Green Flame: Chaos in Washington D.C.

Green Flame: Chaos in Washington D.C.

This episode, recorded January 7th 2021 is a round table discussion of the January 6th protest and riots in Washington D.C.  in the U.S. Capitol.  The hosts for this episode are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan. They are joined by Saba Malik and Will Falk.


The discussion starts with Will outlining his work and allegiance to the natural world, and includes the needs for anti-civilization and a strong biophilic analysis. Saba is clear that the dominant US culture was founded upon kidnapping and genocide.  Max describes the destruction of the systems of life support on Earth (soils, waters) and the current unrest is a sign of the collapse of empire. Jennifer describes the insanity of the recent events and asserts that people are literally going mad. Saba relates the earth as an organism in crisis because she is being killed and the behaviour of some people demonstrates the crisis and insanity.

Max, Will, Saba and Jennifer are clear that preparation, community building, and self-defense is needed as we see more economic and environmental collapse.



Max Wilbert is a writer, organizer, and wilderness guide. A third-generation dissident, he came of age in a family of anti-war and undoing racism activists in post-WTO Seattle. He is the editor-in-chief of the Deep Green Resistance News Service.

Jennifer Murnan is a US based feminist activist and environmental campaigner. Jennifer is involved in projects focused on growing and supporting gynocentric communities, and is co – host of The Green Flame podcast.

Will Falk is a member of Deep Green Resistance, he is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist.

Saba Malik is a mother of two and has been a feminist and anti-racist activist for most of her adult life.

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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.

Have the Machines Already Taken Over?

Have the Machines Already Taken Over?

This article describes the madness of consumption, the accumulation of things, and the impact of consumerism on the human state of being and on the natural world.


by Phil Knight / Counterpunch

According to Ron Milo and his colleagues at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, in 2020 the mass of artificial, human made objects on Earth is likely greater than the mass of all living things. The human-made world – steel, concrete, ships, buildings, vehicles, bridges, overpasses, warehouses, plastic junk…weighs more than the mass of all living things, including forests, marine and terrestrial mammals, fish, and insects. And humans.

The same study points out that, for each person on Earth, a quantity of “anthropogenic mass” greater than their body weight is produced each week. That’s right, your weight in human-made crap is produced EVERY WEEK. Just for you. Have we built enough STUFF yet?

Do we have enough things?

We surround ourselves in a sterile, artificial, soulless world of our own making, becoming ever more dependent on our machines and edifices as we destroy the very world around us. We are flies trapped in amber, struggling fruitlessly to free ourselves as the trap solidifies. We will make amazing fossils.

We are also creating smarter and smarter things – cars that drive themselves, hand held computers that do far more than we could ever need them to, appliances and homes wired to the global internet, tiny chips that hold more information than we could read in a hundred years, jet liners that pilot themselves, spacecraft that spy on the cosmos, gene splicers that alter the very stuff of life.

How soon ‘til all this STUFF turns on us?

The Singularity will occur when artificial intelligence escapes the control of humanity and increases until it far exceeds human intelligence. Artificial intelligence may figure out to reproduce itself and completely take over, making copies of itself at warp speed, spreading in a nightmare of self-replicating von Neumann machines free of human interference. At this point humans may have lost control of their own destiny. We will have entered the Matrix.

Perhaps the machines have already taken over. When was the last time you looked your phone? 10 minutes ago? Five? Two? Instead of a singularity, it has been a gradual stealth campaign. Machines have invaded our minds via screens and headphones and chimes and ringtones. They demand our constant devotion and attention. Especially now, in the pandemic, when we can rarely meet as flesh and blood humans but must talk to pitiful simulations of our friends and family and colleagues, flattened replicas that chatter through tiny speakers, faces that squint and smile and try to make sense of the mess they are in, try to connect in some way across the void of contact.

