Resistance Movements Need Two Things

Resistance Movements Need Two Things

Resistance movements need two things: loyalty, and material support.

— Lierre Keith

As you read this, DGR organizers in Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—are building a resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild sustainable human communities.

To do our work, we need sustainable funding. We need to sign up at least thirty more people to our monthly donor program in the next month. Can you be one of those people?If you can’t donate, no problem. Most of us are poor. But we’re working hard. This weekend, for example, our permaculture wing distributed native trees, seedlings, planter boxes, and revolutionary literature to unhoused people on the West Coast; DGR Asia Pacific held its second-ever organizing meeting; and we planned the next steps in our tactical direct action training curriculum.

All this takes money. And our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Liberal foundations and big corporations won’t fund any organization that actually represents a threat to the ruling class.

Instead, we rely on small, grassroots donations – averaging less than $50 per person – and have only one paid staff. Our current funding levels aren’t sustainable in the long-term, and we need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build a stronger movement and take our revolutionary action to the next level.

Can you join us as a monthly donor?For those who are already donating: we cannot thank you enough.

Sincerely,

Max Wilbert

Organizing Director

Deep Green Resistance

Esther Figueroa, Jamaican Ecofeminist, on Aluminum Mining in Cockpit Country

Esther Figueroa, Jamaican Ecofeminist, on Aluminum Mining in Cockpit Country

Our guest for this show is Esther Figueroa. Esther is a Jamaican filmmaker, writer and advocate who in 2006 returned home to live in Jamaica after being based in Hawa’ii for 25 years. She has a long history of filmmaking, art, and community engagement to protect traditional cultures and the land. Dr. Figueroa has a PhD in linguistics and a masters degree in east asian langauges and literature. We talk about modernity, colonization, and aluminum mining in Jamaica.

MUSIC: “Red Pill” by Minori.

POEM: “Cockpit Country Dreams” by Olivia Senior.

Check out Esther’s video work on her YouTube channel, and two of her documentary films on The Paiute Salt Song Trail and the Reclamation of Polynesian Sailing Traditions.

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Excerpt From This Episode

[16:45]

Max: Your latest film is called “Fly Me to the Moon” and as you said it’s an exploration of modernity through the lens of aluminum and bauxite mining specifically bauxite mining. Bauxite is the ore that is being refined into aluminum. So could you talk a little bit about what are the problems of bauxite mining and what is aluminum used for? Just sort of a general overview of aluminum and then we can go from there into Jamaica and Cockpit Country specifically and some of the history of how that looked.  I think in one of your emails that you sent me before the interview that the global aluminum industry uses more electricity than the entire continent of Africa.

Esther: Aluminum basically is the material that allowed for 20th century modernity. If people imagined what it means to be modern, it means mobility, it means electricity, it means tall buildings, it means fast-paced life. Think of fast food, think of the cans that you drink, you know, back in the 50s the TV dinners, chewing gum wrappers, it is what made this way of life from kitchen-ware to fast-food franchises, automobiles, airplanes. Now in the 21st century, you know, the things that we depend on all are devices and then, of course, the satellites that make all of this communication possible, but what it is that aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth. The most widely used non-first metal meaning non-iron. It’s lightweight, durable, malleable, non-corrosive and chemically reactive. The thing is though it’s the most abundant metal, it never is in the Earth singularly, in other words, it is always combined chemically with other types of metals, other types of chemical combinations and so, what happens is it that has to be separated out, so there are basically 3 processes.

The first is bauxite, what bauxite is it’s a type of soil, it’s the metal in the soil, and it’s different in different places but it is usually kind of reddish or yellowish, In Jamaica it’s reddish and in Jamaica it is over 25% of the island is bauxite. What makes it attractive is that it is very close to the surface so that it can be easily extracted so what it is this soil. The first stage is the extractive process and that’s basically strip-mining. So huge bauxite haul roads because the trucks are big, the machinery is big, are just basically gouged out of mountains, hill-sides, wherever the bauxite is, so that means huge deforestation and destruction of whatever flora is there.

