by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 28, 2013 | Education, Movement Building & Support
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
A two-day teach-in focused on community organizing, activism, direct action, and issues facing Utah communities comes to Salt Lake City the weekend of March 16th and 17th.
The event, “Communities of Resistance,” will feature presentations and trainings from Goshute Tribal Chairman Ed Naranjo, community organizer and filmmaker Simón Sedillo, Peaceful Uprising, Utah Tar Sands Resistance, Deep Green Resistance, Idle No More, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and other community organizers.
“This teach-in will be indispensable for political people around Salt Lake,” said event organizer Max Wilbert. “If we want to win sustainability and social justice, we need supportive communities that nurture a willingness to fight. This is a step toward that goal.”
Subjects covered will include hands-on training for non-violent civil disobedience, the SNWA Las Vegas water pipeline that is poised to destroy rural valleys and indigenous peoples of Western Utah, the proposed Utah Tar Sands project, and community organizing in Mexico to defend traditional peoples from logging, drug syndicates, and government exploitation.
Communities of Resistance will take place between 10am to 4pm on Saturday, March 16th, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday, March 16th, at the Federation of Mexican Clubs, 344 Goshen Street, Salt Lake City.
The organizers are asking for a suggested donation of $5 – $10, with all proceeds going to the Unist’ot’en Camp, a First Nations group in Canada that is blocking construction of Tar Sands and “fracking” pipelines across their traditional lands, and the Tar Sands Blockade, a group with is using sustained direct action to halt the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
The event is sponsored by the Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and Decolonize SLC.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 25, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Noncooperation, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home
By Colombia Informa; translation by Molly Fohn
After two weeks of peaceful protesting against oil exploitation in Arauca, on February 12 that department’s social organizations began a strike announced a few days earlier as a response to the repeated broken promises by the national government and transnational companies.
The last attempt at dialogue took place on Monday, February 11, between the Commission’s spokespeople (composed of a delegation of indigenous people, peasants, youth, women, workers and community members) and representatives of the Minister of the Interior, as well as oil companies that operate in the region, with the goal of establishing the conditions that would allow the fulfillment of those promises that they’ve been making since May 2012.
The repeated lack of follow-through by the government and businesses, and the delay in the negotiation process caused the fracture in the space for dialogue, followed by the use of state force: approximately 1,200 members of the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (the ESMAD in Spanish) arrived to violently evict the communities at the protest sites.
The first act occurred on the walkway San Isidro, over the de Tame road toward the Arauca capital, at the gate to the petroleum complex Caricare, which is used by the transnational company OXY, where ESMAD, the Police, and the Army assaulted the mobilized communities by setting fires to the surrounding pastures, discharging their weapons, destroying common buildings (a school), taking away the food supplies to the protestors, and beating and retaining four people.
As a result of the violence, a pregnant indigenous woman who was passing through lost her baby because of the effects of the tear gas, and had to receive emergency attention at a medical center.
The police had kept local and national reporters from contacting CM&, RCN, and other local media that moved to Caricare; the national army set up a checkpoint in the sector of Lipa that prohibited the passage of reporters “for security reasons.” It should be noted that in the Quimbo (Huila) events the police also restricted the presence of the media and acted out a series of violations of basic human rights and International Humanitarian Rights (DIH).
In the face of the this situation, the Human Rights Foundation Joel Sierra posted an Urgent Action which stated its concern for the detention of people, aggression and brutal violence exercised against the peasants and indigenous peoples, the infractions of the International Humanitarian Rights committed by the police to violate and destroy civil installations, and the removal of supplies for feeding those protesting. The Foundation also insisted that the Colombian State respect human rights and the International Humanitarian Rights norms.
In similar form, Urgent Action denounced a series of violations to the protestors’ rights by the police, whose members have dedicated themselves to constantly photograph those that participate in the protests, have retained, interrogated, and reported some of them, and have appeared in civilian clothing and armed in the middle of the night at the edges of the protest sites, among other cases.
In the rest of the protest sites, like the gate to the petroleum complex of Caño Limón in the municipality of Arauca, the town of Caricare in Arauquita, the bicentennial pipeline in Tamacay and el Tigre (Tame) and in Villamaga (Saravena) and the fire substation of Banadías (Saravena), the authorities have sent contingents from the army, the national police, and the ESMAD, because they fear the same will happen in those places that happened in Caricare.
It’s important to note that at this time people and vehicles cannot travel by land to get outside of the department of Arauca by the only two major roads (Casanare and Norte de Santander), and all commerce and activity is completely paralyzed in that region of the country.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4140-colombia-riot-police-attack-communities-protesting-oil-exploitation-in-arauca-
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 20, 2013 | Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
Resistance against exploitation is nothing new. History is full of examples of people—perfectly ordinary people—fighting back against injustice, exploitation, and the destruction of their lands and communities. They move through whatever channels for action are open to them, but often, left with no legal or political power, they turn to militant means to defend themselves.
