by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 18, 2013 | Education
Deep Green Resistance has just updated the REAL: Resistance Education At Libraries project. This easy to use website helps identify libraries lacking our targeted resistance media, and makes it easier to contact each library or “Suggest a purchase” to fill in the gaps. The new updates include an improved user interface, many new libraries from college towns, and libraries in Canada.
REAL initially focuses on three foundational works of the Deep Green Resistance and strategic anti-civ movement:
- Deep Green Resistance by Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay, and Lierre Keith is crucial reading for anyone who has accepted that civilization is destroying the planet, but hasn’t known how to respond. This is the single most useful book to grow our movement of strategically thinking resisters. Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet — and win.
- Endgame, by Derrick Jensen, gives readers a crash course in anti-civ critique, an excellent and (relatively) succinct summary of what’s wrong with this culture and why. Many people already know this in their bones, but will benefit from Jensen’s eloquence and analysis to help them piece together a coherent big picture. By challenging readers to seriously ask themselves what it will take to make them fight back, and what that might look like for them as individuals and as a movement, this volume builds an important foundation for Deep Green Resistance. This book has awakened and radicalized many people, and has the potential to reach many more.
- Franklin Lopez’ film END:CIV offers a powerful visual introduction to some of Endgame‘s premises and arguments, on which it is based. The movie simultaneously presents some of the worst atrocities of civilization and argues for the necessity of fighting back. It has the potential to reach many people new to anti-civ critique who otherwise might not pick up one of the above books for a “casual” read.
Many people first came to their awareness of the problems of civilization and the need to fight back thanks to these works. Getting them into public libraries will make them more accessible to people who find them by accident, or who seek them out after hearing about Deep Green Resistance and anti-civ activism.
You can help by using the website tools to make suggestions to your local library and to encourage friends and family to do the same. You can also contribute funds to help us donate copies of these media to libraries which can’t afford them from their own acquisition budgets.
To learn more about the project, or to get started, please visit http://deepgreenresistance.org/libraries
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 26, 2013 | Human Supremacy, Male Supremacy, White Supremacy
By Kourtney Mitchell / Deep Green Resistance
Over the almost seven years I have been involved in social justice activism of various kinds, my level of understanding concerning our social and planetary predicament has grown quite a bit. I began my process towards a radical perspective as a student activist in the university anti-violence against women movement. It was there I developed what I like to call a clear “scope of the problem.
Allow me to back up a bit. I did not know it at the time, but while I was in high school my family survived a rough experience fighting the local police department that helped prime me for radical activism. My mother, while an officer, filed a civil suit against the department for racial discrimination. The ordeal was traumatizing – the media was relentless in their assaults on her character, the department engaged in continuous harassment of my family (including forcibly evicting us from our home on my 16th birthday), all of this culminating in several relocations in- and out-of-state. If it were not for the consistent support of family, friends, legal counsel and a compassionate and talented journalist who had our back, the city and its armed thugs would have certainly continued its oppression against us. Instead, my mother’s case was a primary reason the city organized a citizen’s review board to oversee law enforcement activities. My mother and I went on to write and publish a creative nonfiction book of her experience.
To this day, I am consistently amazed at my mother’s strength and courage. I witnessed her defy all odds, determined to stand up to the city’s bullying and set a lasting precedent for future generations.
As a teen I was not inclined towards activism, but that all changed when I attended college and somehow found myself sitting in the social justice center talking pro-feminist theory with fellow campus community members. I completed feminist and anti-violence training and that is when the real change began.
The information I learned was harrowing. I had no idea just how prevalent male violence against women was. Shaken to the core, I spent several nights in tears, struggling to understand just how the world became this way and how it could possibly continue. From the first night of training, I knew pro-feminism would be my life’s work. It became my passion.
Further social justice training on issues of race and class began to complete the circle for me. My own life experiences started to make much more sense, and I became sensitive to issues of justice and equality.
