Editor’s note: Today’s post is an interview with Will Falk discussing his work on the Protect Thacker Pass campaign with Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), host of First Voices Radio. Falk co-founded Protect Thacker Pass with Max Wilbert and is representing the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony in a Federal court case alleging violations of tribal consultation laws.
Tiokasin’s guest is Will Falk, who gives an update on Thacker Pass in northern Nevada. In January 2021, Will and Max Wilbert launched an occupation of a proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass. Will is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today.
Activism has taken Will to the Unist’ot’en Camp — an Indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, and to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin.
Production Credits: Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer; Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer; Malcolm Burn, Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston, WKNY 1490 AM and 107.9 FM, Kingston, NY; Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor
Music Selections:
1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song); Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters; Album: Tahi (1993); Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand) (00:00:22)
2. Song Title: Mother Earth; Artist: Karliene; Single: Mother Earth (2019); Label: N/A (Available on YouTube) (00:24:40)
3. Song Title: Single Pride of Man; Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service; Album: Quicksilver Messenger Service (1968); Label: Capitol Records (00:28:45)
4. Song Title: Revolution; Artist: SOJA; Album: Peace in Time of War (2002); Label: DMV Records (00:32:34)
5. Song Title: Bo Bo’s Groove; Artist: Tom Principato Band; Album: Raising the Roof (2008); Label: Powerhouse Records (00:37:30)
6. Song Title: Mother Earth; Artist: SOJA; Album: Peace in Time of War (2002); Label: DMV Records (00:37:30)
7. Song Title: Through the Eyes of Love; Artist: Walter Trout and the Radicals; Album: Notodden Blues Festival – The Best of People and Blues – Nbf, Vol. 3 (2004); Label: Bluestown Records (00:46:45)
8. Song Title: American Dream; Artist: J.S. Ondara; Album: Tales of America (The Second Coming) (2019); Label: Verve Forecast / Universal Music Canada (00:55:00)
AKANTU INSTITUTE: Visit Akantu Institute, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuinstitute.org/ to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse.
Photo by Max Wilbert: Will Falk surveys native Pinyon-Juniper forests and BLM clearcuts near Ely, Nevada. To learn more, see https://pinyonjuniperforests.org.
Editor’s note: Today we share an online fundraiser created by dissident author and journalist Christopher Ketcham. Ketchum is fundraising to meet with and complete his book about a Texas man who sabotaged electrical infrastructure across the American West “in defense of mother earth,” to use his own words.
We support strategic and moral acts of sabotage against industrial infrastructure that is destroying our planet, and look forward to reading Ketchum’s book when it is released.
What it means when you turn your rifle against techno-industrial civilization
Since 2016 I have been working on a book about a 62-year-old Texas man who was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison, charged with being an “ecoterrorist” for acts of industrial sabotage “in defense of mother earth,” as he put it. He is now in the last months of his sentence, due to be released in August of 2022, a few weeks from now. If I can raise the money, I’d like to be there when he gets out.
The idea is that we take a trip together upon his release to visit some of the places he sabotaged. For that I need your help: $1,000 is my fundraising goal.
My protagonist, who I will call Saboteur (his name will remain undisclosed for now), traveled the American West taking out various parts of our civilization’s fossil fuel infrastructure. In the course of getting to know him – through letters, phone calls, and our many meetings in various jails and prisons since 2016 – I came to see his strange tortured tale of environmental vengeance as a vehicle for discussing the big questions that define our fraught moment.
For Saboteur, there was no doubt in his mind that the beauty of the world would be doomed by the continued march of technoindustrial civilization – a civilization addicted to technology, crazed in its obsession with material wealth, anthropocentric to the point of ecological insanity, totally dysfunctional in its relationship with the natural world. “This is a crackhead,” Saboteur told me. “The crackhead will keep on smoking until the last of the drug.” Until the world, he said, is “turned to ash.”
He declared himself, by contrast, a “madly matriarchal, dirt worshipping, tree-hugging, godless feminist with a gun,” “a worshipper of Gaia.” “We have to destroy the existing order,” he is recorded saying on an FBI surveillance tape. “I have a political agenda to destroy industrial capitalism. I can shut down coal-fired power plants, costing millions of dollars, all by myself. God damn it! You really want me to tell you, or you wanna go see? I’m serious as a fuckin’ heart attack. And I’m willing to die for what I believe.”
