Why and How to Stop Using Porn

Why and How to Stop Using Porn

by | Mar 28, 2022 | ACTION, Pornography

Quitting porn is about reclaiming your authentic sexuality, aligning your actions with your values, and decolonizing your mind. For organizers, activists, and revolutionaries, choosing to stop using porn will make you feel better, leave you with more energy and time, and is a stand in solidarity with women and girls—which is also a stand with the living planet.

This article will introduce the harms of pornography, share a radical feminist perspective on porn, a radical indigenous perspective on porn, a short interview with Noam Chomsky, and provide some tools to help you stop using porn.

Sexting and Pornography are eroding whole generations from birth. — Native Youth Movement

Critical Media Analysis of Porn

Critical media analysis tells us how the advertising and mass media industries use psychological tricks to encourage us to buy and spend more time watching screens. It works. The global entertainment and media industry is worth more than $2 trillion.

However, few of us apply the same critical thinking to pornography. Like mass media, porn is big business. The size of the industry was estimated at roughly $15 billion in 2018 in the U.S. alone. That’s more revenue than Hollywood, Netflix, the NBA, Viacom, or the NFL.

Porn influences individuals and our entire society. However, this influence is rarely interrogated. Porn production and use largely happens in the shadows. It’s mostly a private habit that people indulge in darkened bedrooms and offices. And unlike other large industries, it’s usually not discussed. We educate young children about advertising and mass media to encourage caution around images that are, by design, manipulative. But young people are rarely educated about pornography.

They need to be. More than a third of kids have seen porn by age 12. Seventy-five percent of 18-year-old women say “pornography has led to pressure on girls and young women to act a certain way.” And 70% say “pornography leads to unrealistic attitudes” about sex and that “pornography can have a damaging impact on young people’s views of sex or relationships.” Porn has become the de-facto sex education program worldwide.

“Super-Normal” Stimulus

Human sexuality is a powerful force, and is something that can be beautiful, enjoyable, and important. Pornography, in contrast, is a “super-normal” stimulus.

Our ancestors did not evolve in a world where the internet provided instant access to explicit images and videos. At a biological level, modern internet porn is completely unlike the authentic human sexuality we evolved with, which involves face-to-face communication, desire, relationships, conversations, sex, and so on.

Porn, in contrast, provides a never-ending stream of digital images that has almost nothing in common with real sexuality. This super-normal stimulus is why many men, and a smaller number of women, are addicted to pornography.

Porn is to sex as heroin is to a runner’s high. Rather than nourishing the self and others, as authentic sexuality can, porn leaves users alienated, shameful, disconnected from partners and others around them, and wasting precious time—the only thing we have in life—looking at an image on a two dimensional screen. And like opiates, compulsive porn use is very common.

Why to Stop Using Porn

There are many reasons to stop using porn.

1. Porn harms women.

There are real women (and men) working in the pornography industry. They tend to have very high rates of drug abuse, STDs, mental health issues, physical and sexual abuse, and premature death. More broadly, porn fuels demand for prostitution and for sex trafficking. Tragically, there are many examples of porn depicting trafficked women who are being raped on-camera. Porn is not a fantasy. It is something happening to real people.

2. Porn harms society.

Critical media analysis tells us the images we are exposed to effect us. This is why advertising works. Porn lives inside the minds of the people who watch it, and then filters out into society. Porn also gravitates towards “shock content” as people become accustomed to hyper-normal stimulus. This is why porn so often contains blatant racism, real and faux underage and “teen” content, acts that are not actually pleasurable, BDSM, incest tropes, and outright violence. One analysis of the most popular porn films found that 88% of scenes contained violence against women. The objectification of women, negative body image, and abusive practices normalized by porn have ramifications throughout society and particularly on women and girls.

3. Porn harms users.

There is nothing categorically wrong with masturbation, but porn is not masturbation. It’s masturbation moderated by a patriarchal, capitalist industry. People who use porn don’t actually get anything out of it. They don’t get good sexual education. They don’t strengthen their relationships by building trust and intimacy. They don’t make money or become more enlightened. They don’t even get real, lasting pleasure (users consistently report feelings of shame, depression, and anxiety regarding their habit/addiction). In this sense, porn is similar to a destructive drug addiction. It harms users, yet they crave it and have trouble stopping.

A Radical Feminist Perspective on Porn

Feminists have been speaking out against pornography and the objectification of women for a long time. The great anti-porn organizer Andrea Dworkin wrote that:

“Pornography incarnates male supremacy. It is the DNA of male dominance. Every rule of sexual abuse, every nuance of sexual sadism, every highway and byway of sexual sadism, is encoded in it. It’s what men want us to be, think we are, make us into; how men use us; not because biologically they are men but because this is how their social power is organized. From the perspective of the political activist, pornography is the blueprint of male supremacy.”

A quick visit to any popular porn site confirms this. Whatever facet of patriarchy you are concerned about (sexual harassment, sexual assault, incest and family violence, rape, workplace abuse, exploitation of young women and girls by older men, forced childbearing, sexualized racism and racialized sexism, revenge porn, upskirting, voyeurism, and every other possible form of non-consent, deception, coercion, etc.) you will find pornography catering to and sexually reinforcing those ideologies.

Radical feminists have long argued that the sadistic brilliance of pornography is that is sexualizes domination, objectification, and violence; that it encodes patriarchy within something that feels pleasurable, and thus makes it often invisible. Andrea Dworkin, once again, wrote that “Pornography is the institution of male dominance that sexualizes hierarchy, objectification, submission, and violence.”

The feminist writer Susan Griffin described both the production and consumption of porn as a ritualistic rite to patriarchy with political ramifications rarely understood by those participating in it:

“For above all, pornography is ritual. It is an enacted drama that is laden with meaning, which imparts a vision of the world. The altar for the ritual is a woman’s body. And the ritual which is carried out on this altar is the desecration of flesh. Here, what is sacred within the body is degraded.”

A Radical Indigenous Perspective on Porn

Griffin’s analysis of pornography as a ritual that is conducted on women and girls and broadcast into the minds of hundreds of millions of people worldwide has some similarities to a radical indigenous perspective on pornography.

From the Native Youth Movement Warrior Society [edited for length]:

When two humans exchange their energy it is a sacred union. In our pre-invasion world sex was seen very different than today, very sacred; the most sacred of our ceremonies, the one that is universal. By exploiting sexuality, we exploit our essence as life forms. By colonizing and changing our sexuality they colonize our first and oldest ceremony, so sacred every man and woman had their own and it was only viewed, attended and participated in by them.

It is now controlled by the perverted minds of the colonizer. If they control what arouses people and when, through imagery, they can make a person think about sex and control the oldest part of us. The hind brain is older and stronger than any other portion of the brain. We share it with all other backboned animals.

When hind brain is in charge, accessing neural networks that are responsible for compassion, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence is harder. The place where our deepest love comes from can be quickly overridden by the hind brain. Today most people in the industrial world function in this continued state of narcissism. In other words, they have sexualized our world as a way to control the oldest thought process of survival.

Sexting and pornography are eroding whole generations from birth. While sex is thought of as a curse word in public and our communities, dysfunctional sexuality is a behind-closed-doors addiction. In 2012, the Internet Watch Foundation found that an “estimated 88% of self-made explicit images are stolen from their original upload location and made available on other websites, in particular porn sites collecting sexual imagery of children and young people.” When the person who originally sexted the photo finds out everyone has access to it they can go into depression and there have been many cases of suicide.

