactic, not a strategy. And “smashing the megamachine” isn’t a vision. Such appeals might invoke the spirit of resistance and sound nice on paper, but they mean very little without a clear vision of the society we hope to build, the strategy needed to successfully achieve our vision, or the organizations and structures required to carry out such a strategy. This, again, is the problem with commentators making suggestions about how people should respond to our cascading and multi-layered crises. Punditry is not the same as organizing. Commentating is not the same as strategizing.
Likewise, the religious left’s over-moralizing provides no path forward. What, exactly, does it mean to have the “capacity to exercise moral autonomy?” Yes, we should encourage strikes, or what Hedges calls “refusing cooperation,” but those acts require highly disciplined and organized bases of supporters (ask the CTU), ordinary people, who are engaged, empowered, and sophisticated enough to develop a collective identity. That doesn’t simply happen through people “taking to the streets.” Millions of Americans took to the streets in 2020. The results? Joe Biden barely won the White House; Democrats took a beating in down-ballot races; right-wing protesters attempted a coup; and there’s no evidence to suggest that long-lasting political organizations with a clear, serious, and sophisticated vision have developed as a result of the George Floyd uprisings.
Americans have long been obsessed with the concepts of “personal freedom” and “meaning.” We need a serious discussion about what “personal freedom” looks like in the 21st century. In the context of a rapidly growing global population and runaway climate change and ecological devastation, it’s not entirely clear. In addition, I’m skeptical of any pursuit of “meaning” and agree with Avital Ronnel: the pursuit of meaning has many fascist undertones. Here, the religious left and the fascist right share a common ideological orientation — whereas some of us can function perfectly well operating under the assumption that our existence, our life, our being, carries no inherent meaning, others relentlessly pursue a life of meaning, often accompanied by a dogmatic sense of moral righteousness. “It’s our duty to do the right thing!” No, it’s not. Human beings have no inherent “moral duty,” and surely no collectively decided upon “moral duty” (unless I missed the meeting).
If all the left can offer ordinary working-class people is a set of lofty moral sentiments, vague and non-strategic calls for rebellion, and silly calls for hope, it makes more sense for ordinary people to remain on the sidelines and enjoy themselves until the whole damn system collapses. Without a serious plan, that’s the only rational response to the system we endure and the context in which we live. Rebellion is not its own justification, unless, of course, one believes human beings have a purpose on this planet. I don’t. Rebellion without a serious, viable, and strategic plan is an act of political suicide or fantastical role-playing. Extinction Rebellion is a perfect example of this sort of childish and non-strategic approach to political activism/mobilizing.
The inability to articulate a vision that has a serious connection to material reality or the forces that currently dominate and comprise our political, economic, cultural, and social institutions is a problem the anarcho and religious left has faced for at least as long as I’ve been engaged in political activism and organizing (fifteen years), if not for decades. Appeals to “erode structures of oppression,” which sound pretty on paper, mean utterly nothing to organizers and working-class people who are strategizing on the ground. Further, calls to “erode structures of power” fall into the same failed category of “anti-politics” that the anarcho-left has peddled for years: constantly calling for “dismantling” this, or “abolishing” that, or “resisting,” but never articulating a viable vision for the 7.8 billion people who live on this planet, never building, never winning — always on the defensive; hence, always focused on destruction.
The only way to “keep alive the possibility” that capitalists/bosses and right-wing zealots/fascists (we should name our enemies and targets) can be stopped is by actually stopping them. And the only way to stop them is by engaging in deep-organizing. The left’s current approach to politics isn’t working. Simply repeating the cycle will only engender more apathy and cynicism. Moralizing won’t cut it. And left-wing virtue-signaling is embarrassing. Leftists with a platform have a responsibility to change course.
Hedges should know better. He’s not intellectually lazy. Does he not speak with organizers? Does he not understand the difference between Mobilizing and Organizing? Does he not believe that vision and strategy are essential components to victory? Does he not think about what victory would look like? Does he enjoy writing the same essay over and over again? Wolin. Camus. Conrad. Freud. Arendt. Horrors of society; Nazi reference, followed by small glimmers of hope and vague calls for resistance. Rinse. Repeat.
It feels like I’ve been reading the same Chris Hedges essay for ten fucking years. When I was 25 years old, reading Hedges was provocative, challenging, and interesting. Today, it’s boring, predictable, and unproductive.
I also find it very interesting that a guy who supposedly loathes electoral politics decided to run for U.S. Congress as a member of the Green Party. Why not help develop a serious independent left media entity? You know, instead of a bunch of assholes on YouTube operating as individuals, pushing their individual brands. Why not organize with working-class people with the aim of conducting “massive acts of civil-disobedience?” Turns out, that work is difficult. Turns out, Hedges’ ideology and assumptions about the working-class would quickly evaporate if he had to actually put them to the test.
Talking about politics is easy. Actually doing politics is difficult. Instead of participating in the hard part, Hedges regurgitates decade-old lines about resistance and throws his hat in the ring for elected office, yet has the audacity to talk shit about groups (DSA) and politicians (Sanders) who actually win reforms in the real world. That garbage might impress someone sitting at home, but it doesn’t impress those of us who are actually organizing.
In the end, I don’t believe in hope or moral duty. And I’m very skeptical of the concept of justice, which I think lends itself to a form of punitive politics, often aimed at the wrong people. I believe in the power of ordinary people and their ability to wield it at their workplaces, in their communities, and through the state. I believe in using state power. I believe in material results in the material world. I don’t care about spirituality. I believe in plans, discipline, and individual and collective accountability. I believe in winning. I believe in living.
Everything else, for me, is leftwing Pokémon and I don’t have time for it, nor do any of the organizers I know who spend their days and nights strategizing as opposed to moralizing and sloganeering. We’re in a life or death battle and we need all hands on deck. That means fewer cartographers of the apocalypse and more strategists for the revolution.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 5, 2018 | The Solution: Resistance
Featured image: Occupy Wall Street. Wikipedia
by Derrick Jensen
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That the real world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise. Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet: without a living planet you don’t have any social or economic systems whatsoever. It is self-evident that to value a social system that harms the planet’s capacity to support life over life itself is literally insane, in terms of being out of touch with physical reality.