And then the soil is dug out, put in trucks, which then drive to a place where each truck is weight and then they dump it, it’s kept in piles, and then it’s moved unto trains which then take it to the coast where it’s shipped out or it is put into to tramways that are aerial tramways that go straight down to the port and then shipped out or it is taken to Alumina refineries and that’s the second stage, that is all of this soil, and remember it takes hundreds of years to produce a centimeter of soil. This is the most basic thing apart from air and water that we need. And billions of tons of this soil is being dug up and sent away either on boat to North America or we have a few Alumina refineries in Jamaica.

About The Green Flame

The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.


We Need Your Help

Right now, Deep Green Resistance organizers are at work building a political resistance resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild just, sustainable human communities.

In Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—we are building resistance and working towards revolution. We need your help.

Can you become a monthly donor to help make this work possible?

Not all of us can work from the front lines, but we can all contribute. Our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Foundations and corporations won’t fund us because we are too radical. We operate on a shoestring budget (all our funding comes from small, grassroots donations averaging less than $50) and have only one paid staff.

Monthly donors are the backbone of our fundraising because they provide us with reliable, steady income. This allows us to plan ahead. Becoming a monthly donor, or increasing your contribution amount, is the single most important thing we can do to boost our financial base.

Current funding levels aren’t sustainable for the long-term, even with our level of operations now. We need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build stronger resistance and grow our movement.

Click here to become a monthly donor. Thank you.

Why Are People Burning Cell Phone Towers?

Why Are People Burning Cell Phone Towers?

Arson attacks and other forms of sabotage against cell phone towers (mobile masts) have accelerated over past months. In this piece, Max Wilbert and Aimee Wild explore why people are burning cell phone towers.


6 Reasons Why Destroying Cell Towers is Justified

By Max Wilbert and Aimee Wild

Over the past few months, there have been dozens of arson attacks on cell phone towers across the world.

Why is this happening? Are these attacks justified? And what is the reasoning behind them?

The truth is, cell phone towers are not benign. In fact, cell towers (or “mobile masts”) harm the world in many different ways. In this article, we’ll lay out six reasons why we believe destroying cell phone towers is justified.

1. Cell Phones Are Anti-Democratic

The technology behind cell phones is anti-democratic. In other words, it both emerges from and strengthens a social, political, and economic system which concentrates power into the hands of a small number of extremely wealthy people. These people have control over the information and consumption of most of the rest of the population.

William H. Gross, summarizing Jerry Mander’s book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, wrote the following in 2005, before the smartphone explosion. The sentiment is just as applicable to cell phones:

“Television not and cannot be a neutral technology, nor does it convey a neutral message. It has the power to influence large portions of the population using surreptitious psychology and inherent technology to achieve its owners’ purposes and to promote their agenda.

The medium by its very nature consolidates power and influence into the hands of a rich few. There is no democratic process by which voters and consumers may directly affect its content, or control its impact. The problems and the dangers of television are inherent in the technology itself. That means it cannot be reformed in its nature as a medium. And because the medium of television cannot be reformed, it needs to be eliminated.”

2. Cell Phones Facilitate Global Capitalism and Harm Workers

Cell phones also destroy the planet by facilitating capitalism. The global mobile phone industry is worth roughly $1 trillion per year. The modern CEO in the early 2000’s was characterized by the Blackberry. Now, business wouldn’t run nearly as efficiently without cell phones. The smartphone enables a constantly connected, always-on lifestyle that is Taylorism run wild.

Now you can be on a meeting at home, in the car, from a rest stop on the side of the road in the bath, even in designated wilderness. It’s ideal for business, but destroys the undisturbed leisure that we need as human beings. When humans work too hard, prolonged stress causes our immunity to fall, and we become more susceptible to illness. It should surprise no one that increasing addiction to cell phones makes us sick.