Then it was time for another wake-up call. I do not remember exactly how I discovered radical politics, but eventually I came upon Marxist theory, which then lead me to anarchism and eventually anti-civilization. I began reading Derrick Jensen’s Endgame in the fall of 2008, and all of the emotions I felt when completing activist training came rushing back to the fore.
It was all even worse than I had thought – the levels of violence against women, people of color, indigenous communities, children and now the planet. We are, in the words of Lierre Keith, “turning the planet to dust” with agricultural and extractive industrial processes. Quite literally, the planet is being killed, and that murder is increasing over time.
And that is when it all finally clicked, once and for all. It took me nearly three years to finally complete Endgame. Jensen does not hold back – his writing makes the violence of this culture so palpable. In addition to pro-feminism, I decided to somehow find a way to assist in the fight against industrial civilization, just in time for the publication of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.
A good definition of “scope” is “extent or range of view.” It is how far or wide one is able to see, how much of a given subject, problem or circumstance one has considered. A narrow scope yields superficial or inadequate results in addressing a given situation. A wide scope allows one to consider more possibilities, and be more honest about what needs to be done.
My life experiences have given me no choice but to keep a wide scope of our planet’s peril. I have been fortunate – and unfortunate – enough to have, directly or indirectly, experienced many of this culture’s truly wicked crimes against humanity.
An aspect of widening your scope that is important to consider is that when you do, it is likely you will never be the same. Society will transform before your eyes – what was once a world seemingly full of pleasure and privilege becomes one in which oppression, repression and psychopathic behavior are the norm, the way the system works.
But when you do widen your scope, and finally become honest about what is happening, you have a responsibility to act. And you must allow the reality of the situation to inform your actions.
Jensen, Ward Churchill, Peter Gelderloos, Arundhati Roy, Stephanie McMillan, and so many others have all articulated it in various ways – the dominant culture will not voluntarily transition to a more sustainable way of life unless we force them. Even if it were possible, it is unlikely to occur within a timeframe adequate enough to save the planet from destruction.
Consider this: there is a chance that this planet is the only source of life of its kind in the entire universe. Whatever your belief, this is a possibility, and industrial civilization is destroying potentially the only source of life.
One would be hard-pressed to find a greater evil than that. If you ever wanted to determine a set of objective moral truths to follow and carve them onto a couple stone tablets, this is a good start: destroying all life on earth is evil and immoral and it must be prevented by whatever means necessary.
We are facing a global temperature increase between five and eleven degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Keep in mind that just a few degrees increase is more than enough to wipe out the vast majority of diverse species on the planet.
Last year, 313 black men were killed by police or other vigilantes, an average of one every 28 hours.
Men battering women is the most common crime in the world; a man beats a woman once every fifteen seconds. And at least one-third of all women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
We must begin to see the world through the lens of justice, and our scope must extend to all of life. There are some very serious yet important questions that need to be answered, and very soon: What do we value – life or luxury? If the dominant culture is incapable of changing on its own, are we prepared to force it to change? And what will it take to do so?
There is no use in hiding behind our privileges, comforts and perceived inadequacies any longer. Oppressed communities have been on the front lines fighting back against genocide of mind and body since the onset of this culture, but now everyone and everything is at risk. Even the privileged elite – sadistic in their callous disregard for the welfare of others, stopping at nothing to extract every ounce of resources from whoever they can – will have to pay for their actions. And that payment will be made in blood.
So what scope are you using? Are you waiting for a mass shift in collective consciousness, ascension into a higher spiritual plane of existence? If so, please tell me: who all is included in this ascension? Will the psychopaths destroying the planet be going as well? Seriously, you can have them. Take them with you. I love this beautiful planet and I’m staying here to fight for it.
Get serious about the situation we are in. Take a step back, look at the world for what it really is, swallow that lump in your throat, and join us. Let the emotions wash over you – allow yourself to fully feel them. Get acquainted with that despair and heartbreak, and then do what is necessary to make sure future generations do not also have to feel it.