In my book about him I seek to understand the psychological forces behind both the refusal to act and the turn toward violent disruption. Why did Saboteur finally pick up his weapons? What has inspired other ecosaboteurs? Given the bleak future of a depauperate earth that business-as-usual promises, what shape does direct action take and how extreme should that action be? In what circumstances is sabotage justified, if ever? If Greta Thunberg’s “fairy tale of eternal economic growth” condemns future generations to apocalyptic suffering, what duty do we have to oppose that noxious and ultimately homicidal economic system? What kind of sacrifice will that entail, now, today? What are we willing to risk for the safety and security of the generations of tomorrow?
All subjects to be explored, questions to be answered, in my story about Saboteur. Any help you can give to facilitate my book about him is most appreciated!
Below is one in a series of letters to an ecosaboteur, declared by our government an “ecoterrorist,” who is serving 96 months in federal prison. In his most recent email, this individual, who I will call Saboteur, wrote: “Anatole France came close to the theme that Sartre was later to exploit: the tragic solitude of the thinker in a hostile community……….. Prison is the most hostile of all communities…” The subject line of his email was “alone.” He had written previously that he felt now, at the tail end of his sentence, that he was losing his mind.
His inspiration to act – he destroyed fossil fuel infrastructure – was his love of the natural world, wild places, wild flora and fauna. My reply to Saboteur, who turned 62 this year, was an attempt to cheer him up:
I’m sorry I missed your last few calls. I was out taking my 10-yr-old daughter backpacking. And since she asks questions about you often enough (as I talk about you so often), I told her that you spent a good part (the best part?) of your 40s and 50s taking nieces and nephews into the wild with backpack, on foot and free and easy. To assuage your loneliness, forthwith some random notes on my trip with Josie up Plateau Mountain in the Catskill range.
Now the Catskills, mind you, is not a range at all, not orogenic, formed by tectonic folding of the earth’s crust, but is in fact an eroded plateau, an uplift dissected into pieces much like the Colorado Plateau has been dissected. Except this violent erosive process was made gentle with the help of glaciers, the most significant of which was the Wisconsonan Glacier, which lasted 75,000 to roughly 11,000 years ago. This last glaciation rounded the edges of the high points of the plateau, carved rolling valleys and cirques, created shallow river corridors with fast run-off, and, where there might have been impossibly walled canyons in a plateau of the American West, fashioned instead narrow notches where the cols of the “peaks” gloomily come together. The major peaks of the Catskills plateau ascend to a relatively uniform height, between 3500 and 4000 feet, and at a distance they have the table aspect of mesas. What distinguishes them most clearly from the plateau country of the West is the rich rushing green: the deciduous oaks, beeches, birches, and the evergreen conifers, the Eastern white pine, balsam fir, spruce.
Plateau Mountain, as its name suggests, is the most canyon-country-like of these peaks. The climb to the top of Plateau is from a v-shaped col called Stony Clove Notch, also called the Devil’s Notch. The trail from Stony Clove Notch rises nearly 2000 feet in the space of 1.3 miles. A difficult climb — especially for a ten-year-old girl shouldering a 15-pound pack.
It is of course as green as the ancient English mythic forests where the Green Man lives, he who peaks behind ferns in the woods, who might kill you, but is mostly loving. A few years back, when she was six or maybe seven, Josie and I were planting seeds, building our vegetable garden, and I told her bedtime stories about the Green Man who leapt from the forest and could eat a fallen man, woman, or child who it saw as flesh to rejuvenate. Human beings as compost. Which we are.
There has been terrific heat over the last month in the lowlands around the Catskills: ninety degree highs, day after day of unbroken sun and blue sky, rarely seen here, probably a new weather regime of climate warming. But in the higher reaches of the mountains this heat softens, takes on a delightful aspect, libertine and easeful, with silken zephyrs, and bringing, most importantly, the chance to travel in the backcountry with barely any weight. A normal Catskills in summer is sunny for a minute, then rainy, foggy, dismal, doomy, blowing a gale, or still as death and full of bugs and humidity — and all these strange troubled faces of the mountains can show in the space of days. Which means preparation and a lot of equipment.
Now that a hot calm clear-blue-eyed weather had stabilized, Josie and I traveled light on our ascent of Plateau Mountain, starting the climb late in the day, around 6 pm, with sunset not two and half hours away, and the long tail of twilight until 9:30 pm or a little later.