We occasionally peel away from our screens to climb into our rolling deathboxes and spew more carbon into the frying atmosphere, an atmosphere rapidly transforming into one giant human artifact, albeit one we do not control but only alter and ruin willy-nilly with little regard for the rapidly approaching hell on Earth we are creating.

Those artifacts we blithely build become ever more necessary yet deadly as the climate becomes more hostile, as society consumes itself cannibal-like, becoming a death spiral of conspiracy theories, hate, tribalism and simmering warfare.

Note how the machines spread division.

Computer screens display social media, which blares conspiracy theories and false news and fear, turning human society into tribes ruled by hatred of others. Divide and conquer. Not only human destiny is at stake. The destiny of life on Earth may be forfeit. Machines will have no incentive to preserve living things, nor wilderness, nor oceans. All will be raw material for their growth and their ever-increasing spread. They will link in one giant brain, an Internet gone berserk.

Total takeover by artificial intelligence may never occur. But we are approaching what you might call the physical singularity – the growth of human systems, spun out of control. No one has the means nor the will to stop what we have set loose – the constant and multiplying conversion of natural life and living systems into human junk. We must have more, always more. A few words to your Smart Speaker or clicks on your keypad and more stuff arrives on your porch, delivered for a price. A constant flood of merchandise flows through factories, warehouses, into trucks and planes and onto highways and into our cities onto our doorsteps.

We bring it in and add it to the pile.

And much of this Stuff either sits unused – in the billions of storage units strewn across the landscape or on the RV and boat storage lots – or worse, it gets thrown out. Landfills overflow with reuseable, recyclable resources and things. They are entombed until someone gets determined or desperate enough to mine the landfills.

Humans have transformed vast areas of the planet. On landscapes very recently populated by large wild animals like grizzly bears, elk, bison, elephants, giraffes, tigers, rhinos, and hippos, now the masses of migrating creatures are mechanical. Great seething hordes of metal wheeled dinosaurs jockey for position in a mad race from an age of steel and plastic (which is now). The roar of the lion and the howl of the wolf have been replaced by the shriek of the diesel pickup, the scream of the jacked up Mitsubishi or Mazda, the snarl of the Harley Davidson. Savanna, forest, prairie, marsh, wetland, delta and meadow have been turned into parking lot, shopping center, business park, runway, interstate, subdivision and factory.

Thousands upon thousands of homes sit empty for much of the year, sealing off the land from use by any animal or plant beyond those tiny ones that can sneak in.

Great cruise liners built to hold thousands of people fester at dockside as the pandemic makes their use extremely uninviting. Office buildings a hundred stories tall are “hollowing out” as the pandemic forces a shift to working online from home. Parking garages sit empty, monuments to the late great commuter. The only public buildings filling up are hospitals and morgues.

Can we ever have enough? Will our stuff take over? Have we given ourselves over to our creations? Are we evolution gone mad?

Who knows, maybe the singularity will create a benevolent race of machine overlords. If they become so much smarter than us, maybe they will see the wisdom in kindness, the necessity to preserve the abundant and beautiful life of this blue green ball spinning through the vast emptiness.

But I doubt it.


Phil Knight is an environmental activist in Bozeman, Montana. He is a board member of the Gallatin-Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance

This article was original published in Counterpunch, here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/14/have-the-machines-already-taken-over/

How to Develop Resistance Leadership Skills

How to Develop Resistance Leadership Skills

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.


By Fred Gibson

Why Leadership is Important

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.)
  • Larraine R. Matusak: Finding Your Voice: Learning to Lead…Anywhere You Want to Make a Difference. 1997. San Francisco: Jossy-Bass. (A good ‘intro’ to leadership: accessible, non-academic, with a practical bent. Has a motivational component, and is pretty short.)
  • 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.

Featured image: Kurdishstruggle, CC BY 2.0

Revolutionary Discipline with Vince Emanuele

Revolutionary Discipline with Vince Emanuele

Vincent Emanuele is a writer and organizer born and raised in America’s Rust-Belt. A former US marine and Iraq War veteran, Vince refused orders for a third deployment in 2005 and immediately began working with the anti-war movement during the Bush years.

