Mainstream Fiction Normalizing Radical Eco-Activism

Mainstream Fiction Normalizing Radical Eco-Activism

Editor’s Note: For the past few decades, the environmental movement has tried lobbying, educating, and holding rallies with the notion of protecting the natural world. This approach has not led to success. Instead of the destruction of the planet being slowed down, it has been progressing (in some cases, accelerating). This inefficacy has forced us to consider other means that might have better results. The deep green environmental movement has always called for use of any means necessary to protect the natural world. The following analysis highlights how more are opening up to the idea.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here


By Kate Yoder/Grist

It’s hard to think of something more wholesome than gardening. But the New Zealand gardening collective at the heart of Birnam Wood, a new political thriller by the Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton, have a rebellious streak. The guerrilla gardeners trespass on unused land to grow carrots, cabbages, strawberries, and other crops. They tap private spigots and snipe the occasional tool from a shed in a wealthy neighborhood, imagining themselves as environmental revolutionaries.

Bookshelves are beginning to teem with radical environmentalists. In the sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a group called the Children of Kali target conspicuous “carbon burners,” knocking jets out of the sky and sinking yachts. A purported ecoterrorist also drives the plot of the mystery Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer, sending the main character on a risky mission into the world of wildlife trafficking. Then there’s Stephen Markley’s novel The Deluge, released in January, where a group of climate radicals called 6Degrees tries to avoid detection by the surveillance state as they instigate attacks on oil and gas infrastructure.

That eco-sabotage has captured so many authors’ imaginations seems to reflect a broader frustration with governments’ failure to rein in carbon emissions — a feeling that decades of peaceful protest weren’t enough, and the world is out of options. It has propelled climate fiction, once a niche genre, into the mainstream. Think of The Overstory by Richard Powers, a sweeping novel that follows activists who seek to save trees at all costs, employing human barricades, tree-sitting, and arson. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and generated glowing praise from Bill Gates as well as Barack Obama, who said it “changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it.”

History suggests that fictional stories about eco-sabotage, sometimes called “monkeywrenching” after Edward Abbey’s book of the same name, could inspire people to try something similar in the real world.`

“The world right now is ripe for radical activism,” said Dana Fisher, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. Last week, a report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the risks from climate change — both present and future — were even more severe than previously thought. In the last year alone, heavy rainfall submerged a third of Pakistan with massive floods and China endured a heat wave more intense and longer-lasting than any in recent history. The panel of scientists called for a “substantial reduction” in the use of fossil fuels, with the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declaring that the world needed a “quantum leap in climate action.”

Yet earlier this month, the Biden administration approved the Willow project, a ConocoPhillips oil drilling operation that could release up to 260 million metric tons of carbon over its lifetime. For progressive groups in the United States who spent recent years working with the Biden administration to pass the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest climate package in the country’s history, it felt like a betrayal — one that might lead to a shift in tactics.

“I mean, everybody knows that we are nowhere near where we need to be,” Fisher said. “And so the natural progression is you’re going to see folks, particularly young people, rise up.”

Apocalyptic storylines have long dominated environmental fiction — including Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road — a frame that’s tailor-made to ramp up concern about planetary crises. “I think that a lot of climate fiction has been perhaps stuck in this mold of cautionary tales, of bad climate futures,” said Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, an English professor at Colby College in Maine.

Now reality is doing the work that fiction once did. With a quorum of Americans sufficiently frightened about the world’s trajectory — a full quarter of the population is now “alarmed” about climate change — writers are branching out. Authors are modeling for readers a transition from “apathetic awareness” to “meaningful action” by showing different kinds of political engagement, Schneider-Mayerson said.

That might explain the variety of unconventional activism in recent novels, such as the guerrilla gardeners of Birnam Wood and the utopian commune in Allegra Hyde’s Eleutheria (2022). Hyde’s novel follows a woman who joins a camp of eco-warriors in the Bahamas, after she read a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. “I felt like a lot of climate fiction that I was encountering was purely apocalyptic,” Hyde told Grist. “But I wrote this because I wanted to use fiction as a space to imagine other possibilities, imagine utopian possibilities, and maybe open up that imaginative space for people.”