The trail was very steep. We toiled and sweated. Josie complained not one bit. She rallied me to her side when I slowed. The air was still. The insects were quiet. No brooks or streams or rills ran off the peak; we’ve had little rain lately, and the land is in the early stages of drought. I worried about our water. I had brought a gallon for the both of us, taken from the tap at home, and a water filter in case we found something running. A few springs burble in wet years on the high Catskill peaks, but for the most part these are dry places. We got thirsty. Husbanded the water. Lots of sweat and groans, the good and happy kind, as everywhere along the trail there were ledges and boulders and cobbles and minor difficulties galore. I worried about the water, and I worried about the time — it was dusk now and we were hardly nearer the rim of the mountain (for Plateau is one of those “peaks” in the Catskills that really does form a mesa rim).
At about 3,000 feet of elevation, relief: a breeze picked up, the satiny zephyrs of which I spoke. We were both of us soaked in sweat, wet to the skin, wet down to our wool socks (for even in summer on the trail I’ve taught Josie to wear only wool socks). The stirring air drove through our soaked clothes, acted with the effect of evaporative cooling, the same action of what they call a swamp cooler in the aridlands.
Still we climbed. The trail faced west and now there was a sunset of marvelous red-pink-purple immensity that we caught sight of through the rustling leaves of the silver birches and the paper birches. Soon, the full dark, moonless, time for headlamps. Josie was afraid. Bears, she said. I had a pistol strapped to me, and showed her the gun to allay her fears, clearing the chamber and handing it to her. “Looks like a blaster!” she said, being a Star Wars fan. She held and weighed it without judgment, as one might any other tool, and correctly did not place her finger in the trigger guard while doing so.
For the most part you don’t need a gun out here, not for bears or anyone else. Subjective risk and objective risk are two explicitly competing worlds – often comically at odds – and the subjective risk, Josie’s perception of it, was allayed a bit (meaninglessly) with the knowledge that ol’ backpacker dad carried a gun to deal with an almost non-existent objective risk. I told her the greatest risk on this wondrous mountain was that we might happen on another Homo sapiens playing music on a portable IJoy Beachbomb sound system. Blind and deaf hominids as they hike deep in wilderness need to get terribly lost and never be able to recharge their Beachbombs.
We climbed and climbed, the trail narrowed now to the cone of light from our headlamps, the breeze blew stronger and warmer, all the living world on the steep mountainside shook and danced and hushed. With our lamps we groped up the final stretch along a series of ledges, and at the top, where the wind blew fiercest, we looked for a place to lay our sleeping bags, found one in the duff of high country firs and pines, and hugged. We hugged! And did a little dance, celebration of finding a place to sleep that was so endearing, so lovely. The perfume of the balsam fir filled the air. Here was the revealed edge of the world, here was a small taste of immensity.
Let it never be said, however, that such glory is because of conquest. It is not glorious by the measures of the deranged creature called the Competitive Man, who keeps by his side the sick concubine Competitive Woman-who-Wants-to-Be-Man. It is not glorious by the measure of some inane clown-mimicry of a climb up K2, Kilimanjaro, fastest ascent (fastest masturbation), fastest descent, etc. etc., ad absurdum.
The glory is when the mere walker in the woods, the animal Homo sapiens, is at the still point of the turning world: “Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered….Except for the point, the still point.”
A small creature, a silly creature, a stupid and contemptible creature given the industrial culture he’s created, but also, free of that culture, a loving and sweet and gentle creature who needs only to find the still point.
And on the rim of Plateau Mountain, two creatures, father and daughter, now lay down at their camp to sleep.
Author’s Note: Since 2016 I have been working on a book about a 62-year-old Texas man who was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison, charged with being an “ecoterrorist” for acts of industrial sabotage “in defense of mother earth,” as he put it. He is now in the last months of his sentence, due to be released in August of 2022, a few weeks from now. If I can raise the money, I’d like to be there when he gets out. The idea is that we take a trip together upon his release to visit some of the places he sabotaged. For that I need your help: $1,000.00 is my fundraising goal.
