In this article published originally on Stop Fossil Fuels you are offered an overview of Jem bendell’s work and suggestions of how you can contribute to resilience.
Environmentalists advocate reduce, reuse, and recycle as the 3 R’s of sustainability—good practices, but incommensurate with the scope of our emergency.
To better mitigate the looming ecological and social crises, we propose superseding these R’s with resilience, relinquishment, and restoration. Along the way, we’ll look at the three I’s of denial which helped get us into this mess: ignorant, interpretative, and implicative.
We draw on Jem Bendell’s academic paper “Deep Adaptation” which urges his fellow sustainability professionals to stop tinkering with an irreparable system and instead prepare for collapse. Beneath the surface of his mostly placid, formal prose, he implies an even more radical necessity: active replacement of the industrial system. This will be less a revolution than a devolution—transferring power and decision making to local communities.
Jem Bendell
Bendell has a background in sustainable business and finance, with an impressive list of accomplishments from twenty years in the field. When he reviewed and grappled with climate science for the first time since 1994, he came to some of the same shocking realizations as have we: the 2°C warming limit was chosen more for political than scientific reasons; we’ve already overdrafted our carbon budget; “green” tech and governments and decades of environmentalism “have not produced a net positive outcome.”
Like us, he now deems catastrophic climate disruption and near term societal collapse to be inevitable, rendering his field’s traditional work mostly irrelevant. Minor progress on an agenda more concerned with industrial development than with true sustainability is pointless if the wins are dwarfed by the losses. “For instance, discussing progress in the health and safety policies of the White Star Line with the captain of the Titanic as it sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic would not be a sensible use of time.”
Bendell wrote the sober “Deep Adaptation” for colleagues unaware of the likelihood of short term societal collapse or the possibility of near term human extinction, so it’s worth reading in full if those concepts are new to you. We’ll explore some psychological underpinnings of our collective failure to change course, introduce Bendell’s deep adaptation framework, and relate his paper to our goal of stopping fossil fuels.
The Three I’s of Denial
We often process information according to “perspectives we wish for ourselves and others to have, rather than what the data may suggest is happening.” Social norms exacerbate this self-censorship, as people fear disturbing the peace with the truth of how bad things are. Sustainability professionals risk careers if they question an upbeat resilience narrative of “development” and “progress.”
Sociologist Stanley Cohen built a theoretical framework of denial in his book States of Denial. More recently, sociologist Ron Kramer and author John Foster have each applied his ideas to global warming denial.
Ignorant denial
Ignorant denial is used actively, to justify apathy or to shield against reality. Comfortable citizens give in to entertainment and diversions while knowing they’re disengaged from reality. Distractions include not only TV sitcoms and sports, but also corporate news and political spectacle. Accepting prepackaged memes from one’s subculture or political tribe, without employing critical thinking, is as much an avoidance of difficult truths as is refusing to think at all.
Interpretative denial
Interpretative denial accepts the facts, but gives them different meaning than is normal. The denier may honestly believe this unusual interpretation, or may cynically undermine discourse. Global warming “skeptics” employ interpretive denial when they admit industrialism’s warming impact, but claim it will yield net benefits in plant growth and happier days basking in mild winter sunshine.
Implicative denial
Environmentalists don’t commonly indulge in ignorant or interpretative denial, but do in implicative denial—accepting and fully understanding the facts, but avoiding the logical conclusions. Of course reasonable people can debate those conclusions, but most would agree with Foster’s assessment: “From dipping into a local Transition Towns initiative, signing online petitions, or renouncing flying, there are endless ways for people to be ‘doing something’ without seriously confronting the reality of climate change.” Living a moral, fulfilling life requires honestly contemplating the implications of our environmental crises. Only by rejecting the well-traveled road of denial can one choose a meaningful path.
Not just individuals, but entire environmental organizations engage in implicative denial. From Big Green NGOs thriving on donations towards influencing legislation, to scrappy radicals fostering a reputation for obstructive lock downs, groups want to feel and appear effective. But ecological destruction is intimidatingly vast in scale and deeply entrenched within business as usual; in contrast, typical aboveground, attrition based actions can rarely achieve substantive change.
Activists come to accept environmentally fatal compromise as the only realistically achievable outcome, or abandon long-term systemic goals to pursue occasional small wins against one project at a time. Few acknowledge that we’re losing the war; fewer contemplate the implications for their future actions. Individuals and groups dodge analysis of their efficacy with the platitude that at least they’re “doing something.” Though such self deception is understandable as a morale boost amidst thankless work and heartbreaking losses, it undermines the movement. Denying reality in order to feel that our work counts for something is dangerous and ultimately unfulfilling. We must make our actions truly effective.
Choosing Our Framing
Humans aren’t as rational as we like to believe. Bendell outlines a range of scenarios imagined by those who accept some form of collapse as likely:
Transition to a beneficial post-consumerist way of life
Catastrophic descent without hope of a tolerable future
Near term human extinction
People choose from and assign probabilities and timings to these alternatives based more on their preferred story than on data and analysis. Bendell himself chooses to interpret the facts as indicating inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe, and possible human extinction.
Our psychological need for purpose influences the stories we choose around collapse.
George Marshall explains that humans “invest our efforts into our cultures and social groups to obtain a sense of permanence and survival beyond our death.” We subconsciously fear not only the immediate personal danger of collapse, but the total death threatened by loss of the entire society to which we might contribute.