That any way of life based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition not sustainable.
That any way of life based on the hyperexploitation of renewable resources is by definition not sustainable: if, for example, there are fewer salmon return every year, eventually there will be none. This means that for a way of life to be sustainable, it must not harm native communities: native prairies, native forests, native fisheries, and so on.
That the real world is interdependent, such that harm done to rivers harms those humans and nonhumans whose lives depend on these rivers, harms forests and prairies and wetlands surrounding these rivers, harms the oceans into which these rivers flow. Harm done to mountains harms rivers flowing through them. Harm done to oceans harms everyone directly or indirectly connected to them.
That you cannot argue with physics. If you burn carbon-based fuels, this carbon will go into the air, and have effects in the real world.
That creating and releasing poisons into the world will poison humans and nonhumans.
That no one, no matter now rich or powerful, should be allowed to create poisons for which there is no antidote.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to create messes that cannot be cleaned up.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to destroy places humans or nonhumans need to survive.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to drive human cultures or nonhuman species extinct.
That reality trumps all belief systems: what you believe is not nearly so important as what is real.
That on a finite planet you cannot have an economy based on or requiring growth. At least you cannot have one and expect to either have a planet or a future.
That the current way of life is not sustainable, and will collapse. The only real questions are what will be left of the world after that collapse, and how bad things will be for the humans and nonhumans who come after. We hold it as self-evident that we should do all that we can to make sure that as much of the real, physical world remains intact until the collapse of the current system, and that humans and nonhumans should be as prepared as possible for this collapse.
That the health of local economies are more important than the health of a global economy.
That a global economy should not be allowed to harm local economies or landbases.
That corporations are not living beings. They are certainly not human beings.
That corporations do not in any real sense exist. They are legal fictions. Limited liability corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions—making them, by definition, inhuman and inhumane. To the degree that we desire to live in a human and humane world—and, really, to the degree that we wish to survive—limited liability corporations need to be eliminated.
That the health of human and nonhuman communities are more important than the profits of corporations.
We hold it as self-evident, as the Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it. . . .” Further, we hold it as self-evident that it would be more precise to say that it is not the Right of the People, nor even their responsibility, but instead something more like breathing—something that if we fail to do we die. If we as a People fail to rid our communities of destructive institutions, those institutions will destroy our communities. And if we in our communities cannot provide meaningful and nondestructive ways for people to gain food, clothing, and shelter then we must recognize it’s not just specific destructive institutions but the entire economic system that is pushing the natural world past breaking points. Capitalism is killing the planet. Industrial civilization is killing the planet. Once we’ve recognized the destructiveness of capitalism and industrial civilization—both of which are based on systematically converting a living planet into dead commodities—we’ve no choice, unless we wish to sign our own and our children’s death warrants, but to fight for all we’re worth and in every way we can to overturn it.
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Here is a list of our initial demands. When these demands are met, we will have more, and then more, until we are living sustainably in a just society. In each case, if these demands are not met, we will, because we do not wish to sign our own and our children’s death warrants, put them in place ourselves.
We demand that:
- Communities, including nonhuman communities, be immediately granted full legal and moral rights.
- Corporations be immediately stripped of their personhood, no longer be considered as persons under the law.
- Limited liability corporations be immediately stripped of their limited liability protection. If someone wants to perpetrate some action for which there is great risk to others, this person should be prepared to assume this risk him- or herself.
- Those whose economic activities cause great harm—including great harm to the real, physical world—be punished commensurate with their harm. So long as prisons and the death penalty exist, Tony Hayward of BP and Don Blankenship of Massey Coal, to provide two examples among many, should face the death penalty or life in prison without parole for murder, both of human beings and of landbases. The same can be said for many others, including those associated with these specific murders and thefts, and including those associated with many other murders and thefts.
- Environmental Crimes Tribunals be immediately put in place to try those who have significantly harmed the real, physical world. These tribunals will have force of law and will impose punishment commensurate with the harm caused to the public and to the real world.
- The United States immediately withdraw from NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other so-called “free trade agreements” (if it really is “free trade,” then why do they need the military and police to enforce it?) as these cause immeasurable and irreparable harm to local economies in the United States and abroad, and to the real, physical world. They cause grievous harm to working people in the United States and elsewhere. Committees should be formed to determine whether to try those who signed on to NAFTA for subverting United States sovereignty, and for Crimes Against Humanity for the deaths caused by these so-called free trade agreements.
- The United States remove all support for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Both of these organizations cause immeasurable and irreparable harm to local economies in the United States and abroad, and to the real, physical world. They cause grievous harm to working people in the United States and elsewhere.
- The United States recognize that it is founded on land stolen from indigenous peoples. We demand a four stage process to rectify this ongoing atrocity. The first stage consists of immediately overturning the relevant parts of the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. M’Intosh, which includes such rationalizations for murder and theft as, “However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear; if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questioned.” We demand that this pretense, this principle, not only be questioned but rejected. The second is that all lands for which the United States government cannot establish legal title through treaty must immediately be returned to those peoples from whom it was stolen. Large scale landowners, those with over 640 acres, must immediately return all lands over 640 acres to their original and rightful inhabitants. Small scale landowners, those with title to 640 acres or less, who are “innocent purchasers” may retain title to their land (and this same is true for the primary 640 acres of larger landowners), but may not convey this title to others, and on their deaths it passes back to the original and rightful inhabitants. The third phase is for the United States government to pay reparations to those whose land they have taken commensurate with the harm they have caused. The fourth phase is for each and every treaty between the United States government and sovereign indigenous nations to be revisited, with an eye toward determining whether the treaties were signed under physical, emotional, economic, or military duress and whether these treaties have been violated. In either of these cases the wrongs must be redressed, once again commensurate with the harm these wrongs have caused.
- The United States government will provide reparations to those whose families have been harmed by chattel slavery, commensurate with the harm caused.