3. Cell Phones Enable and Reinforce a Culture of Mass Surveillance

The third major problem with cell towers and cell phones is that they are perfect tools for mass surveillance. Each cell phone is a tracking device that logs your location every minute with nearby cell towers. Quite literally, as long as your phone is turned on, with you, and has service, it can practically retrace every one of your steps. And this isn’t to speak of the surveillance facilitated by apps, advertising and cookies, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tracking, malicious downloads, hijacking sensor data, and so on. States and corporations have shown themselves only too willing to use cell phone data to track and monetize every users and surveil and harass dissidents.

4. Cell Phones and Service Networks are Based on Polluting, Destructive Resource Extraction

The fourth reason that destroying cell towers is justified is the harm done to the natural world. Delivering cellular connectivity requires a sophisticated system of cell phone towers, routers, and networking. A 2014 estimate put the total number of cell towers globally at about 4 million. That number has exploded in the years since. As of 2019, China alone had nearly 2 million towers, and as of 2018, the United States had 349,344 towers.

These towers are connected to power lines, diesel backup generators, transformers, routers, switches, and servers. And they serve cell phones. All of these are made out of materials—steel, plastic, rare earth metals, aluminum, silicon, copper—which are produced by strip mining and destructive extractive methods. The creation, maintenance and repair of mobile phone masts, bases, and the phones themselves are part of a wider culture of consumption. And as network technology escalates, demands for raw materials will increase as well. The shorter range of 5G technology, for example, requires many more access points to provide equivalent network coverage.

Don’t believe me? Spend 10 minutes searching for “How steel is produced” and “iron ore mining pollution.” The human rights implications and devastation of the natural world caused by these industrial processes cannot be overstated. Modern cell phones cannot even be recycled—although even if they could, that would not mitigate the problem, since the number of phones produced keeps rising and recycling is itself an extremely polluting, human-rights-violating industry.

Keep in mind that corporations chronically fail to report “accidents,” and that most pollution is fully permitted and perfectly legal. Stopping those companies from polluting? Now that is illegal.

5. Cell Phones Harm Our Minds, Bodies, and Spirits

The average smartphone user spends 3 hours and 15 minutes per day on their phone. In the United States, the number is nearly 5 and a half hours. The rise in cell phone use in young people has corresponded to plummeting mental health as social media, pornography, gaming, and toxic mass media are piped to young people 24/7. Unfortunately, probably everyone reading this knows how addictive these technologies can be.

The days of TV addiction seem almost quaint.

6. Cell Phone Towers Kill Massive Numbers of Birds

Cell towers also kill birds. Back in 2013, a study was published estimating that telecommunications towers of all types kill 7 million birds annually—with especially serious impacts to bird species that are already rare and struggling.

Keep in mind, the number of cell towers has possibly doubled or tripled since that time and is climbing steeply. The same cannot be said for bird populations, which have declined by 2.9 billion in the U.S. and Canada alone over the last 50 years.

Is Radiation From Cell Phones Harmful?

Cell phones and cell towers transmit information using radiofrequency (RF) radiation, a low frequency form of electromagnetic radiation. In the U.S., legal radiation levels from cell phones are set by the FCC at 1.6 watts per kilogram averaged over 1 gram of tissue.

Independent tests have shown that cell phones regularly exceed these legal limits by 2-5 times. National health institutes and cancer research organizations have researched exposure to radiation from cell phones, but have not found any conclusive evidence of increased cancer risk. But risk factors for cancer are complex and varied, and cancer is not the only potential harm. More chronic, low level health issues could be associated with increasing levels of RF radiation generated by industrial civilization. Is radiation from cell phones increasing anxiety levels? Linked to hormonal problems? Hurting our immune systems?

There is little research and less incentive—or funding—to conduct it. Regulatory bodies like the FCC are staffed by telecommunications industry veterans in a mutually beneficial “revolving door” that means policies are almost always designed to prioritize profits, not human health.

