by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 28, 2013 | Education, Movement Building & Support
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
A two-day teach-in focused on community organizing, activism, direct action, and issues facing Utah communities comes to Salt Lake City the weekend of March 16th and 17th.
The event, “Communities of Resistance,” will feature presentations and trainings from Goshute Tribal Chairman Ed Naranjo, community organizer and filmmaker Simón Sedillo, Peaceful Uprising, Utah Tar Sands Resistance, Deep Green Resistance, Idle No More, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and other community organizers.
“This teach-in will be indispensable for political people around Salt Lake,” said event organizer Max Wilbert. “If we want to win sustainability and social justice, we need supportive communities that nurture a willingness to fight. This is a step toward that goal.”
Subjects covered will include hands-on training for non-violent civil disobedience, the SNWA Las Vegas water pipeline that is poised to destroy rural valleys and indigenous peoples of Western Utah, the proposed Utah Tar Sands project, and community organizing in Mexico to defend traditional peoples from logging, drug syndicates, and government exploitation.
Communities of Resistance will take place between 10am to 4pm on Saturday, March 16th, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday, March 16th, at the Federation of Mexican Clubs, 344 Goshen Street, Salt Lake City.
The organizers are asking for a suggested donation of $5 – $10, with all proceeds going to the Unist’ot’en Camp, a First Nations group in Canada that is blocking construction of Tar Sands and “fracking” pipelines across their traditional lands, and the Tar Sands Blockade, a group with is using sustained direct action to halt the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
The event is sponsored by the Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance, the Salt Lake City Brown Berets, and Decolonize SLC.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 20, 2013 | Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
Resistance against exploitation is nothing new. History is full of examples of people—perfectly ordinary people—fighting back against injustice, exploitation, and the destruction of their lands and communities. They move through whatever channels for action are open to them, but often, left with no legal or political power, they turn to militant means to defend themselves.
It is hardly a simple decision, and rarely the first or preferred option, but when all other paths have been explored and found to lead nowhere, militant action becomes the only realistic route left. Movements and communities come to that truth in many different ways, but almost without fail, they come to it borne by a collective culture of resistance. One inspiring example is the Bolt Weevils.
The Bolt Weevils were a group of farmers in Minnesota who spent several years in the late 1970s perfecting the fine art of sabotaging interstate electrical transmission lines. Their efforts have been memorialized in numerous books and songs, and their story is a hopeful one we would do well to remember and re-tell.
The story of the Bolt Weevils begins in the mid-1970s, when the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA) proposed construction of a new interstate high-voltage transmission line. Taking its name from the two cooperatives, the CU Powerline would carry current from a generating station in North Dakota across west-central Minnesota to feed the urban centers of the Twin Cities.
In determining a route for the powerline, small farmers land was rated less important than large industrial farms, and as a result, the proposed route crossed the property of nearly 500 landowners. Outraged at being trodden over to for the benefit of industry and urbanism, resistance against the project began immediately in earnest.
Once residents found out about the project, they refused to sign land easements. Local towns passed resolutions opposing the project and reject construction permits. The powerline went to review before the State’s Environmental Quality Council, which went ahead and granted the necessary permits in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
When surveyors showed up out of the blue in one farmer’s fields, he smashed their equipment with his tractor and rammed their vehicle. The action of that one farmer helped catalyze popular sentiments into action. Farmers began using CB radios to notify one another about surveying activities, and would turn out in groups to stop the work. As resistance began to build, local radio stations would broadcast times and locations of protestor gatherings. Farmers and others who opposed the project began meeting every morning in the Lowry town hall, hosting others who’d come from neighboring counties, to make plans for each day.
As surveying and construction continued, the locals escalated their efforts. They would erect signs in their fields to block the sightlines of the surveyors, and stand next to survey crews running their chainsaws to disrupt their work. Survey stakes disappeared overnight. Farmers used their trucks to make roadblocks and their tractors to pile boulders in the construction sites. One group even gained permission from the county to improve a rural road—they dug a ditch across it to stop all traffic.