Eleutheria was inspired in part by The Great Derangement, a nonfiction book by the Indian author Amitav Ghosh published in 2016 that bemoaned the lack of serious literature about climate change, especially outside of science fiction, at the time. “I think it is a real call to arms to fiction writers to recognize how storytelling can and does shape how we live our lives in the real world,” Hyde said.

Another inflection point for climate fiction was the widespread popularity of The Overstory, the 512-page novel that brought attention to the ways trees communicate and wound up as a global bestseller. “It wasn’t hived off into the usual silos of climate change or speculative fiction, but was treated as a mainstream novel,” Ghosh told the Guardian in 2020, noting that he’s seen an “outpouring of work in this area” since the book’s publication.

Monkeywrenching is also spilling over into film. The movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, coming out next month, is inspired by the Swedish writer Andreas Malm’s book of the same name, a manifesto that encourages sabotage and critiques the pacifism of the climate movement. The film adaption takes that idea and turns it into a work of fiction, following a group of disillusioned young people on a heist to sabotage an oil pipeline. The trailer shows them making bombs and features dramatic background music punctuated by klaxons. “They will defame us and claim this was violence or vandalism,” one activist says. “But this was justified.”

Previous films have tended to “pathologize” activists who destroy property, psychoanalyzing them to figure out what was wrong with them, Schneider-Mayerson said. “I think maybe there’s a sense that, like, you can kind of touch these topics, but you can never endorse it.” On the other hand, How to Blow Up a Pipeline ends with “a wink and a nudge,” according to an early review of the film. “You can almost hear the movie say that the sabotage doesn’t need to stop when the credits roll,” Edward Ongweso Jr wrote in Vice.

The idea that people might take a cue from the movie isn’t far-fetched, experts say. “I can just say for sure that there are a whole bunch of dissatisfied young people around the country,” said Fisher, the sociologist. “And if they start watching movies about blowing up pipelines, what will that do?”

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

1st letter from political prisoner Jessica Reznicek

1st letter from political prisoner Jessica Reznicek

Free Jessica Reznicek
15m

BREAKING: As Joe Biden talks of being a climate leader at #COP26 in Glasgow we received our first letter & update from #JessicaReznicek for the people. Jessica is a climate / water protector political prisoner in the U.S. who was labeled a terrorist just months ago by the US government for her nonviolent action against #DAPL. She asked we share this with all of you!

By Jessica Reznicek

“10-29-21

Hello Dear Friends!

I am reaching back out to you to express gratitude for your love and support. These are without doubt difficult times, but your kindness helps to soften the blow. The human spirit certainly is resilient and with your prayers and friendship I am able to overcome obstacles much more gratefully.

A few updates in my world: Through the help of many supporters I am excited to say I have sent out my admissions form to the University of Colorado and in January plan to be enrolled in B.S. Sociology program.

I’ve been approved to volunteer at snow shoveling this coming winter. I’m so happy to very soon be getting outdoors more!

In 2 weeks I’ll be completing a tutoring program and will soon be tutoring my fellow inmates in GED classes, creative writing, empowering women courses and more. Great opportunity for me given so many obstacles.

I am making progress in being accepted into the PAWS program. I am currently being recommended to fill a position that will be opening in January. The new puppies will be arriving at the end of December.

As for hobbie I’m drawing a lot and learning to play the piano. Super peace-giving pastimes.

Anyway, I love you all. I truly do. I am human, so it would be dishonest to not share the other side of things. I’m battling depression and at times still in shock about where I am and for how long I’ll be here. One day at a time! Thank you again for your prayers and love, Peace, Jessica Reznicek”

—-

Please continue to share Jessica’s story as her appeal & petition move forward!

SIGN THE PETITION

“Water Protectors not Terrorists. Free Jessica Reznicek” T-Shirts

#FreeJessicaReznicek  #COP26Glasgow

Banner image: Tony Webster/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Radical Resolutions 2021

Radical Resolutions 2021

This list of radical new years resolutions comes from Deep Green Resistance volunteers and organizers.


Learn survival skills.

Learn about the edible wild plants in your area. Build your own home. If the past year has demonstrated anything,  it is that the industrial civilization and global supply chain cannot be relied upon. Practice farming. Go hunting. When the system eventually comes down, will you be able to provide yourself with that which is the most essential to you?