Editor’s note: The Extraction Economy and oil pipelines are everywhere, and they affect everyone. If you are white enough, rich enough, and/or lucky enough, the pipelines might not be built in your backyard, but no matter who you are, they contaminate the water, air, and land upon which you depend for your life. The distance does not keep you safe, it only delays alarm. There are no safe places to hide from a culture and economy based on extraction, drawdown, theft, genocide, and ecocide; this culture eats beautiful forested lands, rich seas, and clear skies and leaves behind wasteland, toxic dead zones, and, possibly in the near future, an inhabitable planet. If it doesn’t seem like this culture and its economy steals wealth of all sorts for the benefit of a few, it’s very likely that you live in an exclusion zone rather than a sacrifice zone. The exclusion zones are where resources are sent, where power is concentrated, where the in-group is nourished. Sacrifice zones are where resources are extracted, where power is enforced to maintain subjugation, where the out-group is impoverished. Even if you recognize the material problems this culture produces, its strong tradition of silencing dissent, erasing indigenous cultures and knowledge, and spreading self-serving disinformation obscure the root cause of these problems. For thousands of years, the dynamic of the haves and the have-nots has been at the core of an evolving culture that dominates and erases other cultures. It has taken many forms, including city-states, empires, kingdoms, feudalism, mercantilism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and fascism. The common denominator is a selfish urge to profit at the expense of others, beginning about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and male subjugation of women. This developed into various socioeconomic structures that depend on and thus facilitate the destruction of life. The dominant culture abuses the earth just as it abuses women.
“When it comes to protecting the planet, stopping pipelines needs to be one of our first priorities. And like other Earth-destroying machinery, pipelines are very vulnerable. They stretch on for miles with no guards, no fences, and no protection.” – Max Wilbert
When Enbridge Inc. announced on September 29, 2021, its “Line 3 Replacement Project [was] Substantially Completed and Set to be Fully Operational,” Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth, issued a video response from the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. After years of fighting against Enbridge’s efforts to desecrate Anishinaabe lands, Winona refused to give up the fight. In her words, “They’ve created their jobs. They put in their pipe. They won. They’ve committed a crime. And someone needs to stop them from making a profit off of that crime. Do something for the people. Stop Line 3 and give us a ‘just transition.’”
Line 3 is a project of Enbridge Inc., a multinational corporation headquartered in Alberta, Canada. Enbridge transports 30% of all oil produced in North America and operates 76,546 miles of pipeline across the continent. Last year, Enbridge reported yearly revenue of $39.853B, a 33.53% increase year-over-year. Line 3 is part of Enbridge’s Mainline System and runs 1,097 miles from Edmonton, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. Line 3 transports ‘tar sands oil,’ a variant of oil that the Union of Concerned Scientists denounces as “a mixture of mostly sand, clay, water, and a thick, molasses-like substance called bitumen…[which] on a lifetime basis…produces about 15% more carbon dioxide emissions.” Built in 1960, Line 3 initially transported 760,000 barrels of oil a day. But, as of 2019, it could only transport 390,000, about half the amount. Enbridge Inc. announced its Line 3 Replacement Project on October 24, 2014, by filing a Notice Plan with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). In Enbridge’s words, the Line 3 Replacement Project will “maintain … high safety standards…and restore the historical operating capabilities of Line 3.”
But, the story of Line 3 is not that of “safety standards” and “operating capabilities.” Instead, it is the story of Honor the Earth and the Anishinaabe’s resistance against Line 3. It is the story of ‘manoomin,’ and Turtle Island again being attacked by the “Black Snake.” And it is the story of the MPUC’s failure to honor treaty rights and protect the Earth. Line 3 was not a failure of the State of Minnesota but rather the logical consequence of a settler-colonial political system determined to destroy the Earth and any potential for Native sovereignty. Enbridge knew it would face a fight, as with the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL. But, this time, it came prepared. It assembled the Northern Lights Taskforce, “brought jobs to Minnesota,” and pursued every legal and illegal option available to nullify resistance to Line 3. Enbridge wielded its power to its advantage, and it won. But, that doesn’t mean that the resistance failed.
Andy Pearson, Midwest Tar Sands Coordinator at MN350, who was also detained at an MPUC hearing, said, “Although Line 3 is in the ground, the fight against tar sands and pipelines…is something that does continue and will continue. We’re seeing action against Line 5 in Northern Wisconsin, and we’ll see more work to build against the Enbridge Mainline System.” While Line 3 is just a single component of Enbridge’s vast infrastructure holdings across the so-called United States, Enbridge appeared determined to influence every unit of the State of Minnesota to its advantage. Despite resistance by Honor the Earth, StopLine3, MN350, the Giniw Collective, the Sierra Club, and many others, Enbridge was able to use the police, the legislature, and the PUC to neutralize the Anishinaabe people and affiliated water protectors.
