by DGR Colorado Plateau | Oct 8, 2015 | Gender, Repression at Home
By Tara Prema / Gender Is War
It’s a plot filled with anonymous denunciations, secret meetings, betrayal, dissidents, blacklists and infiltrators. For those just tuning in, this shitshow is the latest infighting on the left, where ideological purity and individual identity are all the rage – literally. Welcome to a new era of #LeftFail, where identity politics trumps everything, including strategy.
When we subtract the drama, what’s happened is that a couple of social justice groups (mostly hyper-moral ultra-leftist white college kids) has launched a campaign to blacklist people who disagree with their answer to a philosophical question. It’s not a question about the nature of capitalism or justice or exploitation or some other relevant topic, though. The question that’s tying the left in knots is: “What is a woman?”
If you answer, “An adult female human,” you could be blacklisted.
The correct answer nowadays is, “Anyone who identifies as a woman.”
This begs the question: “What does it mean to ‘identify’ as a woman?’”
The correct answer is, “To feel like a woman; to feel as if one is a woman.”
If you ask what it means to “feel like a woman,” there is no coherent answer, just hisses of:
“Transphobe!”
So what is a transphobe?
Anyone who speaks about women’s biology, their physical sex, the power to give birth and nurse, for example.
Anyone who wants to abolish gender roles, meaning the stereotypes of how boys and girls are expected to behave, and how that affects us into adulthood.
Any person or group who defines “woman” as “adult human female.” That is, someone born female, with female biology.
The list includes midwives, traditional communities, radical feminists, and many others. It includes peace activist Cindy Sheehan and comedian Roseanne Barr. It includes Deep Green Resistance.
Radical feminists find that gender is a ridiculous set of oppressive stereotypes that have nothing to do with biology, rather than seeing gender as a spectrum or a binary or some kind of fluid. Gender stereotypes dictate that men are masculine and dominant, and women are feminine and submissive, and that is what you are. For this, academics and activists alike have denounced and blacklisted them.
There is a difference between a person’s sex and his or her gender. Radical feminists believe that sex is innate – it’s the biology we are born with, our DNA and secondary sex characteristics, like breasts and testes. Sex is in-born, and gender is constructed – that is, imposed on us by societal stereotypes (what we used to call “sex roles”).
On the other hand, genderists believe that gender is innate somehow – we are born with the stereotypes of being frilly or macho already in our heads. Sex, therefore, is constructed by means of surgery and hormones.
Genderists: If your internal sense of pink lace or ball games doesn’t match your genitalia, you need opposite-sex hormones and an operation! Or at least a whole new set of clothes, makeup, and a name change. And a million bucks. And a reality show. And a magic mirror to whisper flattering things.
Midwives are being told they can’t use the term “women” when referring to those of us who give birth and nurse children. Because that is transphobic. Midwives face blacklisting by their own professional association for refusing to call mothers “birthing parents.”
A traditional matrilineal community was harassed about having women’s circles until they started holding them in secret, away from the white dudes.
White dudebro masters student arriving at a traditional indigenous encampment: “Hey, you’re doing gender wrong. Let me mansplain to you about why this postmodern theory I just read about is superior to your traditional teachings passed on for hundreds of generations. Hey, where you going?”*
Anti-feminists have infiltrated radical feminist groups to spy out where their events are being held, so they can disrupt them by barging in or by phoning in death threats. In one case, a police informant joined a west coast radical environmental group and used the wedge issue of gender identity politics to start a faction fight that ended only when everyone quit.
And now we find ourselves watching as mass media celebrate transwomen as the epitome of womanhood. And we find we are ostracized by the gender cheerleaders at universities, conferences, and within the environmental movement.
Stop the Frack Attack is the most recent spasm of horizontal hostility on the environmental left. This anti-fracking coalition includes radical groups like Rising Tide, which has staked its moral purity on denouncing those who consider biological sex to be a material human condition. It does not include Deep Green Resistance, a group led by radical feminists, because – we are told – radical feminists are the evil “cis” oppressors. Note that Christian zealots and rightwing nuts with guns are not being targeted here. Feminists are the biggest threat and therefore deserve to be bashed, according to some trans advocates.
Along with the radicals, STFA includes the Idaho Conservation League, the United Christian Church, and the Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group. Did STFA’s central committee interrogate these good citizens on where they stand on the burning question of “What is a woman?” Are we to assume they all agree 100% that the categories of male and female no longer exist, except as semantics?
