Leadership is incredibly important for resistance movements. Yet many of us mistrust leaders—with good reason. What exactly is a leader? Are there leadership models that align with our ethics? How can one develop resistance leadership skills? This piece, excerpted from internal Deep Green Resistance training materials, explores these topics.
It’s no secret that resistance to industrial civilization isn’t winning. The planet is still dying, and injustice and oppression are rampant; you might say we’re getting our asses kicked.
In part, our struggles are due to the enormity of the problem, and our small numbers. We have no control over the former, but more over the latter. Consider these issues for a moment:
Do we have problems with recruitment? Turnover? Commitment?
Are we all on the same page regarding purpose, direction, and/or strategy?
Do we experience ‘drama’ / horizontal hostility within our ranks, or across resistance collectives?
Do you want comrades to struggle with you, to take risks, to actually take direct action, but find the response underwhelming?
It’s not a stretch to suggest that these questions can be addressed by more effective leadership among members of the resistance. It isn’t hyperbole to declare that the planet is crying out for leadership. From John Gardner: “we are anxious but immobilized” by immensely threatening problems. What’s needed is the capacity to focus our energies, and a capability for sustained commitment. This is a call for leadership, of course. We’re at war for the survival of the planet, and we cannot afford not to fight better.
No one has yet figured out how to manage people effectively into battle; they must be led.
— John Kotter
The corporate world and the military invest heavily in leadership development, as they understand the payoff in competitive advantage that leadership capacity brings. They’re organized: we need to be, too. We have to compete and win without traditional leverage (rewards, authority) over others. Comrades need to be led, not managed or coerced.
What is Leadership?
One challenge for us is to choose a conceptualization of leadership with which to work, because embedded in each are assumptions, about: agency with respect to followers or peers; relative worth of comrades vis a vis leaders; acceptability of a hierarchy or power differential; and so on. One conceptualization that fits our requirements comes from Kouzes and Posner:
Leadership is the art [and practice] of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.
This form of leadership fits nicely for us in the resistance. Leadership here is not a position, or about power. This approach also suggests a process of mutual influence, not coercion or manipulation. For resistance members, this ‘egalitarian’ view should be more palatable than management-oriented approaches; at the same time, viewing leadership as a process shared by all avoids a tendency for resistance groups to devolve into cults of personality, which not only limit the existence of the collective to the lifetime of the cult leader, but also tend toward abuse and misogyny.
How then can we practice leadership in this way? By incorporating five “practices” that enable leaders to inspire their comrades to get extraordinary things done.
1. Serve as a Model
(Who are you and what are you all about?)
Effective leaders first “find their voice” – they discover, prioritize, and clarify their values, both personal and organizational. They resolve potential conflicts between their values and those of whatever collective they are part of. Once they have found their voice, leaders ensure they speak in ways consistent with the values of the larger collective, by constantly engaging in dialogue with others concerning what is important, what is not, and why the shared values are necessary for the survival of the collective and realization of its purpose. Clarity and commitment to these values are essential prerequisites for leaders to establish core principles concerning the way comrades, constituents, and allies should be treated and the way goals should be pursued.
Leaders also set the example by behaving in ways that are consistent with shared values. By acting as an exemplar for share values, leaders help comrades see how the values play out in behavioral terms – they teach. By modeling and teaching, leader act to establish and maintain a healthy culture for the group. “Culture work” is a critical leadership function, and all the practices we describe here play some role in influencing the culture of the group.
2. Inspire a Shared Vision
(What do we want our world to be like?)
Resistance leaders need to answer the question, “What are we fighting for?” Collective struggle is fueled by a shared vision of the future – of a realistic, credible, attractive future; an ideal and unique image of the future for a group, organization or larger collective. Leaders envision the future and clearly paint a picture for the group to comprehend.
Without a vision for a group, little can happen. If a leader is going to take people places they haven’t been before, constituents need to have a sense of direction. This is the function an effective vision provides.