- Rivers be restored. There are more than 2 million dams in the United States, more than 60,000 dams over thirteen feet tall and over 70,000 dams over six and a half feet tall. Dams kill rivers. If we removed one of these 70,000 dams each day, it would take 200 years to get rid of them all. Salmon don’t have that time. Sturgeon don’t have that time. We demand that no more dams be built, and we demand the removal of five of those 70,000 dams per day over the next forty years, beginning one year from today. Remember, physical reality is more important than your belief system.
- Native prairies, wetlands, and forests be restored, at a rate of five percent per year. Please note that tree farms or “forests” managed for timber are not the same as native forests, any more than lawns or corn fields are prairies, and any more than concrete sluices are wetlands. Please note also that if all of the prairies and forests east of the Mississippi River were restored, the United States could be a net carbon sink within five years, even without reducing carbon emissions.
- An immediate end to clearcutting, “leave tree,” “seed tree,” “shelter tree” and all other “even age management” techniques, no matter what they are called, and no matter what rationales are put forward by the timber industry and the government. All remaining native forests are immediately and completely protected.
- An immediate end to destruction of prairies and wetlands. All remaining prairies and wetlands are immediately protected.
- The United States government immediately begin strict enforcement of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other acts aimed at protecting the real, physical world. All programs associated with these Acts must be fully funded. This includes the immediate designation of Critical Habitat for all species on the wait list.
- Each year the United States must survey all endangered species to ascertain if they are increasing in number and range. If not, the United States government will do what is required to make sure they do.
- The United States government do whatever is necessary to make sure that there are fewer toxins in every mother’s breast milk every year than the year before, and that there are fewer carcinogens in every stream every year than the year before.
- The United States government do whatever is necessary to make sure that there are more migratory songbirds every year than the year before, that there are more native fish every year than the year before, more native reptiles and amphibians, and so on.
- Immediate closure of all US military bases on foreign soil. All US military personnel are to be immediately brought home.
- An immediate ban on the direct or indirect use of mercenaries (“military contractors”) by the US government and all associated entities.
- A reduction in the US military budget by 20 per year, until it reaches 20 percent of its current size. Then it will be maintained at no larger than that except in case of a war that is declared only by a direct vote of more than 50 percent of US citizens (and to last only as long as 50 percent of US citizens back it). This will provide the “peace dividend” politicians lyingly promised us back when the Soviet Union collapsed, and will balance the US budget and more than pay for all necessary domestic programs.
- The United States officially recognize that capitalism is based on subsidies, or as Dwayne Andreas, former CEO of ADM said, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.” He’s right. For example, commercial fishing fleets worldwide receive more in subsidies than the entire value of their catch. Timber corporations, oil corporations, banks, would all collapse immediately without massive government subsidies and bailouts. Therefore, we demand that the United States government stop subsidizing environmentally and socially destructive activities, and shift those same subsidies into activities that restore the real, physical, world and that promote local self-sufficiency and vibrant local economies. Instead of subsidizing deforestation, subsidize reforestation. Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, subsidize relocalization. Instead of subsidizing fisheries depletion, subsidize fisheries restoration. Instead of subsidizing plastics production, subsidize cleaning plastics from the ocean. Instead of subsidizing the production of toxics by the chemical industries, subsidize the cleaning up of these toxics, both from our bodies and from the rest of the real, physical world.
- Scientific consensus is that to prevent even more catastrophic climate change than we and the rest of the world already face, net carbon emissions must be reduced by 80 percent. Because we wish to continue to live on a habitable planet, we demand a carbon reduction of 20 percent of current emissions per year over the next four years.
- The enshrinement in law of the right for workers to collectively bargain. In case of strikes, if police are brought in at all, it must be to protect the right of workers to strike. If police force anyone to come to terms, they must force the capitalists.
- That laws against rape be enforced, even against those who are rich, even those who are famous athletes, even those who are politicians, even those who are entertainers.
- The enshrinement in law of the precautionary principle, which states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or the real, physical world, then the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action. In the absence of conclusive proof, no action may be taken. For example, no chemicals would be allowed to be released into the environment without conclusive proof that they will not harm the public or the environment.
- No new chemicals be released into the real, physical world until all currently used chemicals have been thoroughly tested for toxicity, and if found to have any significant chance of harming the public or the environment, these chemicals must be immediately and without exception withdrawn from use.
- The immediate, explicit, and legally binding recognition that perpetual growth is incompatible with life on a finite planet. We demand that economic growth stop, and that economies begin to contract. We demand immediate acknowledgement that if we do not begin this contraction voluntarily, that this contraction will take place against our will, and will cause untold misery.
- That overconsumption and overpopulation must be addressed in methods that are not racist, colonialist, or misogynist. We must recognize that humans, and especially industrial humans, have overshot the planet’s carrying capacity. We must recognize further that while overconsumption is more harmful than overpopulation, both are harmful. We must further recognize that right now, more than fifty percent of the children who are born are not wanted. We demand that all children be wanted. We recognize that the single most effective strategy for making certain that all children are wanted is the liberation of women. Therefore we demand that women be given absolute reproductive freedom, and that all forms of reproductive control be freely available to women. We demand that those who attempt to deny women this freedom be punished by law.
- The United States government put an immediate end to absentee land ownership. No one shall be allowed to own land more than one-quarter of a mile from his or her home.
- Land ownership patterns change. Land ownership is more concentrated in the United States than in many countries the United States derides as antidemocratic: five percent of farmers in Honduras own 67 percent of the arable land, while in the United States five percent of landowners (not citizens) own 75 percent of the land (California is in many ways worse: twenty-five landowners own 58 percent of the farmland). To rectify this, no one shall be allowed to own more than 640 acres. All title to individual or corporate land holdings over 640 acres are to be immediately forfeited. These lands will be first in line for restoration to native forest, prairie, wetland, and so on. Lands not suitable for these purposes will be used to provide housing for those who cannot afford it.
- An immediate end to factory farming and to monocrop agriculture, two of the most destructive activities humans have ever perpetrated. We demand a return to perennial polycultures.