Learn self-defense.

We are at a war with those destroying the planet. Not all of us need to be in a combat situation. In fact, most of us will hopefully never face violence. But all of us defenders of life on Earth need to be prepared for situations where our physical safety may be compromised.

Build a community of resistance.

As much as the individualist doctrine wants us to believe, we are not isolated beings. We are a part of a web of relationships. We need these relationships to survive. We need our community to survive. One of the end goals of DGR is to create strong communities of resistance. A resistance community is self-sufficient, resilient, and most importantly, actively opposes the dominant culture.

Build strong relationships with organizers / allies.

A strong network of allies give us logistical, physical and emotional support throughout our actions. However, not all of these organizers share the same political ideology with us. Nevertheless, we can, and should, work together to find common cause.  Participate in their activities. Interact and share each other’s worldviews. Build trust and solidarity.

Self Care as part of political warfare.

With homage to Audre Lorde, you must do everything you can to care for yourself. Warriors are needed. Take some of the love and awe you have for others and the natural world and give it to yourself. Take that break, dance, spend time with loved ones, grow tomatoes, light candles in the bath, get enough sleep, eat nourishing food, and take action. There is a balance to be had; sometimes you need to rest and sometimes getting involved in front line resistance, direct action, writing, etc. is the right path for you at the moment.

Read.

Some incredible minds have taken time to put their thoughts and careful analysis on paper. We can benefit from decades of thinking and learning with very little effort. There’s also a lot of pith out there so be discerning or ask for recommendations.

Resist. Resist. Resist.

The dominant system is fucked up in all imaginable ways. Everyday we come across situations where we can either comply with or resist the system. Some days resistance means helping organize a blockade, other days it just means voicing a radical opinion within a trusted group of people. Seize these opportunities. Resist to the dominant system whenever you get the chance.

George Floyd’s Murder: An Act Of White Supremacy

George Floyd’s Murder: An Act Of White Supremacy

The United States is built on a foundation of slavery and indigenous land theft. Racism is deep in the bones of this country. Where there is oppression, there is resistance: the ongoing Minneapolis rebellion against the white supremacist state and police murder has spilled out across the U.S. Deep Green Resistance stands in solidarity with principled resistance by any means necessary.


George Floyd’s Murder: An Act Of White Supremacy

By Jocelyn Crawley

One of the first things that came to my mind when I learned of George Floyd’s ruthless murder was a social theory, typically used to analyze the ideology that undergirds patriarchy: the thought of domination.

According to radical feminists such as Monique Wittig, the thought of domination involves the idea that the ruling class produces the ruling ideas.

These ideas come to support the ruling class’s dominance over all of the other members of society. Within this schema, the thought of domination entails assent to the ruling class (men) imposing limiting ideas on the servant class (women). One of these ideas is the notion that there are two categorically different sexes and that these distinctions entail sociological consequences.

One of the sociological consequences is the naturalization of the division of labor in the family, with this belief functioning as a catalyst for the cult of domesticity and male dominance of the public sphere.

As made plain by this brief summary, the thought of domination ensures that those in power (men) keep those who lack it (women) in a position of subservience and slavishness. Within this type of societal schema, women are vulnerable to and subjected to diverse forms of dehumanization, some of which include rape, domestic violence, pornography, and prostitution.

Dominance and dehumanization:

In addition to functioning as an accurate analysis of how patriarchy works, I believe the thought of domination is directly pertinent to the white supremacist act we witnessed when white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for seven minutes while he was lying face down on the road. The video footage of the incident shows Floyd groaning and repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.” After moaning while lying motionless near the foot of the squad car and being transported into an ambulatory vehicle, Floyd died. The only sense that I can make of this inhumane behavior is that the perpetrators have adopted the dominant society’s values of venerating domination as a desirable way to exist in the world because it enables one to become the abuser rather than the victim of abuse. Within a world predicated on a thought of domination in which whites are the ruling class and can therefore impose their rules on all other racial groups, the abuse they subject black people to frequently goes unquestioned and unpunished.

