by DGR News Service | Feb 13, 2014 | Building Alternatives
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
Without gods or masters, how do we live? Who do we live for?
One of my earliest acts of rebellion was leaving behind the religion of my parents. There was no legitimate authority in my eyes; neither natural nor supernatural.
Religion seemed an obvious enemy: clearly corrupt, notoriously pacifying, and easy to vilify. In well-meaning haste, I cast religion as something stark: always monotheistic, always Christian. And further: always dogmatic, always a tool of the powerful.
Reality is so inconveniently complex. I wanted to believe that I could live by the radical slogan, “no gods, no masters,” and truly be free of both. I wanted to believe that it is even possible to live without serving something larger than myself, on the ground and in the cosmos, in spirit and flesh.
The dominant culture forces upon us gods and masters in their most destructive forms. But in rejecting them, which other gods and masters do we end up serving? Who do we live our lives for? Which stories do we live by? And how?
Writes Rob Bell:
The danger is that in reaction to the abuses and distortions of an idea, we’ll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.
All religions ask us to ask ourselves one question: “How shall I live my life?” For the socially-conscious, for the socially-active, this question is our guiding beacon. It always has been.
The journey towards that beacon, the attempt to describe what it means to be human, routinely leads political people to religion. It certainly led me.
I’ll be candid: I go to church. About a year ago, I could no longer deny the yearning inside me to have a spiritual home for my activism; some kind of sanctuary to rest and recharge.
The church I found is a progressive one and part of the Unitarian Universalist tradition. At first, I was skeptical. What would my radical comrades think? What did I even think? But sermon after sermon spoke to political struggle, past and present. Sermon after sermon spoke to living in reverence and humility and integrity. Then I read the official set of Unitarian Universalist principles, which includes “the inherent worth and dignity of every person”, “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all”, and “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Despite all apprehension, I knew I was being stimulated and challenged. I knew I was growing.
Spiritual practice is not a replacement for the hard work of political organizing, but a supplement to it; sometimes, a basis for it. In his book, Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition, Dan McKanan explains the relationship. He writes that not only have religion and radicalism always been intertwined, but that radicalism is in itself a form of religion. “It occupies much of the same psychological and sociological space,” writes McKanan. “People are drawn to religious communities and radical organizations in order to connect their daily routines to a more transcendent vision of heaven, salvation, or a new society.”
If religion starts with a capital “R”, if it has a singularly destructive form and purpose, if it is categorically opposed to liberation, how do we explain religions of resistance and religions of communion?
How do we explain former-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said it was only alongside other radicals that he could “get any glimpses of God anywhere”?
How do we explain Shawnee warrior Tecumseh, who tried to unite tribes under the “Great Spirit” for one of the largest resistance campaigns against white colonialism?
How do we explain Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day, who referred to the “poor and oppressed” as “collectively the new Messiah”?
How do we explain the countless radical movements throughout history which were firmly rooted in religion? How do we explain religions that have acted not as an “opiate of the masses”, but as a mobilizer of the masses?
How do we explain the thousands of indigenous human cultures able to live in place for essentially eternity, because they believed—and continue to believe—in the holiness of the natural world?
We needn’t fall in line with any of these specific religions to recognize the roles they have played in making our world a better place.
Religion can be many things, both righteous and rotten, but it certainly is not one, monolithic institution.
What is it then? “Religion, in reality, is living,” writes Native American scholar, Jack D. Forbes. “Our religion is not what we profess . . . our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think. . . . One’s religion, then, is one’s life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived.”
If religion is what we do, none of us can be said to be truly non-religious. We may be non-monotheistic. We may be non-Christian. We may be, and hopefully are, non-dogmatic and non-destructive.
All of us embody our religions each and every day. We may pick from already existing traditions or practices. We may create our own. But to assume it is even possible to live without religion is to live religiously in denial. Our actions, small and large, speak loud and clear of which religion we adhere to, of which gods and masters we ultimately serve.
Without religion, how do we live, who do we live for? If we don’t consciously choose, our actions choose for us. We can choose to be accountable to others, we can choose communion, we can choose to serve life. We can choose to live in such a way that, year after year, actually creates more ecological health and social justice. Or, we can pretend we are exempt from choosing. We can pretend to be non-religious or anti-religious, yet serve a certain religion, certain gods and masters, nonetheless. At its root, the word “worship” means “to give something worth.” In our daily lives, where do we see worth? What do we, through intention and action, give worth?