They filed more lawsuits, and the issue was eventually taken up by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which in the spirit of everything it represents, decided against the farmers and in favor of the powerline. Many of the citizens opposing the pipeline had earnestly believed in institutions like the Supreme Court and the structures of power. After their battles through the courts, many of them were disillusioned and had been radicalized.
Law enforcement began escorting construction and survey workers, and the situation came to a head on January 4th 1978, when 100 farmers chased powerline crews from three different sites, fought with police, and even tore down part of a tower. The next week, the Minnesota Governor ordered the largest mobilization of the State Troopers in Minnesota’s history, with 200 Troopers—fully half of the force—descended on the rural area to ensure construction continued.
Protests continued and grew, as the issue began to draw national and international media attention; hundreds turned out for rallies at survey sites, and some schools even let out so students and teachers could attend. In St. Paul, thousands of farmers rallied and demonstrated, and in March of 1978 more than 8,000 people marched almost ten miles through freezing temperatures from Lowry to Glenwood to protest the CU powerline.
It was in the heat of August that the kettle boiled over. Bolts on one of the transmission towers were loosened, and soon afterwards, it fell over, as the Bolt Weevils entered the scene. Then three more fell over. Guard poles and bolts were cut and loosened, insulators were shot out. Over the next few years, 14 towers were felled and nearly 10,000 insulators were shot out. Soon, helicopters patrolled the powerline, and it was made a federal offense to take down interstate transmission lines.
There were numerous arrests, some 120 in all, but only two individuals were ever convicted on felony charges, and even then they were only sentenced to community service. Opposition to the powerline was so common that in some instances, witnesses refused to testify against farmers.
In the end, unfortunately, the powerline was built and went into operation, despite the protests and the disruptions by the Bolt Weevils. While they were unsuccessful in ultimately stopping the project, there’s much from their efforts that we can learn and apply to our work today against exploitation and civilization.
As in most social struggles that turn to property destruction and militancy, that wasn’t the first choice of tactics for those on the ground. They fought for years through accepted legal and political avenues, turning to material attacks after all other courses of action had proven ineffective. But more than that, the popular agitation and organizing in the years leading up to the emergence of the Bolt Weevils didn’t merely precede militant direct action: it laid the groundwork for it.
The work of the local farmers—their protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and community organizing—paved the way (forgive the phrase) and set the conditions for the sabotage that would later occur. By mobilizing residents and community members against the project, building social networks, and agitating and raising opposition against CU powerline, a collective culture of resistance was created, planting and watering the seeds from which the Bolt Weevils were born.
With civilization churning onwards towards biotic collapse and underground resistance the only real hope left, caring for those seeds is our primary duty today. The story of the Bolt Weevils—like countless other stories of resistance—shows that militant resistance emerges from strong and supportive cultures of resistance. The time to start building such a culture was yesterday. For those of us who choose to organize and work in an aboveground and legal way, building such a culture that embraces and celebrates sabotage and the use of any means necessary to stop the omnicide of industrialism is our foremost task.
The story of the Bolt Weevils isn’t empowering and inspiring because they “fought off the bad guys and won.” They didn’t win. The power lines were built, forced down their throats in the face of their resistance. No, their story is inspiring because it so clearly and undeniably demonstrates how simply feasible sabotage and material attacks truly are. Often, we talk about militant resistance and direct action as mysterious and abstract things, things that wouldn’t ever happen in our lives or communities, things that no one as ordinary as any of us would ever do.
Whether we romanticize underground action or are intimidated by it, we generally talk about it as though it is something out of a movie or a novel. The truth is that such actions are simply tactics—just like petition-drives or street marches—that can be used to dismantle systems of power. The Bolt Weevils—a group of farmers with hunting rifles and hacksaws*—serve as a stark reminder that one doesn’t require military training and high-tech gadgets to act in direct and material ways against the infrastructure of destruction. We’re all capable of fighting back, and while sabotage against industrial infrastructure can be daunting for many valid reasons, technicality isn’t one of them.