Some reject the idea of societal collapse because acceptance would strip all meaning and purpose from life; others embrace it as an excuse for inaction and self-indulgence. In contrast, those ready for adult responsibility might welcome the opportunity to leave a legacy of unprecedented reach and longevity. They can impact not only their immediate society, but the future of all life.
We can’t know humanity’s fate with certainty—whether we’ll transition relatively smoothly through a long descent, or suffer a painful collapse, or go altogether extinct. But barring an extremely unlikely—and entirely preventable—scenario of life wiped out down to the bacteria, our actions matter. The more biological abundance and biodiversity which make it through the bottleneck of industrialism, the healthier will be the future for survivors. If society as we know it collapses, then the more intact the biosphere, the easier will be the lives of those humans picking up the pieces. If our species goes extinct, then the less damage we’ve inflicted on the way, the faster others can rebound. With recovery from mass extinctions taking millions of years, saving a species or habitat from destruction leaves a permanent legacy.
We are given both a heavy responsibility and a unique opportunity for purpose in life.
The Three R’s of Collapse
Bendell’s “deep adaptation” accepts near term collapse as inevitable, and avoids implicative denial by asking “what to do?” with eyes wide open. His answers revolve around identifying the core values we want to retain as we build new cultures. He doesn’t attempt to explore specifics of a deep adaptation agenda (so as not to reinforce the illusion that we can control or manage conditions), but he provides a framework:
Resilience: How do we keep what we really want to keep?
In institutional discussions, “resilience” planning often aims to maintain a close approximation of business as usual, complete with “development” and economic growth. But if material “progress” is incompatible with sustainability, its pursuit is counterproductive.
We might draw instead from a psychological understanding of resilience as the ability to “bounce back” from hardship or loss. In this framing, we prioritize valued societal norms and behaviors to retain (or on which we can even improve). These might include security and stability, physical and mental health, relationships with family and friends, meaningful work, spirituality, and interaction with the non-human world.
Relinquishment: What do we need to let go of in order not to make matters worse?
Our current lifestyle brought us to this point of collapse. If we cling to it, we’ll go down that much harder. To keep what we really want, we must let go of many expectations and customs. We need to put an end to industrial mining, fishing, logging, agriculture, transportation, manufacture, and consumption. We may have to withdraw from dense settlements, coastlines, deserts, and other areas uninhabitable in an overheated world.
One way or another, our unsustainable practices will cease. Giving them up voluntarily, sooner rather than later, promises individuals, families and communities the most autonomy and time to learn from mistakes.
Restoration: What can we bring back to help us with the coming difficulties and tragedies?
Bendell suggests rewilding landscapes, changing diets, rediscovering non-electronic forms of play, and relocalizing. Industrialism has eroded the foundations not only of non-human life, but of human cooperation. Anywhere you look, there’s work to be done rebuilding topsoil, establishing perennial polycultures, reforesting, bringing down dams, and defending species and habitats. Human communities need post-carbon skills, practice working together, and localization of everything, including food, energy, education, decision making, construction, trade, and enforcing norms.
Conclusion: Get Proactive
“In abandoning hope that one way of life will continue, we open up a space for alternative hopes.” — Tommy Lynch
Bendell and other critical thinkers anticipate inevitable societal collapse, probable catastrophic break down of human communities, and possible near term human extinction. Elites want to “protect” the public from such analysis, in fear of instigating hopelessness, dismay and despair. Such paternalism makes sense in Hollywood movies, where disasters befall passive victims with scripted fates often ending in gruesome death. But in reality, hopelessness and despair seem appropriate responses to our predicament, and may be necessary precursors to grounded action. Bendell finds that sharing his analysis with students in a supportive environment leads not to apathy or depression, but to a positive focus on moving forward. Whichever scenario unfolds, we can still minimize and mitigate risks and damage. By choosing what to retain, what to relinquish, and what to restore, we shift from victims to actors in our and the planet’s destiny.
On a small scale, people can embrace voluntary simplicity, better preparing themselves and their communities for collapse. Tragically, at the international scale, society shows no sign of willingly transforming to a sane and sustainable way of living—in fact, it’s escalating its experiment in madness. 7.7 billion humans cling to an overcrowded extension ladder supported by ecological systems and secured by the web of life. Yet every day our society tears at that web and blasts away chunks of the ladder’s foundation, while squeezing on 227,000 more humans than the day before. For each step that proactive individuals descend towards solid ground, global industrialism extends the ladder ten higher.
A radical yet inescapable implication runs through Bendell’s piece: with collapse inevitable, the sooner it occurs, the gentler will be our collective transition.
He suggests people must “com[e] together in solidarity to either undermine or overthrow a system that demands we participate in environmental degradation.” It’s not enough to relinquish solely as individuals; we must also forcibly loosen industrialism’s death grip. Freeing human and non-human communities from fossil fueled exploitation will open space for localization and restoration. Saving habitat and species from extermination will benefit all future beings, human and non-human.
If you’re ready to bring on devolution and leave behind the richest and most permanent life legacy possible, then read more about how to stop fossil fuels and how you can get involved.
In this article Shad Engkilterra exposes plans to expand clearcutting across vast portions of the U.S., to fast track the process, bypass environmental laws and regulations, and destroy forests on a huge scale.
‘Scorched Earth’: In Final Days, Trump Admin Finalizes Sweeping Clearcutting Rule Across West, While Cutting Public out of the Process
Trump and his administration are pushing through policy changes to keep the public in the dark and avoid public input requirements at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a group of prominent environmental NGOs decried today in a press release. With just a little over a month left in office, Trump’s BLM is moving forward with plans that will allow fast-track approval on a massive blanket clearcutting initiative for native forests and shrubs throughout the West.