The dominant culture is deeply religious and ever eager to force its own religions upon us. Forbes writes that we all suffer under the wetiko, or cannibal, sickness: “Imperialism, colonialism, torture, enslavement, conquest, brutality, lying, cheating, secret police, greed, rape, terrorism.” The cannibal sickness is a religion. It is, as Forbes has termed it, “a cult of aggression and violence.”
Whether or not we like it, this is the cult we’ve been socialized into. Its values come naturally for us; unseating them from our hearts and minds is a lifetime project. But if we don’t try, these values will rule our lives. If we don’t replace the cannibal religion with our own religion—that is, if we don’t adopt and act from an opposite set of values—we inevitably act in its service, we inevitably worship it.
“A word for religion is never needed until a people no longer have it,” Forbes writes. “Religion is not a prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call ‘religion.’ It is our every act.”
Ailed by the cannibal sickness, how do we act? Forbes continues, “If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion.”
This is why I go to church: to share with and be held accountable by a congregation of people, all of us struggling to live out of a religion that serves not the cannibal sickness, but life. Sure, not everyone needs a congregation for this. But I find it invaluable.
In a sermon, one of the ministers at my church described his vision of religion. He said it is both private and public, an organization of people and a personal practice. He said it is an overarching myth, a path towards a new way of living. And finally, he said that the root of the word “religion” means “to bind,” because it is meant to bind each of us into a community, all working and walking together.
Another one of the ministers at my church put it this way:
If we are living, breathing, hurting, laughing, crying, questing human beings, it is impossible not to be spiritual beings. Spirituality is the energy that connects us to the greater pulse of life. We work on and with our spirituality, not to become divine, but to become more human.
Radical activism can be religious just as religion can be radical. Look around. Life moves. We can join that movement, or we can stand against it. We choose anew each and every day. Love life. Defend life. Make it your religion.
Ben Barker is a writer, activist, and farmer from West Bend, WI. He is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance. Read other articles by Ben, or visit Ben’s website.
This piece was originally published at: http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/02/the-gods-of-a-radical/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 2, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Murray Bush / Vancouver Media Co-op
COAST SALISH TERRITORY – Activists blocked access to the federal Port of Vancouver for an hour early this morning as part of an International Day of Action in Support of Elsipogtog Land Defenders in New Brunswick.
Access to the Port at the foot of Clark Drive was blocked for an hour. Traffic was backed up as far as as the eye could see. The adhoc coalition of activists blocked the road with a banner reading Solidarity with Elsipogtog and #ShutDownCanada. The group said it condemns fracking for poisoning water and boosting carbon emissions and decries “the brutality of the RCMP response, and their ongoing collusion with corporate interests.”
“We stand in solidarity with Land Defenders everywhere – from the Mi’kmaq in New Brunswick to the Unis’tot’en in British Columbia – who are fighting rampant and reckless resource extraction, which is the face of modern colonialism. We denounce the assertion that this destruction and the associated corruption, deceit, and violence are necessary. And today we shut down a key piece of the infrastructure of this ideological machine.”
The Mi’kmaq Territory encampment which saw standoff’s between Mi’kmaq peoples protecting water and RCMP protecting corporate interests, requested the global support. More support actions are planned in BC today including rallies in Vancouver and Victoria.
From Vancouver Media Co-op: http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/photo/elsipogtog-solidarity-action-shuts-vancouver-port/20175
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 1, 2013 | Movement Building & Support
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
If the political Left was what I thought it was growing up, I would want nothing to do with it. It’s not what I thought it was, however; at least not in its true form. A Left worth the name is less a sold-out party line and more a grassroots revolutionary force of the kind we’ve not seen for far too long. No matter what we want to call that force, now is the time to build it again.
It starts with political. I know the connotations: we think charades of Presidential elections and we think the textbook spectrum to which we’ve never been able to relate. We all know that the political system is boring, pointless, and corrupt (and did I mention boring?). Politics, however, is not the political system.
That which shapes the world we live in, from the most global to the most intimate sense; that which determines who has power and who doesn’t, who has wealth and who doesn’t, who eats and who doesn’t; this is the real meaning of the political. The term comes from the Latin politicus, meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens.” Need I say that this concerns and should be important to us?
To ignore politics or revile it is to do nothing more than sit on the sidelines as society unfolds. Decisions will be made, whether or not we participate. Thus, we have two choices: concede power over our own lives to the powerful or take that power back for our communities and landbases.
I have, at different times, been both apolitical and anti-political. Like so many who dream of a saner way to live, I placed no more faith in the Left than I did the Right to take us there. It’s all the same, I convicted; sad but true.