Nonetheless, even if radiation from cell phones is harmless, destroying cell phone towers is justified given the other harms listed above.

It is Justified to Burn Cell Towers

Industry never “self regulates.” Destruction and exploitation only stops when people rise up and stop it themselves. So it should come as no surprise when people attack cell phone towers or other infrastructure of industrial civilization. This way of life is not good for people and it is not good for the planet. We need a new path. And that will require dismantling the old.

Escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass left us with some of the most important words ever written: “If there is no struggle there is no progress,” Douglass said. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

The people who are attacking cell phones towers and burning mobile masts are more than justified. They are making a moral choice to resist the expansion of cellular networks and of industrial civilization in general. They are a strategic movement taking action against the communications network. Their attacks slow growth of the telecommunications industry by increasing cost and risk of expansions.

The activists involved are taking genuine risks in the interests of protecting their communities —human and non-human. The mainstream media reports portray these arsonists as conspiracy theorists who are ignorant or perhaps mentally unwell. It is interesting that they choose this angle rather than using the words criminals and terrorists. They are being ridiculed in order to downplay and devalue the reasons for these actions. Meanwhile, technological escalation and destruction of the planet is normalized. How could anyone resist this progress?

Industrial capitalism will never be stopped by destroying cell towers alone. Nonetheless, these types of underground action can be an important part of resistance movements. We hope that with proper target selection, the same passion can be directed towards infrastructure that is even more destructive and central to the industrial system.

Saboteurs: we salute you.


We Need Your Help

Right now, Deep Green Resistance organizers are at work building a political resistance resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild just, sustainable human communities.

In Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—we are building resistance and working towards revolution. We need your help.

Can you become a monthly donor to help make this work possible?

Not all of us can work from the front lines, but we can all contribute. Our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Foundations and corporations won’t fund us because we are too radical. We operate on a shoestring budget (all our funding comes from small, grassroots donations averaging less than $50) and have only one paid staff.

Monthly donors are the backbone of our fundraising because they provide us with reliable, steady income. This allows us to plan ahead. Becoming a monthly donor, or increasing your contribution amount, is the single most important thing we can do to boost our financial base.

Current funding levels aren’t sustainable for the long-term, even with our level of operations now. We need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build stronger resistance and grow our movement.

Click here to become a monthly donor. Thank you.


Featured image by Carl Lender, CC BY 2.0.

Can Permaculture Become a Revolutionary Force?

Can Permaculture Become a Revolutionary Force?

What would a revolutionary permaculture movement look like? As food shortages begin to sweep the world, the prospect of a Deep Green Resistance—a movement combining relocalization with organized political resistance—grows ever more relevant.


Can Permaculture Become a Revolutionary Force?

By Max Wilbert

As coronavirus unravels global supply chains, wildfires cool in Australia, Arctic ice continues to decline, and 2019 goes down as the 2nd hottest year on record, we all know how bad things are.

Unless there is fundamental change to the socio-economic fabric of global societies, the future is bleak.

Here in the United States, both major political parties are completely insane. Even the most progressive Democratic politicians are only proposing what amount to relatively minor reforms to the economic systems we live under.

Policy proposals like The Green New Deal in the U.S. and plans like the Energiewende in Germany aim to maintain a modern, high-energy consumption lifestyle while only changing the sources of energy we use. Much more is needed.

As we accelerate further into global crisis, we are seeing increased instability around the world. Refugees are on the march, food instability is rising, extreme weather events are becoming commonplace, and as a result authoritarianism is on the rise. Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, and Erdogan reflect the hopes of a fearful population looking for a strong patriarch figure to lead them to safety.

But there is no safety to be had behind walls and armies, not when the world is burning.

Industrial Civilization is Fragile

A founding principle of Deep Green Resistance is the understanding that modern industrial civilization is fragile. While globalized supply chains enable the system to easily recover from regional shocks, industrial capitalism is highly vulnerable to global disruptions, as CoViD-19 has shown.