On Dec. 10, 2020, the BLM announced its final “pinyon-juniper categorical exclusion” and its “salvage logging categorical exclusion.” With these two rules finalized today, the agency has enacted five rules and major initiatives designed to allow industrial clearcutting plans to proceed much more quickly by eliminating the public comment period, which the BLM says takes too long.
“The BLM’s massive deforestation schemes will transform much of the West into bleak, cheatgrass-infested and treeless expanses, dealing a huge blow to biodiversity and the survival of many species of migratory birds and other native wildlife,” said Katie Fite of Wildlands Defense, in a joint press release.
Once implemented, the change will skirt the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and cut the public out of the process. The agency claims “these categorical exclusions will contribute to rural economies, reduce waste of salvageable timber, and reduce future wildfire fuel loads, while diminishing hazards to wildland firefighters, the public, and infrastructure from dead and dying trees.”
But conservation groups are having none of it.
“These are scorched-earth policies with no place in what is supposed to be open, transparent, and science-based management of 245 million acres of public land,” said Kya Marienfeld, Wildlands Attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) in a press release. The NEPA-mandated public comment period allows citizens and scientists to review plans set forth by the BLM and other Department of the Interior agencies, and to inform the process by making suggestions or raising concerns. As reported by EnviroNews, allowing citizens to participate in the process oftentimes results in improved land management, above and beyond what the agency initially proposes.
“The removal of public review through these final NEPA exclusions today is especially alarming because many large projects that were withdrawn because of public pressure — including some within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — could now reappear at any time under this new policy and move forward without public review, scientific study, or accountability,” said Marienfeld.
Environmentalists say the beneficiaries of these policies are the industries destroying the western landscape and harming its wildlife populations.
Ranchers, mineral barons, the lumber industry, and oil and gas companies stand to gain now that these policies have been enacted. “This is nothing more than an eleventh-hour attempt by the outgoing administration to shut the public out of public land management and curry favor with Secretary Bernhardt’s industry allies. It has absolutely no basis in science or sound management practices,” said Scott Lake, Nevada Legal Advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The new “pinyon-juniper categorical exclusion” will allow the BLM to clear up to 10,000 acres of pinyon-juniper without any environmental analysis, scientific oversight, or public review and input. The agency can approve projects of this size an unlimited number of times.
“The BLM’s assertion that clearing 10,000 acres of pinyon and juniper forests will not have a significant environmental effect is wrong and incredibly dangerous to ongoing efforts to protect public lands, wildlife, and the general safety and livability of the human environment,” said Logan Glasenapp of New Mexico Wild.
The BLM also says the rules will allow it to better “maintain and restore habitats that are essential to mule deer, sage-grouse, and other important wildlife species.” The sage-grouse is an “umbrella species” spanning the sagebrush sea across 11 western states. Subject of an expansive EnviroNews documentary, the imperiled dancing ground-bird has been at the center of the costliest conservation fight in history.
Mary O’Brien, Utah Forests Program Director for the Grand Canyon Trust disagreed with BLM’s notion that these rule changes are to preserve native wildlife:
“The BLM’s claim that massive clearcutting and mastication of pinyon pine and juniper is ‘solely’ intended to enhance habitat for sage-grouse and mule deer might be believable if science indicated that these ‘[habitat] treatments’ work, or if the BLM didn’t use them as an opportunity to graze the heck out of the newly ripped-up landscape, seeding it with exotic grasses meant for cattle.”
The “salvage logging categorical exclusion” allows the agency to approve logging on up to 3,000 acres of land as long as it determines the trees are “dead or dying.” Lands matching that criteria will be exempt from the NEPA requirements of environmental analysis, scientific oversight, and public input and review.
“The bottom line is that science has to guide the management of our western lands,” said Vera Smith, Senior Federal Lands Policy Analyst with Defenders of Wildlife. “We hope that the Biden Administration will right this wrong by directing the [BLM] to restore science-based decision-making to our public lands and refrain from clearcutting under these new rules.”
The Trump Administration’s BLM has had no shortage of controversies, including in its leadership.
On September 25, a judge ruled that Acting Director William Perry Pendley had served in his position illegally for 424 days in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Pendley never received Congressional approval, and was supposed to step down. However, he has made numerous statements that he isn’t going anywhere. The judge in the case also ruled the BLM was to submit which actions Pendley had taken during his time atop the BLM so those actions could be reversed. In October, the court invalidated three of Pendley’s major land-use plans in Montana and warned Pendley against fulfilling the duties of acting director.
EnviroNews has documented the ramping up of a Trump Administration “War on Wildlife,” which has reached a zenith in the last few months of the President’s first, and last, term. From removing the words “climate change” from the White House website, to redefining the word “habitat,” to refusing to give species protections under the Endangered Species Act, to delisting iconic, imperiled species, to allowing drilling in sensitive environments like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Trump Administration has exploited every opportunity to increase access for industry to public lands. Many are concerned that the upward trend in environmental rollbacks will continue until the day he leaves the White House.
This article was written by Shad Engkilterra and published on December 10, 2020 in Environews. You can access the original article here:
Featured image: a freshly-bulldozed native forest of Pinyon Pine and Juniper trees on federal BLM lands just south of Ely, Nevada in 2018. This biodiverse native forest was destroyed in the name of “restoration.”
In this article, Suzanna explains how nihilistic relativism has spread across the environmental movement. It has altered our perception of right and wrong, and prevents the environmental organizers from taking a radical stance for the natural world.