And if the Denton Stakeholders issued a public statement that Caitlyn Jenner has only changed clothes and makeup, not sex – would Stop the FA excommunicate them too?
Or is shunning a punishment reserved only for feminists?
And – final question – what the hell does this have to do with fracking?
One thing for sure: the oil and gas executives are laughing all the way to the bank. They know what some of us don’t – that infighting is like civil war: the only winners are the vulture capitalists.
* Different cultures around the world have different teachings about sex and gender. Many cultures have a designation outside of “male” and “female,” such as two-spirit and hijira. Many societies do not. Traditionally, some social groups are egalitarian, some are patriarchal, and some are matriarchal. They all have their own definitions of “who is a woman.” Not to speak for them, but those definitions don’t appear to be based on either radical feminism or postmodern theories about gender.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Oct 1, 2015 | Repression at Home
Members of Deep Green Resistance denied entry to Canada on the way to a Chris Hedges’ lecture
By Adam Federman / Earth Island Journal
Three members of the radical environmental organization Deep Green Resistance and two other individuals were detained for more than seven hours at the Peace Arch border crossing between Washington State and British Columbia on their way to Vancouver to attend a talk by author and activist Chris Hedges last Friday, September 25. They were questioned about the organizations they were involved in, their political affiliations, and their contacts in Canada before being turned away by Canadian border agents. Upon re-entering the United States they were then subjected to another round of questioning by US border agents. The car they were traveling in as well as their personal computers were searched.
The interrogation comes on the heels of an FBI inquiry into Deep Green Resistance last fall in which more than a dozen members of the group were contacted and questioned by FBI agents. Several months later the group’s lawyer, Larry Hildes, was stopped at the same border crossing and asked specifically about one of his clients, Deanna Meyer, also a Deep Green Resistance member. During the 2014 visits, FBI and Department of Homeland Security agents showed up at members’ places of work, their homes, and contacted family members to find out more about the group. Meyer, who lives in Colorado, was asked by a DHS agent if she’d be interested in “forming a liaison.” The agent told her he wanted to, “head off any injuries or killing of people that could happen by people you know.” Two of the members detained at the border on Friday were also contacted by the FBI last fall.
Since Hildes was last held up at the Peace Arch border crossing in June he filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program. In August he received a letter from the DHS saying the agency “can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement sensitive information.”
It’s not only Deep Green Resistance members who have had trouble getting across the border. Environmental activists who were part of a campaign in Texas opposing the Keystone XL pipeline were the targets of an FBI investigation in 2012 and 2013 and have also been denied entry into Canada. At least one of those activists, Bradley Stroot, has been placed on a selective screening watchlist for domestic flights.
Nearly all of the activists involved are US citizens who have not had issues traveling to Canada in the past, leading them to believe that the recent FBI investigation and interest in their activities has landed them on some kind of federal watchlist. According to Peter Edelman, an immigration attorney in Vancouver, there are three broad categories under which Canadian border agents may deny entry to a foreign national: If they suspect you are entering Canada to work or study or you clearly don’t have the financial resources needed for the duration of the visit; if you pose a security threat to Canada or are a member of a terrorist or criminal organization; or if you’ve committed certain crimes. Edelman says that US citizens tend to get targeted more easily at the Canadian border because of the various information- sharing programs between the two countries. As soon as they scan your passport, border agents have access to a whole host of state and federal databases. Still, Edelman says, “Who gets targeted and who doesn’t is definitely an exercise in profiling.”
On Friday, September 25 Deep Green Resistance members Max Wilbert, Dillon Thomson, Rachel and two other individuals not affiliated with the group drove from Eugene, Oregon to attend the talk by Hedges, which was a collaboration with the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter and the Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution. They got to the border around 1 p.m., told the border agents where they were going, and that they’d be returning to Oregon the next day. They were then asked to exit their vehicle and enter the border control facility, where they assumed they would be held briefly before continuing on their way.
Instead, they ended up spending four hours on the Canadian side, each questioned separately. At one point, an agent came into the building carrying Wilbert’s computer and notebooks. He asked the agent what they were doing with the computer and was told they were searching for “child pornography and evidence that you’re intending to work in Canada.” The agent also said they were “not going to add or remove anything.”
According to Edelman the searching of computers and cell phones at the border has become standard procedure despite the fact that there are questions about whether a border search allows for such invasive measures. Border agents take the view that they are permitted to do so, but the legal picture remains murky. “The searching of computers is an issue of contention,” Edelman says.