Everything we do needs to be done mindful of its effect on several generations ahead. This culture is so short-sighted; in less than one percent of our existence on this planet, we’ve decimated land, animal, water and air. There is a hole in the ozone layer, and acid in the rain, and the very soil upon which we depend is either blowing away in the wind or running off into the seas and oceans.
Such is the result of limiting our scope to the next quarter, or the next fiscal year. It is a suicidal tendency. Let’s rediscover our sanity. Communion with each other, with Earth, and with its entire community of life – this reconnection will help us reverse this murderous trajectory. We don’t have much choice, anyway. So widen your scope and fight.
We have a planet to save.
Let’s Get Free! is a monthly column by Kourtney Mitchell, a writer and activist from Georgia, primarily focusing on anti-oppression and building genuine alliance with oppressed communities. Contact him at kourtney.mitchell@gmail.com.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 6, 2013 | Alienation & Mental Health
By Vincent Kelley / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains & Eugene
Civilization’s continuance requires widespread denial among the populace of civilized nations. The denial of the inherent unsustainability and violence of civilization is, for example, pivotal in the conventional understanding of civilized existence as the most “advanced” or “highest” form of societal organization. While denial of the egregious material consequences of civilization is the most blatant example of this culture’s sickness, there’s an intuitive sense among those who are aware of civilization’s destructive nature that there are deeper socio-psychological problems in the substratum of civilized life. Although often undetected, the denial of impermanence is one of the strongest underlying forces behind civilization’s rapacity and attendant destructiveness.
Impermanence is inherent to existence regardless of sociocultural arrangements, present in cyclical indigenous cultures and contemporary linear industrial civilization alike. Despite this undeniable fact, the way a culture relates to impermanence plays a large part in determining its sustainability, the level of violence it perpetuates, and the internal well-being of its members.
One option is to accept and even embrace the basic uncertainty of an impermanent world. We may get sick at any time. We will certainty grow old. And, incontrovertibly, we will experience the most conspicuous and mysterious of impermanences: death. Another option is to tell ourselves that impermanence doesn’t exist. We can decide to fear old age, illness, and death. [2] as the greatest of horrors and center our morality around what historian Faisal Devji calls “life as an absolute value.” [3] Since death is an impermanence that cannot be avoided, it is worth reflecting further on its place in society and, in turn, our individual psychologies.
Just as patriarchy is viewed by some feminist philosophers, such as Ynestra King, as the root hierarchy from which all other forms of domination in society flow [4] a fear of fluidity, change, and passing away in life can often be traced back to a deep fear of death itself. Indeed, we sometimes speak of something “dying” in our life as it fades away. The civilized response to death, and all impermanence for that matter, is to resist it with all of one’s might. As activist and philosopher Charles Eisenstein notes, “[t]his is most obvious in our medical system, of course, in which death is considered the ultimate ‘negative outcome,’ to which even prolonged agony is preferable.” [5]
But if impermanence is part of life, and death is the paragon of impermanence, why can’t death also be seen as a part of life? Some cultures—clearly not our own—have understood death in this light. Indigenous scholar Jack Forbes points out that “'[s]oil fertility’ is, in large part, nothing but a measure of the extent to which a particular bit of ground is saturated with our dead ancestors and relatives,” and concludes that “[d]eath, then, is a necessary part of life.” [6] More concretely, we can observe this phenomenon when a nurse log facilitates the growth of burgeoning seedlings as itself decays. Going even further, Yaqui nagualli Juan Matus invites us to conceive of our death as a sort of gift for another, even if this other is only a micro-organism. [7]
So, as we can see, death—and impermanence more broadly—is inevitable personally and is even inextricably linked to life itself. However, attitudes towards death can be radically divergent, and, as I hope to demonstrate, tremendously consequential in our relationship to ourselves and the natural world.