- An immediate end to soil drawdown. Because soil is the basis of terrestrial life, no activities will be allowed which destroy topsoil. All properties over sixty acres must have soil surveys every ten years (on every sixty acre parcel), and if they have suffered any decrease of health or depth of topsoil the lands will be confiscated and given to those who will build up soil.
- An immediate end to aquifer drawdown. No activities will be allowed which draw down aquifers.
- Provision of free food, shelter, and medical necessities to all residents.
- Immediate increase in the tax rate to 95 percent for all gross earnings over one million dollars per year by persons or entities.
- An immediate and permanent halt to all fracking, mountaintop removal, tar sands extraction, nuclear power, and offshore drilling.
- An immediate and permanent halt to all energy production that is harmful to the real, physical world. This includes the manufacture of solar photovoltaics, windmills, hybrid cars, and so on.
- Removal of plastic from the ocean. Each year the ocean must have 5 percent less plastic in it than the year before.
- Each year the oceans must have 5 percent more large fish than the year before.
- The United States Constitution be rewritten to destroy the primacy it gives to the privatization of profits and the externalization of costs by the wealthy, and to make its primary purpose not the preservation of the wealth and power of the already wealthy and powerful, but rather to protect human and nonhuman communities—to protect the real, physical world—and enforcably to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet.
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We hold these further truths also to be self-evident:
That demands without means to enforce them are nothing more than begging. We are not begging. We are demanding.
Power is not a mistake, and those in power will not suddenly have attacks of conscience. Social change has never occurred through waiting for the rich or powerful to develop consciences, and it never will.
Those in power will not act different than they have acted all along, and they will not act against the power of capital. We hold it as self-evident that the rich and powerful have no reason to stop the rich from stealing from the poor nor the powerful from destroying more of the real, physical world than they already have. That is, they have no reason except us. Our lives and the life of the planet that is our only home is on the line. We no longer have the luxury of allowing those in power to continue. If those in power won’t accede to these demands, then they need to not be in power, and we need to remove them from power, using any means necessary.
We hold it as self-evident, as the Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it. . . .”
It is long past time we asserted our rights.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 15, 2012 | Building Alternatives, People of Color & Anti-racism, White Supremacy
By J. G. / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is a veteran community and anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-prison organizer. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Black Panther Party, and is a founding member of the Black Autonomy Federation. Lorenzo is the author of the underground classic, Anarchism and the Black Revolution as well as many other essays and articles about fighting capitalism and white supremacy. A former political prisoner and political refugee, he currently lives in Memphis Tennessee and is working to bring attention to and combat rampant police brutality in the area including the murder of 15 year old Justin Thompson.
J. G.: What is the Black Autonomy Federation and the Let’s Organize the Hood program?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Let’s Organize the Hood started out as a training program. We were training people of color activists all over the U.S. and Canada over the course of about 15 years. Organize the Hood is kinda like something that you would organize in your own community. It won’t be the same in every community. Some places the issue might be unemployment in the black community. Here in Memphis we thought the issue was going to be massive unemployment and poverty because this is the poorest big city in the country. So far that has not proven to be the case though.
We trained people in Detroit who were interested in building a black led tenants movement. We trained people in Atlanta who had issues that they wanted to deal with around massive unemployment and police shootings ‘cause, you know, we have experience in grassroots organizing around all of these things. We don’t project ourselves as some sort of experts who are over and above the people but we’ve got practical experience. We’re not putting out any national plan or something that we haven’t done ourselves; that we haven’t actually got our hands dirty in doing. It’s a program that’s for the community to take up.
Organizers might bring it to the community but the plan is that the organizers would ultimately be removed and the community would run its own programs, ‘cause that’s the way I was taught in the 1960’s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You had organizers who would be sent to a community and in the community they would find who the leaders were and they would train and develop that leadership then they would get out of the way and let the people do what they feel like they needed to do. Now they would be around if people had questions or wanted help or something but basically the community made all the major decisions.
So this is what we’re trying to develop in Memphis. This is something brand new here in Memphis in the sense that we’ve only been living here for a couple years ourselves and our program has only been in existence two months. And in two months time especially once we figured out that the community has had a long running history with the police department, we’ve become the main organization in the city dealing with police brutality. There’s no other groups doing anything. The so-called civil rights groups haven’t said anything. They’ve been neutralized completely.
I guess you could say that Let’s Organize the Hood is what you want it to be in your community. There’s no rule that says that you have to organize everything thus and thus and thus. Although there is a national program. We got areas that we work in but each community and sometimes even each neighborhood would be able to pick out its own particular program and carry that out.
JG: What is the situation in Memphis with police brutality?
LKE: To really understand why these things happen in Memphis, you have to look at the political structure here and go back a little ways. Back some years ago there were so many shootings of black people here by what was then an openly racist police department. An all white police department was killing black people including several young kids. There was a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court called Tennessee v. Garner and in that case the issue was brought up of a “fleeing felon law” which allowed the police to use deadly force in situations where a person was unarmed and merely trying to elude capture. Well they could shoot you in the back of the head and that’s what they were doing. A lot of people were dying in that period here.
So this case wound up in the Supreme Court. The court looked at this situation and they found that fleeing felon law unconstitutional. They forbade the Memphis PD from using deadly force in a situation where someone was trying to elude capture that didn’t represent any threat of violence to the public. Well of the nine people that were killed by the Memphis PD this year, none of them were armed and five of those were trying to run for their lives with police shooting at them. And this young man Justin Thompson that was killed, they claimed he was shot just one time but there were at least four other bullets that they pulled out of peoples houses. So he was shot at at least five times and they refused to let his family see the body.
In February a young man, 20 years old, was shot in the back. They claimed that he was the leader of a car theft ring. And when they ran up on him, they shot him in the back. They admit he didn’t have any gun. He was just trying to get in the car and escape.