We may have to fail working through other channels (as if we haven’t already) before collectively turning to sabotage and attacks on industrial infrastructure as a strategy, and we will certainly need to build a supportive and strong culture of resistance. But if we’re serious about stopping the destruction and exploitation of civilization, we will be left with no other choice.
*This is speculative. I don’t actually know how they shot out insulators or cut through guard poles, although there are plenty of accounts of hunting rifles and hacksaws being used in this fashion, and it’s from those stories that I hazard this guess.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Mike Ludwig / TruthOut
For residents in Assumption Parish, the boiling, gas-belching bayou, with its expanding toxic sinkhole and quaking earth is no longer a mystery; but there is little comfort in knowing the source of the little-known event that has forced them out of their homes.
Located about 45 miles south of Baton Rouge, Assumption Parish carries all the charms and curses of southern Louisiana. Networks of bayous, dotted with trees heavy with Spanish moss, connect with the Mississippi River as it slowly ambles toward the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen and farmers make their homes there, and so does the oil and gas industry, which has woven its own network of wells, pipelines and processing facilities across the lowland landscape.
The first sign of the oncoming disaster was the mysterious appearance of bubbles in the bayous in the spring of 2012. For months the residents of a rural community in Assumption Parish wondered why the waters seemed to be boiling in certain spots as they navigated the bayous in their fishing boats.
Then came the earthquakes. The quakes were relatively small, but some residents reported that their houses shifted in position, and the tremors shook a community already desperate for answers. State officials launched an investigation into the earthquakes and bubbling bayous in response to public outcry, but the officials figured the bubbles were caused by a single source of natural gas, such as a pipeline leak. They were wrong.
On a summer night in early August, the earth below the Bayou Corne, located near a small residential community in Assumption, simply opened up and gave way. Several acres of swamp forest were swallowed up and replaced with a gaping sinkhole that filled itself with water, underground brines, oil and natural gas from deep below the surface. Since then, the massive sinkhole at Bayou Corne has grown to 8 acres in size.
On August 3, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a statewide emergency, and local officials in Assumption ordered the mandatory evacuation of about 300 residents of more than 150 homes located about a half-mile from the sinkhole. Four months later, officials continue to tell residents that they do not know when they will be able to return home. A few have chosen to ignore the order and have stayed in their homes, but the neighborhood is now quiet and nearly vacant. Across the road from the residential community, a parking lot near a small boat launch ramp has been converted to a command post for state police and emergency responders.
“This place is no longer fit for human habitation, and will forever be,” shouted one frustrated evacuee at a recent community meeting in Assumption.
The Bayou Corne sinkhole is an unprecedented environmental disaster. Geologists say they have never dealt with anything quite like it before, but the sinkhole has made few headlines beyond the local media. No news may be good news for Texas Brine, a Houston-based drilling and storage firm that for years milked an underground salt cavern on the edge of large salt formation deep below the sinkhole area. From oil and gas drilling, to making chloride and other chemicals needed for plastics and chemical processing, the salty brine produced by such wells is the lifeblood of the petrochemical industry.
Geologists and state officials now believe that Texas Brine’s production cavern below Bayou Corne collapsed from the side and filled with rock, oil and gas from deposits around the salt formation. The pressure in the cavern was too great and caused a “frack out.” Like Mother Nature’s own version of the controversial oil and gas drilling technique known as “fracking,” brine and other liquids were forced vertically out of the salt cavern, fracturing rock toward the surface and causing the ground to give way.
“In the oil field, you’ve heard of hydraulic fracturing; that’s what they’re using to develop gas and oil wells around the country …”What is a frack-out is, is when you get the pressure too high and instead of fracturing where you want, it fractures all the way to the surface,” said Gary Hecox, a geologist with the Shaw Environmental Group, at a recent community meeting in Assumption Parish. Texas Brine brought in the Shaw group to help mitigate the sinkhole.