Indigenous views of sexuality must be revived as a Sacred teaching for our young ones. The future of Indigenous people is at stake. Body parts are not objects, just as the humans they are part of are not objects, they are sacred life forms that must be treated good and engaged respectfully. Physical appearance is shallow. A person’s mind must be in good health to be healthy.

Noam Chomsky on Pornography

When asked about his stance on pornography, in response to perceived endorsement of Hustler, who had tricked Chomsky into giving an interview for the magazine, Chomsky responded:

Pornography is humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. I mean, women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That’s not what human beings are. I don’t even see anything to discuss.

Interviewer: But didn’t performers choose to do the job and get paid?

The fact that people agree to it and are paid, is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweatshops in China, where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day, and then the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but it doesn’t make me in favor of it, so that argument we can’t even talk about.

As for the fact that it’s some people’s erotica, well you know that’s their problem, doesn’t mean I have to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of humiliation of women, they have a problem, but it’s nothing I want to contribute to.

Interviewer: How should we improve the production conditions of pornography?

By eliminating degradation of women, that would improve it. Just like child abuse, you don’t want to make it better child abuse, you want to stop child abuse.

Suppose there’s a starving child in the slums, and you say “well, I’ll give you food if you’ll let me abuse you.” Suppose—well, there happen to be laws against child abuse, fortunately—but suppose someone were to give you an argument. Well, you know, after all a child’s starving otherwise, so you’re taking away their chance to get some food if you ban abuse. I mean, is that an argument?

The answer to that is stop the conditions in which the child is starving, and the same is true here. Eliminate the conditions in which women can’t get decent jobs, not permit abusive and destructive behavior.

How to Stop Using Porn

There are many ways to stop using porn, but the difficult part is the psychology of quitting. Unlike a drug like heroin or alcohol, porn is barely addictive at the physical level. People quitting heroin or alcohol often need medical support and gradual weaning. Porn is not like that. The addiction is primarily psychological.

Most compulsive porn users are convinced that they need porn, that they like it, or that they’ll feel miserable without it—even though using porn makes them feel shameful and physically depleted. This is the psychology of addiction.

So how can this be overcome? There are a few common methods used by millions of people around the world to stop using porn. These include EasyPeasy, Fortify, Your Brain on Porn, and others.

1. Stop Using Porn with the Easy Peasy Method

“Easy Peasy” is a method adapted from Allen Carr’s 1985 book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. The method focuses on first transforming your attitude towards porn by seeing it as a drug that has no benefits and embracing a desire to quit. This method is interesting because it emphasizes happiness and contentment to be free of porn, and discourages people from feeling like they are depriving themselves of something by quitting. It involves reading a short book (also available as an audiobook) and is free.

2. Stop Using Porn with the Fortify App

Fortify is a smartphone and web app that is available for free to help people stop using porn. It was created by the people behind “Fight The New Drug,” an anti-porn organization. The app helps prompt you to take certain actions, get support from others, track your progress, and do mindfulness exercises. A free version is available, as is a paid plan with more tools that costs $10 USD per month.

3. Stop Using Porn with Your Brain on Porn

YBOP doesn’t prescribe a single program for quitting porn. Rather, it has a collection of tips and tricks collected over many years and from many people.

Please note: these methods are not explicitly feminist creations; they are self-help methods that are largely apolitical. Many anti-porn communities and forums still contain misogyny. However, don’t let this discourage you from using the resources that are available.

Additional Information

Musings on Organizing

Musings on Organizing

by | Mar 22, 2022 | ACTION, Strategy & Analysis

Editor’s note: This piece was written in 2018, and does not reflect DGR strategy. We are not a partisan organization along the U.S. Democrat-Republican divide. Rather, we view both of these political parties as tools of capitalist hegemony–two factions of the ruling class, battling for political and economic control.

However, it is rare to find organizers writing about organizing. This piece is valuable for the same reason that autobiographies of organizers and revolutionary leaders are valuable—not for sweeping statements or ideological platitudes, but precisely because of the unpolished reality they, at times, show. Organizing for change in our society is not simple, and revolutionary change on the scale Deep Green Resistance advocates is titanic by any measure. Any success we find will not play out smoothly like a Hollywood film. Essays like this remind us of the hard grunt work of grassroots organizing that is required for us to leave a better future for those who come after.

By

I haven’t had much time to write, hence the lack of essays. We’ve been organizing and I can never seem to get in a good writing groove when my schedule is filled with community obligations.

That said, one of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered over the years is a lack of organizing knowledge and information. Groups such as the Highlander Center or Greenpeace provide manuals, but I would guess that over 99% of the articles and essays produced on progressive media outlets focus on what’s wrong, not what people are doing about it.

Part of the problem is that many progressive media outlets aren’t interested in such articles. However, organizers and activists are also to blame as we simply don’t write as often as analysts, professors, or essayists.

Below is a lengthy and unstructured series of reflections on the sort of organizing work I’m currently doing in Northwest Indiana, where I live and work. I hope people will find some of my insights interesting and useful.

TRUMP’S INAUGURATION & LACK OF ORGANIZATION                     

Back in January of 2017, hundreds of people throughout the Northwest Indiana region and millions across the United States were regularly attending events, meetings and rallies. At the time, I recognized that such a pace was not sustainable, and for many reasons.

First, it’s hard to replicate large symbolic actions such as protests because those sort of events require a lot of time, resources and manpower. Plus, the utility of large-scale rallies is limited, especially if they don’t take place within the context of broader campaigns and political projects.

Second, it was clear from the start that many groups were quite inexperienced with regard to their basic organizing knowledge. I attended meeting after meeting where basic facilitation skills and meeting structures were completely lacking. People were confusing terminologies and misunderstanding the difference between tactics and strategy, vision and programme.

Of course, all of these things are fixable, but that requires a certain level of humility and trust. If organizations and organizers are insular, it’s difficult to provide advice. Toxic personalities play a discouraging role as well.

Third, many of the groups that popped-up after Trump’s inauguration were tied to groups such as Indivisible and Our Revolution. Both groups, however, have failed to garner serious support or provide a viable path forward. In my opinion, that’s the inevitable result of top-down organizational structures and ideas.

In Northwest Indiana (NWI), where I live, hundreds of people were showing up to town hall events where elected Democrats would essentially give marching orders to those in attendance: “Send more emails to your elected officials!” This strategy, if one could even call it that, has been a great waste of time and energy. Even worse, progressives missed a potentially fruitful political opportunity to immediately orientate thousands of first-time activists.

That said, many progressive groups have formed in NWI and throughout the state of Indiana since Trump’s inauguration. Without question, one of the biggest challenges we face is a lack of coordination between progressive organizations at the local, regional and state levels. Collectively developing vision, strategies and tactics is difficult work, but it’s also essential if we hope to build long-lasting institutions capable of addressing not only our immediate needs, but also our long-term ideals.

Right now, the Michigan City Social Justice Group (MCSJG), which is the organization I’ve been primarily working with since 2017, is going through an internal restructuring process. It’s a needed and welcomed step for an organization that’s existed for a little more than a year. Fortunately, many of the group’s members have embraced and welcomed the process.

As an organization, we’ve had successes and setbacks (as any political organization does), but we’re moving in the right direction and doing all of the necessary and sometimes monotonous tasks that lay a solid foundation for what should become a growing organization.

Should we become a 501(c)3 or a ‘Super Pac?’ If we want to raise money, we have to become more professionalized and that requires legal aid, loads of paperwork ,and serious accountability.

