There is a spectrum of involvement in political organizing.
It begins with awareness of the issues. Then, a person may wish to volunteer and contribute to a cause. Eventually, if commitment and experience continues to grow, a person can begin to be a leader and true organizer, bringing other people together and coordinating work that falls into the three categories of resistance efforts [Ed. note: see our next article this Friday for more on these categories].
Ideally, political organizing should be conducted inside an organization. Organizations help us build power by forcing us to clearly define goals, bring people together, create structure and accountability, and evolve over time. Working in a group also requires more of us as individuals; we learn to work better with others, get feedback on our approach, and are exposed to different ways of thinking.
When I first got involved in Deep Green Resistance more than a decade ago, I began to ask myself, “how do I contribute?” First, I found simple ways. I posted to social media, washed dishes at gatherings, and participated in discussions to build community. I shared resources that I found interesting, contributed short articles and blog posts, and donated $5 per month — not much, since I was very poor at the time, but an important symbol of my commitment.
I also worked to educate myself as much as I could, reading books about historical resistance movements, community organizing, fundraising, environmental issues, and of course the Deep Green Resistance book.
Whenever there was an opportunity to step up and volunteer for something, I tried to take it. Over time, I built more experience and confidence, and I started doing more.
Getting started with local and regional organizing
When I moved to a new town, I began by organizing a chapter of DGR there. I talked with leadership, made us a website, and started sharing information about local and regional environmental issues, learning about them as I went along.
I started attending rallies and protests with homemade signs. I met some people who were interested and worked to recruit them into the organization. We held several events, such as meetings, film screenings, and so on. Some were attended by only one or two people. But this experience helped me learn, and eventually I organized a full two-day event including speakers from a half-dozen organizations and regional tribes, which was attended by 30 people. I was learning.
When I head about a radical direct action campaign in the area, I got involved. I started going to meetings, taking notes, doing research, and contributing as much as I could. We visited the site of a proposed fossil fuel project, and got to know the area. I fell in love with the land and started to write essays. As the campaign went on, I had a chance to participate in several direct actions and risked arrest.
Soon, I redirected my energy towards another environmental issue in my region that was less well-known.
This period I’m describing ended about eight years ago. Since then, I haven’t stopped learning. I thought it might be useful to share this story with you all to help you envision yourself going through a similar process.
Here are a few things I’ve tried to keep in mind throughout this time period to deliberately organize my life for resistance.
1. Cultivate passion
The most important thing is to keep the fire burning. I fall in love with the natural world over and over again. And my heart breaks and I get angry over and over again when I see the world being destroyed. This is the foundation of everything.
2. Learn
Effective resistance is a skill, not an innate trait. If I study, practice, and reflect, I will become more skilled over time. I work to gain theoretical (analysis, history, philosophy, writing, etc.), interpersonal (communication, conflict mediation, community organizing, fundraising, etc.), and practical (self-defense, wilderness survival, climbing, navigation, cooking, etc.) skills.
3. Find flexible and stable work
Both poverty and professional-workaholism are weapons of capitalism. Capitalism is set up to keep us locked into the prison of 40-hour work weeks and the nuclear family model. To have maximum time and energy for resistance, I try and find flexible work (self-employed if possible) and minimize my expenses by living an alternative lifestyle.
4. Build a supportive network and focus on your health
I surround myself with people who reflect my values and help me expand my thinking. Cultivating good relationships and personal health gives me vitality and allows my energy to match my passion. I try to distinguish between things that feed my soul and things that are a waste of time so I can prioritize resistance work.
5. Don’t give up
I am always looking for better ways to do things and do not hesitate to self-criticize and change course.
Max Wilbert is an organizer, writer, and wilderness guide. He is the author of two books, most recently: Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It (Monkfish 2021 — co-authored with Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith).
Deep Green Resistance is a radical environmental movement, dedicated to shifting activists towards strategies that have a real chance to stop the murder of the planet. Our allegiance is first and foremost to the land around us; we fight for the salmon, the pine trees, and the songbirds, not the solar panels and space shuttles so many ‘environmentalists’ have fallen in love with. We in DGR don’t want a more sustainable nightmare. We want a living world.