This article was originally published August 26th in VT Digger. an off-the-grid farmer who lives in Walden.
Last month, the Trump administration gutted the 50-year old National Environmental Policy Act under the guise of “modernizing,” “streamlining” and making the law more “balanced.” Here in Vermont, similar language is being used to justify eviscerating our state’s landmark environmental law, Act 250. But it’s not the ethically- and environmentally-challenged Trump administration proposing the gutting, it’s the unholy alliance between the moderate Scott administration and the Vermont Natural Resources Council.
VNRC, once a staunch defender of Act 250, now supports creating numerous loopholes for harmful development in exchange for tepid forest fragmentation “protections” that would do little to halt further incursions of development into our mountain ecosystems. At the beginning of the 2020 legislative session, VNRC acted more like the Chamber of Commerce than the environmental organization it purports to be.
It lined up developers, lobbyists, and business leaders to testify in favor of their proposed exemptions to Act 250.
One such exemption: removing downtown development from regulatory oversight, with no consideration of the consequences – particularly regarding wastewater issues.
This bill, H.926, will possibly be voted on during an unusual summer session meant to address pandemic and related budget issues. Perhaps gutting Act 250 is being considered now, under cover of Covid, because public awareness and participation are severely limited. After looking over H.926, a lawyer friend of mine asked me, “Why do we now have to defend the environment from environmental organizations?”
It’s a great question.
Part of the answer, of course, involves money. Fifty years ago, when Act 250 and other important protections were enacted, environmental organizations believed it was their role to draw lines in the sand beyond which economic interests could not go. They understood that we could not blindly expand industry, business and commerce into the landbase without inevitably degrading it.
But from the mid-1980s on, moneyed interests began co-opting the environmental movement by supporting groups that embraced “market-based” solutions to environmental problems. As environmental NGOs softened their stance against rampant development, we got “green consumerism,” “carbon trading,” “ethical investment,” “smart growth” and other business-friendly steps in place of genuine environmental protection. This form of “environmentalism” has turned corporations into “environmentalists” but failed to protect the natural world.
Were the leaders of those environmental organizations conscious of what they were doing?
Psychologist Robert Lifton’s work offers some insight. His career focused on examining how ordinary people become involved in projects with horrific consequences. This phenomenon, he explains, emerges from a shared ideology that remains unquestioned – often with a declared higher good or “claim to virtue” justifying it – thereby blinding people to the real-world consequences of their actions. He studied people responsible for atrocities throughout the last century. Expecting to find psychosis and sociopathy prevalent among them, he found something surprising: many were actually nice people. They were well-liked and respected in their communities. They had stable families and were loving parents and grandparents. They weren’t necessarily ideologues nor particularly hate-filled.
What they were was ambitious. Lifton concluded that when one is ambitious in a destructive society, one will participate in that destruction to reap the rewards. His conclusions are a cautionary tale that should alert all of us to look deep within and examine our conduct and motivations. The environmental leaders who espouse “balancing” environmental protections with the need for economic growth are more likely to win major funding, receive invitations to government roundtables, and hold the microphones that shape opinion.
Over time, the result has been that “environmentalism” is no longer about defending nature from the voracious appetite of the ever-expanding human empire, it is about convincing the public that we can continue that destruction as long as growth is cloaked in euphemistic adjectives like “green,” “smart,” “resilient” and “sustainable.”
But why has the public gone along with this shift?
The reason, in part, is that we have been afflicted by a new brand of ethics: nihilistic relativism. Originally identified by Hannah Arendt, nihilistic relativism allows us to deny our complicity because “right” and “wrong” are seen as simply relative measures. If our actions are better than the egregious actions of others, if they are disguised behind empty props such as “mitigation” and “balance,” our consciences are clear while our actions steadily eat away at the biosphere. The result, though, is that we have paved over our hearts and buried our affection for the living natural world that supports us all.
Firmly wrapped in the ideology of economic growth, the global ecocide and ultimate extinction we are hurtling toward is the logical endpoint of this dark pathology. Here in Vermont, nihilistic relativism reassures us that we are far more environmentally aware than Trump or his minions.
Meanwhile it blinds us from seeing that sometimes we are just as dangerous.
Suzanna Jones is an off-the-grid farmer who lives in Walden. This article was originally published August 26th in VT Digger: you can find the original, full article here:
This piece, republished from Counterpunch, explores the current uprising against police brutality in the context of the struggle against capitalism and asks: what are the most effective forms of struggle going forward? Join the conversation in the comments section.
“We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”
— Henry Kissinger
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
— Sun Tzu
Over the past several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in the wake of George Floyd’s hideous murder. Police stations have been commandeered and torched, corporate stores destroyed and set ablaze. In Seattle, people have constructed the ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,’ otherwise known as CHAZ, which encompasses several city blocks, a police station, apartments, and storefronts. Protests and actions ranging from nonviolent marches to small-scale rebellions and uprisings have taken place in over 2,000 cities across the United States.
Before the uprisings, the U.S. was crumbling under the weight of its bloated empire, vicious economic system, and ossified political institutions. Not only has Trump’s response to the pandemic been criminal, to say the least, the political system at every level has failed to respond to the crisis.
The U.S. has been exposed as a failed state.
GOP Senators wheel and deal stocks, including ‘Human Capital Stock,’ as White House adviser Kevin Hassett put it. Meanwhile, Democrats respond to the current crisis with half-measures and symbolic (and absurd) acts of solidarity. So far, the pandemic, which has killed over 115,000 Americans, accounting for 25% of the world’s total deaths due to COVID-19 (the U.S. has only 5% of the world’s total population), continues to spread like wildfire, yet most of the country has gone back to business as usual. Prior to the pandemic, over 140 million Americans lived in poverty.