Then you had the case of a young man who was 19 years old. He was mentally challenged. They claimed that he ran at six cops with a knife. They knew who this guy was. They knew he was mentally challenged and they had arrested him two months before this. They shot him. We don’t know how many times they shot him because they cover all this stuff up. Now Memphis claims that they have a model for how to deal with mentally challenged people that does not require them to use deadly force. And they claim to have at least 200 officers who are specially trained to defuse such situations. Well the question is where were those officers at? Because the police station is right up the hill within a couple of blocks from where this boy was killed. Any one of these officers could have defused the situation. They could have just overpowered him. Six cops can do that. The same night a white man was arrested with a knife and they didn’t beat him they certainly didn’t kill him.
Then there was another situation where a black man was in a relationship with a white woman and was driving around in her car. She reported the car stolen. Even after they found out that the car was not stolen, they went after this guy and shot him 32 times.
You got two people who were in police custody who got choked to death. One guy was arrested at a July 4th party and he turned up dead, choked to death. And the police won’t release the autopsy reports. So part of our struggle is to get them to release this information.
Then you got two people killed here in an automobile accident with a police officer. This guy was driving at 101 miles per hour with no sirens or running lights and just ran into a 13 year old girl and her grandmother and killed them. And this is the third case of what is essentially vehicular homicide by a cop in the last five years.
In all these cases, every one of these people was unarmed. One guy was sleeping in his car. How do you get killed for sleeping in your car? They say they beat on the door and woke him up and he jumped out of the car and grappled with the police and then jumped back in his car and started the engine and therefore they had to shoot and kill him. This is their story. And it really doesn’t matter to them what they tell us.
So this is the type of thing that goes on. But Memphis has a long history of this. Back in 1983 they killed seven young black men over a minor incident. This group was a so-called MOVE type organization according to the cops. So they set up an incident where they had the police go to the door claiming that someone had stolen something and forced their way in and surrounded the place. They killed everybody. They executed them. They shot every one of those men in the back of the head.
So this is what accounts for this kind of police terrorism in this town that has gone on for years and years. And we are the first group to be doing this type of grassroots organizing in 20 years. But the civil-rights groups have been neutralized by the election of a black mayor and also by money and status and all that kind of thing. In some places they will come out and demonstrate at least. They will at least acknowledge a police killing. But we’ve heard nothing in Memphis from the NAACP; nothing from the Southern Christian Leadership Council which we call the Southern Christian Liar’s Club; nothing from these groups. So this wasn’t the issue that we thought we were going to be organizing around but we’ve been pushed into it by community need and we’re the only force dealing with police brutality in Memphis.
JG: On September 8th there was a rally and march against police brutality. Can you tell us how that went? How do you see this movement against police brutality moving forward in Memphis and throughout the state?
LKE: We did have people come to this event from other cities especially Chattanooga which is my home town some five hours away from Memphis. And there is talk now of building a statewide movement. But the demonstration itself was fantastic if you consider the fact that what the media here does is they don’t report on anything that we do. We’re persona non grata. They are extremely opposed to us. If we give a press conference, nobody comes. I think one media source is pretty sympathetic, he comes. None of the other stations even report on it.
So if you consider this media white out that’s been going on for quite some time for us to get 70 people just with our own networks and flyers. That is absolutely phenomenal. And people were really militant and they took over the center of the city. And we went to the police station with all these tough guy cowboy cops and demonstrated in front of there and they would not come out.
And this is the place where they’re quick to beat you up. You can go on YouTube and see videos of them beating women up, beating children up, beating all kinda people up. But they would not come out to face us. So we marched on the city hall and went through the tourist district and had a 2 hour rally at city hall.
So this forced the media to come out and report on us. They wanted to portray a lot of negative stuff about us. Talk about my background as a revolutionary. Talk about my wife’s background in the Black Panther Party. Talk about the fact that I was a political prisoner; this that and the other. But the fact that they had to report on people protesting really shook them up. It allowed people to see that there are people who are willing to fight police brutality in this city. And we are going to build a statewide movement. And we are having an event on October 20th to raise the case of Justin Thompson, the 15 year old kid who was killed, and all of those who have died at the hands of the police. What we want to do is publicize these cases enough so that they will get the same kind of attention as Trayvon Martin. We want to eventually get a national march against police brutality.
It’s really important for people who’ve had loved ones die, whether that was last week or years ago, that they don’t give up the fight. A woman that I used to work with came to the event from Chattanooga and had somebody pushing her around in a wheelchair. But she wanted to be a part of it because she believes in this campaign. Her father was murdered by the police in 1983 and she founded the Concerned Citizens for Justice that I became president of. The CCJ led a 15 year campaign against police terrorism. And we had, at one stage, one of the most advanced political formations against police brutality in the country. ‘Cause our thing was grassroots organizing and protest as opposed to lobbying politicians and celebrity so-called leaders. We’re trying to build a grassroots movement from the bottom up.
JG: I first became aware of your work when I came across something you wrote about building a Poor Peoples Survival Movement and the need for autonomous communities to become self sufficient and eventually create bioregional federations. How does that connect to the work you’re doing now?
LKE: Well, you know, we’ve always taken the position of grassroots community organizing. So the logical next step is to then talk about how we build a community or series of communities that are not beholden to the existing government. How do we turn neighborhoods and communities into self governing communes? Right now there’s widespread disaffection with representative government. So the Idea is that on the local level people would start to build their own neighborhood institutions.
They’d even start to deal with community control of the police and building their own militias or self defense forces to deal with our own social issues. So the city and all these racist vigilantes calling themselves police officers wouldn’t be in the community to kill people. But you have to talk about how do you take a community that is extremely impoverished and create some kind of economic base where people can be given jobs and can build housing and infrastructure for themselves.
Urban food production is something that we’ve always recognized as a survival program. And we’ve been doing urban farming in other cities that we’ve been in and trying to understand the skills and link all these things together. We’ve got to deal with massive unemployment, police brutality and all of the things that are killing us.
Memphis has the highest number of infant mortality cases among black infants of any big city in the U.S. It’s the city with the highest rates of cancer among black women. And it’s the poorest big city in the country. And there’s all these social disparities because of long years of economic segregation and also years of police terrorism. All these things linked together. So when you build this, you can’t just concentrate on growing food. You have to organize around issues of people being disempowered by institutions that exist now. You gotta build a whole synthesis instead of just single issue organizing.