It is hardly a simple decision, and rarely the first or preferred option, but when all other paths have been explored and found to lead nowhere, militant action becomes the only realistic route left. Movements and communities come to that truth in many different ways, but almost without fail, they come to it borne by a collective culture of resistance. One inspiring example is the Bolt Weevils.
The Bolt Weevils were a group of farmers in Minnesota who spent several years in the late 1970s perfecting the fine art of sabotaging interstate electrical transmission lines. Their efforts have been memorialized in numerous books and songs, and their story is a hopeful one we would do well to remember and re-tell.
The story of the Bolt Weevils begins in the mid-1970s, when the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA) proposed construction of a new interstate high-voltage transmission line. Taking its name from the two cooperatives, the CU Powerline would carry current from a generating station in North Dakota across west-central Minnesota to feed the urban centers of the Twin Cities.
In determining a route for the powerline, small farmers land was rated less important than large industrial farms, and as a result, the proposed route crossed the property of nearly 500 landowners. Outraged at being trodden over to for the benefit of industry and urbanism, resistance against the project began immediately in earnest.
Once residents found out about the project, they refused to sign land easements. Local towns passed resolutions opposing the project and reject construction permits. The powerline went to review before the State’s Environmental Quality Council, which went ahead and granted the necessary permits in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
When surveyors showed up out of the blue in one farmer’s fields, he smashed their equipment with his tractor and rammed their vehicle. The action of that one farmer helped catalyze popular sentiments into action. Farmers began using CB radios to notify one another about surveying activities, and would turn out in groups to stop the work. As resistance began to build, local radio stations would broadcast times and locations of protestor gatherings. Farmers and others who opposed the project began meeting every morning in the Lowry town hall, hosting others who’d come from neighboring counties, to make plans for each day.
As surveying and construction continued, the locals escalated their efforts. They would erect signs in their fields to block the sightlines of the surveyors, and stand next to survey crews running their chainsaws to disrupt their work. Survey stakes disappeared overnight. Farmers used their trucks to make roadblocks and their tractors to pile boulders in the construction sites. One group even gained permission from the county to improve a rural road—they dug a ditch across it to stop all traffic.
They filed more lawsuits, and the issue was eventually taken up by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which in the spirit of everything it represents, decided against the farmers and in favor of the powerline. Many of the citizens opposing the pipeline had earnestly believed in institutions like the Supreme Court and the structures of power. After their battles through the courts, many of them were disillusioned and had been radicalized.
Law enforcement began escorting construction and survey workers, and the situation came to a head on January 4th 1978, when 100 farmers chased powerline crews from three different sites, fought with police, and even tore down part of a tower. The next week, the Minnesota Governor ordered the largest mobilization of the State Troopers in Minnesota’s history, with 200 Troopers—fully half of the force—descended on the rural area to ensure construction continued.
Protests continued and grew, as the issue began to draw national and international media attention; hundreds turned out for rallies at survey sites, and some schools even let out so students and teachers could attend. In St. Paul, thousands of farmers rallied and demonstrated, and in March of 1978 more than 8,000 people marched almost ten miles through freezing temperatures from Lowry to Glenwood to protest the CU powerline.
It was in the heat of August that the kettle boiled over. Bolts on one of the transmission towers were loosened, and soon afterwards, it fell over, as the Bolt Weevils entered the scene. Then three more fell over. Guard poles and bolts were cut and loosened, insulators were shot out. Over the next few years, 14 towers were felled and nearly 10,000 insulators were shot out. Soon, helicopters patrolled the powerline, and it was made a federal offense to take down interstate transmission lines.
There were numerous arrests, some 120 in all, but only two individuals were ever convicted on felony charges, and even then they were only sentenced to community service. Opposition to the powerline was so common that in some instances, witnesses refused to testify against farmers.
In the end, unfortunately, the powerline was built and went into operation, despite the protests and the disruptions by the Bolt Weevils. While they were unsuccessful in ultimately stopping the project, there’s much from their efforts that we can learn and apply to our work today against exploitation and civilization.
As in most social struggles that turn to property destruction and militancy, that wasn’t the first choice of tactics for those on the ground. They fought for years through accepted legal and political avenues, turning to material attacks after all other courses of action had proven ineffective. But more than that, the popular agitation and organizing in the years leading up to the emergence of the Bolt Weevils didn’t merely precede militant direct action: it laid the groundwork for it.