Now, with 40 million additional Americans out of work, with no end to the pandemic or job prospects in sight, those numbers have and will continue to increase dramatically. Millions of Americans are incapable of paying their bills; tens of millions endure mounting student loan, credit card, and personal debt; and hundreds of thousands face evictions in the coming weeks. At the same time, Wall Street loots trillions from the Treasury and Federal Reserve.
From the very beginning of the pandemic and economic crisis, the state has refused to enact even small-scale economic measures or social programs that would benefit poor and working class people. As a result, tens of millions remain jobless, with no hope in sight. On July 31st, the CARES Act provision that provides an extra $600 a week to Americans receiving unemployment benefits will expire.
People are tired, angry, and rightly so.
Unsurprisingly, many corporate media commentators suggest that systemic racism and policing are the driving factors of the current wave of protests and rebellions. Without doubt, those are the issues that sparked our current ‘Movement Moment,’ but they’re not the only factors playing a role in the uprisings. Class is front and center, though ignored in mainstream political discourse, which seeks to frame everything through a racialized lens. If the corporate media spent some time in the streets, they’d understand that the uprisings have as much to do with class as they do about race.
Corporate Media Lags Behind
During the initial days of the Minneapolis Uprisings, the independent media outfit Unicorn Riot (UR), which describes itself as a “decentralized, educational non-profit media organization of artists and journalists,” was my preferred outlet for on the ground reporting. Journalists at UR don’t necessarily provide commentary as much as they document events in real-time. Outlets such as UR report directly from the streets, with the people, long before or after the corporate media outlets arrive or leave. Young people appreciate and trust UR (UR started during the Standing Rock protests), so they’re given access to moments and events that cable news journalists cover from miles away, if at all. While protesters were smashing up CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, UR was documenting those actions on the ground, talking to people in the street (CNN commentators were hiding in their studio bunkers high above the streets, shocked that non-Trump supporters also hate their guts).
It’s hard to downplay what Unicorn Riot does: namely, report from streets and document what’s happening from Ground Zero without commercial breaks or talking heads to provide out of touch commentary. Corporate media outlets lack legitimacy. When they do show up to a protest or uprisings, they misinterpret or outright lie about what’s happening. UR, on the other hand, shows up, starts their livestream, and allows anyone and everyone to grab the mic and speak to those watching at home.
Their work is phenomenal and necessary.
At one point during their live broadcast, hundreds of thousands of people were watching the uprisings in real time, along with hundreds of thousands watching live on mediums such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. In Minneapolis, hundreds of protesters got on camera and spoke at length about the horrors of capitalism, why they’re angry (issues ranging from poverty to housing, gentrification, climate change, corruption, and wars), and why they were in the streets with such fervor (because they see no hope in existing political institutions). I haven’t seen any such interviews on corporate news outlets.
The uprisings do make one thing very clear: Americans under 35 years old are not getting their information or commentary from traditional news sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or even cable channels such as CNN or MSNBC. The Old Guard was caught flat-footed. Professional class liberals, major NGOs, prominent progressive and leftwing thinkers and writers admit they were shocked at the scale of the uprisings. This isn’t surprising. Professional class commentators live in a different world, socially, culturally, and economically, than the younger generation. And that gap only widens with time.
Poor and working class teenagers and Americans in their 20s, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, receive most of their news and information, for better or worse, via social media and various other digital platforms/modes (podcasts, videos, memes) — those are the entities shaping young peoples’ consciousness and ideologies. Young Americans are much more sophisticated than many older people assume. The recent wave of protests and uprisings show that to be the case. Likewise, poor and working class Americans are much angrier than the professional class could possibly understand. There’s an entire underbelly of seething anger and resentment just beneath the surface of our society: the 50% of Americans who don’t vote
Their voices are now heard loud and clear. Bernie’s campaign asked, “Where are the young people?” They’re in the streets, Bernie. And they’re more radical than you. And their voices will only grow angrier with time, as they realize the current government is incapable of responding to their needs and that Wall Street would rather see them die than enjoy healthcare or UBI. The younger generation, as always, is way ahead of the eight ball with their demand to ‘defund the police.’
Defund the Police
Right now, activists and organizers throughout the U.S. are debating what it means to ‘defund the police.’ This demand is very strategic, and for many reasons. Not only does it allow for a conversation about the redistribution of material resources, it also responds to the demands of those on the ground. For better or worse, this is the demand that organically arose within the context of our current struggle. In other words, leftists can choose to ignore or ridicule this demand (I’ve seen both), or they can respond to popular demands and find strategic ways to connect those demands to broader class issues and larger institutional change. If leftwing organizers and intellectuals are interested in meeting people where they’re at, but not leaving them there, it would be wise to take the latter approach.
Since others have written at length about the details about what it would mean to ‘defund the police,’ there’s no need to rehash those points, though the details are interesting and important. Leftists who shrug off this demand for not going far enough, or not encompassing enough class politics, are missing the boat in terms of how powerful this demand could potentially prove to be.
Capitalism has three primary weapons: 1) capital itself, which can engage in capital strikes, divestment, capital flight, and broader forms of economic warfare, 2) the police, who break strikes, arrest protesters, and protect private property, and 3) the military, who also protect property and break strikes, but whose primary function is to express power on an international scale, securing and opening new markets, protecting business interests abroad, and so on.