Political organizing work, while fulfilling and empowering, is very trying, stressful and at times, quite tedious. Filing paperwork with the IRS, obtaining state documentation, requesting municipal permits for events, sitting through two hour meetings about risk management and conflict resolution plans, creating websites, managing social media and crafting word documents isn’t exactly the most exhilarating work, but it’s absolutely necessary if people are interested in creating a serious organization that has the potential to grow and significantly change the political, cultural, economic and civic structures of our city, county and state.

The overall scope of such a project is daunting, which is why most people either remain at the level of engaged citizen (but not a member of an organization) or join a preexisting organization (because it’s much easier than starting one from scratch, especially if you’re a precarious worker trying to make ends meet).

For those reasons and many others, including how preexisting organizations treat newcomers, it’s rare to find a group of people who are willing to create something new. I’m grateful to have met such committed and serious folks.

TRUMP: DISTRACTION OR TARGET?

One of the primary challenges progressive organizations faced in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory, and still face, is how much time they should spend specifically targeting Trump, and how much time and effort should they spend on local and state-wide efforts. Of course, in an ideal world, all of these efforts would work with each other in a strategic manner, but that’s not always possible.

For example, most of the progressive groups that exist in the state of Indiana are not in contact with one another. Activists, for example, in NWI have very little idea of what’s happening in Fort Wayne or Bloomington. We have friends in those areas, and occasionally discuss ongoing organizing efforts, but not in a systematic fashion.

As I mentioned above, one of our primary challenges at the state level is increasing coordination between existing groups, especially those operating at the grassroots level. The major NGOs communicate with each other, but they’re not actively building independent organizations or coalitions in our state. To be honest, we don’t expect them to. We’re not looking to replicate the structures of existing NGOs — we’re trying to build an independent progressive organization and series of institutions whose primary focus is building power at the grassroots level. 

The question of whether or not groups should respond to each of Trump’s reactionary policy directives or statements cannot be understated. Back in January of 2017, people routinely blew up at meetings when we told them that we weren’t going to put a ton of energy into trying to keep Jeff Sessions from being the Attorney General, or that we weren’t interested in the Russia-Trump scandal.

It’s easy to see how liberal groups and the Democratic Party have been so unsuccessful in recent years: they focus on the issues the corporate media highlights, as opposed to focusing on the needs and interests of working-class, poor people, and the environment. Their focus is also very short-term. Many of these groups have a difficult time imagining politics beyond election cycles.

Without doubt, it makes sense to oppose (when possible) the Trump Administration and the GOP’s most damaging and reactionary excesses. However, it also makes sense to step back, reflect, and determine how we’re going to build the sort of organizations and movements that it will take to win. Trying to take down a president when your group can’t even hold regular and productive meetings is not only a waste of time, it’s laughable, and at worst, it’s a surefire way to burn people out.

On a tactical level, groups can use Trump’s vulgarity and brutish behavior as propaganda, but that’s a short-term outreach strategy. There are simply too many people and organizations who’ve built their ‘resistance’ on an anti-Trump platform, and it’s proven to be wholly inadequate. The tax bill, for instance, provided an opportunity to coalesce around an issue of great importance and one that resonated with ordinary folks (some polls suggest that over 70% of Americans were opposed to the bill). Progressives were unable to capitalize on this moment due to our internal disorganization, lack of vision and capacity.

To be fair, many millions of people are doing their best on a daily basis to stop Trump’s agenda, but they are disconnected, lacking organizational knowledge, and adequate resources.

LOCAL-STATE-NATIONAL-INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZING

We’re extremely limited in terms of what we can do at the municipal level in the state of Indiana. For instance, we can’t raise income, corporate or sales taxes (so much for the GOP’s mantra about ‘local control’); we’re also unable to put in place rent control caps or raise the minimum wage above the federal level; sanctuary cities are illegal; and we have limited control over the power company monopolies that exist throughout the state.

These limitations pose great challenges, but they also force us to think about creative alternatives and strategies that can alter existing power relations. Ideally, we would have both a local and state-wide strategy to change legislation in Indianapolis, but that’s rarely the case. More commonly, major NGOs (with limited success) and unions (with even less success) are the groups campaigning at the state level. Outside/independent groups and social movements have limited capacity and as a result, virtually no power to influence state politics.

Electorally, one strategy could be to fill as many local seats with progressives as possible, while simultaneously bolstering local and regional social movement groups and engaging in state-wide efforts when possible. That’s probably the most reasonable short-term strategy I could see for regional groups.

That said, running progressives for elected office is a tricky game. Should they run under a Democratic ticket? Should they run as Independents? Or should they run as Greens? Obviously, there are no easy answers to this question. Context should dictate the answer.

In Indiana, the Democratic Party is an empty vessel. Perhaps with a decent strategy and a committed group of organizers and activists, the local, county and state party apparatuses could be seized and used for progressive reforms (at least in the short-term).

The Democratic Party continues to win in cities like Michigan City because they’ve been around longer than anyone else and our city is 30% Black, working-class, and disproportionately union, hence GOP candidates stand little chance at winning local seats, at least that’s been true historically (Since 2010, the GOP has flourished in our country and state).

At the end of the day, the question organizers ask more than any other is: Do we have the capacity? What is practical with our current numbers? In our small city, we have 20 committed members in the  Michigan City Social Justice Group (MCSJG). How do we build our capacity while engaging in meaningful campaigns that provide real-world results for poor and working-class people? What projects will produce the greatest results over the long-term? These are constant and never-ending questions.

At every level, the primary issue is a matter of capacity and resources. Progressives will accomplish very little at the municipal level in a state like Indiana if we don’t radically change legislation downstate. It’s just that simple. It’s true that we can get creative and potentially develop alternative structures and revenue, but without the ability to raise corporate taxes, income taxes, the minimum wage, or put in place rent controls, we’re severely hampered in the short-term.

The new version of the Poor People’s Campaign is attempting to bring together some of these groups, but their platform is unclear, as they’ve put tactics before strategy (an ongoing and major problem on the Left, especially among antiwar activists and members of the progressive-faith community). There seems to be a persistent and incorrect belief among progressives that simply getting arrested and putting on the largest public spectacle imaginable will bring people into our movements. Sometimes, it’s true: people come along for the ride, but only for a limited amount of time. For the most part, people want concrete results and a clear platform.

Most people also have jobs, families and lives outside of political activism, hence they have limited time and patience for groups and movements, such as Occupy, which was disorganized, unclear in what it hoped to achieve, and isolated from other progressive organizations.

Street theater and protests are nice, symbolic events, and I enjoy them as much as the next person, but they are not an end, nor are they the primary means to our collective ends. Protests and occupations are simply tactics, and over-used ones at that. While occupations such as the ones that took place at Zucatti Park and Standing Rock are more useful than rallies, they’re also completely unsustainable.

At the national level, I’ve been unable to find an organization, movement or campaign that can tie into our existing local or regional organizing efforts. The Poor People’s Campaign would be the closest example, but that’s about it. Again, I’m assuming this varies depending on where one lives. For instance, I’ve heard that some Indivisible groups in Florida are doing great work. I’ve heard the same about DSA groups in Chicago. Again, however, the focus of these organizations is strictly electoral in nature. Here, in Northwest Indiana, the Sanders’ campaign-offshoot, Our Revolution, hasn’t taken off. Bringing Bernie’s supporters back into the mix has been an ongoing and frustrating effort, but also a necessary one. The 2018 midterms should offer an opportunity to reengage this constituency.