Enbridge’s relationship with Minnesota law enforcement is well established. Before beginning construction on Line 3, Enbridge obtained a permit through the MPUC that outlined its financial responsibilities to the State of Minnesota, including Minnesota law enforcement. It states:
“Prior to construction, the Permittee shall establish a Public Safety Escrow Account…Local Government Units (LGU) shall submit in writing an itemized request to the Public Safety Liaison sufficient to recommend to the Commission’s Executive Secretary whether services rendered were additional municipal services uniquely provided as a result of construction of the pipeline during the term of this permit.”
While Enbridge didn’t explicitly approve of nor solicit this inclusion, it’s hard to imagine that they do not approve. The Northern Lights Task Force, a coalition of Police Departments in Northern Minnesota, including the Aitkin Police Department and Palisade Police Department, is also the direct beneficiary of this provision. The Escrow Account functions as a blank check written by Enbridge on behalf of the policing agencies in Northern Minnesota. There are few limitations on what can be included in a reimbursement request. And in documents obtained by The Intercept, one Aitkin Police Department Seargent expressed hope that “the pipeline will give us an extra boost to next year’s budget, which should make it easy for me to propose an upgrade/trade to your rifles rather than a rebuild of our 8 Bushmasters.”
Shanai Matteson, a Cultural & Campaign Organizer at Honor the Earth and lifelong resident of Palisade, Minnesota, was heavily involved in the resistance against Line 3. In one incident, Shanai was charged for, in her words, “conspiring, aiding and abetting trespass on critical public infrastructure” for making “a speech at a rally where I live, also known as the Welcome Water Protectors Camp.” On the 30th Anniversary of the Enbridge Oil Spill in Itasca County, Shanai was charged after officers “kettled and arrested dozens of people taking part in a memory march.” When asked about the relationship between the State of Minnesota and Enbridge, Shanai indicated, “What happened here in Northern Minnesota sets a dangerous precedent…with local law enforcement paid to police the property and profits of a private company.”
According to a Permit Compliance Filing with the MPUC, “$250,000 was deposited on May 8, 2020” into the Escrow Account. But, in total, Enbridge paid $2,171,008.84 to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and millions more to police departments across Northern Minnesota. Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth, said she “was charged by a DNR officer first…so the guys charged with protecting us are the guys arresting us.” On June 15, 2021, Enbridge pierced an aquifer near its Clearbrook Terminal worksite. According to the DNR, as of September 5, 2021, 24.2 million gallons of groundwater had been spilled. As a penalty, the DNR ordered Enbridge to pay 3.32 million dollars. And yet, on September 10, 2021, Enbridge pierced another aquifer near the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation, spilling 220 million gallons of groundwater.
The Department of Natural Resources and the State of Minnesota did nothing to stop Enbridge’s criminal misconduct in Northern Minnesota. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. Enbridge bought off the police and was willing to accept whatever fine the DNR might levy, as long as it meant Line 3 was in the ground. Yet, at the same time, viewing Enbridge’s relationship with the Northern Lights Taskforce, the State of Minnesota, and the Department of Natural Resources through this lens of corruption or malfeasance doesn’t do justice to the nature or extent of the relationship. It is no mistake that the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation had 220 million gallons of water spilled into its Dead Fish Lake, threatening its wild rice harvest. Nor was it a mistake that Winona LaDuke, the ‘guardian ad litem for the Shell River’ appointed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, was arrested protecting the very river she swore to protect.
The Public Utilities Commission’s permit for Line 3 includes provision 6.11, titled Tribal Economic Opportunity and Labor Education Plan, which states, “The Plan must include…a discussion of how Minnesota-based tribal members and businesses will be given preference under the committed target.” Additionally, it demands that “The Plan…include: a discussion of a Regional Native American Training Program with the purpose of recruiting and training Native Americans in the region.” Enbridge employed 12,155 workers during its Line 3 Replacement Project, 295 of which identified as Native Americans and residents of Minnesota.
Even the Public Utilities Commission, despite serving as Enbridge’s puppet, recognized the plight of Native communities in Northern Minnesota.