Even though at this stage we’re dealing with police terrorism, we came into existence actually to deal with a number of issues. One of them is the mass imprisonment of black youth. One of them is to deal with massive unemployment and poverty. And really this whole issue that we’re dealing with now is the one thing that no other groups wanted to deal with. But they were stacking up bodies so quick that we couldn’t ignore that.
To the question of a bioregional area as opposed to just a city: We cannot be limited to what the state says is the territorial limitation of an area. We need to be able to take land from corporations and use that to grow. Even in Chicago we started to do that. Because in the city of Chicago there’s all these plots of land. Buildings have been torn down and nobody’s using it for anything. So we started to just take it over. First they said, “Well we’re gonna give you permission,” and we said, “You don’t have to give us permission.” But it’s a fight. It really is a fight. And it’s not always dramatic. A lot of times people don’t even hear about it. We didn’t get any massive publicity for most of the stuff we did. And like I said, every city we’ve organized in has been different. And the expectations of people have been different.
JG: So is the strategy of the Black Autonomy Federation to help organize communities, share knowledge and skills, and then spread that to other areas?
LKE: This is essentially what we’ve been doing. We’ve been in a number of different cities. When we first got started in the mid nineties, we were in ten cities. The whole idea of creating a national movement without creating local movement first is that it’s unsustainable. When people see that you’ve got a sustainable movement wherever you started at, it can spread. People will emulate it. And that’s essentially what happened with the Black Panther Party. They didn’t try to build a national movement. They started in the Bay area and it just spread. It was popularized through media and different things but it wasn’t planned. That’s why we’re concentrating on Memphis. I’m not saying that we won’t help someone start up somewhere else, but our objective right now is to worry about Memphis.
What we try to do is develop people so that they can take on leadership roles within the community. And that’s really important otherwise you’ve just got a cult. Everybody follows one guy or two people and nobody else can say anything or do anything and nobody’s being trained to do anything.
JG: You’ve written before about the importance of supporting people of color in dismantling white supremacist institutions. Unfortunately for most of the American white Left, the struggles of working class POC are either unknown or not considered a priority. What would you say to those on the Left who pay lip service to anti-racism or ending oppressive systems but seem dismayed at the prospect of making actual connections with communities of color?
LKE: First of all those groups and individuals have to be challenged by people of color organized in their own autonomous movements even if it’s within another organization. They have to organize in numbers enough to challenge these people and change the direction of the movement. You’re fighting for the heart and soul of the movement is what it is.
Generally if you take a broad analysis you would have to say that they are corrupt and their efforts won’t result in a revolution especially one that benefits people of color. I’ve criticized the Occupy movement because it’s predominantly a white middle class movement whose only concerns have always been predominantly for the white middle class. Some would say “Well, there’s black people in this”. That doesn’t mean anything.
What does matter is whether they have a voice or any power to create policy. And if they don’t have that, if they’re just a puppet organization or group of people that they can trot out and say, “Here’s our blacks.” We call that a Progressive Plantation. And that is a very dangerous and dispiriting development for people who are in those groups. And it’s very disempowering. This is how the white Left has generally operated over the years. They bring in a few people of color might even put them up front to be visible but they don’t have any power whatsoever. They’re puppets and they are not respected in communities of color. This is why the white left has rarely made any serious connections with communities of color.
What is really important right now is that people have to understand that racism is not going to go away on its own. It has to be challenged. And I don’t care what some white radicals, we used to call them “mother country radicals”, claim they stand for. They have privileges. Even the ones who claim to be broke. They have privileges vis-à-vis people of color and they will often use that to try to neutralize or weaken any criticism of them. They were happy when the Black Panther Party was attacked and destroyed and they didn’t try to help. Their whole strategy was to profit from the death of the Black Panther Party by attempting to absorb all of their cadre and community supporters into their own movements.
In the 1960’s what you really saw was an autonomous movement of working class black people that was able to challenge white supremacy in the South. And later when Black Power came in, it was able to challenge white supremacy and corporate capitalism throughout the country. It’s really important to understand that and compare the fight against racism in that period to what’s happening now. You’ve got so called anti-racist movements made up of white people who want to talk about right-wingers but don’t want to talk about their own internal white supremacy and how it is related to the state.
What people of color movements have to do is to understand this whole thing about decolonization which is an important concept but it has to be taken further than just trying to get the white folks to stop being racists or getting them to accept Indian claims. It has to be understood that we’re trying to dismantle this entire society. This entire capitalist system and the whole system of white supremacy worldwide.
JG: Tokenism and exceptionalism have been common tactics used by the media to make people believe that we’re living in a “post racial” or “post patriarchal” society. Do you think this has played a role in neutralizing resistance within communities of color?
LKE: Well, I think that’s it’s been effective for quite some time. We like to call it “black faces in high places”. And essentially what that is, is a form of neocolonialism where they put a person of color in an alleged position of authority to be administrators within this system.
In the 1970’s when the Black Power movement was being defeated, the leadership wasn’t just killed or imprisoned. They actually went after the minds of the people too because they wanted the people to think that we had now reached the state where we’d arrived and were now enjoying the benefits of the civil rights movement. And what we really saw was a kind of entrenchment of black middle class forces going into the institutions and corporations or going into the government.
We went from seeing something like forty black officials nationwide to several thousand people of color inhabiting political positions. The white power structure was asking themselves, “How can we deal with Black Power? How can we deal with all these mass movements of people of color?” So what they decided to do was to neutralize them with their own people and to do the same kind of neocolonialism that they’ve done in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
It was Richard Nixon of all people who came up with this idea of holding up the black entrepreneur. His whole idea was that “we’re gonna give ‘em grants. We’ll give ‘em pay-offs and we’ll split them that way. We’ll find the ones who are gonna sell out. The ones who won’t sell out, we’ll put in prison or kill ‘em.” And this is essentially what happened. I was one of those that was put in prison and some of my comrades and other people I knew were hunted down and killed. Now you have people many of whom are still in prison today and have been there for 30 or 40 years.