With regard to electoral campaigns, it’s important for progressive organizers to obtain contact lists. Thousands of addresses, phone numbers, and email lists are created, then lost or stashed away. It’s a real shame because many of the people who work on electoral campaigns disengage between cycles while grassroots groups remain engaged but have a difficult time gathering contacts.

We’ll be using our community space, PARC (Politics Art Roots Culture), as a primary organizing hub for Democrats during the 2018 midterm election cycle. Elections are one of the few times ordinary Americans are politically active. To me, it makes sense to expose liberals and Dems to leftwing ideas and forms of organizing that take place outside of the electoral sphere, and within the social movement context. As my friend once said, “We meet people where they’re at, but we don’t leave them there.”

PARC will fully support and host phone-banking, canvassing, and fundraising efforts, though it remains to be seen to what degree the MCSJG will engage with the 2018 midterms. Overall, we think it makes strategic sense to get rid of the GOP in the immediate future. They pose an immediate and grave threat to the planet and species and we’re constantly in triage mode when they’re in power. 

In our thinking, progressives can’t afford to ignore the electoral arena of struggle, nor can we afford purity politics. Poor and working-class people across the globe are suffering as a result of Trump and the GOP’s insane agenda, and the Democratic Party’s capitulation, and inability or unwillingness to provide a serious alternative. At the same time, many people on the Left refuse to acknowledge the limitations of the Green Party or the various Socialist parties who stand absolutely no immediate chance at gaining power. 

On the international level, it’s hard to fathom how progressive organizations in Red States such as Indiana can build serious and effective working relationships with organizers overseas if we can barely work together at the local, regional, state or national level. To me, it makes more sense for groups to build their base and create relationships with groups who share similar values and then focus on larger projects. We have to find the issues that can unite progressive groups and go form there (Sanders’ platform provided a model). 

I get calls and emails from folks throughout Indiana who want to start state-wide efforts, yet they have virtually no base of support in their hometowns. How can we project regional or state power if we don’t have power in our cities and towns? It doesn’t make sense, which is why so many groups who engage in meaningful work generate limited results.

SPACE AND COMMUNITY

From the very start, it was clear to my friend and long-time organizing partner and I that we had to open a community center to serve as a political and cultural organizing space. Having a space to operate in has been essential to MCSJG’s work. It’s also been quite useful for regional and even national groups who want to expand their reach to localities such as Michigan City.

Right now, we have an organizer from the Sierra Club’s ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign who operates and holds meetings in our space. As I mentioned before, the MCSJG uses our space as their primary hub, as does the PFLAG (Parents & Friends of Gays and Lesbians) – LaPorte County group. Mothers Clean Air Force and Veterans for Peace have held events in our space, as have regional organizations.

We hold bi-monthly live music/cultural events which double as fundraisers and use the center as a space where people can simply come, hang out, have a conversation and a cup of coffee. We have an enormous book collection that anyone can utilize and free Wi-Fi.

This year, we’re going through the process of becoming an NGO. We could remain a LLC, but that would greatly limit opportunities for grants and foundational money. Obviously, the most strategic and sustainable way to fund the space is a small donor program, but that takes time to build. The trick is keeping the overhead as low as possible so if/when the foundational money dries up, the space can remain open.

Again, I can’t stress enough the importance of having a space where people can gather, talk, laugh, learn, drink, dance, and create community. It’s also important for organizations and movements to be rooted. In that way, having a space provides a foundation for everything that follows, especially in an era of hyper-alienation.

Over time, we want the space to become a cooperative effort. The idea being that Sergio and I should relinquish control of the space in the coming years and hand over the reigns to a new generation of organizers, artists, and community members who will probably have a different and fresh idea of what the space should become. We welcome the change.

For now, we have all of our regularly scheduled events on the calendar and a few big ones on the horizon. On Saturday, January 20th, 2018, we’re holding a ‘Dump Trump & The GOP’ fundraiser/bash where we’ll have regional musicians performing and local organizers talking about their ongoing work and how people can get involved.

Next month, we have a ‘Medicare For All’ event where we’ll discuss Bernie Sanders’ proposal and how folks can get involved at the local level. I’ve already had a wonderful conversation with a woman form Southeast Indiana who, frustrated with the election results and previously disengaged, took it upon herself to start a free medical clinic in a suburb of Cincinnati where she resides.

I think such projects could be very useful if properly managed. Put differently, it’s clear that certain groups and individuals are simply interested in providing immediate support. Many of the volunteer groups in our city, region, and state focus on providing services, but they rarely, if ever, address the underlying political, economic, and social institutions that perpetuate the very systemic problems they provide immediate relief for. 

In our thinking, progressive groups should be able to do all of the above: provide needed services, oppose and stop immediate threats (development projects, legislation, etc.), and propose reforms while developing long-term alternatives to existing structures (what some would call ‘revolution’). Again, the primary challenges are a lack of capacity, vision, resources, and time. The never-ending question is always: what sort of events will allow us maximum outreach and the ability to gain capacity?

ADVOCACY, MOBOLIZATION & ORGANIZING

Jane McAlevey makes a clear and important distinction between advocacy, mobilizing and organizing in her latest book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. The reality is that many groups are actually advocating or mobilizing as opposed to organizing. For McAlevey, advocacy is the lowest form of involvement and the least capable of building serious power. Here, one should think of NGOs battling corporations in court, with lawyers and officials making the important decisions.

Mobilizing is a step-up from advocacy, but still fails to meet McAlevey’s threshold for proper ‘organizing.’ In the mobilizing model, organizations (unions, NGOs, neighborhood groups, etc.) regularly preech to the choir and turn out self-identifying progressives to rallies and major events, but this model easily burns people out and doesn’t provide a long-term path to building power at the grassroots level. Occupy and the ‘Right to Work’ protests in Madison, Wisconsin, are good examples of mobilization efforts.

Organizing, on the other hand, is the highest form of engagement and requires the most time, effort, and strategy. The primary goal of true community organizing is empowering the maximum number of people and providing them with the knowledge and tools necessary to win the things they want and need. The aim is to get ordinary people to join existing struggles through identifying “organic leaders” in workplaces and neighborhoods.

To be clear, “organic leaders” are not people who simply show up to every meeting or rally — they are the sort of folks who are highly respected in the community. If an “organic leader” vouches for someone or some cause, people listen. That’s the basic criteria, and people would be wise to immediately identify these individuals as they hold the most valuable social capital.

Right now, we’re capable of small-scale mobilization in Northwest Indiana. We’ve been able to stop GEO from building a private immigrant detention facility in Gary, Indiana. And a new group has formed in Elkhart, Indiana, to stop CoreCivic from constructing a private immigrant detention facility in their county. Currently, we have the power and numbers to mobilize and stop projects or certain pieces of legislation, but not much else.

It would be wise for every organizer in the country to read McAlevey’s book. She highlights and articulates so much of what I’ve encountered and thought about over the past 12 years of organizing with leftwing/progressive groups and movements. It’s truly an amazing piece of work. The only issue that I found in the book is that McAlevey doesn’t necessarily mention what, beyond immediate needs, people should or could be fighting for.

Perhaps this is the limitation of an organizer’s perspective: we have too much to do and not enough time to contemplate what sort of society we’re trying to achieve. But that’s also part of the problem: too many organizers and groups are fighting back, but with little idea of what they hope to create over the long-term. The question remains: what sort of society do we want to live in and how should it be structured?