Deep Green Resistance recognizes that industrial civilization is incompatible with life on this planet – and when our way of living conflicts with the needs of the land, our way of living must go. This transition to a healthy and just relationship with the natural world is a massive undertaking, one that won’t be achieved with individual lifestyle changes and a green coat of paint on the latest mountain-killing mining rig. Real change will take a revolutionary heart. Anything less is a recipe for failure.
Deep Green Resistance has a roadmap for that revolution. We call it Decisive Ecological Warfare. We’ve studied resistance movements throughout history, from the Irish Republicans to Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, and applied the lessons they can teach us to the fight for Earth liberation. Our goal as aboveground activists is to promote this strategic resistance, with the goal of triggering cascading systems failure within industrial infrastructure. In this mission, we are guided by a strict code of conduct, a steering committee of seasoned revolutionaries, and, most of all, an unwavering dedication to the land on which we live.
As an analysis, DGR explains that “the culture of empire”—civilization—is the social structure that is responsible for destroying life on Earth. By recognizing the roots of the problem, we can create meaningful strategies to address it.
As a strategy, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop the destruction through a two-pronged approach: an “aboveground” movement engaging in organizing, resistance, and building of alternative institutions such as food, housing, and medical systems; and an “underground” wing committed to strategically dismantling the institutions killing the world—using non-violent methods and coordinated dismantling of industrial infrastructure.
As an organization, Deep Green Resistance is implementing the aboveground portion of this strategy.
How Can I Get Involved?
In the midst of all this destruction, it’s easy to feel hopeless. But there’s one nice thing about living in such dark times – anywhere you look, there’s great work to be done. Deep Green Resistance organizers are hard at work around the world fighting open-pit mining, deforestation, global warming, industrial agriculture, urban sprawl, and more.
Whether on the front lines or behind the scenes, there is room for you in this war. So get in touch! We have members across the globe and resources in multiple languages. Head to our website, check our Facebook, or send us an email and introduce yourself. We’ll help you learn more about DGR, find opportunities for volunteering, and apply for membership. You’ll also be able to download a free ebook copy of the Deep Green Resistance book.
DGR is working to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary. In order to succeed, we’ll need teachers, healers, warriors, and workers. If you’re tired of the false solutions and the feel-good failures, Deep Green Resistance is for you, whatever your skills. In a fight like this, we need it all.
Remember: Deep Green Resistance is an aboveground organization, meaning we don’t engage in violence or property destruction. If you feel your talents would best be put to use in more militant actions, please do not contact us. This will keep you safer, and help us be more effective. We will not answer any questions related to any underground that may or may not exist.
“Our best hope will never lie in individual survivalism. Nor does it lie in small groups doing their best to prepare for the worst. Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear.”
Editor’s note: In these dire times, we are glad to see increasing adoption of and advocacy for eco-sabotage. However, when it comes to tactics and strategy, context matters. No tactic can be judged as “effective” or “ineffective” in isolation. Goals, assumptions, and political circumstances must be considered before selecting methods.
In the political context of 2022 Britain, the actions of the eco-sabotage group “Tyre Extinguishers” may be amplifying political pressure to reduce carbon pollution and curtail the hegemony of the automobile and building a cultural acceptance for more drastic illegal actions on behalf of the planet. This type of small-scale act of minor eco-sabotage may also be useful for training and propaganda. This is the best case outcome.
A more pessimistic view is that these actions could lead to an upper-class backlash, further empower surveillance and repression against environmentalists, and put activists at risk within the legal system. However, we largely discount this interpretation, as the upper classes are already hostile to environmental action, this type of illegal action would likely lead to minimal punishments if prosecutions did take place, and police in Britain are already harassing, infiltrating, and disrupting environmental movements.
A more valid critique—made in the spirit of solidarity—is that these actions are hitting the wrong targets and are inadequate to address the crisis we are facing. Halting global warming and reversing ecological decline will likely require massive, coordinated eco-sabotage against industrial infrastructure—not just individual cars. In that sense, these actions may represent a failure of target selection when compared to the Valve Turners or the DAPL eco-saboteurs.
The Tyre Extinguishers chose their targets based on the idea that pressure on governments can halt the climate crisis and the destruction of the planet. We at Deep Green Resistance put no faith in this line of reasoning; the UK government has not defended the planet thus far, and there is no evidence that it will. Based on this divergent analysis, our goal is different. Rather than political-social, our goal is physical-material: we advocate for strategic dismantling of global industrial infrastructure.