After four hours of questioning, all but one of the travelers were told that they would not be allowed to enter Canada. Wilbert, who grew up in Seattle and has traveled to Canada many times without incident, including as recently as January 2015, was told that they were suspicious he was entering the country to work illegally. A professional photographer, he had volunteered to take pictures of the event, which he had openly told the agents. “It was pretty obvious they were grasping for straws,” Wilbert says. “Under that level of suspicion you wouldn’t let anybody into Canada.”
The other three individuals were told they had been denied entry for previous political protest-related arrests. Rachel, a Deep Green Resistance member arrested in 2012 during a protest near the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, had traveled to Canada in December 2014 without any problems. The one individual allowed entry had no prior arrest record or explicit affiliation with any political groups. (Interestingly, several Deep Green Resistance members traveling separately, including one of the group’s founders, Lierre Keith, were allowed to pass through the border and attend the event.)
After being denied entry to Canada, the group turned around and attempted to reenter the United States, at which point they were again pulled aside and told by US border agents to exit their car. The group was then subjected to a similar round of questioning that lasted three and a half hours. This time, US agents took three computers from the vehicle into the border control facility and kept them for the duration of the interrogation.
According to Wilbert, the questions on the American side were more obviously political. Agents wanted to know the names of the groups they were involved in, what kinds of activities they engage in, what they believe in, and who they were going to see.
“It seemed very clear on the US side that they had already come to conclusions about who we are and what we were doing,” Rachel says.
Around 8:30 p.m. they were told they could leave and that it had been nothing more than a routine inspection.
Wilbert doesn’t see it that way. Two days later he got a new computer and says he plans to get rid of the one seized by border agents. Despite assurances from the border officials that nothing was “added or removed” he says, “We feel like everything we do on those computers will never be private.”
“It was pretty clear to us that it was an information gathering excursion,” says Wilbert. “They had an opportunity to harass and intimidate and gather information from activists who they find threatening.”
Adam Federman, Contributing Editor, Earth Island Journal
Adam Federman is a contributing editor at Earth Island Journal. He is the recipient of a Polk Grant for Investigative Reporting, a Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism, and a Russia Fulbright Fellowship. You can find more of his work at adamfederman.com.
Republished with permission of Earth Island Journal
by DGR Editor | Sep 29, 2015 | Gender, Male Supremacy
by Jonah Mix, Deep Green Resistance
Earlier this month, transgender activist Trevor MacDonald published two opinion pieces on the Huffington Post, each to attack the feminist organization Woman-Centered Midwifery. Woman-Centered Midwifery has earned the ire of the transgender movement for their open letter to the Midwives Alliance of North America, protesting MANA’s decision to remove all mention of the word “mother” or “woman” from most of their literature. Woman-Centered Midwifery made a simple request, signed by over a hundred prominent birth experts, activists, and feminists – that an organization devoted to promoting and organizing midwives shouldn’t deny the link between womanhood and birth. This was, of course, enough to bring down a torrent of condemnation, harassment, and threats by transgender activists.
Woman-Centered Midwifery is led in part by Mary Lou Singleton, whose Facebook comment is also the subject of the second hit piece. Full disclosure: Mary Lou is a friend of mine, and someone I respect greatly. Her work with Stop Patriarchy’s Abortion Freedom Ride, Deep Green Resistance,the Women’s Liberation Front, and other radical feminist and environmentalist resistance efforts have inspired, encouraged, and even facilitated my own activism. But these ridiculous smears would be inappropriate when aimed at any woman, not just one who has so clearly demonstrated her commitment to women’s reproductive justice.
MANA and other groups that support the removal of “woman” from a discussion of midwifery believe that such language is offensive, due to the existence of a small minority of those who identify as men. As the logic goes, the obvious connection between pregnancy, birth, and womanhood must be excised so as to not invalidate their identities; instead of discussing mothers or women, the millions of adult human females who birth children across the globe will have their identities stripped and be relabeled “pregnant persons,” in deference to a handful of transgender activists.
As I attempted to follow this logic, I was brought back to 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for his lynching of Trayvon Martin. As black anti-violence activists began rallying around the cry of Black Lives Matter, the pushback from white supremacists was immediate – and their foremost response was the formation of their counter-slogan, All Lives Matter.