As the weeks went by, officials determined the unstable salt cavern was to blame for the mysterious tremors and bubbling bayous. Texas Brine publically claimed the failure of the cavern was caused by seismic activity and refused to take responsibility for the sinkhole, but the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has since determined that the collapsing cavern caused the tremors felt in the neighborhood, not the other way around.
According to Hecox and the USGS, the collapsing cavern shifted and weakened underground rock formations, causing the earthquakes and allowing natural gas and oil to migrate upward and contaminate the local groundwater aquifer. Gas continues to force its way up, and now a layer of gas sits on top of the aquifer and leaches through the ground into the bayous, causing the water to bubble up in several spots. Gas moves much faster through water than oil, which explains why the bubbles have not been accompanied by a familiar sheen.
Documents obtained by the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate, revealed that in 2011, Texas Brine sent a letter to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to alert its director, Joseph Ball, that the cavern had failed a “mechanical integrity test” and would be capped and shut down. The DNR received the letter but did not require any additional monitoring of the well’s integrity.
Despite this letter, regulators apparently did not suspect the brine cavern to be the source of the bubbles until a few days before the sinkhole appeared, The Advocate reported. The letter raised ire among local officials, who did not hear about the failed integrity test until after Bayou Corne became a slurry pit.
Texas Brine spokesmen Sonny Cranch told Truthout the company has not officially taken responsibility for the sinkhole disaster, but has “acknowledged that there is a relationship” between the collapsed cavern and the sinkhole.
Read more from TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/13136-bayou-frack-out-the-massive-oil-and-gas-disaster-youve-never-heard-of
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 24, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Rachel / Deep Green Resistance Cascadia
In the arid Powder River Basin of Northern Wyoming and Southern Montana, the long roots of sagebrush draw water from deep beneath the soil. The ability to access water in this way makes sagebrush an important star of the Basin’s biotic constellation. Species of grasses and herbs are allowed to thrive on the moisture that the sagebrush draws toward the surface.
Elk, mule deer, and pronghorn antelope access the water stored in the plant’s pale gray, three-pointed leaves. Greater sage-grouse eat the sagebrush too, while making their nests and performing their complex courtship rituals among the plant’s low branches. The soil is the basis for the lives of these creatures and countless others, and the precious moisture within the soil is thread that connects them in a web of relationship.
The Powder River Basin’s coal extraction industry doesn’t place the same value on soil, and neither does the government that serves the coal extraction industry. The region extracts about forty percent of the coal mined in the United States. More coal is mined annually from the Powder River Basin than is mined annually from the entire Appalachian region.
The industry calls the soil and rock that lies between their extraction equipment and the coal seams ‘overburden,’ and they don’t take kindly to being burdened with the survival of the beings that depend on that soil. No soil means no sagebrush, and no sagebrush means no sage-grouse.
Though the threat posed to the sage-grouse by human activity is acknowledged by industry and governmental regulatory agencies alike, both have chosen to prioritize the economy over living beings both human and non-human. Nevada, another state inhabited by sage-grouse, is developing a conservation plan intended to “sufficiently conserve the species while enabling our economy to thrive.”
This, of course, is nonsense. Since coal is a non-renewable resource at the center of our culture’s one-time energy extraction blowout, the destruction of the land must continue, and the wasting of soil must accelerate, in order to keep the US coal profit machine running. By definition, coal mining cannot coexist with the greater sage-grouse, and it is time to choose sides.
In 2010, the Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the listing of sage grouse as a species endangered by human activity was “warranted but precluded,” meaning that the bird needs protection but “other species in bigger trouble must come first.” Presumably, the “other species” they refer to include the US coal industry – which is definitely in big trouble. Though coal remains a major source of electricity generation, the combination of band-aid environmental protections and increased competition from cheap natural gas is driving the coal industry’s profits way down from previous levels. The industry is not taking this decrease in revenue lying down.
The coal industry is looking to boost their profits by tapping into the Pacific market. Unlike the US coal market, which has lately been flat, the Asian market’s demand for coal is exploding. China is building at least one new coal-fired power plant every week. A big obstacle to exploiting this market is a lack of coastal Pacific transport capacity. To really cash in on Chinese demand, they’ll need more rail lines and expanded West coast ports, and there’s already a plan in the works to get those things in spite of the impact that their construction will have on marine life.