Leaders look forward to the future. But visions seen only by the leader aren’t enough to make things happen; effective leaders therefore show others how their values and interests will be served by a long-term vision of the future.
The visioning process is enabled by laying the groundwork of shared values.
A vision …doesn’t just reveal itself in a flash of light or a brilliant dream! It evolves from knowledge of ourselves, our values, and our desires.
— Laraine Matusak
The process of creating a shared vision isn’t mystical or forbiddingly charisma-charged; it’s pretty straightforward.
Know yourself & your organization (or similar groups) – and know the past. Visit the past of your group or your movement to better understand the possible futures.
Get in touch w/your organizational values. Determine what you want to fight for.
Let yourself dream/get creative.
Enlist others in the vision – attract people to a common purpose (discuss it, articulate it, repeat it) by appealing to shared aspirations. Demonstrate your belief and confidence in it, and in the ability of your comrades to achieve it.
Just because your organization has a vision in place doesn’t imply you can’t undertake this important work for whatever part of the organization you’re leading. Your comrades may be hungry for direction and meaning – feed that need.
3. Challenge the process
(What should we do differently?)
We don’t have to tell resistance warriors they need to challenge the status quo (dominant culture), as that’s likely the path that led them to resistance work in the first place. Continue to do that! But it’s less likely these same advocates for fundamental, radical change in the world apply that analysis internally, to their own groups or organizations. Give yourself permission to voice the need for changes, wherever they might be needed. We doubt your group is perfect, so do yourself and them a favor and help them move in the direction of improvement and evolution.
Search for opportunities to change your status quo, because comrades do their best when there’s the chance to transform the way things are. Seek challenging opportunities to test your abilities, and motivate others to exceed their self-perceived limits. We’re not going to make a dent in the dominant culture by doing business as usual, in the larger society or in our respective groups. We must be vigilant for opportunities to change our comrades, our groups, and ourselves. Look for innovative ways to change, grow and improve. To maintain energy and momentum as part of the change process, one thing leaders can do is treat every assignment as an adventure, not just another routine. Even in the resistance world, there are lots of tasks that are less than romantic. Look for ways to keep yourself and comrades engaged as much a possible, and open to suggesting change.
Continue the drive to change and evolve by experimenting and taking risks, by trying new ways of reaching toward the mission and purpose. To that end, constantly generate small wins (incremental successes linked to innovations they or others are trying) and learning from the resulting mistakes, too.
You don’t have to be the creator or innovator – you can recognize and support good ideas, and challenge the system to get them adopted; you can be a champion of risk takers. Create a climate for learning, taking risks, and changing.
4. Enable Others to Act
(How can I help you resist?)
You may need to “decolonize” your mind. Effective resistance efforts won’t be led by the strong loners of our neoliberal movie mythology; they will be led by activists who encourage comrades to thrive in their work. Leaders can’t succeed alone. They create and maintain trustworthy relationships, and build cohesive teams that feel like family. But while good leaders don’t try to do everything by themselves, they don’t just delegate, either; they involve comrades in planning and give them discretion.
Leaders foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals, facilitating relationships and building trust.
Trust is a core component of collaboration and nurturing effective groups. ’We’ can’t happen without trust. It’s the central issue in human relationships. Without trust you cannot lead. Those who are unable to trust others fail to become leaders, precisely because they can’t bear to be dependent on the words and works of others. From the comrades’ perspective, why should a fellow resistance warrior work hard or take on risk for someone she or he doesn’t trust? Make sure you create a climate of trust – here are some tips:
Be the first to trust. Model the way!
Show concern for others (often, by listening)
Share knowledge and information. Sure, information is power, so share it!
Another best practice for fostering collaboration is to promote joint efforts in staffing tasks or campaigns, and incorporate systems that enable fact-to-face interactions wherever possible. Resistance members are spread far and wide, so it’s difficult to implement these interactions physically, so use what’s available. Technology is evil, but let’s leverage it to build an effective resistance while we can.