More of these shocks are coming, as industrial civilization undermines the ecological foundations of life. Soil depletion and desertification, aquifer depletion and fresh water pollution, deforestation, ocean acidification, the rise of dead zones, and overfishing are just a few of the trends.

We are seeing cracks in the industrial food system, which is leading people to question modernity. This questioning is a good thing. It’s essential that we begin a wholesale shift away from high-energy, consumeristic lifestyles and towards local, small-scale, low-energy ways of life. We need to abandon industrial capitalism before it destroys all life on the planet.

Various movements such as Transition Towns and permaculture have been saying this for a long time. Their message is essential, but in my opinion incomplete. The dominant culture has always destroyed and exploited low-energy, small scale, sustainable human communities.

That’s what colonization is. And it’s still going on today. A failure to grapple with the racist violence necessary to maintain and expand modern civilization is one reason why permaculture movements have remained mostly white and middle-class (capitalism, and poor people’s resulting lack of access to land and free time, are another critical factor in this).

Building a Revolutionary Permaculture Movement

Therefore, not only do we need to relocalize, we also need community defense and resistance movements dedicated to pro-actively dismantling industrial civilization in solidarity with colonized peoples and indigenous communities. We can’t just walk away. We have to fight like hell and bring a revolutionary edge to all of our organizing. We have to combine building the new with burning the old. The faster the system comes to a halt, the more life will remain. And there is no time to waste. This is probably the only way to save the planet and guarantee a livable future.

The failure of mainstream political parties of technological solutions are becoming increasingly clear to average people. They are looking for solutions. Popular movements are becoming increasingly confrontational. But still, it is very rare that anyone is able to articulate a feasible alternative to the dominant culture, the techno-industrial economic system.

A politicized permaculture movement has this alternative. A political permaculture movement, allied with resistance movements and working to rapidly re-localize and de-industrialize human populations could provide a feasible alternative to partisan gridlock while demonstrating a tangible real-world alternative. This movement needs to begin at the local and regional levels, seizing power in schools, county offices, water and soil boards, and building our own power structures through localized food networks, housing, labor, and political organizing.

I have heard it said that permaculture is a revolution disguised as gardening. Perhaps it is time to drop the disguise.

Our Pilot Project

In Oregon, Deep Green Resistance is engaged in a community mutual aid project in collaboration with local indigenous organizers and other allies. We are distributing to the community free of charge:

  • Food
  • Seeds and gardening supplies
  • Plant starts
  • Gardening pamphlets and guides
  • Freshly-hatched ducklings and information as to their care
  • Seedlings of native oak trees

native black oak seedling

We have chosen to distribute native oak seedlings because native oak savanna is the most endangered habitat in the country. More than 95% of it has been destroyed since colonization. Second, because acorns can be a valuable staple food. Third, because planting native oak trees (and assisting in the northward migration of valuable non-native food trees) can help begin the transition to perennial food systems while both mitigating and preparing for global warming and biodiversity collapses (oaks are prized by wildlife and oak savanna is an extremely biodiverse habitat).

At the same time, we are also distributing political literature and engaging in (socially-distanced) conversations with our community members about these issues. Our goal is to strengthen and build local food systems, and also resistance networks  with radical analysis of the political situation.

Oregon is perhaps ahead of the curve. It’s a mostly rural state with a relatively small population. It has long been a hub for local food production, permaculture, and relocalization. These projects will be harder to implement in urban communities, and poverty compounds all the challenges. However, the skills to live  sustainably already exist. The barriers are time, funding, political education, and most importantly the will of the people. As the famous saying goes, only ourselves can free our minds. Free your mind and begin to build this new revolutionary transformation.

We hope to see this project replicated around the world. We take inspiration from the many people already engaged in this sort of work, especially those who combine ecological awareness, practical relocalization, and revolutionary resistance. Contact us for more information, to get involved, or to have a conversation about implementing similar projects in your community.