Defunding the police not only saves black, Latinx, and poor white lives, it also takes away one of capitalism’s primary weapons.
Without overfunded and highly militarized police forces, it becomes much more difficult for the state to protect fossil fuel infrastructure, banks, government buildings, corporate headquarters, and a host of other potential targets. Nonviolent protesters would no longer face the wrath of racist and militarized police departments. Communities would no longer live in fear of being pulled over, harassed, arrested, tortured, or killed by the cops.
Defunding the police also provides an opportunity to dismantle one of America’s favorite sacred cows. The fact that the majority of Americans side with the protesters is a profound ideological, political, and cultural shift. The police, much like the military, regularly rank in the top five in terms of the jobs and institutions most respected in U.S. society. Dismantling the police is a significant step toward eventually dismantling the U.S. Empire. Redistributing funds from police departments to social programs could serve as an example and model for how to proceed with defunding the military, the logical next step. Since the police have limited funds (the NYPD’s operating budget for 2020 is $5.6 billion), the only way to actually meet the needs of poor and working class people will be through a radical defunding of the military, coupled with the nationalization of critical industries, and a broader redistribution of wealth from corporations and the rich to social programs and the poor.
Defund the Military
The U.S. Empire operates 800-1,000 military bases stretched across the globe. The U.S. ‘Defense Budget’ for 2020 is $721 billion, but if we tally the cost of maintaining its nuclear stockpile, intelligence/spy agencies, Veterans Affairs budget, homeland security budget, international-affairs budget, and its share of the national debt, the total cost of maintaining the U.S. Empire in 2019, according to William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, was $1.25 trillion. Without question, a tremendous amount of resources could be redistributed by defunding and dismantling the military. According to the National Priorities Project, the $712 billion the U.S. spent in 2018 to maintain its empire could have provided 49 million Americans monthly relief payments of $1,200 for one year, or 20 billion COVID-19 tests for one year, or 209 billion N-95 respirator masks for one year, or 9 million elementary school teacher salaries for one year, or 20 million Head Start slots for four years, or 300 million children receiving low-income healthcare for one year.
Overall, the total cost of Uncle Sam’s post-9/11 ‘War on Terror’ comes to $6.4 trillion, money that could’ve been used to pay off the $4 trillion in outstanding consumer debt Americans suffer. Aside from the potential social and economic benefits, it’s equally important to note the massive amount of death, pain, and suffering that would be prevented by dismantling the U.S. Empire, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted over 50 years ago. Since King’s assassination, millions have died as a result of U.S. militarism, with tens of millions forced from their homes and turned into refugees.
Yes, there’s much to gain from dismantling the empire, not the least of which being America’s soul.
Seeing as more and more Americans are beginning to understand that the primary task of police forces within the U.S. is to protect property and repress popular rebellion, it’s a great time to connect the same critique to the U.S. Empire, which performs the same function on the international stage. The U.S. Empire crushes international revolts and anyone who dares to dream of alternatives to global capitalism and so-called ‘American values.’ Doing so, however, would require activists to fundamentally challenge U.S. nationalism, an inherent component of the imperial project, both at home and abroad. Even amongst poor Americans, there remains a sense that Uncle Sam is a force for good in the world, and that the U.S. military ‘protects our freedoms.’ Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
The concept of American Exceptionalism must be challenged head-on if we hope to transition to defunding the U.S. Empire. It’s not surprising that the U.S. government has deliberately hidden not only the financial cost of war, but the images, pictures, and stories of its post-9/11 wars. After all, most Americans would be quite upset if they saw the death and carnage unleashed in their name, with their tax dollars. Important distinctions exist between the military and police, as my friend and former Army Ranger, Graham Clumpner put it:
“The U.S. military doesn’t have the same relationship with Americans as police departments do. Americans interact with cops all the time, and usually those interactions are bad. Cops also sign up for careers. Military personnel sign up for 2-6 year contracts, with the overwhelming majority leaving after their first enlistment ends. The contradiction is that the military is much more powerful and destructive than domestic police forces, yet it’s much easier to organize dissent within the military than it is to organize dissent within police departments. U.S. history shows this to be true. GIs have mutinied throughout the history of this country, from the Revolutionary War and Civil War to the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We should build on this tradition.”
If activists in the U.S. seek any level of partnership and solidarity with individuals inside existing repressive state institutions, they should look to the military before they look to the police.
Additionally, it remains unclear how the military would respond to a call for genuine Martial Law, whatever that may entail. Certainly, many active-duty troops and veterans are not motivated by the idea of patrolling the streets of America. In fact, “a majority of U.S. veterans believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a mistake,” as recent polls show. An even larger majority of U.S. veterans are opposed to a potential war with Iran. Indeed, more and more U.S. troops understand they’re being asked to fight unwinnable, illegal, and immoral wars, and they’re sick and tired of it. That’s a good thing. Troop morale is low after 19 years of war and civil unrest at home. Antiwar activists should build on this momentum, which will require a new antiwar movement, one led by U.S. veterans, the families of U.S. veterans, and the primary victims of Uncle Sam’s wars: Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, and so on.
Defund the Empire
Without the military and police at its disposal, the repressive arms of the state, American capitalism would be amputated, if not crippled. Political movements in the U.S. would greatly benefit, as would revolutionary political movements abroad. The cause of Internationalism would benefit. The planet would benefit, as would human beings in general. In short, there are countless upsides to dismantling the police and military.