Effective leaders continually develop comrades and cultivate their confidence and self-efficacy. They strengthen others by sharing power and discretion, and by delegating with development and challenge in mind. A comrade may not be as good as you in a particular area, but that doesn’t mean you can’t delegate that task to him! Let them do their best and grow from the practice and feedback. Sharing builds competence and confidence as well as trust. It’s a powerful practice.
Generate a learning climate and educate others in other ways, too. Be a coach.
Give constructive feedback, particularly when a comrade completes something you delegated to her or him.
Probe a comrade for her understanding, reflection and learning following a challenge. Engage in Socratic questioning to further a comrade’s ability to reason and reflect.
Don’t try to do everything yourself – spoiler: you can’t. Develop others – while sometimes time consuming, it’s an investment in your movement that pays huge dividends. When leaders coach, educate, enhance self-determination and otherwise share power, they demonstrate profound trust in and respect for others’ abilities
5. Encourage and Uplift
(What keeps us going?)
Activist work, particularly direct action, is difficult, isolating, stressful, and fraught with risks. It’s hard to maintain motivation, energy, and a sense of purpose. People need encouragement to function at their best and to persist. They need emotional fuel to replenish their spirits. At the same time, no one is likely to persist for very long when they feel ignored or taken for granted. Often the best, or only, way to keep comrades going is through your demonstrated appreciation, pride, and affection for them and what they’re doing. And when they experience wins small or large, these occasions should be all the more celebrated, given the challenges.
Encouraging leaders recognize contributions individuals make. They communicate that they believe in the abilities of their comrades to help them achieve their purpose. Belief in others is crucial, because positive expectations influence comrades’ efficacy and aspirations. Don’t just tell them you believe in them, either – show them by how you behave toward them. And to do this well, get close to them; be out and about or at least in regular contact.
Celebrate the values and hard-won victories, even if they are small wins. Create a sense of community: celebrations are among the most significant way people display respect and gratitude, renew a sense of community, and recall shared values & traditions. Celebrations are important ways leaders communicate what’s important to them and the organization.
Leaders can also provide social support, and champion systems that enable support for all comrades. Supportive relationships among comrades, characterized by genuine belief in and advocacy for the interests of others, are critical to maintain vitality. Social support networks are essential for sustaining motivation & work as an antidote to burnout. Keep your comrades on the road, as they say, by supporting them.
Invest in fun. In a difficult climate for activists, people need to have a sense of personal well-being (which fun can contribute to) to sustain their commitment. And leaders set the tone. Be yourself, but build fun into the work itself, celebrations, or personal / team recognition.
Leadership as a Role
It’s exceedingly difficult for resistance organizations or the movement writ large to function without a broad spectrum of individual activists taking on leadership roles. Characterizing leadership as a role is important, because such a representation emphasizes that anyone can assume leadership, depending on circumstance, task, and so on. This realization also de-emphasizes the importance of organizational position and hierarchy, to – in fact, our movement is more likely to be effective when leadership is widely dispersed. Then, we better leverage the diverse talents and experiences at our disposal. We also generate better ‘bench strength’ so when a leadership position or new role emerges, we have the capacity on board to meet that challenge.
When we accept that leadership is a role, we free ourselves from the assumption (myth) that some people are ‘gifted’ with leadership ability, while others are not. Everyone possesses leadership potential, and as resistance warriors we are behooved to develop the skills and values to sharpen our capacity to lead. In this way, ‘leadership’ is wholly consistent with our collective identity. Anyone can take on the mantle of leadership, depending on the circumstances and the makeup of the group she or he find himself or herself part of. Depending on your task-relevant skills or passion, you may be asked to take the lead. And if you’re not asked, step up anyway. We need more of you to do just that.
In case you think you can’t use these skills if you’re new to resistance/your group or not a top staff member, think again: You’re likely a member of some team, task force or committee that can benefit from leadership. You’re also part of some community that needs leadership to deepen, evolve, or thrive.
