History

By Norris Thomlinson / Deep Green Resistance Hawai’i To most of us with no military experience, the Decisive Ecological Warfare strategy (DEW) of Deep Green Resistance can seem abstract. The aboveground efforts of rebuilding local food systems, local economies, and local decision making are straight-forward and well known to citizens engaged in any sort of social justice or environmental activity. More confrontational public direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience are familiar to most activists, from historical examples of women’s suffrage and civil rights movements to modern fights like the tar sands blockade and the Unis’tot’en Camp. However, the crucial underground role of directly attacking critical infrastructure, though it sounds exciting in theory, has little grounding in our daily experience or even in the history we’ve learned. ...

By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance Not all worldviews are created equal. I thought this as I sat listening to Mel, a Wet’suwet’en man, explain the ideas behind the establishment of the Unist’ot’en Camp. It was lunch on my first day of the camp. The sun was strong and the few dozen visitors to the camp gathered in a clearing surrounded by tall pines. The quick-flowing clear-voiced Morice River flowed next to our gathering place, ice cold from its glacial source not far away. ...

By Rachel / Deep Green Resistance Eugene Yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made it illegal for federal and state governments to make blanket, outright bans on abortion. For those who fight for women’s ability to exercise full autonomy and human rights, January 22nd is treated as a day of celebration and remembrance of those who fought before us. Nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and student groups from coast to coast held benefits and awareness events. Celebratory twitter hashtags and blurbs from liberal blogs are still piling up. Good news is scarce in the world of reproductive justice activism, and we’ll take it where we can get it. I won’t begrudge our beleaguered cause one day of hope – at least, not until the morning after.The reality of our situation gives the lie to much of the hopeful rhetoric that comes rolling out every year on Roe’s anniversary. Our backward slide doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon. If we face the the reality of what Roe has done, self-congratulatory reflections on how far we’ve come become not only ridiculous and out of touch, but insulting and dangerous as well. A prime example of the rose-colored view of Roe espoused by many in the mainstream is this sentence, written by President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America on the 38th anniversary of Roe, three years ago: ...

By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin If the political Left was what I thought it was growing up, I would want nothing to do with it. It’s not what I thought it was, however; at least not in its true form. A Left worth the name is less a sold-out party line and more a grassroots revolutionary force of the kind we’ve not seen for far too long. No matter what we want to call that force, now is the time to build it again. ...

By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin In June 1988, climatologist and NASA scientist James Hansen stood before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the United States Senate. The temperature was a sweltering 98 degrees. “The earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements,” Hansen said. “The global warming now is large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect… Our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.” ...

By Lexy Garza and Rachel / Deep Green Resistance Humans are storytelling creatures, and our current strategy as a movement is a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. We need to ask whether that story matches up with reality, and with the way social change has happened throughout history. So here’s the story as it stands: By raising awareness about the issues, we will create a shift in consciousness. A shift in consciousness will spark a mass movement. A mass movement can successfully end the murder of the planet by using exclusively pacifist tactics. We all know this narrative, we hear it referenced all the time, and it resonates with a lot of people, but we need to examine it with a critical eye along with the historical narratives that are used to back it up. There are truths behind these ideas, but there is also the omission of truth, and we can decipher the interests of the historian by reading between the lines. Let’s take each piece of this narrative in turn to try and find out what’s been omitted and those interests that omission may be concealing. ...

By Lexy Garza and Rachel View video of the event at the Deep Green Resistance Youtube channel Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This quote by Spanish writer and philosopher George Santayana was posted on the wall in my high school history classroom. The idea, as my history teacher explained, it is that learning about history is vitally important because by knowing and understanding past events, we can actively shape the future. According to my teacher’s view, at least the view he shared with his students, the history in our textbooks is objective, time-tested truth, and nothing more nor less. ...

As radicals, we believe that another world—a world without patriarchy, white supremacism, capitalism, colonialism, or ecocide—is possible. But in the face of the reality in which we live our day to day lives, it can become difficult to remember not only the possibility of successful resistance to power, but also its rich and proud history, of which we are a part. This is all the more true when we recognize that a potent resistance movement will have to include militant, underground resistance. Being aware of our place within that legacy and re-telling the stories of past movements serves to fan the flames of our own will to resist, and are crucial pieces in building a culture of resistance. ...

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. ...

Within the radical environmental movement, it is widely acknowledged and rightly accepted that we have little time left before the earth is driven into catastrophic and runaway biotic collapse. We know that civilization is predicated on the slow dismemberment of the planet’s life support systems—a dismemberment that is increasing in speed as more efficient and devastating technologies are developed. We know that for a healthy, living world to survive, industrial civilization cannot. ...