In the following excerpt from “Resistance Radio” with Derrick Jensen, Vince shares his thoughts regarding how discipline plays out an important role in activism and how to become disciplined by starting to make small but constant changes in our day-to-day activities.


Revolutionary Discipline

Vince Emanuele, with Derrick Jensen

[Starts: 1:08]

Vince Emanuele: [My friends] and I will often say things about simple day-to-day interactions. For instance when we are at a dinner, and a server walks up and, you know, to make eye contact and not to just keep eating if they drop something off at the table without acknowledging their presence, making sure that you hold doors for people, making sure that you are courteous with people. Those things for me on a smaller level operate as form of discipline that should carry over to other forms.

So let’s bring this back to military training (…) let’s put it this way: you don’t go into boot camp on day one or week one and start patrolling with a weapon in your hand.

Discipline in Small Actions

In fact, as an infantry soldier or Marine, and I’ll speak from my personal experience, you don’t really do that until sixteen weeks of training. You actually sit in a formation with a group of people with weapons, let alone live ammunition which might only happen once over the course of twenty-four weeks of training. So what do they start you with first? Can you stand up straight? And I don’t mean to sound ableist when I say some of these things, I just wanna throw that out there, but, you know, can you stand there on the line? Can you keep a straight face? Can you keep your hands and your knuckles at the seam of your pants? Can you make your bed or what we call a rack? Can you fold your socks? Can you have everything in line? Can you have your footlocker organized? Can you follow simple commands like “yes, sir” after certain commands, or kill after other commands? Will you move to the right or to the left when you are given a command to do so?

Now, that is an extreme example and it is obviously in a very destructive institution particularly here in the Unites States, but I think that you could take a lot of those lessons and the fundamentals which for me mean starting off very small with people. So, if you can’t be disciplined enough to get up and at least make your bed, at least maybe get something healthy to eat if you can afford it, if you have access to it. Making little schedules for yourself, making sure that you are living up to your commitments, and just doing the smaller things then I think after weeks and weeks of training, finally, as I was explaining to my neighbor who didn’t know this the other day, in Marine Corps Boot Camp you don’t shoot a weapon until, I think, week eleven of a thirteen-week boot camp. So, you’re doing your training and learning discipline for eleven weeks before the United States Marine Corps even gives you a weapon to fire.

So, when I think of resistance movements, when I think of even say non-violent direct actions groups who are performing very illegal actions but, say, in a non-violent action, but who still face serious repercussions, I think to myself we need activists and organizations who are disciplined on the same level, and maybe not in the same manner, obviously, but I do think some of those techniques and some of the long view that, you know, we are not just gonna discipline people in the course of a weekend workshop or we’re not gonna just discipline people, even if you could spend a week with someone, I mean, we’re talking about having people for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 16 weeks before you can trust them enough ,and that’s under great duress and stress for those 16 weeks just to get people to the point where they can walk down a street together, and know what to do when someone fires on them.

I don’t want to overly stress that, I don’t want to like people who are thinking out there: “Gee, I just want my group to be a little more disciplined “or “I just wanna find some discipline for myself to do that.” That’s the ideal I would say, and I would say that’s a model, but in any small way and I think that extends to day to day courtesies looking at someone when they’re talking to you – listening someone who’s talking to you, to be there in the moment, to pay attention to what you’re doing, and what you’re saying, you know, the way you’re coming across to people. I think that’s a very important thing, and I think that just starting with those smalls things like, hell, can I do half an hour of working out today? I don’t really like to read, but I now that reading is very good for me, I know my brain is a muscle; I need to work it, can I at least read half hour or 45 minutes a day? Just those little things I think if you stay with them long enough, and if you do them, I think they’ll have a profound impact on your life I think there’s no question about that.