But there’s something deeper in that word: the Left. What if, instead of being one end of a spectrum, one pillar of the status quo, it could sink that spectrum and topple those pillars? What if the real meaning of the Left is a culture of resistance: a fiery populist radicalism potent enough to shake the power elite with even the smallest dose?
“Left” has become a dirty word even amongst those ostensibly most aligned with its values. For some it comes on too strong; it’s too political, too confining. For others, it’s too weak; it reflects but one arm of a wholly corrupt machine. In either case, when we wash our hands of the political Left, we wash our hands of the potential for a better world. Neither best wishes nor fierce posturing will cut it.
There is no American Left. Once upon a time there was, but it died long ago: stamped down by force, kept there by fear.
Its remnants are pitiful: one part those who act nothing like a Left, but call themselves such, and one part those who have the potential to build a Left, but can’t get over the name to get together; the essence of modern liberals and radicals.
I’m not sure Leftists know our own history. It starts with revolution in France. Within the Estates General, a political assembly, those opposed to the monarchy and in favor of revolution sat on the left side of the room. Old Regime heads occupied the right.
Since that time, “Left” has been applied to a vast array of worthy movements: anti-colonialism, anarchism, socialism, lesbian and gay liberation, environmentalism, anti-racism, feminism, anti-imperialism, and so on. What bound them together—and should still bind them together—was one simple thing: opposition to the ruling class.
Read that again. The Left, in its original and most honest meaning, is an opposition to the ruling class. Not a loyalty to it. Not an indifference to it. Not even a hatred of it. But an opposition. And in our case, it means an opposition to capitalism. This is why there is no Left in America. This is why we so desperately need one.
Devoid of any meaningful political opposition to join, potential activists are diverted instead into the benign, the fringe, and the bizarre. Each one heads in a unique direction, but in any case it’s never one that leads to the transformation of society.
Some want to remain in the center. They want to take from both the established Left and the established Right to find bipartisan solutions. But the problem is bipartisanism itself: Democrats and Republicans are for more alike than they are different. The only real political party in this country is the capitalist one. How can any well-meaning person want to be in the center of that?
Some imagine themselves radical beyond the Left. It’s called post-Leftism, pitting itself against traditional Leftist values like organization, political struggle, and morality. At its core, this is merely a cult of the individual. No matter how righteous those individuals imagine themselves to be, social change is a group project.
Some wander into conspiracy theory. Obscure schools of thought masquerading as movements appeal to those privileged enough to imagine that social control happens largely in the head rather than through grinding poverty and oppression. Yes, there exists those who are conspiring against us, but they’re called multi-national corporations, not “the new world order.”
The task before us now is to rebuild a home for these would-be Leftists. We must make it the common-sense avenue for resistance. Moreover, we must be a reminder that the political is important. We must be a reminder that the world can be changed, that there is an organized opposition capable of making that happen.
Until then, we have the indifferent and the disillusioned to work with.
I have friends who are silent revolutionaries. Their bones shake enough at every injustice to make even Che Guevara proud. They don no labels or political affiliations, but passionately desire a better way of life; one without systemic atrocity; one worth living in. These friends know things are bad and are just continuing to get worse. They know we need some force of nature to change that. But they don’t imagine that they, themselves, would make up such a force. They simply don’t know it’s possible.
Similarly, I have friends who are outspoken militants. But they, too, don’t see themselves as part of the Left. Why? Two words: Red Scare. It was but fifty years ago that the most passive and compromised of the Left stabbed in the back their active and steadfast counterparts. “[W]riters, actors, directors, journalists, union leaders, government employees, teachers, activists, and producers,” were fired, deported, or otherwise crushed by those in power, writes Chris Hedges in Death of the Liberal Class. “The purge,” he writes, “was done with the collaboration of the liberal class.” Indeed, it was a gleeful bloodlust. So much for solidarity.
Our energy is diffuse, but vast amongst these pools of the disenfranchised. It’s up to us to give common people, in the words of Hedges, “the words and ideas with which to battle back against the corporate state.” And it’s up to us to rescue our opposition from the status quo of the ruling class, where it became “fearful, timid, and ineffectual,” says Hedges. He continues, “It created an ideological vacuum on the left and ceded the language of rebellion to the far right.”
It’s impossible to say exactly what an actual Left would look like in today’s America. Certainly, the project won’t be easy. We won’t always agree. But our debates could be held behind that shared banner, our unwavering Leftist vision of opposition to the ruling class. There’s a chance it won’t work. But right now that ruling class is driving our world to ruin. A Left that means it could put a stop to it once and for all. That chance is worth it.