Max Wilbert is a third-generation political dissident, writer, and wilderness guide. He has been involved in grassroots organizing for nearly 20 years. His essays have been published in Earth Island Journal, Counterpunch, DGR News Service, and elsewhere, and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, and French. His second book, Bright Green Lies, is scheduled for release in 2021.

The Rise of Coronavirus Surveillance

The Rise of Coronavirus Surveillance

Coronavirus is leading to expansions in surveillance around the world. This article discusses implications and what we can do to protect ourselves.


By Max Wilbert & Salonika

Fear is a powerful force. Fear is not just an emotion: it is a state of heightened physiological arousal. Fear lowers our immunity. Fear makes careful decision-making difficult.

Fear also makes us susceptible to suggestion, and this is exploitable.

In Naomi Klein’s 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, the author (someone we have deep disagreements with, especially on the issue of “green” energy) writes that “in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure—whether the crisis is a financial meltdown or, as the Bush administration would later show, a terrorist attack.”

Or a virus.

The Coronavirus Crisis and The Corporate State

There are now roughly 3 million confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide, and likely millions more as yet untested. Of those confirmed infected, 200,000 have died. Deaths are disproportionate among Black, Latino, indigenous, and poor people who are more likely to have health issues as a result of capitalism, colonization, and white supremacy.

It is a grave situation, although it is as yet unclear exactly how deadly this virus is. This publication has previously covered the importance of considering underlying health issues, such as exposure to high levels of air pollution, which complicate “cause of death” considerations and implicate industrial pollution and industrial fast food. But predictably, governments are waging a “war on coronavirus,” not a war on pollution or on McDonalds.

Coronavirus, after all, doesn’t make any “campaign contributions” (that’s what we call bribes in the United States).

The Rise of Surveillance and the Chinese Model

Coronavirus originated in China, and so has China set the model for how the world responds to this situation.

Public surveillance is China is not a new phenomenon. The Chinese government employs a variety of tools to control it’s 1.4 billion people, including the world’s largest and most powerful internet censorship and control system (“The Great Firewall of China”), an AI-powered facial recognition platform linked to a network of hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras, laws requiring official IDs for mundane activities, extensive financial and communications monitoring, and a mandatory “Social Credit” system that assigns a score to each citizen based on their regular activities.

One city alone, Chongqing, was reported to have 2.58 million government surveillance cameras in operation last year—thirty times more cameras than Washington D.C.

This data is used to, among other things, assess the “political loyalty” of residents.

From China to the World

Coronavirus provides justification for expansion of these activities. In Wuhan and across the country, China is using CCTV cameras and drones to enforce quarantine. As the lockdown in Wuhan was lifted, the government mandated that residents install an app called “Health Code” on their phones to track possible exposures to coronavirus.

Governments around the world are taking advantage of the crisis to expand surveillance and police powers. In Hungary, for example, the government has passed an unlimited emergency declaration allowing the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, to rule by decree. Elsewhere, the expansions in state power have been less stark but no less concerning when it comes to civil liberties.

For example, twenty-three countries and counting have now adopted “contact tracing apps”—a nightmare for privacy and surveillance. Even the so-called “anonymized” contact tracing apps can be easily reconstructed, leaving detailed records of social relationships. In Hong Kong, authorities have mandated wristbands which alert police if a person has left their place of quarantine. In South Korea, data from credit card transactions, smartphone location tracking, and CCTV video surveillance is being used to generate a real-time map of possible vectors.

What is the Price of Safety?

The push for a stronger surveillance is often justified by as a means for saving lives. With people fearing for the lives of themselves and their loved ones, it is easier to find support for greater surveillance. The Tony Blair Institute, a neoliberal think tank in the UK, calls it a choice between three “undesirable outcomes:” an overwhelmed health system, economic shutdown, or increased surveillance.