Don’t wait for an invitation to lead.
Becoming a Better Leader
Reading through this entry, and even checking out other resources, will not make you a better leader, any more than reading about becoming a better baseball hitter will get you to the major leagues. So how can you improve your leadership? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall.
We know leadership consists of observable and learnable behaviors. Even if you’re a highly experienced leader, you can improve your ability to lead if you commit to this process:
Adopt a model of leadership to aspire to, with a behavioral basis. Otherwise, you’re just guessing about what to observe and practice. You have that model – the one we introduced here.
Observe positive models of those behaviors.
Get feedback on your present use of the desired behaviors based on this model. This can be via written feedback, discussions with peers, or working with a mentor or coach.
Reflect on the results.
Set goals for yourself and/or build a development plan.
Practice the behaviors.
Ask for and receive updated feedback on your performance.
Set new goals.
Repeat.
You don’t need to take this trip alone, and in fact you’ll find it much easier with others. Consider getting a mentor or coach, or joining a leadership support group. You may have to recruit, perhaps with the promise that you are working to improve, but the results can be enriched substantially.
Final Thoughts
If your Mom was dying, you’d do anything to save her. Well, she is and you will. Resistance is risky, and direct action scary, but learning to be a better leader and maybe occasionally being uncomfortable? C’mon! You can do it.
Fred Gibson is an environmental and social justice activist. Living in Colorado off and on since 1970, he’s witnessed the native beauty and biological diversity of the Front Range, as well as its ongoing destruction. He is determined to reverse that trend. An organizational psychologist, Fred offers his experience to build effective leadership and organizational capacity to groups that resist the destruction of the planet. In addition to his DGR membership, Fred is co-founder of Communities that Protect and Resist.
Resources
Reading List
James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner: The Leadership Challenge. 2012. San Francisco: Wiley. (The basis for the practices. There’s more detail and anecdotes to flesh out the topics we discussed. You may also be able to find the text online.)
Richard L. Hughes, Robert C. Ginnett, & Gordon J. Curphy. Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. Boston: McGraw-Hill. (Considered by many the gold standard for teaching leadership, especially at the undergrad level. Comprehensive account of the major systems and theories of leadership and its practice. Lots of reflection questions and developmental work, too. )
Other
You can check out Communities that Protect and Resist for a conceptual model and examples of how to build an oppositional community. https://ctpr.home.blog
Contact DGR to sign up our Leadership for Resistance course.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
In this excerpt from his book Endgame: The Problem of Civilization, author Derrick Jensen explores how limited the English language is when considering different aspects of “violence.”
I do think we need more words in English for violence.
It’s absurd that the same word is used to describe someone raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing a child; and someone stopping that perpetrator by shooting him in the head.
The same word used to describe a mountain lion killing a deer by one quick bite to the spinal column is used to describe a civilized human playing smackyface with a suspect’s child, or vaporizing a family with a daisy cutter.
The same word often used to describe breaking a window is used to describe killing a CEO and used to describe that CEO producing toxins that give people cancer the world over.
Check that: the latter isn’t called violence, it’s called production.
Sometimes people say to me they’re against all forms of violence. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a pacifist activist who said, “Violence never accomplishes anything, and besides, it’s really stupid.”
I asked, “What types of violence are you against?”
“All types.”
“How do you eat? And do you defecate? From the perspective of carrots and intestinal flora, respectively, those actions are very violent.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
Actually I didn’t. The definitions of violence we normally use are impossibly squishy, especially for such an emotionally laden, morally charged, existentially vital, and politically important word. This squishiness makes our discourse surrounding violence even more meaningless than it would otherwise be, which is saying a lot.
The conversation with the pacifist really got me thinking, first about definitions of violence, and second about categories. So far as the former, there are those who point out, rightly, the relationship between the words violence and violate, and say that because a mountain lion isn’t violating a deer but simply killing the deer to eat, that this would not actually be violence. Similarly a human who killed a deer would not be committing an act of violence, so long as the predator, in this case the human, did not violate the fundamental predator/prey relationship: in other words, so long as the predator then assumed responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community.