One of the repercussions of the denial of impermanence is the privileging of preservation over experience itself. One need not look far to see the copious examples of this obsession in our culture. Often, taking pictures on a hike, for example, takes precedence over the experience of hiking itself. And, in some cases, the picture taking can even set up a wall of separation between “us” and “nature,” commodifying the latter while attempting to preserve a static conception of the former as a rigid identity. What about music? Do you ever find yourself at a concert thinking more about purchasing the band’s CD or looking them up on the internet than experiencing the music as it manifests around you? It’s not that these efforts to capture a fleeting moment are inherently wrong; they do become constricting, however, when they take priority over present-moment experience itself.
Indeed, when we valorize creation and preservation over decay and ephemerality—failing to see their inseparability—we are left in an existential bind where “making our mark,” so to speak, in an often physical manner, seems like the only sensible and worthwhile course of action. The drive to make a mark springs from a cultural belief that our value is dependent upon leaving something behind that will make us worthy in the eyes of society after we die, or at least place us in the category of people who worked for the cause of civilizational progress—bowing at the alter of the off limits idol of “human innovation.”
Hence, to have our very existence affirmed we are compelled to create something “permanent” as a testament to our worth. This mark-making often takes the form of environmental degradation and imperial conquest. We create toxic chemicals that will outlive us all, erect dams that alter the Earth’s orbit [8] and are more concerned about the future strength of the United States military, and the propagation of Western Civilization to “backwards” parts of the globe, than the availability of clean air and potable water. The paradox of all of this is that, in an effort to preserve, we destroy. Our fear of the impermanence inherent in existence has led us to create that which destroys and fail to realize the consequences as the pattern plays out time and time again.
Eisenstein writes that “[t]he whole American program now is to insulate oneself as much as possible from death—to achieve ‘security.’” [9] Concomitant with this false sense of security is a false sense of control. The desire for control is a result of denying impermanence. As an alternative to this denial, we can acknowledge that the world is full of ever-changing, largely unpredictable, and, above all, endlessly developing then decaying phenomena. Only then can the control imperative fall away, relegated to history as the ignorant, destructive, and ultimately self-defeating ideology that it is. Take technology. One of the alluring aspects of technology is the ability to control previously uncontrollable phenomena. But for us to be able to control something through technology, it’s presupposed that we have control over technology.
This is a misconception. Indeed, philosopher Tad Beckman asserts, in his reading of Martin Heidegger’s writings on technology, that technology is not merely “a complex of contrivances and technical skills, put forth by human activity and developed as means to our ends,” but instead is, in essence, “a vast system of organization which encompasses us rather than standing objectively and passively ready for our direction and control.” It is “an autonomous organizing activity within which humans themselves are organized.”[10] And, as Heidegger himself points out in The Question Concerning Technology, “the will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.” [11]
The same can be said of civilization as a whole. With its growth imperative it takes on an existence in itself within which humans must function. Our desire to control increases, paradoxically, in proportion to the increase of civilization’s control of our very existence. As cities grow and encompass the globe, dictating the terms of our existence, the surveillance state and the extirpation of biomes become all the more essential—two examples of this culture’s rapacious crusade of domination. In the process, the fallacy of infinite growth on a finite planet is implanted into our worldview, further reinforcing our denial of impermanence. In other words, the avariciousness inherent in the structure of civilization is matched by that of civilized humans, who have created a way of living which provides the illusion of control as it uncontrollably metastasizes across the planet.
The denial of impermanence is not only toxic to our individual selves, but also to those beings with which we enter into relationships, human and nonhuman, and the planet as a whole. At the root of our insecurity with impermanence is a fear, and, in the end, a misunderstanding of death, which is, in reality, a part of life. This leads us to devalue present-moment experience as we grasp at preservation and replicability. Finally, our faith in the religion of civilization has led us to become inextricably ensnared in civilization’s controlling trap, unable to see through the shadow of its edifices. Reflecting on the impermanence in our lives, and in the life of the decaying culture within which we live, is therefore critical in our struggle to engender a way of living that is free from the greed, exploitation, and devastation of civilization.
Notes
[1 ] See Derrick Jensen, Endgame: The Problem of Civilization (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), 40-41 for a discussion of cyclical vs. linear cultures.