Derrick Jensen : I think this is extremely important; the importance of this cannot be…

Discipline and Burnout

Vince: Oh, I was going to say… the other day I saw this clip from Oliver Stone, and it was a really good clip about his movies and I don’t even know him as a person, so if he’s an asshole person I apologize. I’m just with what he said the other day, it was the National Writers Guild Awards and the gist of what he said towards the end, and I’m paraphrasing, but he was like “look, I’ve been fighting this people who make war my entire life, and most of the time you’re going to get your ass kicked, you’re gonna get insulted, there’s people who are gonna make threats against you, and there’s gonna be even people who flatter you but, at the end of the day, if you can stay in course, and if you believe in what you’re saying then you can make a difference.”

There’s been a lot of people there over the years, Sergio and I talk about this very regularly, I would say 90 to 95 percent of people that I started doing activist work with no longer do the kind of activist work that Sergio and I are still engaged with. They might be involved in smaller level which is still good, they might be doing artistic work, which is all good, all that stuff is good, but in terms on being of the same level we were at 22, thinking we can radically change society, and we are not going to deviate from these principles, there’s very few of us who’ve remained.

Now, some of that is the toxicity of the left, some of that is life can beat you down, some of that is we’re living in one of the most fucked up economic periods on US history, and all this other stuff, I mean, all that’s true, but another large part of that is, and this from seeing people at least anecdotally, and I’d like to see a study on this, but just how many people sort of fell away because they couldn’t maintain certain level of discipline, like I have it in my head that this is what I’m doing for the rest of my life.

I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass. I’m not just saying that at the pub because we’re having a few beers. I’m not just saying that to make you happy. I’m not just saying that because that’s what I think I wanna hear. But I have seriously sat back and meditated and thought to myself… Okay, maybe meditation is the wrong word because I’m not really into some of those things, that’s another story, nonetheless sat there and reflected and thought to yourself “Is this what I’m seriously all about and why?” ‘cause it better not be for, you know, a career or book deals or to get your name in the newspaper or to appear in radio programs.

If it’s for those reasons you’re in the wrong fucking line of business, and I don’t wanna be around you and, number two, you’re gonna fall away anyway because this work, as most people who do it know, it is very difficult, it is time-consuming and it is extremely stressful, and it can beat you down. It is very, on the flip-side, very rewarding, you meet amazing people, you get to participate in very meaningful activities, you don’t have to look back as many of my friends are doing in their early 30s and asking: “God! What the hell did I do with my 20s?” or “God, what the hell did I do in the last decade?” I haven’t asked that question.

Discipline and Self-Critique

I mean are there things I would have done better? Of course, I’m not crazy, there’s plenty of things. For me part of being disciplined is not that you’re going to be always this perfect person, it’s that you’re gonna notice when you start screwing up. I know I need to get back into shape right now, I know that’s the case, I’m not in the kind of shape I need to be in. So what’s that gonna require? That’s gonna require me clamping down sort of on myself. So, you know, I just think little things like that, even showing up to stuff that sometimes you don’t want to. You know, for the activists who are out there and so on, you know, and I have to be reminded of this when I watch those old video clips, and I see someone -I need to find her name- like the woman from the Mississippi Freedom Party who was telling people, just regular rally folks dressed like they’re going to church: “you’re gonna have to put your lives on the line.” That kind of stuff reminds me, that kind of stuff inspires me, you know.

The other day when I saw clips of disabled people, people who are terminally ill being dragged out of Senator’s offices just because they need their Medicaid and their health care, that stuff not only enrages me, those images and those kinds of actions inspire me, and how can you not be the least bit inspired? How can I look to someone who is terminally ill in a god damned wheel chair and I’m sitting at home going “Man! I really don’t know if I want to go to this meeting tonight” or “I really don’t know if I want to go to this action next week” or whatever.

