The American Southwest, like all of North America, is occupied territory. Its resource are in a constant state of extraction and destruction. What would it take to reclaim the land and the life in it? Deep Green Resistance member and activist Will Falk discusses how we might do so, by distinguishing between liberalism and radicalism. AUGUST 19, 2015 Liberalism’s Game: the Failure of Settler Solidarity in Hawai’i by WILL FALK ...
The DGR Southwest Coalition recently held their annual Southwest Gathering, sharing skills & good food, strengthening interpersonal bonds, and engaging in many valuable discussions & strategy sessions. As part of the gathering, Deanna Meyer of Deep Green Resistance Colorado joined Brian Ertz of Wildlands Defense to discuss the recent campaign against a Castle Rock mega-mall development. We’ve reported here a little bit on the struggle, and are excited to share this video of Meyer and Ertz describing the campaign in more detail. ...
Given the events of the past few months in Castle Rock (resisting the efforts of Alberta Development to slaughter prairie dogs in the name of a mall), it seems appropriate to re-post a letter by Derrick Jensen of Deep Green Resistance: Open Letter to Reclaim Environmentalism Once, the environmental movement was about protecting the natural world from the insatiable demands of this extractive culture. Some of the movement still is: around the world grassroots activists and their organizations are fighting desperately to save this or that creature they love, this or that plant or fungi, this or that wild place. ...
By Max Wilbert, Deep Green Resistance Seattle A good friend recently reminded me that there is a big difference between activism and organizing. Activism is to be involved at some level in political struggle; organizing is to make that struggle effective by planning for success. Organizing requires attention to the smallest details and the broadest overview. It takes a great deal of strategic thinking, critical self-evaluation, people skills, and persistence. Organizing is hard. None of us are born with the skills needed for effective organizing; we have to pick them up as we go. All we have is us, and so many of us are tied up with families, jobs, and other responsibilities. But if we’re going to win struggles for social and environmental justice, we need more organizers. ...
Editor’s Note: This article originally ran March 20, 2013, in the Deep Green Resistance News Service. We are republishing the entire Time is Short series, and considering that the newly elected US Senate now has enough votes to pass approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline and has made it second on its list of priorities, we think this is especially relevant. The Keystone XL Pipeline is without question the largest environmental issue we in North America face today. It’s not the largest in the sense that it is the most destructive, or the largest in terms of size. But it has been a definitive struggle for the movement; it has brought together a wide variety of groups, from mainstream liberals to radicals and indigenous peoples to fight against a single issue continuously for several years. It has forged alliances between tree-sitting direct actionists and small rural landowners, and mobilized people from across the country to join the battles in Washington and Texas, as well as at the local offices of companies involved in building the pipeline in their own communities. It has also posed serious questions to us as a movement about how we will effectively fight those who profit from the destruction of the living world. ...
This open letter was written by a member of Deep Green Resistance Colorado, and was influenced and informed by Deep Green Resistance and the work of Paul Kingsnorth, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Aric McBay, and Jack Forbes, among many other sources and experiences. Download a PDF version The earth isn’t dying; it is being killed. And “clean energy” will only make things worse. I should probably begin by introducing myself; my name is Alex, and I’m a recovering renewable energy advocate. For years, I was a victim of desperation and hope; I petitioned and parlayed, chanted and canvassed; I brimmed with excitement at the prospect of “green jobs” and a “renewable energy economy.” I still see much of myself in many of you. I know what it’s like. I know exactly how it feels to look around and see a world not just dying but being suffocated, being tortured and maimed, sacrificed on the twin altars of profit and production. As a young person today, I know what it’s like to fear the future, to fear for my future. I—like many of you—have read all the studies and reports I need to see to know what’s coming, what disaster is now screaming, all but unchallenged, down the track upon us.
Our planet is under serious threat from industrial civilization; whether it’s the 200 species pushed to extinction everyday, catastrophic runaway climate change, the murder of the world’s topsoil, or the toxification of the air, water and our very bodies, this culture is incompatible with a living planet. Yet most activists refuse to consider strategies that might actually prevent the looming biotic collapse the Earth is facing. We need to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. We need a serious resistance movement that includes all levels of direct action–action that can match the scale of the problem.