For those who are unclear, it must be said that All Lives Matter is a vicious expression of white supremacy hidden behind a façade of egalitarianism. Of course all lives do matter in a moral sense. But as many black activists have pointed out, we currently live in a system where the value of white life is affirmed in a way black life is not. To the police, courts, and prisons, white lives – especially rich, male white lives – have recognized importance. The growing piles of broken brown bodies across this nation make it clear that the same is clearly untrue for those who live outside whiteness– and that those inside it have shown little dedication to making their insistence on All Lives Matter a reality.
Luckily, it seems as if most liberals and leftists are on board with rejecting “All Lives Matter” as a slogan – yet they ape its logic when they berate activists who center midwifery, abortion rights, and other reproductive justice issues on women as a class. Some white people do suffer state violence, but we all see “Hey, not everyone killed by police is black!” as an insincere distraction. So why does the existence of a small minority of transgender parents turn “Hey, not everyone who has an abortion is a woman!” into a meaningful critique?
Black activists have repeatedly explained that saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean others don’t, and only the most disingenuous white folks disagree. But clearly MANA and others who want to remove any mention of womanhood from a discussion of birth believe the statement “Women give birth” does unjustly exclude anyone who might not identify as a woman. This double standard makes no sense; if the use of “mother” in a discussion of pregnancy is a violent act of erasure, then Black lives Matter is no more justifiable. Do we really want to travel down that road?
Police violence actually affects white people at a far greater rate than restrictions on abortion or access to childcare affect those who identify as transgender. But in both cases, that doesn’t change the obvious fact that these groups are not the intended victims. Cops are militarized into hypermasculine violence because a white supremacist state requires soldiers willing to do violence against black and brown citizens. White folks – especially poor white folks – are sometimes caught in the crossfire, but the bullets and batons are aimed directly at people of color.
In the exact same way, abortion restrictions are put in place specifically because women are seen as incubators. Their bodies are such that men can fuck them, wait nine months, and remove a (hopefully male) child. Female human beings who don’t want to identify as women still possess those bodies, and they inherit the violence that has been constructed to keep those bodies down – a violence that is specifically tied to misogyny. As Ophelia Benson writes on her blog:
It doesn’t help [pregnant people who don’t identify as women] to try to obscure the fact that attacks on abortion rights are highly political in a particular way – a sexist way, a misogynist way, an anti-women way. A trans man who needs an abortion is caught in a system that was organized to thwart women’s autonomy.
Gloria Steinem (or perhaps an elderly Irish cab driver!) famously said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” The reason transgender folks are refused abortion services, as well as any other reproductive care, has everything to do with the fact that they are seen as woman, treated like women, and navigate a structure of policy and law imbued with intentional anti-woman violence. Sacrificing those obvious connections in the name of inclusion is a victory for right-wing fascists.
Inclusion has become the ultimate liberal fetish. Unfortunately, the uncritical expansion of categories to protect feelings is less inclusion than dilution. “All Lives Matter” is, after all, a demand for inclusion, specifically the inclusion of white trauma into the narrative of black resistance. The classic line used by men’s rights activists – “Sometimes men get beat up by women too!” – is a demand that efforts against domestic violence be “inclusive” as well. But none of these discussions are improved in the least solely by making language less precise.
The whole project of politics is placing the complex web of human interaction into a formula of power: Who does what to whom? And when we say white cops use violence against black civilians, the First World extracts resources from the Third World, or men restrict reproductive healthcare for women, we aren’t claiming that other individual experiences are impossible; we’re saying that, beyond those individual experiences an organizing structure exists that shapes how groups of people interact.
If your goal is to despecify language to the point where all possible experiences are represented equally, then yes, by all means replace woman with “pregnant person.” And while you’re at it, replace “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter.” Demand justice for “incarcerated persons,” not people of color. Set up shelters open to “the battered,” not abused women. Raise awareness for “colonized individuals,” not the Third World. Combat “discrimination based on orientation,” not homophobia. Then sit back, relax, and feel really, really great about just how inclusive you are.
But if your goal is a political analysis that actually confronts power, do just the opposite: Identify the white supremacy at the heart of police brutality, pinpoint the specific victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, name the agents of global empire, and, yes, be honest about who bears the brunt of reproductive oppression. At the heart of Black Lives Matter is the belief that oppressed populations have the right to narratives that center their experience of oppression, even if others who suffer from their peripheral effects may feel momentarily excluded. Reject this or accept it – but don’t apply it selectively. Victims of abortion restrictions and overmedicalized birth may indeed be “pregnant persons,” but only in the sense that those left bleeding, battered, and dead in our streets by psychopathic cops are “policed persons.”