Those questions shouldn’t only be asked by philosophers or academics — those questions should be answered by anyone and everyone who’s interested in living in a decent world.

I’ll be writing more essays in the weeks and months to come. I hope to keep folks informed of our mistakes and progress, challenges and successes. In the meantime, I hope this finds all of our brothers and sisters in the struggle in good health and spirits. It takes great motivation and discipline to remain engaged in such cynical times.

Vincent Emanuele is a writer and community organizer. He is the co-founder of P.A.R.C. (Politics Art Roots Culture), a political-cultural center in Michigan City, Indiana. He’s a member of the Michigan City Social Justice Group, Veterans For Peace, and the National Writers Union – UAW Local 1981. He can be reached at vincent.emanuele333@gmail.com

Posted on Znet
What Sort of Surveillance Tools Do Police Use?

What Sort of Surveillance Tools Do Police Use?

by | Mar 4, 2022 | ACTION, Culture of Resistance, Education, Movement Building & Support, Repression at Home, Strategy & Analysis

Editor’s note: People who confront the destruction of the planet find a legal system that prioritizes corporations and not uncommonly become the targets of police surveillance. Unless we take precautions, police surveillance tools can uncover our plans and organizational structures—and can contribute to a culture of paranoia that discourages action.

This training, from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, consists of interactive materials for learning what sort of tools law enforcement agencies use against journalists, but the material is practically applicable for organizers as well. We encourage our readers to study this material and consider appropriate countermeasures.

by Freedom of the Press Foundation

The Digital Security Training team at Freedom of the Press Foundation works with news organizations to better protect themselves, their colleagues, and sources by upgrading their security posture. In an environment where journalists are increasingly under attack, experiencing targeted hacking, harassment, and worse, we want to see systemic change in the way news organizations learn about and address their digital security concerns. While journalists come from many professional backgrounds, one place we can most reliably address this need for digital security education systemically is within journalism schools, where students are already learning many of the skills they will need in a contemporary newsroom. We know many programs feel underprepared for education of this kind, so we built this curriculum to better support J-schools’ goals for digital security education.

Below, we have created modules responsive to a variety of digital security topics. We intend for this resource to be used by journalism professors and educators looking for a starting point for digital security education. Ultimately, it’s our hope that by tinkering with these materials, you might take advantage of the parts most useful or inspiring to you, and make this curriculum your own.

Police Surveillance Tools Training

This section on surveillance tools used by law enforcement is discussion focused, and intends to get students to think critically about the relationship between surveillance, privacy, and transparency. It begins with lecture canvassing a variety of law enforcement surveillance technology, based on research from from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Afterward, the module opens into an activity to investigate surveillance technology used in a location of their choice, followed by a discussion of their interpretation of law enforcement surveillance technologies they’ve discovered.

Prerequisites

Threat modeling
Legal requests in the U.S.

Estimated time

60-70 minutes

Objectives

  • Upon successful completion of this lesson, students will be able to distinguish between technology commonly used by law enforcement to conduct surveillance in physical spaces.
  • Students will be able to identify which of these tools are used in a specific physical location, based on publicly-accessible reporting tools.

Why this matters

The technical capabilities of law enforcement actors may affect journalists’ threat models when conducting work in risky situations. For example, when meeting a sensitive source their location may be tracked through a constellation of surveillance equipment, or their phone numbers and current call or text data may be scooped up when covering protests.

Homework

(Before class)

Sample slides

Credit to Dave Maass and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for these slides, with minor modifications.

Law enforcement surveillance tech (Google Slides)

Activities

Have students open up Atlas of Surveillance and report back for the group with surveillance technology used in a location where they’ve lived in the U.S. (e.g., where their hometown is; the campus).

Questions for discussion

  • In terms of their ability to compromise journalistic work, which one of these technical law enforcement capabilities is most concerning to you? What makes it concerning?
  • If that’s not especially concerning, why is that?
  • Out of respect for peoples’ privacy, are there any issues you think should be “off the table” for journalistic coverage? If so, what are those issues, and why do you think they should be off the table?
  • We often talk about privacy for people, but transparency for institutions. Why the distinction? Are there times when individual actions demand transparency, and when institutions have a meaningful claim to privacy?

This article was first published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. It is republished under the CC-BY-NC 2.0 license. Banner image: Police training using bodycams via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

How Did the Animal Liberation Front Start?

How Did the Animal Liberation Front Start?

by | Feb 21, 2022 | ACTION, Direct Action

Editor’s note: Animal abuse is a foundational pillar of the modern industrial food system. We stand against factory farming, vivisection, and other forms of animal testing and abuse. As an organization, however, we do not advocate veganism—and in fact, DGR co-founder Lierre Keith wrote a book called The Vegetarian Myth arguing that vegetarianism and veganism are not a political or ecological solution. However, there are vegans and vegetarians involved in Deep Green Resistance, and we overlap on many goals. This article is the story of the Animal Liberation Front, a movement well worth learning from.

By Chad Nelson

It’s about time. Someone has finally written a biography on the real father of the animal liberation movement – Ronnie Lee. Lee’s lifelong work for animals spans five decades and counting. During this time, he has been involved in just about every form of animal advocacy imaginable – direct action, grassroots vegan outreach, political campaigning, public interest campaigns, and animal fostering, to name a few. Perhaps best known for founding the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and being jailed numerous times for illegal direct actions, Ronnie Lee now focuses exclusively on above-ground animal advocacy, having retired from his earlier, extensive underground career.

Author Jon Hochshartner’s access to Lee (and some of his friends and family) provides us an intimate window into Lee’s life as a freedom fighter for animals. Lee’s childhood and early adult years are shockingly unremarkable in the sense that there is little to indicate he would go on to become a pioneer in the animal liberation movement. Although it is clear Lee grew up with a fondness for animals, an aversion to authority, and a keen sense of justice, the same can be said of many people who neither become vegan nor pursue animal liberation. What specifically led Lee to become The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, one can never know. But this unremarkable childhood makes Lee’s segue into full-fledged warrior all the more startling and exhilarating.

Lee’s come to Jesus moment seems to have instead been a confluence of events – no single one having been definitive. One early turning point appears to have been Lee’s innocuous story of how he became vegan. As a teen, Lee, by then a vegetarian, was introduced to veganism by his older sister’s boyfriend – a healthy, robust, vegan athlete. As with many vegetarians, Lee came to understand the hypocrisy of abstaining from eating animal flesh while at the same time continuing to consume other animal byproducts. It only took a single vegan role model for Lee to connect the dots and realize veganism is not only just, but healthy too.

Lee’s subsequent entry into the world of direct action gives us an exciting new window into the early 70s-era radical animal advocacy scene in the United Kingdom. Lee’s involvement with the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) began to blossom into more pointed forms of direct action as time went on. In an effort to refine the efficacy of his hunt sabbing efforts, Lee became more and more motivated to declare full scale war on all animal exploiters. While still “hunting the hunters” with the HSA, Lee felt it more impactful to engage in covert, preemptive forms of hunt sabotage, such as disabling the hunters’ automobiles and ransacking hunt lodges. Lee and some of his more daring saboteur partners eventually leveraged their hunt sab experiences, directing similar attacks against other institutional exploiters like butchers, factory farmers, and vivisectors, whose labs Lee would burn to the ground under the cover of darkness.