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. He can be contacted at benbarker@riseup.net.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 14, 2013 | Strategy & Analysis, White Supremacy
By Jonah Mix / Deep Green Resistance Salish Sea
Henry Ford is a shining example of two great American traditions: Amoral, hardheaded industrialism and unapologetic racial hatred.
He hated Jews; his pamphlet The International Jew was singularly responsible for the anti-Semitism of Hitler Youth Leader and mass murderer Baldur von Schirach, while the Holocaust’s chief architect, Heinrich Himmler, praised Ford as a “great man” and “one of our most valuable, important, [and] clever fighters.” He hated the disabled; along with John Kellog, Andrew Carnegie, Woodrow Wilson, and dozens of other illustrious Americans, Ford openly advocated for the obligatory sterilization and involuntary imprisonment of the mentally ill and retarded, as well as unwed mothers and criminals with brown skin.
I’ll let the reader guess how he felt about immigrants, homosexuals, and people of color; let’s just remember that Hitler proudly proclaimed in 1938, “I shall do my best to put [Ford’s] theories into practice in Germany.” This might be a good time to mention that I’ve now written two essays that mention Henry Ford – the first was in seventh grade, when I picked his name off a sheet of potential subjects in my history class. It was labeled “American Heroes.”
Henry Ford hated a lot of people – Jews, women, the poor, immigrants – but that didn’t stop him from utilizing them as easy fodder in his factories. He often paid black teenagers half wages to work on steel presses, partly because it was easier to unleash crooked cops on them if they tried to form a union. Unwed mothers who escaped sterilization and imprisonment often performed menial labor, both on the factory floor as cleaners and outside as unofficially corporate-sponsored sex workers. Men who had lost limbs, either in the war or in Ford’s own steel presses, occasionally worked for slave wages. Ford’s corporate website refers to this history as one of “diversity and inclusion.” When Henry Ford died, he was worth 188 billion dollars.
Where did Henry Ford’s hate end and his business sense start? Derrick Jensen once said that hatred, if felt long enough, just feels like economics. Wherever the line between the two falls, one thing is certain: a vicious practicality underlies both. The famously industrious anti-Semite undoubtedly hated people of color, and his hatred almost certainly allowed him to rationalize to himself and others their continued exploitation – but mangled hands and broken limbs also objectively cost less when they were brown instead of white. Ford had a deep personal hatred of labor organizers, but simple pragmatism was all that one would need to call for the savage beating of unarmed men and women, as he proudly did at the Battle of the Overpass in 1937.
Sustained brutality and intimidation was the best way to keep his factories running smoothly. These choices were as much business moves as his later decision to move away from ethanol and towards gasoline. Gasoline goes into an engine because that’s the best way to make an engine run. Young black bodies get destroyed by steel presses because that’s the best way to get steel made. Indigenous people die of cancer when toxic waste is dumped into their rivers and forests because that’s the best way to get rid of toxic waste. The planet is ripped apart and hollowed out because that’s the best way to get at what’s inside.
Hate, whether expressed in on the New York Stock Exchange or the front yard of a black family, has a goal. It has an agenda. Henry Ford was not stupid, or uneducated. The common understanding of racism – or, for that matter, misogyny and homophobia – as a symptom of ignorance, a vestige of an older time, is not only false but lazy and destructive.
Rape, abuse, mass incarceration, police brutality, the denial of education, housing, and healthcare – these things are not driven by illogical prejudice or senseless bigotry. They are strategic political actions, and they are incredibly effective. The ones who are truly running this genocide systematically abuse, exploit, disenfranchise, imprison, and murder for one reason and one reason only: Because it helps them achieve their goal, and that goal is universally resource extraction. Henry Ford’s goal was resource extraction. Columbus’ goal was resource extraction. Hitler’s goal was resource extraction.
People of color, the indigenous, and women are all fuel in the engine of civilization, and civilization subjects them to this brutality because brutality is the most efficient method. By definition, this system requires the unsustainable importation of resources through an unrelenting campaign of ecological cannibalism. The horrors that follow – patriarchy, white supremacy, anthropocentricism, colonialism, and militarism – are not unintended side effects but instead logical strategies utilized by the dominant culture to ensure its survival.
Mass incarceration and miseducation has allowed for the theft of billions from minority communities while creating modern-day slave plantations providing free labor and preventing successful political organization among people of color and the indigenous. Rape and sexual violence protect a structure of power that allows for women to be continually exploited for their resources. There is no ignorance involved. Our civilization is a vampire, and it is a pragmatic vampire. It does nothing for fun, for pleasure, or for personal gratification. It only acts to feed its insatiable hunger for blood.
