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First of all I'd just like to thank everyone for coming. It's good to see this many people.
My name is Dillon and this is Sam and we are both staff members of Deep Green Resistance.
We are here to talk to you a little bit about our strategy and some of our analysis.
We do have a table out on the main thoroughfare so if you are interested in what you hear
and want to learn more, someone should be out there afterward.
So we hope you enjoy. We'd also like to thank the organizers of PIELC--
[audience member:] Could you talk a little louder please? [Dillon:] Sure.
So first of all I want to talk a little bit about why we're here
and why we're part of Deep Green Resistance.
This book, “Silent Spring” written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962
is generally credited with being the kick-off point of the modern environmental movement.
What this means is that there has been a modern environmental movement in this country for over 50 years.
Over half a century of modern environmentalism.
And yet...and yet every living system on the planet is in decline, and the rate of the decline is accelerating
and their has not been a single peer reviewed scientific article that has been published in the past 30 years
that contradicts that statement.
With each day that passes the world is in worse shape.
Migratory song bird populations are collapsing, fish populations are collapsing, mollusk populations,
amphibian population, insect populations.
55,000 is the average number of species, of entire species, that we are losing every year.
And when's the last time we saw a scientific report that said climatologists have overestimated the trajectory of climate change?
When's the last time we heard about an international climate conference
that was anything other than a complete failure in altering that trajectory?
Climate change is continuing on its course, the earth descending into a bone-wrenching fever,
and scientists are continually surprised by the discovery of unforeseen feedback loops,
or some new piece of evidence that turns what used to be the worst case, an extreme prediction, into the more conservative.
The Global Humanitarian Forum recently put out a prediction that by 2030,
100,000,000 people could be dying as a direct result of climate change.
And that's based on how many are currently dying, which is about 300,000.
In January I came across a Cornell Research Survey that found that water, air, and soil pollution
account for 40% of human deaths worldwide. 40%. That's a staggering number.
So if the modern environmental movement's failure to address climate change and other forms of ecological destruction
isn't an indication that we desperately need some new strategy, then what is?
In all seriousness, when is it that we will admit to ourselves that we are actually living in the midst of nothing short of apocalypse?
More than 90% of the large fish in the ocean are gone.
97% of the world's native forests are gone.
98% of the world's native grasslands are gone.
Do we wait until these numbers reach 100%?
When do we declare a state of emergency and then act accordingly?
Almost every river in the world has been dammed or diverted.
Entire mountaintops are still being blown off.
Pit mines are still being ripped open.
And Mordor of the North, also known as the Alberta tar sands, the beast that never sleeps. [Audience members laugh]
Our question is, “What is your threshold for fighting back?”
Everyday we wake up, we wake up to a world with sweatshops, rampant poverty, starvation, slavery,
wage economies that make slaves of us all, an entire culture of *** and *** assault,
and of course, the increasing rates of cancer, and diabetes, anxiety, depression, and suicide, and so on.
Any way you want to slice it, this culture we're living in is sick and it's making the earth sick.
And you can see it whether you're looking at the satellite images that show the planet's surface being covered by less and less forest and more and more concrete,
or from our perspective here on the ground as we watch ourselves and those around us being poisoned or driven insane.
The understanding that the earth is sick is pretty much our central understanding as Deep Green Resistance
and the direction we've chosen is based on the knowledge that if we don't do everything we can
to stop the spreading of this disease-like culture, it's highly possible that this planet could be
rendered uninhabitable for most if not all forms of life.
If our own bodies, which have been patterned by the earth itself can get sick and die,
we think it is a mistake to assume that that is impossible for the earth.
Which is why we are hesitant to accept the tag line of this year's PIELC conference,
“The Earth is Too Big to Fail”. [Audience members indicate agreement]
We're not so sure that's the case and we're not willing to take that risk. [More audience members indicate agreement].
So with that, Sam's going to jump into a bit of our analysis.
As members of Deep Green Resistance we often refer to ourselves as radicals.
Unfortunately in today's political climate that term has become pretty stigmatized and convoluted. So I want to redefine that term based off the etymology of that word.
If we look at that etymology then we'll find that it comes from the Latin word “radix” which mean root.
So when we describe ourselves as radicals what we actually mean is that we are trying to get to the root of the issues
that we now face today or address the fundamental cause of all of these problems.
This chart does a really good job of contrasting Radicals with the other side of the political left, Liberals.
The reason why I think it's important to do this is because the vast majority of contemporary activism
and contemporary ideas, have been pushed by this liberal ideology.