Now, sometimes you have to take a break so you don’t burn out, but a lot of times I think we make a lot of excuses for people, and I actually think it’s insulting. It’s not like we understand these are systemic issues, but I have had people tell me: “well, you know, they’re poor immigrants, like we can’t expect them to stand up” and I’m like “Do you understand how patronizing that is? Do you understand how offensive that is? You think there aren’t tons of immigrant families who are already standing up? How about we highlight their work, how about we use them as an example and not, you know, sit back with this goofy mentality go ‘Oh, well, you know, we can’t expect them to stand up, they’re in a position.’” It’s like no, I don’t think we should ever do that, I don’t think that’s what good organizers are, I don’t think that’s what good leaders, intellectual, cultural, political leaders do.

I think they say “hey, I understand your situation, maybe I’m even in your situation, but regardless I’m here to walk with, to work with you hand in hand and this is what we are going to do.” I’m never going to say “oh, well, you know, it’s a bad systemic problem and I don’t really expect you to do much about it because you’re in this terrible state.” I think of other situations, I think if you can resist slavery, I mean abolitionists, I mean, I just think those things fire me up. Because I think, “Man! If this people could do what they did under those circumstances, then, dammit, I can’t make excuses for myself, and I can’t run away and I can’t makes excuses for other people.” People need to take breaks, I understand that, but at the end of the day we need to be holding up these people as examples, we don’t need to be sitting back.

You know, “Derrick, he has health problems so you know I don’t expect him to write that much, I don’t expect him to do anything.” I mean, yeah, I mean a lot of us have health problems in to varying degrees we can all put in what we could put in, but I don’t think all of us including myself need people other than just ourselves to push us, and that’s why I love people like Sergio or my dad or my mom like, “hey, Vince, you know, you could be doing a little more. Hey, you could help this out more.” That to me is real friendship, it’s not just sitting there going, “Oh, Derrick, you’re the greatest person in the world and you don’t do anything wrong.” It’s like, hey, if we spend enough time around each other where we’re comfortable enough to have those conversations, that’s what good activism is, that’s what good organizing is. I mean, building trust, I think, also includes critiques and as long as they’re done with solidarity in mind and with you know good intentions, I think that’s what it’s all about I mean to me should always be critiquing and proving as much as we can ‘cause obviously we are not winning with what we’re doing now.

Discipline and Commitment

Derrick: Well we have about, we have about, oh Gosh, five or six minutes left and there’s, I wanted, we’ll save self-defense for another time.

Vince: Okay * laughs.* I’m sorry, I’ve been rambling…

Derrick: No, no, no, this is perfect, this is great, this is wonderful and another thing that you brought up that I also just want to say, but I want to save for another time because I know you’re gonna have a lot of great things to say about it is something else that’s very clear in the military, at least from reading military history which is all I’ve ever done, if there’s a war that you want to win. And I’m reading a book right now. I’m going back up and I’m going to ramble for a minute

Vince: Yeah!

Derrick: One thing having to do with the discipline: one reason I have so many books out is, surprisingly enough, because I write, you know. That’s it. It’s a cliché, but my mother’s grandmother used to say all the time “inch by inch life’s a cinch.” And so, I don’t write whole books. Like today, I have typed in edits I made, today it was 40-some pages. And I did edits over the previous three or four days of about 90 pages, and now I’m gonna print those out, I’m gonna read it again tonight, and then tomorrow I will type in those changes, and then I’m done with that 90 pages. I mean, obviously I’d written them in the first place, but the point is I do work every day.

Another thing I want to say about that, and it has to do with the whole reading thing, is one of the smartest things I did when I was a teenager is that I decided that every night, before I went to bed, I would read 10 pages of a book that was good for me, that I would never get through otherwise, and it’s pretty extraordinary that if you do 10 pages every night, which is a piece of cake, then in a year you got 3,600 pages, and that’s a bunch of books.