[2] My invocation of the “old age, illness, and death” example is derived from Buddhist teachings. See for example the Upajjhatthana Sutta (AN 5.57): http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.057.than.html.
[3] Faisal Devji, The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (United States: Harvard, 2012), 186.
[4] Andrew Brenna and Yeuk-Sze Lo, “Environmental Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/ethics-environmental/
[5] Charles Eisenstein, “The Ethics of Eating Meat: A Radical View,” Weston A. Price Foundation (June 30, 2002), at http://www.westonaprice.org/health-issues/ethics-of-eating-meat.
[6] Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008 (1979)), 10-11.
[7] Ibid., 10.
[8] Malcolm W. Browne, “Dams for Water Supply Are Altering Earth’s Orbit, Expert Says,” New York Times (March 3, 1996), at http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/03/news/dams-for-water-supply-are-altering-earth-s-orbit-expert-says.html.
[9] Eisenstein, loc. cit.
[10] Tad Beckman, “Martin Heidegger and Environmental Ethics,” Harvey Mudd College (2000).
[11] Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1977 (1954), 5. I should note that Heidegger was critiquing technology as a “mode of Being-in-the-world,” not in the sense of “the machines and devices of the modern age,” per se (Michael Wheeler, “Martin Heidegger,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/heidegger/.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 1, 2013 | Alienation & Mental Health
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
“There is a problem. It’s a big problem. It’s not just the kids in the inner city. It’s the average middle-class family dealing with this and suffering huge losses.” The problem is heroin. The voice quoted here belongs to a local parent who just lost two sons after they overdosed on the drug.
I live in a relatively small, mostly white, and definitely conservative Midwestern city where this just keeps happening: kids are dying. Heroin has been seeping into my community for years now. Combined with an already existing culture of heavy drinking, and the addiction, poverty, and violence that almost always accompanies substance use and abuse, the result should be obvious: a new twenty-something-year-old face in the obituaries every week. They didn’t die because they were simply irresponsible or reckless; this crisis is built in to the dominant culture, and nothing will get better until this culture is changed.
We live in a society that values money above all else. Money comes before education, before healthcare, before children, before community. Decisions affecting all of us are made according to profit motive rather than human need. On every level, capitalism systematically exploits and destroys healthy communities.
The backdrop to this local heroin crisis is a repressive city that does little to serve young people or anyone besides the rich elites who run it. Social programs and initiatives are relatively nonexistent. Cafes, music venues, and other social spaces are denied funding so that they usually have an expiration date of less than a year. We’re left with only a few options: get a job, get high, or plan to move away. The gate-keepers of this community enforce a terrible double-standard: they won’t talk about their kids who are shooting up and dying, but they also won’t provide (or allow) an alternative.
Speaking of no alternatives, about one-third of this country’s population is living below the poverty line or near it. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. The places hit first and hardest are what Chris Hedges calls “sacrifice zones.” These are the colonies of empire—the ghettos, the barrios, and the reservations. Like the grieving parent alluded, it’s not uncommon that “kids in the inner city” die young, because those communities were gutted—flooded with alcohol, gentrified, and stripped of social services—long ago. But now, the pillaging has come around full circle to take even the children of the “average middle class family,” the children of the elites.
The story is the same everywhere: when there’s nothing to live for, there’s no reason to care about living. Hopelessness is universal.
Last night I had a conversation with one of my peers who quickly moved from this town as soon as she was of age. In just one year, 12 of her hometown friends have died from heroin or drunk driving.
My childhood best friend, 20 years old, overdosed on heroin. A year later, his friend, also 20 years old, overdosed on heroin. A person I had a crush on in the 8th grade recently died after driving drunk. A person I used to go skateboarding with in high school recently died after driving drunk and smashing his car into a brick wall. I wish I couldn’t, but I could go on and on.
My heart breaks a little more every time a young person’s life is so needlessly taken because of the sad, sorry culture built by generations before us. From Palestinian and Pakistani children bombed to death, to the guns fired by gang kids, to the unheard cries of suicidal victims of bullying, to the cities mourning too many heroin-related deaths to count—the young did not design this cruelty, nor do we have much of a say in changing it.