A new direct action group calling itself the Tyre Extinguishers recently sabotaged hundreds of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in various wealthy parts of London and other British cities. Under cover of darkness, activists unscrewed the valve caps on tyres, placed a bean or other pulse on the valve and then returned the cap. The tyres gently deflated.
Why activists are targeting SUVs now can tell us as much about the failures of climate policy in the UK and elsewhere as it can about the shape of environmental protest in the wake of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.
The “mung bean trick” for deflating tyres is tried and tested. In July 2008, the Oxford Mail reported that up to 32 SUVs were sabotaged in a similar way during nocturnal actions in three areas of the city, with anonymous notes left on the cars’ windscreens.
In Paris in 2005, activists used bicycle pumps to deflate tyres, again at night, again in affluent neighbourhoods, again leaving anonymous notes. In both cases, activists were careful to avoid causing physical damage. Now it’s the Tyre Extinguishers who are deflating SUV tyres.
In the early 2000s, SUVs were still a relative rarity. But by the end of 2010s, almost half of all cars sold each year in the US and one-third of the cars sold in Europe were SUVs.
In 2019, the International Energy Agency reported that rising SUV sales were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO₂ emissions between 2010 and 2018 after the power sector. If SUV drivers were a nation, they would rank seventh in the world for carbon emissions.
At the same time, the Tyre Extinguishers’ DIY model of activism has never been easier to propagate. “Want to get involved? It’s simple – grab some leaflets, grab some lentils and off you go! Instructions on our website,” chirps the group’s Twitter feed.
TYRES DEFLATED ON HUNDREDS OF SUVs OVERNIGHT IN 13+ UK LOCATIONS AS DEMANDS FOR CLIMATE ACTION GROW SUVs ‘disarmed’ last night in Chelsea, Chiswick, Harley Street, Hampstead Heath, Notting Hill, Belgravia, Clapham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Sheffield, Liverpool and Edinburgh. pic.twitter.com/zeUjTEdIJu
— The Tyre Extinguishers (@T_Extinguishers) March 8, 2022
Changing activist strategy
Though the actions led by the Tyre Extinguishers have numerous precedents, the group’s recent appearance in the UK’s climate movement does mark a change of strategy.
Extinction Rebellion (XR), beginning in 2018, hoped to create an expanding wave of mobilisations to force governments to introduce new processes for democratically deciding the course of climate action. XR attempted to circumvent existing protest networks, with its message (at least initially) aimed at those who did not consider themselves activists.
In contrast, activists in the Tyre Extinguishers have more in common with groups that have appeared after XR, such as Insulate Britain, whose members blockaded motorways in autumn 2021 to demand government action on the country’s energy inefficient housing. These are what we might call pop-up groups, designed to draw short-term media attention to specific issues, rather than develop broad-based, long-lasting campaigns.
After a winter of planning, climate activists are likely to continue grabbing headlines throughout spring 2022. XR, along with its sister group, Just Stop Oil, threaten disruption to UK oil refineries, fuel depots and petrol stations. Their demands are for the government to stop all new investments in fossil fuel extraction.
The Tyre Extinguishers explicitly targeted a specific class of what they consider anti-social individuals. Nevertheless, that the group’s action is covert and (so far at least) sporadic is itself telling.
In his book How to Blow up a Pipeline, Lund University professor of human ecology Andreas Malm asked at what point climate activists will stop fetishising absolute non-violence and start campaigns of sabotage. Perhaps more important is the question that Malm doesn’t ask: at what point will the climate movement be strong enough to be able to carry out such a campaign, should it choose to do so?
Given the mode of action of the Tyre Extinguishers, the answer on both counts is: almost certainly not yet.
The moral economy of SUVs
For now, the Tyre Extinguishers will doubtless be sustained by red meat headlines in the right-wing press. It’s still probable, however, that the group will deflate almost as quickly as it popped up: this is, after all, what has happened with similar groups in the past.
The fact that activists are once again employing these methods speaks to the failure of climate policy. Relatively simple, technical measures taken in the early 2000s would have solved the problem of polluting SUVs before it became an issue. The introduction of more stringent vehicle emissions regulations, congestion charging, or size and weight limits, would have stopped the SUV market in its tracks.