But these are false dichotomies. Many health professionals advocate for protecting privacy and addressing the coronavirus using other approaches. With governments pushing for greater surveillance rather than establishing accessible healthcare systems and free testing and treatment, the public should be apprehensive. And opening the economy before the proper time is a fools gamble.

Community organizer Vince Emanuele reminds us, “For capitalists, economic recessions and depressions are the best of times. After all, they can buy up assets at bargain basement prices and further consolidate their power. Capitalists raked in record profits after the 2008 Financial Collapse, which turned out to be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of this country, expanding and deepening existing wealth inequalities. The only reason capitalists want to reopen the economy is to avoid giving Americans the sort of social democratic programs that would be necessary to keep the country closed and everyone safe. They’re not worried about saving capitalism — they’re worried about giving you money, healthcare, and canceling your student loan payments. If Americans get a taste of the good life, good luck getting them to go back to their shitty jobs that provide less than a living wage, no benefits, and no future. Capitalists are not worried about saving capitalism. They’re worried about poor and working class people experiencing what it would be like to live in a decent society.”

9/11 and the Power of Fear

Once governments and police agencies have developed a new surveillance technology, there is no evidence they will give it up. The same goes for laws. To judge by history, there is no such thing as “temporary” expansions in surveillance. The surveillance system adopted during times of crisis are more likely to define the new normal long after the crisis has been averted.

“Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life,” writes Yuval Noah Harari. “That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments.”

The Patriot Act, for example, was originally designed to be temporary, and is still in effect 20 years later. Every time it comes up for renewal, it passes by a wide margin. Israel still has surveillance laws—originally planned to be temporary—dating from the 1940’s.

The September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States created a culture of fear that led directly into submission to state authority. This in turn led to the “War on Terror,” and as a result, the world has been subjected to expansions in surveillance, detention, and torture, and to the outbreak of wars in the Middle East which have destabilized the planet and killed well over a million people.

One expert called the current situation “9/11 on steroids.”

As some would see it, lack of privacy is a price they are willing to pay for increased security. They should be reminded that “privacy” isn’t an abstract value, it is a fundamental principle of political liberty. Without privacy, dissent can become literally unthinkable.

There are countless reasons we cannot trust states to keep our personal information safe, and only use it in case of emergency. Historically, even “liberal democracies” have not been able to meet these standards. As Snowden leaks illustrated, to provide states access to our personal information and expect them to respect our privacy is analogous to giving our car keys to a known car thief and expecting him to only use it in case of an emergency.

How to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus Surveillance

So what is to be done?

We advocate for revolutionary change to the economic and political system of the world. This requires the development of political consciousness, leadership, and organizations—work that we are engaged in right now. We welcome you to join us.

While we build revolutionary power, we must protect ourselves from existing state surveillance programs. Say no to #CoronavirusSurveillance. We can keep our communities safe without ceding all privacy to the state and corporate partnerships. We must demand privacy. This level of surveillance is absolutely unacceptable, and we must push back as hard as possible. Here are some basic actions you can take:

  1. Pressure your government to preserve privacy. Call, write letters, and meet with representatives. Support organizations fighting for civil liberties.
  2. Campaign against installation of surveillance cameras and other intrusive technologies.
  3. Refuse to install privacy-degrading applications, including official tracing apps as well as corporate applications like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, etc.
  4. Use a “faraday bag” to store your cell phone when not in use to prevent contact tracing.
  5. Turn off GPS and Bluetooth whenever you are not using them.
  6. Protect your digital information by using privacy-respecting services like Signal, Session, Protonmail, and Tutanota for email and communication. Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Use Firefox instead of Google Chrome, and use add-ons like uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger.
  7. Consider using a VPN or Tor to protect your internet connection.

Salonika is an organizer at DGR South Asia based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.

Max Wilbert is an organizer, writer, and wilderness guide who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He is a longtime member of Deep Green Resistance. Max is the author of two books: the forthcoming Bright Green Lies, and We Choose to Speak, a collection of essays released in 2018.