The work of the local farmers—their protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and community organizing—paved the way (forgive the phrase) and set the conditions for the sabotage that would later occur. By mobilizing residents and community members against the project, building social networks, and agitating and raising opposition against CU powerline, a collective culture of resistance was created, planting and watering the seeds from which the Bolt Weevils were born.
With civilization churning onwards towards biotic collapse and underground resistance the only real hope left, caring for those seeds is our primary duty today. The story of the Bolt Weevils—like countless other stories of resistance—shows that militant resistance emerges from strong and supportive cultures of resistance. The time to start building such a culture was yesterday. For those of us who choose to organize and work in an aboveground and legal way, building such a culture that embraces and celebrates sabotage and the use of any means necessary to stop the omnicide of industrialism is our foremost task.
The story of the Bolt Weevils isn’t empowering and inspiring because they “fought off the bad guys and won.” They didn’t win. The power lines were built, forced down their throats in the face of their resistance. No, their story is inspiring because it so clearly and undeniably demonstrates how simply feasible sabotage and material attacks truly are. Often, we talk about militant resistance and direct action as mysterious and abstract things, things that wouldn’t ever happen in our lives or communities, things that no one as ordinary as any of us would ever do.
Whether we romanticize underground action or are intimidated by it, we generally talk about it as though it is something out of a movie or a novel. The truth is that such actions are simply tactics—just like petition-drives or street marches—that can be used to dismantle systems of power. The Bolt Weevils—a group of farmers with hunting rifles and hacksaws*—serve as a stark reminder that one doesn’t require military training and high-tech gadgets to act in direct and material ways against the infrastructure of destruction. We’re all capable of fighting back, and while sabotage against industrial infrastructure can be daunting for many valid reasons, technicality isn’t one of them.
We may have to fail working through other channels (as if we haven’t already) before collectively turning to sabotage and attacks on industrial infrastructure as a strategy, and we will certainly need to build a supportive and strong culture of resistance. But if we’re serious about stopping the destruction and exploitation of civilization, we will be left with no other choice.
*This is speculative. I don’t actually know how they shot out insulators or cut through guard poles, although there are plenty of accounts of hunting rifles and hacksaws being used in this fashion, and it’s from those stories that I hazard this guess.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 15, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Saleh Hijaz / Amnesty International
In the small hours of Sunday, more than 500 Israeli police surrounded around 130 Palestinian activists at a protest camp on the hills opposite the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
The camp, which the activists called the village of Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun), was set up on privately-owned Palestinian land two days before to protest against the Israeli occupation and continued expansion of illegal settlements, which goes hand in hand with forced evictions in the West Bank.
Heavily armed police moved into the village to remove the peaceful activists on orders from the Israeli government, despite a High Court ruling on Friday not to remove the camp.
Eventually the video stream I was watching was cut off, but it was still possible to follow Twitter, where activists reported on the arrests and eviction moment by moment.
When I woke up in the morning, I began making phone calls to check on the activists.
I reached Zaid, an activist I met last year when he was beaten up by Palestinian Authority police forces for peacefully protesting in Ramallah.
He asked me to call later as he was in the hospital with his brother who was suffering internal bleeding near his eye because of police violence during the eviction; so much for the media reports and Israeli claims that the eviction had been carried out “peacefully”.
I tried others and eventually talked to Sameer via a video link. It was about 6 pm Jerusalem time and he had just woken up.
“I feel my body is one large bruise,” he said. “They beat me hard and the cold only made it worse.” He groaned with pain as he reached to grab a cigarette before describing what happened. He blew smoke and said:
“It was completely dark and extremely cold. There were hundreds of small lights – flashlights the riot police were carrying, coming from all directions. It was surreal, as if we were in a sci-fi film.
“At about 2 am they began to remove us. There were hundreds of riot police. With their equipment and body armour they looked like super cops, and there were only 130 of us huddled in the middle of the village.
“We did not resist the eviction, but we did not cooperate either. The soldiers began to remove us one by one, they kicked to separate us and then four to six soldiers would carry each of us away.
“I was repeatedly kicked so hard on my left leg that I felt it had broken. Three soldiers dragged me away, and when I was out of the journalists’ sight they started beating me with their elbows and kicking me on the back and then threw me on some rocks. Two of the soldiers kicked me while I was on the ground. I was hit on the neck and on my left leg again, and on my back.
“I was then put in a police bus with around 40 others activists, we were all on top of each other and some of us needed urgent medical attention. I could see the ambulances next to the detention bus, but they refused to treat anyone despite our repeated calls.”
Sameer lit another cigarette and continued:
“I need to go for a meeting now to discuss our next steps, but let me tell you: we will return to Bab al-Shams. Just like all Palestinian refugees since 1948 should return to their homes. This is only the beginning,” he said.