Lee’s shift to more aggressive tactics are praiseworthy. If the war against animal exploiters is truly that – a war – no options can be taken off the table no matter what the law has to say about them. In the war for animal liberation, there is a role for everyone to play, from the underground saboteur to the aboveground political actor. Some of these tactics may seem at odds, and activists wedded to one or another tactic may accuse the other of setting the movement back. At various times in history, certain forms of activism may prove more beneficial and strategically sound than others. But in the grand scheme of things, any action for animals is an important brick in the wall, and they will all add up to achieve total liberation for animals in the long run. Lee’s life exemplifies the value of this veritable smorgasbord of tactics.

Lee’s willingness to serve hard time for his involvement in illegal direct actions has given way to his more systemic approach. Lee now prefers to focus his efforts on vegan tabling and leafletting, and taking part in Green Party politics. Having spent a considerable amount of his life behind bars, one cannot blame Lee for the shift. Nevertheless, it is hard not to look at Lee’s hard-edged ALF years with great admiration. Hochschartner paints a picture of a tireless Robinhood-for-animals who threw caution to the wind, never missing an opportunity to put a brick through an animal exploiter’s window, rescue an animal from captivity, or burn down a torture chamber. On more than one occasion, Lee tells Hochshartner that he knew his sprees would end in jail time, but that each time he simply sought to extend them for as long as he could. One has to wonder whether animal exploitation could survive if all vegans became this courageous overnight.

Alas, Lee’s direct action did inspire many to become that courageous. As with many social movements, the actions of one or two brave souls can serve as a greenprint for others to follow. The ALF continues to thrive to this day as an anonymous, leaderless movement, as the baton gets passed from one liberationist to the next through a series of direct actions and communiques describing them. Lee’s ALF actions in the UK quickly encouraged others, uncoordinated and unbeknownst to Lee, in all corners of the globe. These actions continue to flourish today even despite a conservative political climate which punishes them increasingly harshly.

Any student of animal liberation would be well-advised to read The Animals’ Freedom Fighter in order to help them determine what role is appropriate for them. The book is a welcome addition, as both a tactical encyclopedia and an important historical account. Lee’s life as an animal advocate has been full and diverse, and one has to wonder what else Lee might have up his sleeve. Hopefully Hochshartner will have no choice but to update Lee’s biography in the coming years.

Chad Nelson is a peace advocate.

This article was originally published in Counterpunch.

Could Lichens and Brown Bats Bring Protection to Fairy Creek?

Could Lichens and Brown Bats Bring Protection to Fairy Creek?

by | Aug 29, 2021 | ACTION, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Movement Building & Support, Repression at Home

This article is a follow-up of yesterday’s article. Featured image from the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page.

Fairy Creek is home to a number of species at risk, and should be protected, say several scientists. At-risk species sighted in recent months include a variety of birds, little brown bats, and a lichen described as “cute” and sensitive.

Could these species help Fairy Creek find true protection — beyond its present two-year deferral of logging?

Last Friday at Fairy Creek, three scientists and a citizen scientist showed the assembled forest protectors evidence gathered since May on several federally listed species at risk. Although they described their inventory of species in the old-growth forest as just a beginning, many species were sighted.

Citizen-scientist Natasha Lavdovsky described the Oldgrowth specklebelly lichen which she found in the area. As a multi-disciplinary artist with a science background, Lavdovsky appreciates the lichen’s uniqueness. “They are really cute, because they have a speckled texture on their underbelly. It’s bluish on top, and pinkish underneath. When you look at them with a hand lens, they’re really quite exquisite.”

The rare lichen is generally found farther north, she told the group. Yet, “This is very likely to be the largest population of this lichen ever found in B.C.”

The main reason it still exists is because blockades have been protecting the area for the past year, she said. Most of the lichens are within an approved Teal Jones cut-block in TFL 46, which has been partially logged.

“Many of these lichen communities are right beside clear-cuts. They’re dying now from too much sunlight.” The speckled-belly lichen only grows in old-growth forests.

Dr. Loys Maingon explained that the importance of lichens is vastly underestimated: “They are a crucial, foundational part of our living world. They play an outsized and poorly understood role in global photosynthesis and nutrient cycling.”

An old-growth forest hosts communities of lichens, which, in a highly synchronized way, process rainfall and atmospheric humidity. They capture vital nutrients out of the air, and provide nutrients that support the forest, and the food chains that support all of its creatures, he said.

“Their abundance and diversity are indicators of ‘healthy forests’,” Dr. Maingon added. “Lichens are the basis of nitrogen-cycling in old-growth forests. They’re the foundation of the pumping mechanism that goes into the “biotic pump model” – the capture of water out of condensation and evapotranspiration processes of water, and its transportation inland, far beyond what would normally be expected by passive wind-driven processes. The forest’s biotic pump creates much of our climate.”

Some researchers recently reported that lichens may actually sequester even more carbon dioxide than the old-growth trees they live upon, he said. They also neutralize acidic rainwater as it runs over them to the ground.

Despite providing countless ecosystem services, the specklebelly lichen “is very sensitive,” and a vulnerable at-risk species, Lavdovsky noted. She read a BC Timber Sales document that called for a 200-metre buffer zone to protect the lichen’s habitat from logging. One tree on which she found the rare lichen growing had been marked with red falling-boundary tape. She also found dying lichens along the newly built roadside and in an area that directly bordered a recent cut-block.

“Many people trust that endangered species are protected by law in BC, but they’re not,” said Kathleen Code, a Rainforest Flying Squad spokesperson. “Although there are government ‘guidelines’ requiring logging companies to complete a wildlife inventory and management plan before they log, in practice there is no penalty for inadequately prepared inventories and management plans. No penalty, in other words, for erasing habitat and killing endangered species.”

Dr. John Neilson, a fisheries scientist who has worked for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, noted that the federal Species at Risk Act applies only to federal lands in BC, such as national parks.

“In spite of explicit election promises made by Mr. Horgan in 2017, BC still does not have a provincial act to protect at risk species, placing the province in a minority nationally.”  A very small number of species are covered by BC’s Forest and Ranges Practices or Wildlife Acts.

“I expect that information from our surveys will inform public reactions to the government’s passive and inadequate response to protecting BC’s biodiversity on southern Vancouver Island.”

Along with Dr. Jim Cuthbert, Dr. Neilson helped organize several “BioBlitz” inventories at Fairy Creek since May. Using the i-Naturalist app, he noted that, “With minimal survey effort, we have now documented 322 species, from 903 observations.

“Our data provide evidence of a significant number of species at risk. We have seen 62 observations of 14 vulnerable species.” A more thorough inventory is still needed, which would consist of returning through different seasons, and better coverage of the central part of the Fairy Creek valley and watershed.

At-risk species documented during the BioBlitzes include:

– recordings made of little brown bats near Fairy Lake

– many sightings of Western toads and Northern red-legged frogs

– many sightings of Marbled murrelets and Western Screech owls, as well as other bird species such as Northern Goshawk, Olive-sided flycatcher, and Band-tailed pigeon.

– many plant species, including Western Rattlesnakeroot, Coastal Brookfoam, Carolina Bugbane and Stink Currant.

– fungi species including Northern Red Belt

– other lichen species, including Cabbage Lung lichen

Dr. Neilson’s presentation to forest protectors ended with “a huge thank you” to the forest protectors, “for your passion, dedication and tenacity in your essential efforts to protect old-growth forests.”

Dr. Neilson and Dr. Jim Cuthbert wrote the BC government last week, to alert the ministers of environment and forests about the presence of endangered species in the Fairy Creek area (excerpt below).

“Perhaps enlightened public pressure might lead to long-term protection for these threatened species and their entire ecosystems,” Dr. Neilson said.