We have only two choices: adapt or die.
Some people can’t adapt. They were born into a body that simply doesn’t allow it—one that is female, one that is not white. Even if members of historically oppressed classes want to adapt to this culture, they are always denied the status of full human beings. But the choice was never meaningful for any of us; you can only adapt to drinking poison for so long before it kills you as sure as it does anyone else.
Adapt or die. Deep in our hearts, young people understand the profound sickness we are being socialized into. There’s little to make us feel alive in this routine of school, work, die. Save suicide, how do you cope with that? Welcome to addiction. It can be drugs, alcohol, money, sex, or anything that will numb the pain of being trapped in desperation. We’re floating in a sea of despair, struggling just to keep our heads above the water of self-destruction, but all the while sinking into a pit of hopelessness and forgetting what it means to feel alive. Eventually, as was true for my friends no longer living, a person just gives up.
Before fizzling out, many will grasp for control by abusing whoever is nearby. But perpetuating cruelty will not save you from emptiness. Breaking boundaries is a habit that can only end in overdoses, alcohol poisoning, bullet wounds, and a short life devoid of anything resembling love.
Adapt or die. The only way out of a double-bind is to tear it down and start over. Conformity will not get us anywhere. There’s no shortcut to a life of meaning and integrity. And to get there, we have to choose not to adapt, not to die, but instead to resist. We need take back the humanity we’ve been denied.
Capitalism requires obedience. It needs good workers, good consumers, and good citizens, who have submitted our own wills and desires for the sake of “the way things are.” Sure, we might get a little rowdy once in a while, but as long as we don’t fundamentally challenge the system in which we’re trapped, nothing changes. Dead kids are of no consequence as long as they remain powerless to the very end.
Many from generations before us have chosen to resist this corrupt arrangement. But far too many more have not; they accepted the system as their personal savior, always willing to defend their conditions and never raise a finger or mutter a word in defiance. The result is a world of expanding sacrifice zones, which have now become so large as to subsume the youth of everywhere.
When asked why she was protesting the liquor barons preying on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Lakota activist Olowan Martinez said, “Today I defend the minds of our relatives. Alcohol is a plague; it’s a disease; it’s an infection that causes our young people to kill themselves, to harm each other, to harm their own. We need to stop it before it’s too late. We came here to save the minds and mentality of our own nation.”
Young people today have no real chance of a future with good education, decent housing, and enough food or water. Moreover, we have no real chance of becoming who we are and who we truly want to be, no real chance of claiming the desires and dreams that are our birthright as sentient beings. The planet is burning, human societies are collapsing, and those in power are profiting from it all. It is our generation and those to come after that inherit this mess. We are living out an endgame and everything is at stake: life and all that makes life worth living.
Getting high will not make the horrors disappear. But until the horrors disappear, we can be sure that kids will keep getting high.
The youth have the most to lose, but we also have the most potential to turn things around. We can stop giving up our souls and, ultimately, our bodies, to this culture of despair. We can join with young people everywhere—from Palestine to Chicago, from Newtown to Pine Ridge—to let the powerful know that we will not be sacrificed for their profit. We will put down the drugs and put up our clenched fists. We will say enough is enough. We will not adapt and we will not die.
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 10, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Strategy & Analysis
The following speech was given as part of the Warrior Up Resistance Tour in January 2013.
Good evening friends, allies, relatives, I hope and pray that I say something tonight that makes you feel uncomfortable. You cannot live in these times—in the thrashing endgame of industrial Civilization, in the thrashing endgame of industrial capitalism, in the thrashing endgame of the so-called American empire—without feeling at least somewhat uncomfortable.