One of the most aggressively pursued port-expansion projects is the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposed for Cherry Point Washington, home to the Cherry Point herring. As a keystone species, the herring support a variety of other species that share their habitat. They provide as much as two thirds of the food supply for Chinook Salmon, who in turn provide as much as two thirds of the food supply for the Puget Sound Orcas.
Unsurprisingly, herring populations have decreased by ninety five percent since the late 1970’s. Cherry Point is also already home to the largest oil refinery in Washington state. Vessel traffic in this area is already bloated by a rise in exports and the promise of a new pipeline from Canada. If this port were expanded as proposed, it would become the largest of its kind in North America. The expanded port would allow the transport of an additional forty eight million metric tons to foreign markets each year, which would require the use of an additional four hundred and fifty vessels each year – each one containing a devastating spill, just waiting to be unleashed.
Another expansion has been proposed for the Millenium Bulk Terminal at Longview, also in Washington state. The Millennium Bulk Terminal at Longview applied for 5.7 million tons but later admitted to plans for seeking 60 million tons once a permit was granted. Other ports, including the Port of Grays Harbor in Hoquiam, Oregon International Port of Coos Bay, and Port of St. Helens are also under consideration. Also under consideration is Prince Rupert’s Ridley Island terminal in British Columbia, and other locations in BC may be under similar threat.
Right now, port expansion approval process for Cherry Point and Longview is in the scoping period, which means that hearings are being held for public comment across Oregon and Washington.
The outcome of these hearings will be used to draft an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and that statement will be used to inform permitting decisions. No doubt, government and industry will again be looking for a false compromise between living communities and extractive industry. We can stand with the herring, the sage-grouse, and all the members of their extended family, or we can capitulate to the demands of a system with an infinite imperative to destroy the land, air, and sea.
The negative effects of the proposed expansions (not to mention the negative effects of not only transporting fossil fuels, but also mining and burning them) are not limited to the possibility of extinction for the Cherry Point Herring and the damage their absence would do to those species who depend on them. Coal dust and noise pollution worsen in their effect on both humans and non-humans if this industry gets its way, and both the environmental and economic costs that big-coal externalizes will be forced back onto local communities.
All tactics must be on the table. We will physically halt construction with our bodies when the time comes, but without a community of support, direct action is likely to fail. Engagement with the hearing process will also likely fail unless it is accompanied by diverse tactics and practical strategy. We must use these hearings to connect with others in the communities that stand to be affected, and to send the message that omnicidal industrial projects like this one will not stand unopposed.
You can find more information about the proposed port expansions here: http://www.coaltrainfacts.org/key-facts
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 19, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
The Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance participated in a demonstration in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade today in Salt Lake City.
The Tar Sands blockade has been obstructing the construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would eventually carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Working primarily in rural areas of Texas in collaboration with locals, activists from Tar Sands Blockade have been suspended high in trees for 57 days, blocking the route of the pipeline construction.
Activists from DGR today took part in a rally in Salt Lake City at the Bureau of Land Management office where Tim DeChristopher executed his direct action to halt illegal oil and gas leases in December 2008.
Utah is currently under threat from many capital-intensive industrial projects. It is the proposed site of the second Tar Sands project in North America, which would destroy large portions of wilderness in remote eastern portions of the state. The Salt Lake City region is home to several oil refineries and deepest open-pit mine in the world, and the valley (home to 2 million people) has some of the worst air quality in the country.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert has brought forward a plan to increase the construction of roads and other industrial projects in wilderness areas of southern Utah that many are calling a land grab. In other part of the bioregion, ongoing coal mining, water theft, and the aftermath of uranium milling is devastating communities, particularly indigenous communities and the poor.
The Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance is a new group organizing in the region that is committed to fighting against these injustices. We advocate for the dismantling of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, and industrial civilization – and we have a plan to confront power, without compromise.