SUVs are important because they are so much more than metal boxes. Matthew Paterson, professor of international politics at the University of Manchester, argues that the connection between freedom and driving a car has long been an ideological component of capitalism.
And Matthew Huber, professor of geography at Syracuse University in the US, reminds readers in his book Lifeblood that oil is not just an energy source. It generates ways of being which become culturally and politically embedded, encouraging individualism and materialism.
Making SUVs a focal point of climate activism advances the argument that material inequality and unfettered individual freedoms are incompatible with any serious attempt to address climate change.
And here lies the crux of the conflict. The freedom of those who can afford to drive what, where and when they want infringes on the freedoms of the majority to safely use public space, enjoy clean air, and live on a sustainable planet.
“Letting down a few tyres is a very small imposition,” says the Guardian’s George Monbiot in support of environmental activists deflating SUV tyres
Graeme Hayes is a reader in Political Sociology at Aston University. Oscar Berglund is a lecturer in International Public and Social Policy at the University of Bristol.
Editor’s note: Civilizations are defined by the growth of cities, vast acreages of agriculture, and hierarchical social systems—and after creating short term surpluses of energy and wealth at the expense of sustainability, they inevitably collapse.
Today, we live in the first global civilization. The harnessing of fossil fuels has brought unimaginable power, but also terrible destructiveness. No technological innovation or social organization will be a simple silver bullet to solve these issues.
Nevertheless, people around the world continue to experiment with alternative social arrangements. One is permaculture, which is often reduced to “gardening” but is actually a systems-thinking approach for deliberately designing human settlements, societies, and subsistence economies for sustainability and justice. In this era, systems-thinking around sustainability inevitably includes strategy and action to defend the planet, in addition to building alternative ways of living.
In this piece, Jennifer Murnan argues that permaculture practitioners, who often becomes insular “lifeboaters” or “survivalists,” should link their work to political resistance movements working to dismantle industrial civilization before it’s too late.
Currently, permaculture operates in the realm of bright green environmental activism and adherents seemingly believe that the current culture can be transformed. Why should permaculturalists choose to align themselves with the deep green environmentalists that support dismantling civilization?
It’s all about deep abiding love for the truth that requires brave resistance to untruth. It’s about following that love down the path of truth. That’s what resistance in the form of permaculture is. That’s what the allure of permaculture, a permanent, sustainable culture, is for me.
We are animals, terrestrial animals, whose primary needs are for clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe, healthy food to eat, and the security of community and relationship with each other and our fellow living creatures. Life for us is totally dependent on the health of the earth and our kin, human and non human. All that we create must serve this fundamental truth.
The Permaculture movement has always run counter to the beliefs and principles of global civilization. It views nature as a partner, a teacher, and a guide whom we honor and are completely dependent on. This is completely contrary to the cultural view of western civilization; that the natural world is here to serve us, to be used and abused at will, and that this abuse is justifiable.
Permaculture practice, by definition, is an attempt to depart from the model of exploitation and importation of resources necessitated by civilization. To live permanently in one place is the antithesis of the pattern exhibited repeatedly by civilizations. Civilizations cannot live in place. They violently import and exploit human and natural resources, exhaust their ecosystems, experience population overshoot, and collapse leaving an impoverished land base in their wake. Western industrial civilization is currently playing this scenario out on a global scale. Permaculture not only cannot exist within the confines of civilization, it also cannot coexist with a civilization that is devouring the world. It is neither ethical nor practical on the part of permaculturalists to attempt to do so.
Another reason lies in the common visions of the primacy of the earth shared by deep green and permaculture activists. The first ethic in permaculture is ’Care for the Earth’. Without this basis, the second and third ethics, ’Care for people’, and ‘Redistribute surplus to one’s needs’, are impossible. Healthy organisms produce a surplus to feed and enrich the ecosystem in which they exist. Simply put, there is no health unless Earth is cared for first.
“The Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything.”
— Derrick Jensen Endgame
There are attitudes shared by Permaculture and the Deep Green movement. Permaculturalists believe in working with nature and not against it. Fostering a respect for all life is inherent in permaculture practice. Valuing people and their skills creates more diversity, creativity and productivity in permaculture and deep green communities. Alignment between Deep Green and the Permaculture movements is especially apparent in two permaculture design principles.