So now we get to Obama who’s now the president. And the idea of a black president has been used to neutralize any protest in the street or opposition to the government from black people. Everywhere else in the world, people are fighting tooth and nail against austerity measures.
Even the discussion by politicians of implementing austerity measures started mass protest in France, Greece and many other places; just the discussion of it. In the u.s. nobody said anything. They said “Oh, we’ll vote ‘em out”. In the u.s., there’s a mysticism about the electoral system that doesn’t exist in a lot of places. They see right through it. Now people are starting to see through it here. They’re gonna have to see through it more. But there are millions of people that are still brainwashed that Obama’s going to deliver something to them.
JG: Some would say that it’s the lesser of two evils or a gentler form of fascism.
LKE: I do think that there’s a lot of confusion. And I do think there’s anger but a lot of it is internalized so that you don’t see it in the streets. I think that Obama is a pacification agent. He was elected to neutralize the grassroots Left in this country which was becoming larger and they wanted to push people back into the democratic party fold. The democratic party is the liberal reform party. They had to posture with Obama. They needed Obama more than he needed them, really. Big corporate money went into getting him elected. The liberal wing of the capitalist class put him in office.
Now Romney represents what I call, “Raw Money” and he represents the extreme reactionary right wing of capital. Now what these people want is to have the state run directly by corporations. They want a fascist corporate state. The democrats also want to serve the corporations. They just want to serve them in a different way. We need to understand that neither one of these guys represent the interests of working class and poor people. They’re both are agents of corporations.
There’s this inter-capitalist feud where they fight over which policies they’re gonna adopt; policies that are never in the interest of poor people. And they know this and they’ll sit around and laugh about it at some stage, “I beat you that time, Raw Money! You can get the next one.” They know that they’re both serving the same people. And those people are not down in projects. They’re not in college dormitories. They’re not common people. They are the elite. And I do think that it’s great that the Occupy movement started to raise that issue. It’s just that they didn’t go to the logical extent and bring in voices that have never been heard before.
People of color were not part of the discussion. We were not seen as being an important enough base for them to try to recruit. When people do that to you, to me it is the worst kind of bootlicking to go try and beg to be a part of their movement. It’s treachery. So I tried to encourage people of color involved in Occupy to think about forming their own movement because it’s unsustainable. And that’s what I see. Some cities they’re not doing anything. Here in Memphis, it’s just white folks sitting around a camp fire. They’re in bed with the politicians. They didn’t even attack them here and drive them away like they did everywhere else.
Politicians and Corporations are smoking the planet. And they’re doing it in a way that will wipe out a significant section of the population. They’ll kill off the ability to have crops. Much of the things that we’ve been talking about are really survival programs. They’re not popular at this point because people still see supermarkets and that kind of stuff. But at some stage they are going to create a situation that’s so unsustainable that we won’t be able to eat their garbage food. We won’t have access to their capital reserves. Our lives are going to drastically change. We might not even have electricity, who knows.
But we will not have the things that the petro-fueled economy has created for us. As you know, without petroleum this whole thing is gonna collapse anyway. But from the standpoint of people of color, we have to have our own agenda. We have to be autonomous enough to have our own political programs. Even if we work with white movements we have to have our own agenda. We can’t let the white middle class set an agenda for people who have been historically oppressed in a different fashion. That won’t save us at all.
JG: What can people do to support your efforts in Memphis?
LKE: You don’t have to live in Memphis to be concerned with what’s going on here just like you don’t have to live in Sanford, Florida to be concerned with what happened with Trayvon Martin. We want people to write to A.C. Wharton the mayor of Memphis and complain about the situation here with police brutality. Especially about Justin Thompson the young man that was just killed. And we’ll have a website up soon. The mayor’s email address is mayor@memphistn.gov. You should bombard that guys mailbox because all he cares about is tourism. And you should let him know that “If I come to Memphis, it’ll be to protest not to give you money.” Wharton’s phone number is 901-576-6000. The cops number is 901-636-3700. And you can make a complaint to the police chief, Tony Armstrong, about his reign of terror and corrupt police force. It’s really a national issue. All of our lives are in danger in this place.
These people are insane. They’re shooting people in the back. There’s people that have survived police shootings as well here and we don’t know the figures on that. There have been widespread rapes by police. We’ve got several officers on trial now for rape. We’ve also got officers on trial for prostitution. Many of the cops are drug dealers. In fact this last killing, we were advised, was the result of this cop being a drug enforcer and pick up man. He killed another young man before he killed this kid in 2009. So he’s a treacherous individual. And this is the kind of stuff that goes on around here. I’m not saying that this type of stuff doesn’t happen in many cities, but in our opinion, this is the most corrupt.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 12, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Occupy Monsanto
On Wednesday, September 12 activists calling themselves the Genetic Crimes Unit (GCU) shut down shipping and receiving access points at Monsanto’s Oxnard seed distribution facility located at 2700 Camino Del Sol. By peacefully blockading the exit and access points the group effectively shut down the distribution of genetically engineered (GMO) seeds for a day.
Monsanto is the largest producer of GMO seeds and is being called out for their genetic crimes by a network called Occupy Monsanto. Today’s protest is the beginning of a series of over 65 different autonomous actions that officially start on September 17, a year since Occupy Wall Street movement began. Actions are planned throughout the world including the US, Germany, Canada, India, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Argentina, Australia, Spain, Russia, and Japan. More info as well as video available for media use of today action can be found at http://Occupy-Monsanto.com
After occupying all three shipping and receiving entrances to the Monsanto facility using flashy theatrics including a car with a giant “fish-corn” on top of it and a 6-foot high jail cell complete with someone dressed up like the CEO Hugh Grant of Monsanto inside. Eventually after 5.5 hours the fire department was called in and 9 anti-GMO activists were arrested and charged with trespassing.