Due to the legacy of displacement, assimilation, and extermination, Anishinaabe communities in Northern Minnesota have the highest poverty rates in the State. I.e., the 36.8% poverty rate on the Red Lake Reservation or the 37.9% poverty rate on the Leech Lake Reservation. If it could have a consciousness, Enbridge would not devote it to Minnesota, and certainly not the Anishinaabe. To Enbridge, the Anishinaabe are a resource and, at times, a nuisance. They are ‘people of the past’ and people to control. The MPUC urges Enbridge to “train” the Anishinaabe. But, here, “train” does not mean support or teach; instead, it means ‘to control.’ For Enbridge, it would be financially expedient to exterminate the last and only obstacle standing in the way of Line 3—the Anishinaabe who have stewarded the land for generations.
And while the Public Utilities Commission forbade “counterinsurgency tactics or misinformation campaigns” in Provision 5.5 titled Public Safety and Security, Enbridge didn’t listen. Documents obtained by the Intercept indicate that Enbridge launched an initiative titled “Opposition Driven Operational Threats,” which systematically documented and categorized Native individuals, tribes, and organizations into color-coded arrangements indicating whether or not they were a threat. In 2021, Enbridge event went so far as to purchase land near the headquarters of Honor the Earth (which they later sold after completing Line 3). While the relationship between Enbridge and the Northern Lights Task Force is well documented, Enbridge’s internally discussed strategy in directing the police against water protectors is less well known. Like a ‘black box,’ we know the result—nearly 900 arrests—but don’t know all of what went into Enbridge’s strategy.
While the battle against Line 3 is over, that does not mean that Honor the Earth or, for that matter, any other individual or organization involved in the fight against Line 3 has given up. Hundreds of water protectors are still facing charges, many of them, in StopLine3’s words, “with trumped-up felonies, with most of the felonies being bogus “theft” charges,” and a new campaign, “Drop the Charges,” has been launched to support those facing jail time upon conviction. But Enbridge hasn’t given up either. The fight against Line 5 is heating up in Michigan as Enbridge attempts to build a tunnel underneath the Straits of Mackinaw despite the opposition of the State of Michigan and the Bad River Tribe. When asked about the battle against Line 5 and why, despite the massive influence of a corporation like Enbridge, it’s still work fighting, Paul DeMain, Board Chair of Honor the Earth and Tribal Member of the Bad River Tribe, had this to say: “You know why? Because Enbridge fears the truth. And that’s what we’re fighting up against.”
Editor’s note: Too often, activists fail to understand tactics and strategy, especially when we are matched against business people, law enforcement, and even military professionals. This makes us easy to out-think, outmaneuver, and defeat. It is essential that we remedy this discrepancy. This article is excerpted from Chapter 12, Introduction to Strategy, in the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, by Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen, and Aric McBay. The book aims to introduce readers to basic and intermediate strategic principles and is an essential manual for activists in the age of eco-collapse.
Strategy and tactics form a continuum; there’s no clear dividing line between them. So the tactics available, which will be discussed in the next chapter, guide strategy, and vice versa. But strategy forms the base. If resistance action is a tree, the tactics are spreading branches and leaves, finely divided and numerous, while the strategy is the trunk, providing stability, cohesion, and rootedness. If resisters ignore the necessity and value of strategy, as many would-be resistance groups do—they are all tactics, no strategy—then they don’t have a tree, they have loose branches, tumbleweeds blowing this way and that with changing winds.
Conceptually, strategy is simple. First understand the context: where are we, what are our problems? Then, develop the goal(s): where do we want to be? Identify the priorities. Now figure out what actions are needed to get from point A to point B. Finally, identify the resources, people, and specific operations needed to carry out those activities.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you love salmon. Here’s the context: salmon have been all but wiped out in North America, because of dams, industrial logging, industrial fishing, industrial agriculture, the murder of the oceans, and global warming. The goal is for the salmon population not only to stop declining, but to increase. The difference between a world in which salmon are being wiped out, and one in which they are thriving, comes down to those six obstacles. Overcoming them would be the priority in any successful strategy to save the salmon.
What actions must be taken to honor this priority? Remove the dams. Stop industrial forms of logging, fishing, and agriculture. Stop the massive production and dumping of plastics. Stop global warming, which means stop the burning of fossil fuels. In all these cases, existing structures and practices have to be demolished for salmon to survive, for the goal to be accomplished.