Seeking to preserve, regenerate and extend all natural and traditional permanent landscapes is a goal of both communities. Preserving and increasing biodiversity of all types is recognized as beingessential for survival by both Deep Greens and Permaculturalists.
A primary reason for permaculture to become part of a culture of resistance is that permaculture’s two guiding principles logically mandate dismantling civilization. The precautionary principle states that we should take seriously and act on any serious or destructive diagnosis unless it is proven erroneous.
Civilization has proven itself to be destructive to ecosystems since its inception. Western industrial civilization is causing the wholesale destruction of every ecosystem on Earth.
Practicing permaculture individually can be construed to be a revolutionary act, capable of saving the planet. But individual acts can’t possibly do the trick. Like any other liberal act, it fails to recognize the systems that are destroying the planet and confront them. The most elegant and nurturing permaculture garden will not stop the operation of a single coal fired plant or deep sea oil drilling or fracking or the destruction of a rain forest.
“The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eatingimplies a natural biological relationship; This culture doesn’t just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an ecological serial killer, and it’s long past time we recognize the pattern.”
— Aric McBay
A large scale and effective response to this destruction is necessary. The tactics of the environmental movement up to this point have been insufficient. We are losing. It is time to change our strategy. Therefore, the Deep Green movement is advocating for all tactics to be considered to stop the murder of the Earth.This includes, but is not limited to, practicing permaculture, legislation, legal action, civil-disobedience, and industrial sabotage.
There are problems with holding the permaculture movement as the sole solution to global destruction. While transitioning to sustainability in our personal lives is important, even more important is confronting and dismantling the oppressive systems of power that promote unsustainability, exploitation, and injustice on a global scale. In fact, if these systems are left in place, the gains made by the practice of permaculture will be washed away in civilization’s tidal wave of destruction.
“Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral and stupid. Sustainability, morality and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such economic or social system or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.”
— Derrick Jensen
One of the necessary steps to restoring our relationships with each other and our planet is dismantling the current destructive systems of power through organized political resistance. We are in global ecological crisis, and the love and resistance inherent in permaculture can and frequently does ally with the victims of oppression, support and increase the health of natural systems, work to support and reclaim indigenous knowledge and greater than human wisdom and teaching.
The second guiding principle of permaculture, ‘intergenerational equity’, also necessitates immediate action in response to the destructive force of civilization.This principle states that future generations have the same rights as we do to food, clean air, water, and resources. This statement applies to all humans and non-humans equally. Daily, entire species are being eliminated from this planet as result of the activities of industrial civilization. ‘Intergenerational equity’ for them has ceased to exist and every day this destruction continues more species go extinct. Allowing this to continue is unconscionable.
Permaculture is based on close observation of the natural world, and I believe it can only realize its full potential in a human community that acknowledges the natural laws of its land base as primary. Practicing permaculture in any context other than this necessitates subverting our principles and betraying everything that nurtures and sustains us, all that is sacred, our living earth. We can only truly belong in a culture of resistance, and in communities of resistance.
Both permaculturalists and deep greens know that the earth is everything, that there is no greater good than this planet, than life itself. We owe her everything and without her, we die.
“The earth is our mother. We all come from our mother and to her we shall return. We are of the earth and it is absurd to imagine that we can “own” it, even in small pieces.
And yet the earth has been divvied up as private property. Property is a legal concept, a cultural production and not an intrinsic quality of land. Notions of what can be privatized seem to be infinitely expansive: land is privatized; seeds and genes are privatized; and even water is privatized.”
— Sandor Ellix Katz The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved
It is insane to “own” the land, the water, the air, yet this culture’s laws support and enforce that delusion. We design systems within boundaries and fail to challenge those boundaries, so our designs never truly integrate with their ecosystem, are defenseless against the onslaught of subsurface mineral rights which supersede surface rights and the resultant mining operations, the privatization and theft of water from the natural watershed that nourish the land, and rigidly enforced illusion of individual ownership over the concept of collective responsibility.
One of the necessary steps to restoring our relationships with each other and our planet is dismantling the current destructive systems of power through organized political resistance. We are in global ecological crisis, and the love and resistance inherent in permaculture can and frequently does ally with the victims of oppression, support and increase the health of natural systems, work to support and reclaim indigenous knowledge and greater than human wisdom and teaching.