“The reason I am occupying Monsanto and willing to put myself at risk of arrest is because Monsanto has genetically engineered food crops to contain novel untested compounds that result in more weed killer sprayed on our food, without informing consumers. Unlike most industrialized countries including every country in Europe, Japan and even China, in America right now there are no labels on our food informing us whether we are eating GMOs or not. We have a right to opt out of this experiment: it’s not up to chemical companies what I feed myself and my family. Monsanto has bought and sold both parties and has handpicked henchmen at FDA and USDA making sure we are kept in the dark. Monsanto is also currently fighting the California Prop 37 GMO labeling initiative that would give consumers the right to know if they are eating GMO foods. said GCU member Ariel Vegosen.
The GCU arrived onsite wearing bio-hazmat suits and with giant banners saying the “99% V. Monsanto” and “Seminis and Monsanto bringing weed killer GMO food to your table.” Next week there will be more protests all over the nation.
“In the name of Wall Street profits, chemical corporations such as Monsanto genetically engineer crops to withstand high doses of their toxic weed killers that contaminate our food and water, and have not been proven safe. We deserve to know what we are eating and we should put the GMO crops back in the lab and off the kitchen table. The US chemical lobby has so far made sure Americans are kept in the dark and we are tired of inaction by Obama, “ said GCU unit member Rica Madrid.
“We are here today in civil disobedience because we believe strongly that we have no other option,” said GCU unit member David Pillar. “Its time for healthy food now.”
On Sept. 17, 2012 Occupy Monsanto is calling for hundreds of actions internationally.
From Occupy Monsanto: http://occupy-monsanto.com/press-release-occupy-monsanto-gcu-field-agents-shutdown-gmo-distribution-facility/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 15, 2012 | Climate Change, Obstruction & Occupation
By Will Wooten / Waging Nonviolence
One year after more than 1,200 people were arrested in front of the White House during two weeks of sit-ins against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, a coalition of Texas landowners and activists will attempt to physically halt its construction. Led by veteran climate justice organizers, participants ranging from environmentalists to Tea Partiers are preparing to lock arms for a sustained nonviolent civil disobedience campaign, beginning perhaps as early as this week.
The impetus for such action, which is being called the Tar Sands Blockade, goes back much further than last summer, however. In 2008 and 2009, small landowners along the pipeline’s route in rural Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska started noticing survey stakes with orange tape marked “KXL.” They soon found out that TransCanada — the company building the pipeline — had eminent domain power over their property and that if they didn’t sign a contract allowing TransCanada to build, they would be taken to court.
Many landowners, feeling pushed into an impossible situation, signed the contracts. Some began organizing, doing community outreach to explain what was happening and building conservative support on the ground. Organizations such as Nacogdoches Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines evolved out of conversations between landowners — first focusing around eminent domain, but then, when they learned that tar sands oil would be pumped through the pipeline, discussion started to include environmental impacts, such as toxic diluted bitumen and climate change.
By August 2011, the climate movement in the United States started to focus in on the Keystone XL with Tar Sands Action, a civil disobedience campaign led by Bill McKibben and members of 350.org. The 1,253 arrests in front of the White House helped raise the issue to a national level by stressing that President Obama could stop the pipeline by rejecting its permit to cross the U.S.–Canada border.
Weeks later, the Occupy movement emerged. While environmental issues were not at the forefront, many Occupy encampments passed resolutions opposing Keystone XL and took part in Tar Sands Action’s next rally in Washington, D.C., when, on November 6, 12,000 people encircled the White House. Days later President Obama denied the permit and, for the moment, Keystone XL was thought dead.
TransCanada then changed tactics and decided to split the pipeline into segments so that it could get a head start on construction while making inside deals in Washington to secure the necessary permit for crossing the border. In a sign of goodwill to the fossil fuel industry, President Obama went to Cushing, Oklahoma, and declared that he would “expedite” the permitting process for the Gulf Coast segment from Cushing to Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. While that ability was technically outside of his reach, it was a hint to the agencies responsible for such decisions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Army Corps of Engineers then granted the three permits TransCanada needed to start construction — despite the absence of an environmental review.
The southern segment of the Keystone XL will be built in three different sections, simultaneously, with the goal of transporting tar sands oil currently stored in Cushing, Oklahoma, to refineries on the Gulf Coast, where it then can be shipped around the world. When Texas activists such as myself learned that this was happening despite the Tar Sands Action victory, we decided to form Tar Sands Blockade.
While landowners began organizing along the pipeline route in early 2012, climate justice activists with Rising Tide North Texas were looking for ways to bring wider attention to the pipeline’s impending construction. Many of us had been active Occupiers during the encampments and were disappointed with the movement’s inability to make the connection between economic justice and the climate. So we made a stronger effort to engage people on the community level.
As a result, Tar Sands Blockade is being informed by a variety of voices — from self-identified Tea Party members, flying Gadsden flags at the front of their long driveways, to Occupiers who slept at encampments across the country.
Several organizers with Tar Sands Blockade also participated in and organized for Tar Sands Action, including veteran climate justice activists from around the country. This diverse coalition has agreed on one simple call to action: The Keystone XL should not be built in Texas, and nonviolent direct action is required to stop it.
Other means of addressing the grievances of landowners and meeting the challenge of climate change have thus far failed. As Bill McKibben’s recent article “Global Warming’s Terrible New Math” made clear, the world has years, not decades, to confront the fossil fuel industry head on. Nonviolent direct action offers the best chance of victory, not just for the Tar Sands Blockade but for other fossil fuel extraction movements, such as those opposing fracking, mountaintop removal and coal exports — all of which have been active in what’s being called a Climate Summer of Solidarity.
That solidarity will take on greater meaning in a matter of days when construction on the pipeline is expected to begin and landowners will be bringing ice to the encampments to help alleviate the extreme Texas heat, as well as thanking everyone for defending the home they’ve built over decades. Activists will respond by holding the blockade for as long as possible, through the summer and likely into the fall. This could be an important moment for the entire climate movement, setting the stage for future actions and alliances — not to mention giving new meaning to the words “Don’t mess with Texas.”
From Waging Nonviolence: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/08/dont-mess-with-texas-tar-sands-blockade/