Now it’s time to proceed to the operational and tactical side of this strategy. According to the US Army field manual, all operations fit into one of three “all encompassing” categories: decisive, sustaining, or shaping.
Decisive
Decisive operations “are those that directly accomplish the task” or objective at hand. In our salmon example, a decisive operation might be taking out a dam or preventing a clear-cut above a salmon spawning stream. Decisive operations are the centerpiece of strategy.
Sustaining
Sustaining operations “are operations at any echelon that enable shaping and decisive operations” by offering direct support to those other operations. These supporting operations might include funding or logistical support, communications, security, or other aid and services. In the salmon example, this might mean providing transportation to people taking out a dam, bringing food to tree-sitters, or helping to research timber sale appeals. It might mean running an escape line or safehouse, or providing prisoner support.
Shaping
Shaping operations “create and preserve conditions for the success of the decisive operation.” They alter the circumstances of the conflict and help bring about the conditions required for victory. Shaping operations could include carrying out a campaign on the importance of removing dams, undermining a particular logging company, or helping to develop a culture of resistance that values effective action and refuses to collaborate. However, shaping operations are not necessarily broad-based or indirect. If an allied underground cell were to attack a nearby pipeline as a distraction, allowing the main group to take out a dam, that diversionary measure would be considered a shaping operation. The lobby effort that created the Clean Water Act could even be considered a shaping operation, because it helps to preserve the conditions necessary for victory.
If you look at the taxonomy of action chart on page 243, you’ll see that the actions on the left consist mostly of shaping operations, the actions along the center-right consist mostly of sustaining operations, and the right-most actions are generally decisive.
These categories are used for a reason. Every effective operation—and hence every effective tactic—must fall into one or more of these categories. It must do one of those things. If it doesn’t—if that operation’s or tactic’s contribution to the end goal is undefined or inexpressible—then successful resisters don’t waste time on that tactic.
There is a spectrum of involvement in political organizing.
It begins with awareness of the issues. Then, a person may wish to volunteer and contribute to a cause. Eventually, if commitment and experience continues to grow, a person can begin to be a leader and true organizer, bringing other people together and coordinating work that falls into the three categories of resistance efforts [Ed. note: see our next article this Friday for more on these categories].
Ideally, political organizing should be conducted inside an organization. Organizations help us build power by forcing us to clearly define goals, bring people together, create structure and accountability, and evolve over time. Working in a group also requires more of us as individuals; we learn to work better with others, get feedback on our approach, and are exposed to different ways of thinking.
When I first got involved in Deep Green Resistance more than a decade ago, I began to ask myself, “how do I contribute?” First, I found simple ways. I posted to social media, washed dishes at gatherings, and participated in discussions to build community. I shared resources that I found interesting, contributed short articles and blog posts, and donated $5 per month — not much, since I was very poor at the time, but an important symbol of my commitment.
I also worked to educate myself as much as I could, reading books about historical resistance movements, community organizing, fundraising, environmental issues, and of course the Deep Green Resistance book.
Whenever there was an opportunity to step up and volunteer for something, I tried to take it. Over time, I built more experience and confidence, and I started doing more.
Getting started with local and regional organizing
When I moved to a new town, I began by organizing a chapter of DGR there. I talked with leadership, made us a website, and started sharing information about local and regional environmental issues, learning about them as I went along.
I started attending rallies and protests with homemade signs. I met some people who were interested and worked to recruit them into the organization. We held several events, such as meetings, film screenings, and so on. Some were attended by only one or two people. But this experience helped me learn, and eventually I organized a full two-day event including speakers from a half-dozen organizations and regional tribes, which was attended by 30 people. I was learning.
When I head about a radical direct action campaign in the area, I got involved. I started going to meetings, taking notes, doing research, and contributing as much as I could. We visited the site of a proposed fossil fuel project, and got to know the area. I fell in love with the land and started to write essays. As the campaign went on, I had a chance to participate in several direct actions and risked arrest.
Soon, I redirected my energy towards another environmental issue in my region that was less well-known.
This period I’m describing ended about eight years ago. Since then, I haven’t stopped learning. I thought it might be useful to share this story with you all to help you envision yourself going through a similar process.
Here are a few things I’ve tried to keep in mind throughout this time period to deliberately organize my life for resistance.
1. Cultivate passion
The most important thing is to keep the fire burning. I fall in love with the natural world over and over again. And my heart breaks and I get angry over and over again when I see the world being destroyed. This is the foundation of everything.