Lack of consequences:

In recognition of the fact that being a member of a ruling class oftentimes precludes one from experiencing repercussions under the law, the outcomes of George Floyd’s murder should be carefully considered if we are to truly understand how white supremacy works. All four officers involved in the event were terminated. Yet the question that persists in the minds of many protestors is: “Why wasn’t Chauvin arrested?” This was the same question that I came to ask myself after I learned that Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and William Bryan pursued Ahmaud Arbery in a truck while he was running through the neighborhood. Many are familiar with the footage displaying Ahmaud Arbery stumbling to the ground after being shot while Travis McMichael stood by with a shotgun.

Many are familiar with the horror and fear this murder generated in the black community as we realized, once again, men of color are subject to being shot by the police and arrogant white men within local communities. Many are familiar with the stories of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. What many of us are not necessarily familiar with is the logic that makes this heinous, inhumane behavior acceptable. This is why I propose that members of radical communities engage the thought of domination as the ideology that undergirds white supremacy.

It is clear that the primary system of thought that fuels and justifies the type of incomprehensible violence, we see as a product of white supremacy, is the thought of domination.

Domination is defined as the exercise of control or influence over someone or something, or the state of being so controlled. In a contemporary world whose zeitgeist is guided by white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, domination is and must be an integral component of the cultures in which people are immersed.

Principles of mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation may periodically flourish or temporarily gain traction in people’s minds and actions. However, making the regimes of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy work requires that individuals recognize and respond to the realities created by those regimes. The reality that the regimes require is that an elite few exert extreme power over the masses, and that the masses respond to their own oppression by amassing as much agency and authority to themselves as possible while they grapple with the dehumanization and self-alienation engendered by the systems of oppression as distinct entities and a composite whole.

As one distinct component of the contemporary regime, white supremacy is predicated on the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially blacks.

Based on this false notion of superiority, whites come to believe (whether consciously or unconsciously) that they have a right to dominate society. When I read about horrific stories such as those of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I am convinced that the thought of domination is operative. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why a man would place his knee on another living, breathing human until he was no longer living and breathing. I have no other explanation that would help me understand why one individual would continue holding his knee on another living, breathing human as he begs for his life. When I learn that one white man holds his knee on a black man’s neck and continues doing so despite the latter repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe,” I am convinced the former has unequivocally embraced the logic of domination. In a world marked by this perverse logic, the murder of a black man is acceptable because whites are superior and any threat to their own safety-whether real or imagined-is more important than black life.

In recognizing the reality of white supremacy and the logic of domination that suffuses and energizes it, individuals who find injustice intolerable must begin to revisit whether the strategies of resistance that have been conceptualized and implemented at this point are working.

If they aren’t, we need to refocus our energies. At this point, I am seeing a wide range of social media campaigns as a strategy of resistance. I have also seen footage of a street protest. Recently, I became aware that several demonstrators gained access to a police precinct in Minneapolis and set some sections of it on fire. There are also now reports of vandalism, arson, and looting. While I do not doubt the importance and efficacy of the levels and extent of resistance seen thus far, I also see that white supremacy-manifested through police brutality-remains resilient in the face of resistance. For these reasons, I have two suggestions for the resistance movements that are unfolding strategically or organically.

First, the agitation against the state must increase. I noted that a tent has been placed outside the home of the attorney handling George Floyd’s case (Mike Freeman) and several protestors claim that they aren’t going anywhere until Freeman prosecutes and charges the officers involved. I think more space needs to be occupied so that state representatives become aware that protestors are not retreating into their private worlds while the public realm remains a sphere dominated by white supremacist ideologies and praxis.

Second, individuals across the country and world who oppose this state violence should join forces and make the resistance movement a more tight-knit process. I am aware that NYC-based Black lives Matter activists are heading to Minneapolis to protest the murder. This is the type of solidarity that we need to see in order to ensure that the authority and agency that results from mass resistance engenders a profound shift in cultural consciousness and state activity.

As always, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.


Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her intense antagonism towards all forms of social injustice-including white supremacy-grows with each passing day. Her primary goal for 2020 is to connect with other radicals for the purpose of building community and organizing against oppression.
Featured image: Minnesota State Patrol on May 29th, by Lorie Shaull, CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.
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.