Hell, why not extend the same treatment to the FBI, CIA, DEA, NSA, ICE, and a host of other repressive, violent, and inherently undemocratic agencies? Defund them all. After the police, military, and national security state is defunded, and their resources redistributed, why not defund the fossil fuel industry, Israel, Wall Street, the prison-industrial complex, and every other subsidy and corporate handout the state provides to entities?
Violence, Nonviolence, and Resistance to Capital
Discussions concerning violence and nonviolence always pop up during ‘Movement Moments.’ Usually, conversations about violence are overplayed, unhelpful, and totally detached from reality. This time, however, such conversations have entered mainstream political discourse for perfectly good reasons: Americans are engaging in more militant actions than at any point in recent memory. Police stations have been occupied, ransacked, and burnt to the ground. Government buildings have been stormed by leftwing activists and occupied by armed rightwing militias. Gun stores are empty. And Americans are stocking up on ammo. The situation in the U.S. is ripe for political violence.
Some on the left are actively promoting armed struggle, but the left in the U.S. isn’t prepared to engage in guerilla warfare against the military or the police, nor is the left prepared to face off against rightwing non-state actors. The left is disorganized, small, undisciplined, and fragmented. Even if the left generally agreed, which it doesn’t, that armed struggle is strategic, reasonable, or ideal, it wouldn’t matter because the left in the U.S. is simply incapable of waging an armed campaign against the military, police, or rightwing militias.
That said, coordinated, sustained, and dynamic nonviolent actions, including massive acts of civil disobedience, strikes, walkouts, and direct actions such as blockades, occupations, and various forms of sabotage could create a series of crises significant enough to bring the current regime to its knees, if not topple it. At this stage in the game, an overemphasis on weapons, self defense, and militant posturing could prove detrimental.
The U.S. military is far more fragile, unorganized, and ideologically incoherent than many Americans realize.
Even leftists have a view of the U.S. military as an omnipotent force capable of locking down the entire country, maintaining the empire abroad, and imposing martial law throughout the fifty states. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to the Department of Defense Manpower Data Center, “There were a total of 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces as of September 2017 . . . Total active duty personnel for the five armed services were approximately 472,000 for the Army, 319,000 for the Navy, 319,000 for the Air Force, 184,000 for the Marine Corps and 41,000 for the Coast Guard.” About 1.1 million Americans are in military reserve units, which only train periodically and lack the combat skills or experience to effectively engage in serious counterinsurgency efforts.
Remember, only a tiny fraction of soldiers (15%) and marines (12%) perform infantry functions — most active duty troops are ‘Personnel Other than Grunts,’ otherwise known as POGs. They drive trucks, fix vehicles, run supply warehouses, conduct logistical operations, set up communications networks, work on computers, answer phones, file paperwork, conduct ceremonies, and a host of other non-combat related tasks.
The U.S. military doesn’t actually have the manpower to keep the country locked down.
Sure, one could argue that the U.S. military has the capacity to carpet bomb the entire country and turn the landscape into rubble, true, but it’s not clear whether or not the military would actually respond to such orders, or initiate such actions, especially if massive numbers of Americans were engaged in nonviolent acts as opposed to offensive guerilla assaults. Again, if the left can effectively organize within the ranks of the military, the odds of such calamity decrease significantly. That’s why the work of groups such as About Face: Veterans Against War and Veterans For Peace is so important. Their efforts should be supported.
Right now, members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and United Electrical workers’ union (UE) are organizing non-unionized workers in a wide-range of industries. Their efforts should also be bolstered and supported. Defunding the police and military, at best, allow us to amputate capitalism, but the ultimate goal is to decapitate capitalism, and the only way to do that is through highly coordinated actions that include massive numbers of people, particularly workers who have the ability to shut down business and bring society to a halt. It also requires a vision of what we want after capitalism (a topic for another day).
Students, mothers, nurses, teachers, the disabled, and unemployed have a role to play. Bus drivers, healthcare workers, retail, and restaurant workers as well. Workers in the most critical industries: railroads, trucking, warehouses, shipping, and factories, will play a vital role in determining how things play out over the coming months and years.
If the current wave of rebellions can result in long-lasting revolutionary organizations and institutions that operate coherently and cohesively with national and international movements, while building up bases of support at the local level through deep organizing efforts, there’s a serious opportunity for radical political change in the U.S. If not, it’s easy to see this entire wave of protests dying out, being stomped out, or morphing into a spectacle of violence utterly void of substance and detached from reasonable political ends. Now is not the time for posturing. Now is the time for deep organizing.
Vincent Emanuele is a writer and organizer born and raised in America’s Rust-Belt. A former US marine and Iraq War veteran, Vince refused orders for a third deployment in 2005 and immediately began working with the anti-war movement during the Bush years.
The indigenous community of Didipio on the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines has been resisting foreign gold mining for decades. The gold mine, owned by Oceana Gold Philippines, Inc. (OGPI), has destroyed massive areas of jungle, poisoned the land and water, and displaced hundreds of villagers.
Two resistance figures were shot and killed by anonymous gunmen in 2012, but resistance has continued.
In June 2019, a key mining permit expired. The local community has been fighting this whole time and sensed an opportunity, so they erected a roadblock to stop OGPI from accessing the mine. Last month, the company tried repeatedly to access the site but were rebuffed by non-violent protests.
On April 6th, 2020, Philippine police forces violently dismantled the roadblock, as this video shows. One leader, anti-mining advocate Roland Pulido, chairman of Didipio Earth Savers’ Movement Association (Desama), was arrested and others were beaten.