The following is an excerpt from a letter sent by the scientists July 25th, to Minister Katrine Conroy (Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development), and Minister George Heyman (Environment and Climate Change Strategy):

“In spite of your Ministry’s initial lack of support for our right to scientific freedom of inquiry, we have used the iNaturalist app to gather together much of the existing knowledge of the biodiversity of Fairy Creek. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fairy-creek-research

“Please refer to the link, and you will see evidence that federally-listed species at risk occur in that watershed. Note that these publicly-available data already exist, even without complete survey coverage of the watershed, which was the issue that we hoped to address by seeking access. We are sure that British Columbians will be deeply interested in hearing your plans to protect the habitats of those species, beyond temporary measures in certain parts of the watershed.

“It seems shocking that logging activities are being contemplated for an area where so little is known — and what little we know is indicating an area of great species diversity, including a significant proportion of species at risk. Please take time to explain your plan to protect the habitat of Fairy Creek for listed species found so far, and those yet to be found.

“We appreciate a prompt and positive response to this critical matter.”

REFERENCES

– The iNaturalist Fairy Creek Project link:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fairy-creek-research

(many bird sightings are also listed on ebird)

– how BC compares to other provinces in species protection<:

“Failure to Protect: Grading Canada’s Species At Risk Laws” –

https://ecojustice.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Failure-to-protect_Grading-Canadas-Species-at-Risk-Laws.pdf

Contacts:

Dr. Jim Cuthbert, bioblitz organizer: Email – jimcuthbert33@gmail.com Phone: 250 896-6379

Dr. John Neilson, bioblitz organizer: Email – largepelagicsscientist@gmail.com Phone: 250 465-1728

Natasha Lavdovsky, citizen scientist: Email – tasha.lavdovsky@gmail.com Phone: 250.646.2333

Dr. Loys Maingon, limnologist: Email — tsolumresearch@gmail.com Phone: 250-331-0143,

Cell: 250-218-7558

Kathleen Code, Rainforest Flying Squad spokesperson: Email: codekat999@gmail.com

Phone: 250-418-5313

*A copy of Dr. Neilson’s slide presentation is available by emailing him at: largepalagicsscientist@gmail.com

The History Of Thacker Pass [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

The History Of Thacker Pass [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]

by | Mar 1, 2021 | ACTION, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation

Upon completion of forty days of launching a protest camp in the proposed site for lithium mining in Thacker Pass, Max delves into the history of the area.

Featured image: Max Wilbert

By Max Wilbert/Protect Thacker Pass

Forty days ago, my friend Will Falk and I launched a protest camp here at Thacker Pass.

Situated between the Montana Mountains and Double H Mountains in northern Nevada, Thacker Pass is part of the “sagebrush ocean.” Big sagebrush plants, the keystone species here, roll away to the south and east of the camp. Stars light up the night sky. Often, the only sound we can hear is the wind, the chirping of birds, the yips of coyotes.

The seasons are unfolding. When we arrived, the mountains were auburn in the evening sun. Now, they shimmer bright white after winter storms. Cliffs and sagebrush protrude through the snow and provide habitat for wildlife: bobcats, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, sage-grouse, pygmy rabbits, burrowing owls, and countless others.

We are here in the bitter cold wind to oppose the destruction of this place. Lithium Americas Corporation, and their subsidiary Lithium Nevada Corporation, plan to blow up this pass, extract millions of tons of stone, and build an array of infrastructure to process this into lithium with harsh chemicals like sulfuric acid. Along the way, they will build vast mountains of toxic tailings, leaching heavy metals and uranium into what groundwater will still remain after they pump nearly 1.5 billion gallons per year into their industrial machinery.

For weeks now, I have been researching the true history of this place. I have struggled with how to tell these stories. There are many perspectives on Thacker Pass, and many ways the story can be told.

Where to begin? There are no true beginnings or endings here, where water cycles endlessly from sky to mountain to soil to river to sky, and back again; where human existence passes as fading footprint in the soil, as bones sinking into land, as a whisper on the `breeze. Only stories upon stories, legends and myths, layers of soil and stone. But there is a beginning.

Nineteen million years ago, a column of magma deep within the mantle of the planet arose under the continental plate. Heat and pressure built through miles of stone, liquifying it. Superheated water forced its way to the surface, and geysers appeared. Pressure kept building, and one day, the first volcanic eruption tore open the crust, spewing ash across half the continent.

This was the birth of the Yellowstone Hotspot, an upwelling of heat from deep inside the planet that even now, after migrating hundreds of miles northeast, powers the geysers of Yellowstone National Park.

After a time, the magma was spent. Vast chambers once filled with magma, miles underground, were now empty, and the weight of the stone overhead pressed down. Soon, the ground itself collapsed across an area of more than 600 square miles, and the McDermitt Caldera, of which Thacker Pass is a part, was formed.

The new caldera attracted water. Rain fell and flowed downhill. With wind and water and ice, rich volcanic stones became pebbles, then sand, then clay. Sediments gathered in lake basins, and one element in particular — lithium — was concentrated there.

In one version of the story of Thacker Pass — the version told by Lithium Americas — geologic conditions created a stockpile of valuable lithium that can be extracted for billions of dollars in profits. In this version of the story, Thacker Pass is a place that exists to fuel human convenience and industry — to store power for the wealthy, the consumers of gadgets and smartphones and electric cars, for the grid operators.

In this story, the lithium in the soil at Thacker Pass does not belong to the land, or to the sagebrush, or to the water trickling down past roots and stones to join ancient aquifers. It belongs to the mining company which has filed the proper mining claim under the 1872 mining law, which still governs today.

In another version of this story, this land called “Thacker Pass” is part of the Northern Paiute ancestral homeland. I do not know the Paviotso name for this place. Wilson Wewa, a Northern Paiute elder, says that “the world began at the base of Steens Mountain,” a hundred miles north-northwest of here. Wewa tells that the people emerged from Malheur Cave, a 3,000-foot-deep lava tube near the modern town of Burns.

Northern Paiute have lived on these lands since time immemorial. Scientists have dated nearby petroglyphs as perhaps 15,000 years old — the oldest in North America. Obsidian from Thacker Pass has been gathered, worked into tools sharper than the finest modern scalpel, and traded across the region for thousands of years. There are even burial sites in the caves nearby, directly adjacent to the mine site, according to a Bureau of Land Management Ranger who visited us at camp this week.

I am told that Sentinel Rock, which stands over the Quinn River Valley at the eastern end of Thacker Pass, was an important site for prayer historically. If the mine is built, Lithium Americas’ water pipeline will skirt Sentinel Rock, pumping out billions of gallons of water. I cannot help but think: how much more can the colonizers take?

I cannot tell the story of the history of this place from the perspective of the Northern Paiute, but it would be wrong to not at least summarize what I know. Too often, the invasion of these lands by European settler-colonialists is ignored. When we ignore or minimize genocide, we make future genocide easier. As the Czech writer Milan Kundera said, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

In the 1850’s, colonization of these lands began in earnest. The coming of the white colonizers and their cattle meant the overgrazing of the grasslands and the cutting of the Pinyon Pine trees; the damming of the creeks and rivers; the trapping of the beavers and the killing of the wolves.

In 1859, the discovery of the Comstock lode marked the beginning of the mining explosion. Thousands of people flocked to Nevada, and their axes and cattle and saws devastated the land. Smelting the ore from the mines required every bushel of firewood that could be found.

