by DGR News Service | Jan 16, 2021 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Human Supremacy, Mining & Drilling, The Problem: Civilization
DGR stand in solidarity with land defenders in the Philippines“ and Colombia, where we see the highest levels of murders of environmental activists.
“For years, land and environmental defenders have been the first line of defence against climate breakdown. Yet despite clearer evidence than ever of the crucial role they play, far too many businesses, financiers and governments fail to safeguard their vital and peaceful work.” Globalwitness.org
Colombia, is a country with amazingly diverse ecosystems.
There are also a huge diversity of cultures. In 2019, Colombia was the worst country to be an environmental activist. There was hope this would improve in 2020 but sadly this was not the case. Worse still, Colombia started on new year’s day in 2021 with the murder of young people who were who fought with the guerrilla organization The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and had demobilized to return with their family after the peace agreement was signed in June 2016. FARC signed a ceasefire accord with the President of Colombia. A year later, FARC handed over its weapons to the United Nations. At this point it ceased to be an active, armed group.
The first day of this year started with the execution of a former member of the FARC, Yolanda Mazo aged only 22 and Reina her 17 year old sister. They were murdered in the early morning Friday, January 1st 2021. Yolanda is one of hundreds of activists who have been killed since the signing of the Accords between the Colombian state and the FARC. In addition to the deaths of two young women two union leaders have also been murdered.
Environmental activist found dead.
Most recently, Gonzalo Cardona, the first environmental activist and forest ranger who worked in the protection of the paramo ecosystem was murdered. These ecosystems are regions considered to be “evolutionary hot spots“. The ranger worked to protect this area and several endangered species of birds. He stood for the conservation of the habitat of the yellow eared parrot “loro orejiamarillo” and for the preservation of the natural world from the mining the deforestation and the industrial agriculture.
The systemic and systematic violence on the land and towards the Colombian people is brutal. It is the consequence of the capitalist system, of greed and profit over the health of the natural world and the humans and non-humans that inhabit it. The dominant, violent system depends upon inequality, poverty and repression of social movements to remain in power and when the profit or the power is threatened, they remove the threat.
Who is responsible?
The Colombian government, the military forces, the paramilitary groups and other armed groups are responsible for these deaths, for these murders. All this violence has its roots in land control, exploitation of natural resources and silencing of social movements. The Colombian government, in collusion with national and multinational corporate interests, continue to profit from the destruction of the natural world. They gain political benefits through mining contracts, fracking developments and widespread industrial agriculture. Those in power ensure the elites own the land, reducing the power of the poeple to defend land.
The Colombian government and those who benefits on the land exploitation, continue to attack and discredit social and environmental movements and when they feel threatened people die.
by DGR News Service | Oct 26, 2020 | Movement Building & Support
Where do you draw the line? What is the threshold at which you will fight for the living planet? And how shall we fight?
This November 22nd, join Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Chris Hedges, organizers from around the world, and guests for a special 4-hour live streaming event, Drawing the Line: Stopping the Murder of the Planet starting at 1pm Pacific time and hosted by Deep Green Resistance.
Event Program
This event will introduce you to on-the-ground campaigns being waged around the planet, introduce various strategies for effective organizing, rebut false solutions through readings of the forthcoming book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, and discuss philosophy of resistance. There will be opportunities to ask questions and participate in dialogue during the event.
The mainstream environmental movement is funded mainly by foundations which don’t want foundational or revolutionary change. Radical organizations like Deep Green Resistance therefore rely on individual donors to support activism around the world, which is why Drawing the Line is also a fundraiser. We’re trying to raise funds to support global community organizing via our chapters, fund mutual aid and direct action campaigns, and make our core outreach and organizational work possible.
Whether or not you are in a financial position to donate, we hope you will join us on November 22nd for this event.
Save the Date
by DGR News Service | May 31, 2020 | Direct Action, People of Color & Anti-racism, 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.
by DGR News Service | Nov 12, 2019 | Culture of Resistance, Direct Action
At least 4 environmental activists are murdered each week, these are only the reported and confirmed killings but even more likely disappear without being verified. Between 2002 and 2017, at minimum of 1,558 people have been murdered while attempting to protect land, water, and local wildlife — for a sense of scale, this represents about half of the U.S. troops killed in both the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts during that same period of time. We are now in the midst of a global ecological war where one side is defending life, and the other side is devouring life.
The physical act of murder is being carried out by countless thugs, themselves desperate to survive, but the driving force behind these horrific atrocities is industrial consumerism. The violence is motivated by affluent desires for exclusive furniture, luxury vehicles, enriched confections, and upgraded electronics. In this context, the “affluent” class of humanity is anyone living beyond the subsistence of their basic needs: food, water, clothing, shelter, and basic healthcare. If someone can afford a smartphone and a personal vehicle, they are in the top echelons of global consumerism and they are participating in the cannibalisation of this planet.
When we read these truly horrifying statistics, and when we look at the photographs of the courageous people who have been murdered, our first instinct is to think “how horrible, those corporations and governments are awful.” Yes, they are, truly and profoundly awful — but this is a flawed perspective because it fails to see the forest for the trees. Those governments and corporations are not exceptions to the systems they inhabit, they are embodiments of it. Destroying a single government or a single corporation is utterly futile because, like a hydra, their heads easily grow back. If we genuinely believe that life is worth protecting and that these systems are evil, we must target the underlying infrastructure that feeds the beast of industrial consumerism; this can be done by sabotaging key resources, like rubber, to cause cascading supply-chain failures; or by grinding traffic to a halt in order to disrupt the flow of commerce. The one advantage to attacking such a vast and complex adversary is that those intricate and interdependent systems are profoundly fragile and they are immediately accessible.
Today over 1,600 people have been murdered while attempting to save life on Earth. What will you do to this week to honour their sacrifice?
by DGR News Service | Nov 6, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Defensive Violence, Direct Action, Human Supremacy, Movement Building & Support
Image: Sarah Shenker, Survival International
by Liam Campbell
Paulo Paulino Guajajara, known as Kwahu, has been murdered by loggers in a part of the Amazon currently occupied by the Brazilian government. Equipped with only rudimentary weapons and body armour, and lacking medical assistance, Rainforest Guardians like Guajajara regularly face death at the hands of both government officials and natural resource exploiters. Their only advantages are their intimate knowledge of the rainforest and their deep commitment to protecting those living systems. Guajajara was protecting both his own ancestral land and also the lands of their uncontacted neighbours, the Awá tribe, when he was shot and killed by assassins. Guajajara is not the first ecological activist to be murdered; in April, 3 Rainforest Guardians were similarly slain.
It’s difficult to write this article from the relative luxury and comfort of a Western European country, especially having experienced a small modicum of the difficulties of even living for a few days in jungles like the Amazon — let alone inhabiting those claustrophobic settings with the knowledge that well armed groups of men are hunting for you. I cannot even begin to imagine the courage Guajajara must have embodied in order to take on this critical work; ultimately these words are cheap compared to the very real actions of Rainforest Guardians. We must extend our support beyond words if we’re to meaningfully help them achieve their mission of protecting the world’s dwindling rainforests.
These courageous groups need funding for better defensive weaponry, body armour, combat medicine, training, and basic survival equipment. If we are unable or unwilling to put our own bodies on the front lines to protect nature, then we should share what resources we do have to protect the bodies of people who are willing to put their own lives at risk for the rest of us. Groups like Survival Interntional have a good reputation, or reach out to a Deep Green Resistance representative for additional recommendations.