2. Learn
Effective resistance is a skill, not an innate trait. If I study, practice, and reflect, I will become more skilled over time. I work to gain theoretical (analysis, history, philosophy, writing, etc.), interpersonal (communication, conflict mediation, community organizing, fundraising, etc.), and practical (self-defense, wilderness survival, climbing, navigation, cooking, etc.) skills.
3. Find flexible and stable work
Both poverty and professional-workaholism are weapons of capitalism. Capitalism is set up to keep us locked into the prison of 40-hour work weeks and the nuclear family model. To have maximum time and energy for resistance, I try and find flexible work (self-employed if possible) and minimize my expenses by living an alternative lifestyle.
4. Build a supportive network and focus on your health
I surround myself with people who reflect my values and help me expand my thinking. Cultivating good relationships and personal health gives me vitality and allows my energy to match my passion. I try to distinguish between things that feed my soul and things that are a waste of time so I can prioritize resistance work.
5. Don’t give up
I am always looking for better ways to do things and do not hesitate to self-criticize and change course.
Max Wilbert is an organizer, writer, and wilderness guide. He is the author of two books, most recently: Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It (Monkfish 2021 — co-authored with Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith).
Deep Green Resistance is a radical environmental movement, dedicated to shifting activists towards strategies that have a real chance to stop the murder of the planet. Our allegiance is first and foremost to the land around us; we fight for the salmon, the pine trees, and the songbirds, not the solar panels and space shuttles so many ‘environmentalists’ have fallen in love with. We in DGR don’t want a more sustainable nightmare. We want a living world.
Deep Green Resistance recognizes that industrial civilization is incompatible with life on this planet – and when our way of living conflicts with the needs of the land, our way of living must go. This transition to a healthy and just relationship with the natural world is a massive undertaking, one that won’t be achieved with individual lifestyle changes and a green coat of paint on the latest mountain-killing mining rig. Real change will take a revolutionary heart. Anything less is a recipe for failure.
Deep Green Resistance has a roadmap for that revolution. We call it Decisive Ecological Warfare. We’ve studied resistance movements throughout history, from the Irish Republicans to Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, and applied the lessons they can teach us to the fight for Earth liberation. Our goal as aboveground activists is to promote this strategic resistance, with the goal of triggering cascading systems failure within industrial infrastructure. In this mission, we are guided by a strict code of conduct, a steering committee of seasoned revolutionaries, and, most of all, an unwavering dedication to the land on which we live.
As an analysis, DGR explains that “the culture of empire”—civilization—is the social structure that is responsible for destroying life on Earth. By recognizing the roots of the problem, we can create meaningful strategies to address it.
As a strategy, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop the destruction through a two-pronged approach: an “aboveground” movement engaging in organizing, resistance, and building of alternative institutions such as food, housing, and medical systems; and an “underground” wing committed to strategically dismantling the institutions killing the world—using non-violent methods and coordinated dismantling of industrial infrastructure.
As an organization, Deep Green Resistance is implementing the aboveground portion of this strategy.
How Can I Get Involved?
In the midst of all this destruction, it’s easy to feel hopeless. But there’s one nice thing about living in such dark times – anywhere you look, there’s great work to be done. Deep Green Resistance organizers are hard at work around the world fighting open-pit mining, deforestation, global warming, industrial agriculture, urban sprawl, and more.
Whether on the front lines or behind the scenes, there is room for you in this war. So get in touch! We have members across the globe and resources in multiple languages. Head to our website, check our Facebook, or send us an email and introduce yourself. We’ll help you learn more about DGR, find opportunities for volunteering, and apply for membership. You’ll also be able to download a free ebook copy of the Deep Green Resistance book.
DGR is working to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary. In order to succeed, we’ll need teachers, healers, warriors, and workers. If you’re tired of the false solutions and the feel-good failures, Deep Green Resistance is for you, whatever your skills. In a fight like this, we need it all.
Remember: Deep Green Resistance is an aboveground organization, meaning we don’t engage in violence or property destruction. If you feel your talents would best be put to use in more militant actions, please do not contact us. This will keep you safer, and help us be more effective. We will not answer any questions related to any underground that may or may not exist.
“Our best hope will never lie in individual survivalism. Nor does it lie in small groups doing their best to prepare for the worst. Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear.”