This system will never stop on its own accord through moral appeals or edification. When hate makes economic sense, no amount of education will stop it. Education may win us supporters, and even soldiers, but the social structures that perpetuate this violence will not come down until the process they protect – resource extraction – is disrupted. As long as the system can benefit from rape, abuse, mass incarceration, police brutality, and economic disenfranchisement, these horrors will continue. A wrench must be thrown into the engine itself. The process through which civilization feeds off its victims must be disrupted.
All options must be considered in our quest to render exploitation unprofitable, but the uncomfortable truth is that sustained militancy is a necessary part of any effective approach. Patriarchy will collapse only when credible threats of resistance make sexual violence, the sustaining pillar of male supremacy, impractical as a strategy of oppression. White supremacy can only be dismantled by disrupting the systems that subject people of color to brutal, indiscriminant abuse and exploitation – and the parasitic thieves who depend on that exploitation to survive will not stop until their previous tactics are rendered ineffective by organized and violent opposition. The victims of these hierarchies must band together and organize while their white male allies must work tirelessly as saboteurs.
So long as the dominant power is at all capable of turning human beings, other animals, and the living Earth itself into fuel, there will be hierarchies in place to legitimize and protect that process. Only by removing civilization’s ability to survive through exploitation will the exploitation end. We must cast off the pernicious illusions that portray these structures of domination as the product of anything but rational, dispassionate self-interest on the part of the oppressor class. Remember: Their actions are strategic and their efforts are political. Ours have to be as well.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 26, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By John Vidal / The Observer
Land conflicts between farmers and plantation owners, mining companies and developers have raged across Indonesia as local and multinational companies have been encouraged to seize and then deforest customary land – land owned by indigenous people and administered in accordance with their customs. More than 600 were recorded in 2011, with 22 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The true number is probably far greater, say watchdog groups.
The Indonesian national human rights commission reported more than 5,000 human rights violations last year, mostly linked to deforestation by corporations. “Deaths of farmers caused by the increase in agrarian conflicts all across Indonesia are increasing,” said Henry Sarigih, founder of the Indonesian Peasant Union, which has 700,000 members.
“The presence of palm oil plantations has spawned a new poverty and is triggering a crisis of landlessness and hunger. Human rights violations keep occurring around natural resources in the country and intimidation, forced evictions and torture are common,” said Sarigih. “There are thousands of cases that have not surfaced. Many remain hidden, especially by local authorities,” he says.
Communities complain that they are not warned, consulted or compensated when concessions are handed out and that they are left with no option but to give up their independence and work for minimal wages for the companies.
At fault are badly drafted laws, unclear regulations, corruption and heavy-handed security and paramilitary forces – all of which favour large business over the poor. Illegal land purchases and logging are mostly supported by police, armed forces and local government staff. Companies are even allowed to work with security forces.
Feelings run high when land is taken and livelihoods are wiped out by deforestation. In December 2011, 28 protesters from a logging concession area on Padang island in Sumatra sewed their mouths shut in front of the parliament building in Jakarta in a protest against having their land “grabbed” by a giant paper and pulp company.
Last year, three people were killed in a clash with security forces during a protest over gold prospectors in Bima on the island of Sumbawa. Farmers from Mesuji in Sumatra claimed that security forces murdered residents to evict them from their land.
Over 10m hectares (24.7m acres) of land has been given away and converted to plantations in the last 10 years, forcing thousands of communities to give up forest they have collectively used for generations. Politicians offer land to supporters and give permission to develop plantations with little thought for the human or ecological consequences. In addition, government attempts to move landless people from densely populated areas to less populous areas with “transmigration” policies have caused major conflicts with indigenous groups in provinces like Papua and Sulawesi.
“Who controls the land in Indonesia controls the politics. Corruption is massive around natural resources. We are seeing a new corporate colonialism. In the Suharto era you were sent to prison for talking about the government. Now you can be sent there for talking about corporations,” says Abetnego Tarigan, director of Friends of the Earth Indonesia in Jakarta.
Three of the group’s staff members, including its south Sumatra director, are in prison following protests at the involvement of the police and military in a land dispute involving a state-owned palm oil plantation firm. “The scale of the conflicts is growing. Every day new ones are reported. More and more police are now in the plantations. Government is trying to clamp down on mass protests,” said Tarigan.
“These developments are classed as ‘growth’ but what we are seeing is the collapse of communities of fisherfolk or farmers and increasing poverty. We are exchanging biodiversity for monocultures, local economies for global ones, small-scale producers are becoming labourers and community land is becoming corporate. This is the direction we are going.”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/25/indonesia-new-corporate-colonialism