Ronald Lanner, in his book The Piñon Pine: A Natural and Cultural History, writes that “the furnaces of Eureka [Nevada], working at capacity, could in a single day devour over 530 cords of piñon, the produce of over 50 acres… After one year of major activity, the hills around Eureka were bare of trees for ten miles in every direction… by 1878 the woodland was nowhere closer than fifty miles from Eureka, every acre having been picked clean… The significance of the deforestation around Eureka can be appreciated by realizing that a fifty­-mile radius from that town approaches to within a few miles of Ely to the east and of Austin to the west. Both of these towns were also important mining centers with large populations, and their demands for woodland products probably rivaled those of Eureka itself.”

Lanner continues: “The deforestation of their hills and the destruction of their nut groves often brought Indians into conflict with white settlers and miners. As early as 1860, Paiutes gathered at Pyramid Lake to decide how to cope with the white men who were encroaching on their lands, killing their game, and cutting down what the settlers derisively referred to as the Indians’ ‘orchards.’”

My friend Myron Dewey, who lives on the Walker River Paiute Reservation, told me the piñon pine are to his people as the buffalo are to the nations of the Great Plains: a sacred relative, source of life, an elder being.

Wilson Wewa also tells of how European colonization dispossessed the Northern Paiute. “Pretty soon our people were having to compete with miners and settlers for food. They were killing all the deer, and the antelope, and their cattle were chomping up and destroying all the root digging grounds we relied on for food.”

The scale of ecological devastation unleashed on Nevada by the mining industry is hard to comprehend. With forests gone, soils eroded, biodiversity collapsed, and streams dried up. The damming of creeks and mass trapping of beavers were another nail in the coffin of the hydrological cycle. From the north to south, east to west, colonization destroyed the waters of the region. And what are people to do when their source of life is destroyed? This devastation played a large role in the Paiute War in 1860, the Snake War of 1864-8, the 1865 Mud Lake massacre, the Modoc War of 1872-3, the Bannock War in 1878, the Spring Valley massacres of the 1860’s and 1897, and many other conflicts.

To this day, the results of this destruction are still playing out, from Winnemucca Lake — once a wildlife refuge, home to the previously mentioned oldest petroglyphs in North America, now dry — to Walker Lake, the level of which has fallen more than 181 feet over the last 139 years, causing the extirpation of the Lahontan cutthroat trout. The nearby Walker River Paiute tribe — the Agai-Dicutta Numu, trout eaters — can no longer fish for their namesake.

The piñon pine are still being destroyed, too — this time under the guise of “restoration.” Myron Dewey, who I mentioned earlier, and many others, have long been fighting to protect the “tubape” pine nut trees.

And the war footing remains as well. The largest ammunition depot in the word, the Hawthorne Army Depot, sprawls across 226 square miles just south of Walker Lake.

Back here at Thacker Pass, the same Lahontan cutthroat trout (a federally listed threatened species) hang on in nearby Pole Creek. Will they survive the mine? Or will their creek shrink smaller and smaller as the water table drops, eventually leaving them with nothing? I cannot help but feel there are similarities between the experience of the Paiutes — land stolen, waters destroyed, marched to reservations — and the trout. Perhaps Wewa would agree with a Dakota friend, who told me “I am part of the land; what happens to the land happens to me.”

###

The 1872 mining law is law under which Lithium Americas Corp. has “claimed” the land here Thacker Pass, under which they have been permitted to destroy this place. A one hundred- and fifty-year-old law, a legal justification for colonial extraction, a law created to make extraction orderly. That is the legal authority which Lithium Americas claims.

In September of 2019, the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, which is made up of 27 tribal, band, and community councils from the Western Shoshone, Goshute, Washoe, and Northern and Southern Paiute nations passed a resolution, which called for reform of the 1872 mining law. The resolution states that “the Great Basin tribes believe the 1872 Mining Law poses a serious threat to the Great Basin tribes land, water, cultural resources, traditional properties, and lifeways.”

###

I circle back to that name: Thacker Pass. “Who was Thacker,” I wonder, watching the first Dark-eyed Junco of the spring migration flit from sagebrush to ground.

Basic research found nothing, so I called the Nevada Historical Society and the Humboldt County Museum, and started combing through archives looking for prominent people named ‘Thacker’ in the history of the state and of Humboldt County. Digging through old copies of the Reno Evening Gazette, I find a match: John N. Thacker, who was elected sheriff of Humboldt County on November 3rd, 1868, and held the post for many years before becoming the head of the detective service for the Southern Pacific Company and Wells Fargo express through the 1870’s and into the 1880’s.

Thacker was an enforcer and lawman in the Wild West of train robberies and outlaws hiding in canyons — and the laws he enforced were in large part designed to protect the mining industry. Throughout the late 1800’s, Nevada mines produced an incredible amount of wealth – the equivalent of billions of dollars annually. Gold and silver from the mines were transported by stagecoach and train by well-paid mining and banking employees, and this made a tempting target for thieves. Thacker had at least one shootout with bandits who had absconded into the hills.

In other words, Thacker acted as a protector of mining revenues and an economy based on colonial mining. He worked for the state, the bankers, and the railroad company – the trifecta of institutions creating the conditions for mining to thrive, financing mining projects, and moving ore and raw materials to bigger markets. And, of course, profiting handsomely.

Many people forget the importance of railroads in this era before paved roads. The first transcontinental railroad passed through Winnemucca, operated by Southern Pacific. As Richard White writes in his book Railroaded, the massive land grants given to railroad companies — a total of more than 175 million acres between 1850 to 1871, more than 10 percent of the land mass of the United States — and easy transportation of both people and goods kicked off a massive influx of settler-colonialism to the interior of the American west.

Railroad companies were notorious in this period for corruption, environmental devastation, and mistreatment of workers. Interestingly, Southern Pacific was the defendant in a landmark 1886 Supreme Court case that massively extended the power of corporations in the United States. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, Thacker’s employer successfully argued that the Fourteenth Amendment – originally established to protect formerly enslaved people in the aftermath of the Civil War – also applied to so-called “corporate persons,” striking down various regulations that would have reigned in their power in the West.

Since this unanimous decision, corporations have relied heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment for protection from the public. As my friend and attorney Will Falk writes, “between 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court ruled on only 28 cases involving the rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations, it is easy to conclude that the Fourteenth Amendment has done a better job protecting the rights of corporations than that of African Americans.”

Dana Toth at the Humboldt County Museum helps solve the rest of the mystery: an 1871 newspaper shows that John Thacker owned a 160-acre ranch in the King’s River Valley, just to the west of Thacker Pass. That is most likely the origin of the name Thacker Pass.

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A cold north wind has been blowing all morning at Thacker Pass. It was 16 degrees this morning, without the wind chill. The frigid air bites my fingertips and my nose. Our banners flap in the breeze.

And at the headquarters of Lithium Americas Corporation at 300-900 West Hastings Street in Vancouver, Canada, men and women plan how to blow this place up, to shatter the mountainside, to crush the wild integrity of this place under churning bulldozer treads, and turn it into money.

I look out across a landscape named after a man named John Thacker, a man who worked to protect mining industry profits for decades, and I cannot help but feel that not much has changed. Like in the 1850’s and 1860’s, men with explosives, backed by the armed power of the state, are coming to destroy the mountains, the sagebrush steppe, the grasslands, and the waters of Thacker Pass.

What value is there in history, except in guiding our thoughts and actions in the present? As Barbara Ehrenreich writes, “To know our history is to begin to see how to take up the struggle again.”

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