This is it; we need each other, everyone, every tactic we can muster in defense of the earth.We have never been able to afford civilization.
“The task of an activist is not to navigate around systems of oppression with as much personal integrity as possible. It’s to bring those systems down.”
Oral arguments for a federal appeal in the high profile case of environmental activist Jessica Reznicek will be heard by the 8th circuit court of appeal on May 13. In a defining moment for the climate justice movement and for all civil rights, the court will decide whether or not to uphold a “domestic terrorist enhancement” that an Iowa court applied to Reznicek’s prison sentence. Reznicek is expected to argue that the terrorism enhancement was both illegally and unjustly applied.
In 2016, Jessica Reznicek took action to stop the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves. In 2021 she was sentenced to 8 years in prison with a domestic terrorism enhancement.
Under normal conditions Jess would have been sentenced to 37 months, but the terrorism enhancement resulted in a sentence of 96 months. She was also ordered to pay $3.2 million in restitution to Energy Transfer corporation.
The appeal is supported by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), National Lawyers Guild, Water Protectors Legal Collective, and the Climate Defense Project. “If Jessica Reznicek’s acts can be punished as terrorism,” says an amicus brief filed by CCR, “the United States will have moved so far past the international consensus as to be operating in a completely different realm.”
WHAT: Oral arguments for federal appeal, U.S.A. v. Jessica Reznicek. Case # 21-2548
WHO: United States Court of Appeals- 8th Circuit, DAPL activist Jessica Reznicek
WHEN: Friday, May 13 at 8:30 CST
WHERE: St Paul, Minnesota United States Court, Courtroom 5A. Closed to the public in person. Listen in by calling 1-888-363-4749 Code 4423562. Jessica Reznicek is 5th on the docket.
In 2017 Jessica Reznicek and a partner from the Catholic Worker Movement publicly claimed responsibility for acts of vandalism against the Dakota Access Pipeline. In February, 2021 she pled guilty to a single count of Conspiracy to Damage an Energy Facility. In June, 2021 an Iowa judge imposed a “terrorism enhancement” at the prosecution’s request and sentenced Reznicek to 8 years in prison with restitution of over $3 million to be paid to Energy Transfer LLC. No one was injured by Reznicek’s acts of civil disobedience.
Although federal courts have ruled the Dakota Access Pipeline was constructed illegally, excessive punishment for people like Jessica, who tried to stop it, is on the rise – and scrutiny is growing of fossil fuel industry influence in the process. Wrote Jessica in a 2021 statement to the court, “I am not a political person. I am certainly not a terrorist. I am simply a person who cares deeply about an extremely basic human right that is under threat: Water.”
We are living in an ecological catastrophe. Our world is being killed before our eyes. This hurts. And so for many people, their response is either apathy, complete emotional shutdown, or a nihilistic embrace of powerlessness.
There is another option. While our power to change the course of ecological collapse is indeed limited, limited is different from non-existent. The truth is, we do have power. And we can change the world. No, our power is not limitless. No, the world will not change easily. And no, we cannot fix everything. Some things are broken beyond fixing. But these difficulties do not absolve us of responsibility.
There is an old warrior’s saying that “duty is heavier than a mountain, and death is lighter than a feather.” The duty of humans with moral conscience in this era is heavy indeed. And yet, what would we be if we abandoned this world to its fate? If we abandoned our forests, our oceans, our mountains? If we abandoned our non-human relatives? If we abandoned our communities and future generations of children? What would we be, then?
Some people argue that humanity is simply a cancer. That we will destroy ourselves. That our nature is fundamentally destructive. That our actions have proven us unfit to survive in the long-term, unfit to participate in the community of life, which we are destroying.
But if human destructiveness is one part of our potential, then humans defending the land is another. Those who defend the land are part of the immune system of the world. We are defenders of wholeness. We bring balance. We are the consciousness of the Earth, our bones like mountains, our blood like rivers. We are an evolutionary force, an outgrowth of the planet itself, taking action to defend our community.
And we will not give up, because ultimately, to abandon responsibility is to abandon our own souls. There is only one way we can guarantee the worst possible outcome for the future: if we take no action at all.
And so today, I wish to thank the activists and land defenders of the world. Your hearts are the conscience of our society. Your tears are our prayers. Your dedication is the salvation of life. Your effort is not in vain. You are valuable.