“The village represents non-violent and meaningful resistance – a practical challenge to Israeli oppression and injustice. It was created by young Palestinians without affiliation to any group or party. It is only natural that Israel wants to stop us. We expected the eviction, but this will never stop us from defending our human rights.”
The action was indeed inspiring. It presented a new and creative example of how Palestinians are peacefully defending their human rights. But the story of Bab al-Shams also reflects the wider experiences of many other Palestinians.
Near Bab al-Shams, in scattered communities in and around the area known as E1, live around 2,300 Palestinian refugees from the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. They have been there since they were forcibly displaced by Israel from their original homes in the Negev desert in the early 1950s. Some of them were also forcibly evicted again in the late 1990s to make way for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
Today, the Jahalin live in the fear of forced eviction yet again as Israel announced in 2011 a plan to transfer them from the area to make way for new settlements. The majority of their houses, their schools, and other infrastructure have demolition orders which can be executed at any time.
The eviction of Bab al-Shams reflects the fate that the Jahalin tribes may face very soon if Israel goes ahead with its plans, confirmed last November and again on Sunday morning, to build more settlements in the E1 area.
The eviction of Bab al-Shams is a stark reminder that although Palestinians, and not Israeli settlers, have the right under international law to build and plan villages in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, every day the Israeli government continues to deny them those rights.
The international community should take this as a warning that if action against the expansion of illegal Israel settlements – especially the E1 plan – is not taken immediately, whole Palestinian communities will be forcibly evicted from their homes. Amnesty International will continue supporting these communities, and Palestinians’ right to peaceful protest.
From Amnesty International:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 19, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
The Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance participated in a demonstration in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade today in Salt Lake City.
The Tar Sands blockade has been obstructing the construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would eventually carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Working primarily in rural areas of Texas in collaboration with locals, activists from Tar Sands Blockade have been suspended high in trees for 57 days, blocking the route of the pipeline construction.
Activists from DGR today took part in a rally in Salt Lake City at the Bureau of Land Management office where Tim DeChristopher executed his direct action to halt illegal oil and gas leases in December 2008.
Utah is currently under threat from many capital-intensive industrial projects. It is the proposed site of the second Tar Sands project in North America, which would destroy large portions of wilderness in remote eastern portions of the state. The Salt Lake City region is home to several oil refineries and deepest open-pit mine in the world, and the valley (home to 2 million people) has some of the worst air quality in the country.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert has brought forward a plan to increase the construction of roads and other industrial projects in wilderness areas of southern Utah that many are calling a land grab. In other part of the bioregion, ongoing coal mining, water theft, and the aftermath of uranium milling is devastating communities, particularly indigenous communities and the poor.
The Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance is a new group organizing in the region that is committed to fighting against these injustices. We advocate for the dismantling of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, and industrial civilization – and we have a plan to confront power, without compromise.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 17, 2012 | Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Ken Ward, Jr. / West Virginia Gazette Mail
Patriot Coal has agreed to phase out mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining, in a move Patriot officials say is in the best interests of their company, its employees and the communities where it operates.
In a deal with citizen groups and environmentalists, Patriot said it would never seek new permits for large-scale surface mining operations, according to details of the settlement that were made public in federal court Thursday afternoon.
St. Louis-based Patriot can continue some existing and smaller mining projects, but must also implement a cap on surface production and eventually stop all strip mining when existing coal leases expire.
Ben Hatfield, president and CEO of Patriot, said the plan should help his company emerge from bankruptcy, focus on underground mining, and curb mountaintop removal’s effects on coalfield communities.
“Patriot Coal recognizes that our mining operations impact the communities in which we operate in significant ways,” Hatfield told U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers. “We believe the proposed settlement will result in a reduction of our environmental footprint.”
The deal does not require Patriot to immediately close any mines or lay off any workers. The company must cut corporate-wide surface production starting in 2014, and gradually reduce it to no more than 3 million tons annually — less than half of 2011 surface output — by 2018.
Patriot, the second largest producer of surface-mined coal in West Virginia, becomes the first U.S. coal operator to announce plans to abandon mountaintop removal, a controversial practice linked to serious environmental damage and coalfield public health problems.
“Patriot’s decision that mountaintop removal and other large surface mines are not in its best interests is the inevitable conclusion for any mining company that actually has to pay the costs of the environmental harm it creates,” said Joe Lovett, an Appalachian Mountain Advocates lawyer who negotiated the deal with Patriot on behalf of the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
Lawyers for both sides unveiled the settlement — which has quietly been in the works for months — during a surprisingly low-key hearing in U.S. District Court in Huntington.
Unlike most developments involving West Virginia’s coal industry, elected officials and other government leaders did not rush Thursday to issue public statements offering their views on the Patriot settlement.
From The West Virginia Gazette Mail