I think that's why, WE think that's why, a lot of contemporary activism has failed.
Looking at this chart the first major difference here between liberals and radicals
is in their conception of the basic unit of society.
On the one side, liberals believe that society is made up of individuals
who are mostly autonomous and self-willed and wholly unique.
So therefore a lot of activism, a lot of liberal activism, is focused on changing individual minds
and changing individual actions, or convincing each of us that we need to change our own minds to change the world.
One thing that came out of this is the “go green” movement,
which stresses green consumer choices, and personal lifestyle changes.
On the radical side of the spectrum we understand that society is actually made up of classes, groups, or castes.
For radicals we want to make common cause with others who share our condition.
That's the first step towards creating a political consciousness and having effective political action.
Our activism, as radicals, is focused on making common cause with others,
and targeting institutions, because we know that it's not individuals who are doing the destruction, it's systems.
The second major difference here between liberals and radicals is about the question of the nature of social reality.
In this realm liberalism is pretty idealist. It believes that social reality or reality is mostly constituted of ideas or concepts.
Again, a lot of liberal activism then is focused on changing minds or people's perceptions of the world.
And so [liberals] spend a lot of time trying to convince people to remove hate from their hearts,
or to just internalize that climate change is a real thing, thinking that if enough minds are changed
then that will be enough to alter the current trajectory.
Radicals fall on the side of materialism here.
We recognize that society is organized by concrete systems of power, not just thoughts and ideas.
So these concrete systems of power actually give birth to thoughts and ideas.
Those are the fundamental structures.
In other words, there are physical institutions, with names and addresses that are doing the destruction here.
If we want to address the current environmental crisis we have to target those institutions, not just our mindsets about them.
Changing our minds isn't going to stop the destruction.
Without this solid analysis of the materialism of social reality, liberals often fall into the trap of naturalism or voluntarism.
Basically what this means is that if you can't see the physical barriers
that are keeping the marginalized classes in their place, then oppression can just look like it's natural or voluntary.
A really good example is from Marilyn Frye and she talks about a bird cage, a bird in a cage.
If you can't see the physical bars that are keeping the bird in the cage then you might ask,
“Why is that bird staying in there?”
And you might say “Maybe it's just naturally in that cage.”
“Maybe that species of bird is just born into cages and lives its life that way.”
“And if not, that then maybe it's there voluntarily there, maybe it likes it there, maybe it wants to be there.”
For liberals who can't see that oppression carries material restraints,
from a greater difficulty of getting a job, to a harder time earning a living wage,
to actually the threat of physical violence in your life,
then they might consider oppressed classes as either naturally subordinate or voluntarily so.
We can see this sentiment playing out in the good old American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality,
which is often used as a tool against the poor and destitute to tell them,
“they just need to try a little harder and they can raise above their circumstances”.
The same mentality is used in the victim blaming which is often the response to the victims of *** and *** assault.
When people say “you shouldn't have been dressing like that” or “you might have been asking for it.”
As radicals we know that these are all just justifications for oppression.
We realize that oppression is not natural and it's certainly not voluntary
but it's the result of an unjust political arrangement of power which we think can be changed.
The final major difference here between liberals and radicals is in their approaches to justice.
On the liberal side social justice activism is often focused on abstract principles or ideals.
The logical conclusion of this is that once again material circumstances are erased in exchange for loyalty to these abstracts ideals.
We can see this at work when hate groups are allowed to organize legally under the banner of Freedom of Speech
which somehow outweighs the material facts of what these hate groups do to real humans.
We can see the same thing happening when ***, which brutalizes women, is allowed to actively be on the internet because it is under the banner of Freedom of Expression or an ultimate fear of censorship under the capitalist system.
Which again, somehow outweighs the material effects of eroticizing violence against women.
As radicals we know that instituting abstract moral principles without consideration for material circumstances
is a tactic which only works in the interest of those in power.
And we'd rather see material equality and a real redistribution of power.
So our basic point here today is that the vast majority of contemporary activism
has fallen under this liberal banner which is why, I think, we are losing today.
When we think about tactics it's important to note that no tactic is definitively liberal or radical unto itself.
What makes a tactic liberal or radical is how it's used and if it's tied into a larger strategy or a larger resistance movement.
So tactics can oftentimes overlap in ways that are really crucial and essential,
but the best kind of resistance movement functions where tactics aren't just working for themselves,
but where they're bolstering each other.
This chart describes the basic structure of any effective campaign or resistance movement.