The violation, and thus violence, would come only with the breaking of that bond. I like that definition a lot.
Here’s another definition I like, for different reasons: “An act of violence would be any act that inflicts physical or psychological harm on another.”I like this one because its inclusiveness reminds us of the ubiquity of violence, and thus I think demystifies violence a bit. So, you say you oppose violence? Well, in that case you oppose life. You oppose all change. The important question becomes:
What types of violence do you oppose?
Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking about: categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit ad hoc, we can pretty easily break violence into different types. There is, for example, the distinction between unintentional and intentional violence: the difference between accidentally stepping on a snail and doing so on purpose. Then there would be the category of unintentional but fully expected violence: whenever I drive a car I can fully expect to smash insects on the windshield (to kill this or that particular moth is an accident, but the deaths of some moths are inevitable considering what I’m doing).
There would be the distinction between direct violence, that I do myself, and violence that I order done.
Presumably, George W. Bush hasn’t personally throttled any Iraqi children, but he has ordered their deaths by ordering an invasion of their country (the death of this or that Iraqi child may be an accident, but the deaths of some children are inevitable considering what he is ordering to be done). Another kind of violence would be systematic, and therefore often hidden: I’ve long known that the manufacture of the hard drive on my computer is an extremely toxic process, and gives cancer to women in Thailand and elsewhere who assemble them, but until today I didn’t know that the manufacture of the average computer takes about two tons of raw materials (520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,600 pounds of water; 4 pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals and 70 pounds of water are used to make just a single two gram memory chip). My purchase of the computer carries with it those hidden forms of violence.
There is also violence by omission:
By not following the example of Georg Elser and attempting to remove Hitler, good Germans were culpable for the effects Hitler had on the world. By not removing dams I am culpable for their effects on my landbase.
There is violence by silence.
I will tell you something I did, or rather didn’t do, that causes me more shame than almost anything I have ever done or not done in my life. I was walking one night several years ago out of a grocery store. A man who was clearly homeless and just as clearly alcoholic (and inebriated) approached me and asked for money. I told him, honestly, that I had no change. He respectfully thanked me anyway, and wished me a good evening. I walked on. I heard the man say something to whomever was behind me. Then I heard another man’s voice say, “Get the f*** away from me!” followed by the thud of fist striking flesh. Turning back, I saw a youngish man with slick-backed black hair and wearing a business suit pummeling the homeless man’s face. I took a step toward them. And then? I did nothing. I watched the businessman strike twice more, wipe the back of his hand on his pants, then walk away, shoulders squared, to his car. I took another step toward the homeless man. He turned to face me. His eyes showed he felt nothing. I didn’t say a word. I went home.
If I had to do it again, I would not have committed this violence by inaction and by silence. I would have stepped between, and I would have said to the man perpetrating the direct violence, “If you want to hit someone, at least hit someone who will hit you back.”
There is violence by lying.
A few pages ago I mentioned that journalist Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for his role in fomenting the Nazi Holocaust. Here is what one of the prosecutors said about him:
“It may be that this defendant is less directly involved in the physical commission of crimes against Jews. The submission of the prosecution is that his crime is no less the worse for that reason. No government in the world . . . could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of mass extermination without having a people who would back them and support them. It was to the task of educating people, producing murderers, educating and poisoning them with hate, that Streicher set himself. In the early days he was preaching persecution. As persecution took place he preached extermination and annihilation. . . . [T]hese crimes . . . could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him. Without him, the Kaltenbrunners, the Himmlers . . . would have had nobody to carry out their orders.”
The same is true of course today for the role of the corporate press in atrocities committed by governments and corporations, insofar as here is a meaningful difference.
Featured image: U.S.-made CS gas (“tear gas”) canister used against civilians during the 2011 uprising in Bahrain. Photo by Mohamed CJ, CC BY SA 3.0.
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