Republished from Gender Detective, September 27, 2015
by DGR Editor | Sep 27, 2015 | Agriculture, Indigenous Autonomy
by Kim Hill, Deep Green Resistance Australia
Why did the Australian aborigines never develop agriculture?
This question was posed in the process of designing an indigenous food garden, and I could hear the underlying assumptions of the enquirer in his tone. Our culture teaches that agriculture is a more desirable way to live than hunting and gathering, and agriculturalist is more intelligent and more highly evolved than a hunter gatherer.
These assumptions can only be made by someone indoctrinated by civilization. It’s a limited way to look at the world.
I was annoyed by question, and judged the person asking it as ignorant of history and other cultures, and unimaginative. Since many would fit this label, I figured I’m better off answering the question.
This only takes some basic logic and imagination, I have no background in anthropology or whatever it is that would qualify someone to claim authority on this subject. You could probably formulate an explanation by asking yourself: How and why would anyone develop agriculture?
First consider the practicalities of a transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
What plants would be domesticated? What animals? What tools would they use? How would they irrigate?
Why would anyone bother domesticating anything that is plentiful in the wild?
To domesticate a plant takes many generations (plant generations, and human generations) of selecting the strongest specimens, propagating them in one place, caring for them, protecting them from animals and people, from the rain and wind and sun, keeping the seeds safe. This would be incredibly difficult to do, it would take a lot of dedication, not just from one person but a whole tribe for generations. If your lifestyle is nomadic, because food is available in different places in different seasons, there is no reason to make the effort to domesticate a plant.
Agriculture is high-risk. There are a lot of things that could destroy a whole crop, and your whole food supply for the year, as well as your seed stock for the next. A storm, flood, fire, plague of insects, browsing mammals, neighbouring tribes, lack of rain, disease, and no doubt many other factors. A huge amount of work is invested in something that is likely to fail, which would then cause a whole community to starve, if there isn’t a back-up of plentiful food in the wild.
Agriculture is insecure. People in agricultural societies live in fear of crop failure, as this is their only source of food. The crops must be defended. The tools, food storage, water supply and houses must also be defended, and maintained. Defended from people, animals, and insects. Growing and storing all your food in one place would attract all of these. Defence requires weapons, and work.
Agriculture requires settlement. The tribe must stay in one place. They cannot leave, even briefly, as there is constant maintenance and defending to do. Settlements then need their own infrastructure: toilets, water supply, houses, trading routes as not all the food needs can be met from within the settlement. Diseases spread in settled areas.
Aboriginal people travel often, and for long periods of time. Agriculture is not compatible with this way of life.
Agriculture is a lot of work. The farmers must check on the crop regularly, destroy diseased plants, remove weeds, irrigate, replant, harvest, save seeds, and store the crop. Crops generally are harvested for only a few weeks or months in the year, and if they are a staple, must be stored safely and be accessible for the rest of the year.
Domesticated animals require fencing, or tethering, or taming. They would be selectively bred for docility, which is a weakness not a strength, so a domesticated animal would be less healthy than a wild animal.
The people too become domesticated and lose strength with the introduction of agriculture. The wild intelligence needed to hunt and gather would be lost, as would the relationships with the land and other beings.
Agriculture requires a belief in personal property, boundaries, and land ownership. Australian aborigines knew that the land owned the people, not the other way around, so would never have treated the land in this way.
Agriculture needs a social hierarchy, where some people must work for others, who have more power by having more wealth. The landowner would have the power to supply or withhold food. Living as tribal groups, aborigines probably wouldn’t have desired this social structure.
Cultivated food has less nutrition than wild food. Agriculturalists limit their diet to plants and animals that can easily be domesticated, so lose the diversity of tastes and nutrients that make for an ideal human diet. Fenced or caged animals can only eat what is fed to them, rather than forage on a variety of foods, according to their nutritional needs. Domesticated plants only access the nutrients from the soil in the field, which becomes more depleted with every season’s crop. Irrigation causes plants to not send out long roots to find water, so domesticated plants are weaker than wild plants.
Agriculture suggests a belief that the world is not good enough as it is, and humans need to change it. A land populated with gods, spirits or ancestors may not want to be damaged, dug, ploughed and irrigated.
Another thought is that agriculture may develop from a belief in scarcity – that there is not enough food and it is a resource that needs to be secured. Indigenous belief systems value food plants and animals as kin to be in relationship with, rather than resources to exploit.