The Oceana Gold and Copper mine, located in Barangay Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, was the first mining project awarded a Financial Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) by the Philippine government, allowing the company to operate large-scale mining explorations, 100% owned by foreign investor OceanaGold Corporation.
The mine is located in an area in which the majority of people are indigenous. It has become a much contested site due to large complaints over human rights violations as well as environmental destruction. The company has been alleged to have obtained a Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) of affected communities by creating a ‘council of elders’ comprised by people that either did not belong to the affected communities, or received rewards in exchange for their consent.
Awarded with the FTAA in the 1990s, the company started project [in the year] 2000. Formal petitions against the FTAA were lodged in 2006 but dismissed. On October 2, 2009, it was reported that the company forcefully evicted local villagers without prior consent, bulldozed and burned 187 houses, assisted by private security forces, using teargas and violence against villagers and neighbors who resisted leaving.
In relation to the tension surrounding the mine, Kalikasan reported that in December 2012, two opponents of large-scale mining; both members of the Didipio Earthsavers’ Multipurpose Association (DESAMA), were killed by unidentified assailants in Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya. Cheryl Ananayo, was shot dead along with her cousin-in-law Randy Nabayay as they were riding to Didipio at 6:00PM on December 7, 2012.
DESAMA is a people’s organization opposed to the ongoing implementation of the 17,626-hectare Didipio gold-copper project owned by Australian large-scale miner OceanaGold Corporation. Nabayay was a small-scale miner who had differences with OceanaGold over his property. Ananayo was with her 4 year-old child and carrying her 3 month-old baby, both unharmed.
The Commission for Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines urged the government to withdraw the FTAA due to large evidences of rights abuses. However, the government apparently sided with the company, which claimed to do “ethical, responsible, and sustainable mining.”
Construction was completed in 2012 and commercial production started on April 1, 2013. Since production started, increasing contamination of rivers by heavy metals has been recorded, significantly exceeding the standard safety limits, thus, strongly affecting the environment and the livelihood of local communities. People living next to the river, as well as downstream, are concerned about declining fish stock and irrigation of nearby agricultural fields. Increasing noise and air pollution adds to the situation, while the company was further accused of avoiding tax payments.
Nowadays, petitions and protests against the Didipio mine, targeting the company and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issuing the permits, go on. On the national level, the OceanaGold mine is one of many mines, causing severe tensions between corporate interests in search of new commodity frontiers and indigenous communities, aiming to preserve their identities, opposing these trends which they call “development aggression.”
The Philippines is a dangerous place for indigenous land defenders and environmentalists. Thirty were murdered in 2018 alone (number aren’t yet available for 2019).
The following is a statement made on the Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) Facebook Page. ATM is an alliance of mining-affected communities and their support groups of NGOs/POs and other civil society organizations who are opposing the aggressive promotion of large-scale mining in the Philippines.
Press Release: Condemnation of violent dispersal of peoples’ barricade in Nueva Vizcaya
April 6, 2020, Quezon City – Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) strongly condemns the violent dispersal by the police against indigenous community leaders in Brgy. Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, late afternoon today.More than 100 personnel of the Philippine National Police from the regional and Quirino provincial units escorted a diesel tanker and forcibly entered the premises of the Didipio mine of Oceana Gold Philippines, Inc. (OGPI).
Violence erupted when local residents resisted the entry and stood their ground to prevent the entry of the diesel tanker. A barricade has been set-up by local groups in July 2019, when the mining contract of OGPI expired. Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement No. 1 (FTAA #1) expired last June 20, 2019, and has since been left pending at the Office of the President.
Reportedly, the mining company and its escort brandished a letter dated January 2020 from the Office of Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea endorsing the entry of fuel trucks inside the mining area.
This forced entry of the diesel tanker is illegal and against the people of Nueva Vizcaya. The mining contract has expired so there is no activity allowed inside the mine. The local governments have not given any permit for the mining company to operate. The area is part of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) order of Pres. Duterte, therefore no work activity is permitted.
This is a clear violation of the work-stoppage, the physical distancing and the quarantine procedures imposed by the ECQ in the whole Luzon island.More importantly, the barricade set-up by local organizations DESAMA, BILEG, AMKKAS and SAPAKKMI is a clear indication of the rejection of the people to the continued illegal operations of OGPI in Brgy. Didipio.
We call on the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to immediately conduct an investigation to this tragic and unnecessary confrontation. We demand that DENR urgently issue a cease-and-desist order to OGPI on their illegal operations in Didipio. We insist that the DILG conduct an investigation on the conduct and performance of PNP elements in Region 2, Quirino Province and the Municipality of Kasibu, but specifically violations of the quarantine rules by the OGPI itself.
The use of violence by the police today is a reflection of the blind and draconian measures that this government is willing to use to pursue the greedy interests of the mining industry. The local leaders sustained injuries when the police used unnecessary force in dismantling the barricade. Our alliance strongly denounces this ferocious and aggressive behavior of the PNP against a non-violent and legitimate protest action of Didipio residents.
We note with anger similar instances in the past few weeks of illegal mining activities in the town MacArthur (Leyte), the island of Homonhon in Guiuan, Eastern Samar and clandestine drilling operations in Tampakan, South Cotabato.
We support the continued resistance of the people of Kasibu against the mining operations of OGPI in Didipio. The recent quarantine procedures have harshly impacted the people there when they lost income and livelihoods. Their access to food and health supplies were severely constrained. This violent dispersal has only added more misery to their fragile lives.
For details:
Jaybee Garganera, ATM National Coordinator – (+63) 9175498218 / nc@alyansatigilmina.net