I am part of the radical environmental movement Deep Green Resistance. Our goal is gigantic in scope: “The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet.” We believe lifestyle and consumer choices like recycling, taking shorter showers, or changing light bulbs, will not save us. We believe industrial civilization is destroying the planet and needs to be taken down and turned into rubble. The dams need to be taken out, the cell phone towers need to be knocked to the ground. We believe that, if a culture of resistance forms immediately, we all can help to soften the inevitable crash of this death culture. As a movement, we believe that when it comes to tactics and strategy, we need it all. We need aboveground actions, and we need underground actions. We need people willing to be on the frontlines and countless others supporting them with loyalty and material support. If you come from the occupying invader culture, it is your duty to put your body on the line in defense of Mother Earth and indigenous peoples. That is what makes a good ally.
The state of the planet where we live is this: Over 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. There is 10 times as much plastic in the oceans as there is phytoplankton, the small creatures that supply half the oxygen we breathe. 97% percent of native forests have been destroyed. 98% of native grasslands have been destroyed. The water in 89% of U.S. cities is contaminated with carcinogens. If you are under 30 years of age, half of you will get cancer at some point in your lifetime. In the last 24 hours, 200,000 acres of rainforest has been destroyed and 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released onto the Earth and into the water. Over 45,000 fellow human beings have died from starvation or lack of water, 38,000 of them children. Between 120-200 species went extinct today never to breathe life on this planet–that’s 73,000 a year. Indigenous cultures and languages are going extinct at an even faster relative rate.
As you know now this death culture is waging war on all life. This is a war and we need to say that. I say it again: this is a war. And I ask you: what the hell are you going to do about it? Those of us on the frontlines are willing to do what is necessary to save and defend the living by any means necessary. Are you willing to do the same?
One of my Lakota allies Chase Iron Eyes wrote: “We owe allegiance to the trees, the four leggeds, the winged ones, the water, the salmon, the buffalo, the deer, the elk, the moose, the caribou, the bears, the corn, the wild rice and all living things which find a way to live together. All of us are making a choice everyday about whether or not we will choose a better path or continue complacently down this path that leads to the death of the planet.”
Again I ask you: are you willing to do the same?
For far too many years, this invader culture has done its best to divide us. What we need desperately is solidarity—solidarity with life and standing in solidarity against this death culture. I stand here a proud traitor to this dominant culture of death and destruction.
Are you willing to say the same?
Where there is death and destruction, there is always life fighting to live; where there is oppression there is always resistance. Let’s be very straight forward and honest about fighting back. Our mother is being tortured right in front of our eyes. Our relatives are being killed and poisoned by this invader death culture. None of us can win this fight alone. We need each other, and it has always been done this way. We need each other and we need it all. Andrea Dworkin said, “I found it was better to fight, always no matter what.” Again I ask: are you willing to do the same? A lesson from her-story shows that it is in the best interest of life to fight back: the Jews that fought back against the Nazi during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising had a higher rate of survivability then those who just went along with the system of death that was in place. We must always fight back. Again I ask: are you willing to do the same?
Real resistance looks like MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta has been destroyed and poisoned by Royal Dutch Shell. The people of that land tried peacefully to petition their government for redress, and to ask that the land be cleaned up and that the bodies of their families not be poisoned. Instead of listening to the people, the military government hung 8 of the leaders of the peaceful nonviolent movement, including Ken Saro Wiwa. After that happened, more than 200 brave human beings took up arms to protect the people and the land. They masked their faces, and wore camouflage clothing, the colors of Earth’s Army. They have sabotaged oil equipment and kidnapped oil workers. They have said to Royal Dutch Shell, “Leave our land while you can or die in it.” Again I ask: are you willing to do the same?
Trans-Canada thinks they will be building a pipeline through my Lakota allies’ territory. I stand before you today unafraid when I say this will happen over my dead body. Only over my diead body will they poison the water, and poison countless children and countless generations. Again I ask you: are you willing to do the same?
I leave you with a quote by author and activist Derrick Jensen: “We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love…The songbirds and salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction . . . . We will have to build the resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard there will be a cost, and in too many dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway.”
This is a war!
Join us!
Thank you.