Agriculture isn’t an all-or-nothing thing. Indigenous tribes engage with the landscape in ways that encourage growth of food plants. People gather seeds of food plants and scatter them in places they are likely to grow. Streams are diverted to encourage plant growth. Early explorers witnessed aboriginal groups planting and irrigating wild rice. Tribes in North Queensland were in contact with Torres Strait Islanders who practiced gardening, but chose not to take this up on a large scale themselves.
A few paragraphs from Tim Low’s Wild Food Plants of Australia:
The evidence from the Torres Strait begs the question of why aborigines did not adopt agriculture. Why should they? The farming life can be one of dull routine, a monotonous grind of back-breaking labour as new fields are cleared, weeds pulled and earth upturned. The farmer’s diet is usually less varied, and not always reliable, and the risk of infectious disease is higher…It is not surprising that throughout the world many cultures spurned agriculture.
Explorer Major Mitchell wrote in 1848: ‘Such health and exemption from disease; such intensity of existence, in short, must be far beyond the enjoyments of civilized men, with all that art can do for them; and the proof of this is to be found in the failure of all attempts to persuade these free denizens of uncivilized earth to forsake it for tilled soil.’
After all this, I’m amazed that anyone ever developed agriculture. The question of why Australian aborigines never developed agriculture is easily answered and not as interesting as the question it brings up for me: why did twentieth century westerners never develop hunter-gatherer lifestyles?
From Stories of Creative Ecology January 5, 2013
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Sep 26, 2015 | Direct Action, Strategy & Analysis
By Zoe Blunt, Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network
In every part of the province, industry is laying waste to huge areas of wilderness – unceded indigenous land – for mining, fracking, oil, and hydroelectric projects. This frenzy of extraction is funneling down to the port cities of the Pacific and west to China.
Prime Minister Harper has stripped away legal options to stop this pillaging by signing a new resource trade agreement with China that trumps Canadian and local laws and indigenous rights. Not even a new government has the power to change this agreement for 31 years.
For mainstream environmental groups (and my lawyers, who were in the middle of a Supreme Court challenge to the trade agreement when Harper pre-empted them), it is a total rout. We are used to losing, but not like this.
The only light on the horizon is the rise of direct resistance. BC’s long history of large-scale grassroots action (and effective covert sabotage) is the foundation of this radical resurgence.
This time it’s different. This time we can write off the Big Greens. Tzeporah Berman, once the face of the Clayoquot Sound civil disobedience protests and now head of the Tar Sands Solutions Project, is publicly proposing that enviros capitulate in the hopes of a slightly greener pipeline apocalypse.
As usual, Berman and her kind are far behind the people they pretend to lead. Public opinion is hardening against pipelines and resource extraction.
But the question hangs over us like smoke from an approaching wildfire. How to stop it? The courts are hogtied. The law has no power. The people have no agency. This government simply brushes them aside and carries on. We get it. We’ve had our faces rubbed in it.
This is activist failure. The phase of the movement when most of the public is already on side, when we have filed all the lawsuits, taken to the streets in every city, overflowed every public hearing, and uttered every threat we can muster – and the end result is they are bulldozing this province from the tarsands straight to the coast.
This is the moment when we can expect activists, especially mainstream enviros, to become demoralized and quit or capitulate. Or delude themselves. Green groups are casting about for a strategy that will allow their donors to maintain false hope in a democratic solution. Some are still trying to raise money for legal challenges that can simply be overruled by the treaty with China.
But small cadres are preparing the second phase of the resistance. Indigenous groups are reclaiming territory and blocking development at remote river crossings, on strategic access roads, and in crucial mountain passes. Urban cells are locking down to gates, vandalizing corporate offices, and organizing street takeovers.
It’s a good start. But now we have to look at how to be effective against powerful adversaries with the full weight of the law and the police on their side. How will we protect the land and each other, when push comes to shove?
The new rules don’t change our strategy to bring down the enemy: kick them in the bottom line. The resource sector will wind tighter as competition to feed China intensifies. Profits are slim enough to start with – made up in volume – and investors are jittery already.
We urge our allies to heed the lessons of history. We don’t win by giving up. Tenacity, flexibility, and diversity of tactics turn back the invaders.
Celebrate the warriors. Raise that banner now, and we’ll find out soon enough who’s with us, and who’s looking to appease our new dictators.