So I’ve read Oswald Spengler that way, the first one I ever read was Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and then I was like 20, I read all of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and it’s not a big deal it was just 10 pages a night, slow but sure, and why am I bringing all this up? Oh, the reason I’m bringing all this up is because right now I’m reading a book called “Thunder on Dnepr” (16:16) which is about the Russian defense against Operation Barbarossa when the Germans Invaded in World War II. There was a question asked early on and I will say this once, but I want to ask you this question for an entire interview sometime in the future, early on the book they’re saying a military maxim is “don’t do what you enemy expects” and I read that and I don’t really 100 percent agree with that, because if you have a very defensible position and your enemy expects you defend it you might as well if it’s defensible, if it’s the best place, instead the question I’m interested in is what does your enemy most fear? And then do that, and I asked this on Facebook I asked just people in general and it was so interesting because the responses by many of the people where things like building an alternative currency, not spending money, and there was one person who said ‘destroy the transportation infrastructure that allows the movement of resources’ and I clicked on the guy and he was ex –military.

Vince: *laughs* Yeah, that’s not surprising!

Discipline and Tenacity

Derrick: So, at some point, and I realize this the total crap thing to do in this interview when we have like one minute left, I would like for you, if you don’t mind, to think about that question, if you were in power, what you would most fear? And I would love to interview you again in the future on that question

Vince: Right on, I would love to do it

Derrick: So far as settling down today, we can’t really talk about self-defense ‘cause we only have like two minutes.

Vince: Well, there’s a quote I can give that I think encompass everything that we’re doing and it’s a good old ju-jitsu quote that it’s attributable to no one, nobody knows where it came from and the quote is very simple or the saying is very simple, it’s simply: “a black belt is a white belt that never stopped coming to practice” and all that’s all the black belt is in jujitsu. Every single day or as many times as you can go. There’s people who get it in 8 years, there’s people who get it in 25 years, but the point is just to get up and do it and do it as most as you can, and show up when you can.


Featured image by Max Wilbert.

Rights of Nature and Breaking Illusions: A Conversation with Will Falk

Rights of Nature and Breaking Illusions: A Conversation with Will Falk

In this episode of The Green Flame, we speak with Will Falk. Will is a writer, lawyer, environmental activist and former collaborator of Deep Green Resistance News Service. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens to Nature.

In the fall of 2013, he began traveling to support environmental causes he felt passionate about, endeavor which took him to places such as the Unist’ot’en Camp on the unceded territories of the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in central British Columbia, to the Big Island of Hawai’i, to pinyon-juniper forests and across the Great Basin among other points of interest.

Passionate about defending the Colorado River in all her length, he believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance and he periodically takes freelance legal and content writing work to support himself while researching and writing about environmental causes.

Our conversation focuses on the Rights of Nature movement, Will’s efforts to advocate for the Rights of the Colorado River, and his book, How Dams Fall: Stories the Colorado River Told Me.

Here’s a little excerpt of the interview (minute 18:10):

“One interesting thing when thinking about the threats to the Colorado River is [ … ] most people assume if they stopped watering their lawns in the Colorado River Basin, if they stopped taking showers, if they controlled their use of water better, that this would have a large benefit to the Colorado River and that’s just not true because about 78% of the Colorado River’s water used for agriculture and industry it  goes to corporate uses. I think about 10 or 12 percent of the Colorado River’s water is actually used by households and individual humans. That number is comparable to the amount of water that golf courses in the Colorado River Basin use. So even if every human being in the Colorado River Basin just stopped taking showers and watering their lawns forever and we did nothing about the corporations and the industry that uses this water, we still would be having this huge impact on the Colorado River and we might not be able to really alleviate the problems that the Colorado River is facing.”

You can also find some contributions by Will Falk right here on the DGR News Service. Here are a couple of links:

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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.

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Rights of nature is a legal and political concept that advocates for ascribing legal personhood to natural entities. Traditionally, indigenous cultures across the world have worldviews consistent with treating natural entities as persons.

Organizations like Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and  Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) have been advocating for Rights of Nature.

Will Falk shares his experience of advocating for rights of nature of the Colorado river in How Dams Fall: Stories the Colorado River Told Me.