Are we on the way out of here? By we, I mean me, you, all the animals that walk upon the ground, fly in the air, swim in the seas. I'm thinking the answer is, "probably so," and that's on a good day.
Still, I suppose we can't just chuck it in. We are all still here for now and maybe, unlikely as it seems to me, we can still turn this thing, this turning of our planet into an uninhabitable mess, around.
One thing I am absolutely sure of though is that there is no hope if we just stick to all the old tactics and strategies of the mainstream and even non mainstream environmental movement. For that stuff, the time is passed.
Radical, even more likely, revolutionary action is now needed to just buy us some time to actually create a new world where we can all live and breathe. The Empire must be ground to dust. Capitalism must be sent packing. Patriarchy, racism, and those old time fire breathing religions have got to find somewhere else to hang out, some other dimension where they can enjoy themselves without bothering all the rest of US.
I know that seems like a tall order in the little time we have left to get this thing under control. I think so, too. Personally, again, I have no faith we can get the job done. It is just hard to picture our species finally stepping to the plate while recognizing at the same time our place in the scheme of things.
But still...I give you this from Deep Green Resistance. The first post is basically a self description of what DGR thinks it is.. The second is a sort of call to action. The third is an announcement of "A Culture of Resistance East Coast Roadshow." I hope you take the time to read each of them.
What is Deep Green Resistance?
Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and a movement being born, the only movement of its kind.
As a strategy, it critiques ineffective lifestyle actions and explains their inevitable failure to stop the destruction of people, species, and the planet. In contrast, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction.
As an aboveground movement, just now taking its first steps, Deep Green Resistance is based on this analysis and implementing this strategy. And we’re recruiting.
No more ineffective actions – piecemeal, reactive, and sad. No more feel-good, magical-thinking, navel-gazing, consumer-based, capitalist-approved denial and dead ends.
The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This will require defending and rebuilding just and sustainable human communities nestled inside repaired and restored landbases. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.
DGR’s strategy involves two separate parts of the movement – an aboveground and an underground.* The aboveground works for sustainable, just, and participatory institutions, and assists the aboveground frontline activists with loyalty and material support. And in any resistance scenario, the underground dismantles the strategic infrastructure of power. This is a basic tactic of both militaries and insurgents the world over for the simple reason that it works. But such actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. This means that any strategy aiming for a just future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures. Which means that the different branches of resistance movements must work in tandem: the aboveground and belowground, the militants and the nonviolent, the aboveground frontline activists and the cultural workers. We need it all.
And we need courage. The word “courage” comes from the same root as coeur, the French word for heart. We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love.
So while DGR is about fighting back, in the end this movement is about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being. With love as our First Cause, how can we fail?
Want more? Read an excerpt of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.
*Note: We are strictly an aboveground movement. We will not answer questions regarding anyone’s personal desire to be in or form an underground. We do this for the security of all involved with Deep Green Resistance.
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Decisive Ecological Warfare
Deep Green Resistance is for those who can’t wait anymore.
This is the question: Are you willing to accept the only strategy left to us? Are you willing to set aside your last, fierce dream of that brave uprising of millions strong? I know what I am asking. The human heart needs hope as it needs air. But the existence of those brave millions is the empty hope of the desperate, and they’re not coming to our rescue.
If you care about life on this planet, and if you believe this culture won’t voluntarily cease to destroy it, how does that belief affect your methods of resistance?
Most people don’t know, because most people don’t talk about it. Some are too afraid of being called terrorists by those who are murdering the planet. Some believe using the same tactics that have not worked for the last forty years – whether it be protests or petitions, collaboration with corporations, or window breaking will magically start being effective. Some think a technological solution will appear to make it all go away. Some have pinned their hopes on lifestyle changes, and its corollary, personal change, as if individual behaviors can dismantle systemic problems. And finally, some just have hope – the groundless, amorphous belief that allows us to keep “living” these lives while all around us and inside us the destruction grows exponentially. The hard truth is none of this has or will work, ever. Yet these represent the majority of our efforts to save the Earth.
Those who come after, who inherit whatever’s left of the world once this culture has been stopped are going to judge us by the health of the landbase, by what we leave behind.
They’re not going to care how we lived our lives. They’re not going to care how hard we tried. They’re not going to care whether we were nice people.
They’re not going to care whether we were nonviolent or violent.
They’re not going to care whether we grieved the murder of the planet.
They’re not going to care what sort of excuses we had to not act.
They’re not going to care how simply we lived.
They’re not going to care how pure we were in thought or action. They’re not going to care if we became the change we wished to see.
They’re not going to care whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, or not at all. They’re not going to care if we wrote really big books about it. They’re not going to care whether we had “compassion” for the CEOs and politicians running this deathly economy.
They’re going to care whether they can breathe the air and drink the water.
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Environmentalists fight as hard as we can to protect the places we love, using the tools of the system the best that we can. Yet we do not do the most important thing of all: we do not question the existence of this death culture. We do not question the existence of an economic and social system that is working the world to death, that is starving it to death, that is imprisoning it, that is torturing it. We never question the logic that leads inevitably to clearcuts, murdered oceans, loss of topsoil, dammed rivers, poisoned aquifers.
When most people ask, “How can we stop global warming?” they aren’t really asking what they pretend they’re asking. They are instead asking, “How can we stop global warming without stopping the burning of oil and gas, without stopping the industrial infrastructure, without stopping this omnicidal system?” The answer: you can’t.
Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are already gone. Where is your threshold for resistance? Is it 91 percent? 92? 93? 94? Would you wait till they had killed off 95 percent? 96? 97? 98? 99? How about 100 percent? Would you fight back then?
If salmon could take on human manifestation, what would they do?
What would we do if Nazis had invaded, and they were vacuuming the oceans, scalping native forests, damming every river, changing the climate, and putting carcinogens into every mother’s breast milk, and into the flesh of your children, your lover, your mother, into your own flesh? How much worse would the damage have to get? Would you resist? If there existed a resistance movement, would you join it?
A Strategy
The strategy of Deep Green Resistance starts by acknowledging the dire circumstances that industrial civilization has created for life on this planet. And that these circumstances should be met with solutions that match the scale of the problems.
This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.
Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet—and win.
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Deep Green Resistance Presents:
A Culture of Resistance East Coast Roadshow
Building a Culture of Resistance from the Grassroots Up
June 16- Miami, FL
June 18- Gainesville, FL
June 19- Atlanta, GA
June 22- Asheville, NC
June 23- Chapel Hill, NC
June 26- Knoxville, TN
June 29- Norfolk, VA
June 30- Washington DC
June 18- Gainesville, FL
June 19- Atlanta, GA
June 22- Asheville, NC
June 23- Chapel Hill, NC
June 26- Knoxville, TN
June 29- Norfolk, VA
June 30- Washington DC
Stay Tuned for More Details!
Help get this Roadshow on the road: Donate Today!
90% of large fish in the oceans are gone, 98% of the old growth forests have been destroyed, as have 99% of native prairies. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, every river and stream in the United States is contaminated with carcinogens. 200 species go extinct every day. These are not just random statistics. They indicate a pattern of systematic violence carried out on a daily basis under the euphemism “progress”.
Meanwhile, 17% of the world’s population consumes 80% of the resources derived from this devastation. This is not an aberration, nor a mistake. Ultimately, the current system- an interlocking cage of liberal democracy, capitalism, patriarchy, and monotheism- thrives on the consolidation of wealth and the subjugation of the natural world.
Mainstream activists will tell you that individual consumer choices and legislative reform can correct these trends. But what do we see in reality? Every time progressive policy aimed at preserving the natural world or its inhabitants makes it onto the books, it is immediately attacked, subverted, or ignored by corporations that always seem to get their way in the long run. One would think that after 50 years of modern environmentalism things would be getting better. But the situation is worse, much worse.
And let’s be honest, if there were going to be a mainstream mass movement that had the power to actually alter this course, it would have come into being already. Do you see the dire nature of this predicament? Do you feel the crushing imperative to alter the destructive course of industrial civilization before it’s too late?
Deep Green Resistance presents A Culture of Resistance Roadshow, a traveling group of activists from the environmental and social justice organization Deep Green Resistance who will be touring the Southeast this June. We will be advocating a new strategy for resistance to the current political and social structures that are destroying the natural world. DGR recognizes that the current structure of society–industrial civilization–is fundamentally unsustainable, and that no degree of small scale remedial actions will stop the systematic destruction of the natural world. The Roadshow workshop will cover the inability of current efforts to truly address the fundamental contradictions of our modern struggles, and present concrete steps to an equitable, thriving future. This workshop is intended as a practical guide to effective activism, and will leave attendees feeling empowered to shift the course of history at this most critical juncture. There will be music, art, and informative presentations that will give activists the tools they need to make a difference in this struggle.
Join us in saying “No more ineffective activism!”
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There are all kinds of ways you can help making this Roadshow a success. Here are some ways you can get involved:
1. Busy? Tired? Got a lot on your plate, but want to help? Donate to the Roadshow fund!
2. Live in one of the cities we’re visiting, or along the route we will be taking? We are looking for places to stay at night during our travels!
3. Live in one of the cities we’re visiting, but don’t want random environmentalists crashing on your floor? We can always use help promoting! We have flyers and posters upon request, and there’s nothing like good old fashioned word of mouth to get the word out!
Have questions, or able to help? Drop us a line at: deepgreenresistance [at] riseup [dot] net
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Tour Dates and Venue Details
Miami, FL
Saturday, June 16 – Florida International University Room AC1-194 – 2pm
Location: FIU North Campus 3000 NE 151 St. Miami, FL
Gainesville, FL
Monday, June 18 – Civic Media Center – 3 pm
Location: 433 S. Main St Gainesville, FL – (352) 373-0010
Atlanta, GA
Tuesday, June 19 – The House on Ponce – 7 pm
Location: 368 Ponce de Leon Ave Atlanta, GA
Asheville, NC
Friday, June 22 – Firestorm Cafe and Books – 5 pm
Location: 48 Commerce St Asheville, NC – (828) 255-8115
Chapel Hill, NC
Saturday, June 23 – Internationalist Books and Community Center – 7 pm
405 W Franklin St Chapel Hill, NC – (919) 942-1740
Knoxville, TN
Tuesday, June 26 – The Birdhouse – 7:30 pm
800 N. 4th Knoxville, TN
Norfolk, VA
Friday, June 29
More details coming soon
Washington DC
Saturday, June 30 – Radical Space DC – 5 pm
Location: 5525 Illinois Ave Washington DC
More dates coming soon! Check back for updates.
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