In any campaign or resistance movement you have 3 categories that tactics can fall into
if they are going to be radical, if they are going to support each other.
The first one here is “sustaining”. Sustaining tactics directly assist or support those who are carrying out decisive actions.
So those are things like prisoner support, safe-houses, material support like raising money, and raising food for active resistors.
And then we have “shaping operations”, which are more indirect. They just help create the conditions necessary for success.
These would be more things like education, propaganda, or just generally trying to build an oppositional culture that's right for resistance.
For instance one of our functions as DGR, as an aboveground organization,
is to contribute to a culture that supports or normalizes resistance in the name of environmental and social justice.
So that's a shaping action.
Finally we have decisive actions which are pretty self-explanatory;
those are the actions which directly accomplish an objective at hand.
These could be anything from effective legislation, to community building a defense, to sabotage.
Basically, where a tactic falls depends on the strategic goal at hand.
If my strategic goal is to be self-sufficient then planting a garden would be a decisive tactic, right?
Because that is achieving my goal directly.
But if my strategic goal is to stop the destruction of the living earth,
which means stopping industrial infrastructure, then planning a garden is more like a sustaining action.
It would create food for resistors.
It is all about what our goal is here and thinking about our tactics in terms of those goals.
Now we are going to look at some specific examples of tactics that have been used in the environmental movement.
And we're gonna try to keep in mind that liberal/radical analysis
because we're going to see how a lot of those tactics have been used in pretty liberal ways
but also try and create a pathway or strategy for how they can be used in more radical ways in the future.
The first thing we are going to talk about is lifestyle choices
and this has been a really big thing in the contemporary environmental movement.
In it's most popular form, lifestyle choices have come in the form of individual lifestyle choices
or mostly individual-centric.
I talked a little bit about that with the liberal/radical analysis
but the most prominent brand of personal lifestyle choice activism is consumer choice based.
Do any of these look familiar to people?
[Audience members indicate agreement]
[Sam:] I thought so. This green-consumer movement has hijacked a measurable chunk of contemporary activism.
It has basically redirected all of our energy from making real change to buying “green products”
like post-consumer toilet paper, or hemp bags.
In less noticeably ridiculous personal lifestyle activism, individuals are encouraged
to bring down their personal carbon footprints and make that really the focal point of their activism.
Under this banner we see tactics like taking shorter showers, consuming less, wasting less, riding bicycles and gardening.
The idea here is basically to cleanse oneself of participation in the ongoing violence that is this culture
and to somehow wield political change in doing that.
The logical conclusion of this kind of personal lifestyle choice activism is withdrawal
or the complete removal of oneself from an oppressive system.
I think it is important to say that there is nothing wrong with trying to live more simply or with less of an impact.
In fact the impulse to not participate in this ongoing destruction is quite noble and it's absolutely commendable.
Personally, in my personal life, I ride my bicycle as much as I can, I recycle, I waste as little as I can,
but I know that as I do these things destruction continues to happen on an industrial scale every single day.
There are a few big fallacies that are perpetuated by this personal lifestyle choice movement that I think are worth addressing.
The first one is that personal sustainability will become a mass movement.
As Dillon said the current environmental movement has been around for roughly half a century now,
and we still have yet to see a majority of recyclers,
let alone a majority of people who are willing to drastically alter their lives to become more sustainable.
In other words, this kind of mass environmental movement that many people are pushing for is completely unprecedented.
And how long are we going to wait for that to happen?
The second major fallacy here is built off the first one.
So if personal sustainability DID become a mass movement, then it would result in a sustainable society.
The big thing here is that it's not the products of industrial production which are the central problem here.
It's the industrial production process itself. There is no such thing as sustainable industry.
So consider this, if you think there is: the biggest polluter in the city of Portland is this company called Sapa,
which is an aluminum production company which mainly focuses on the production of bicycles.
[Audience laughs]
While one bicycle might seem like a revolution
the industrial production of thousands of bicycles looks more like 995,962 pounds of sulfuric acid pouring into the air.
Not exactly revolutionary.
In the same vein, a lot of people who tout green consumer choices
put a lot of faith in this “green energy” solutions or alternatives to fossil fuels.
I think that calling these things “green” is irresponsible.
What many people who push for solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal or the vast array of other solutions
don't talk about, is that clean energy requires the industrial extraction of rare earth metals
and industrial manufacturing infrastructure, and industrial transportation infrastructure.
Not to mention these “green energy” solutions are inconsistent and unpredictable
and still require the maintenance of fossil fuel based plats to back them up.
So given these facts it should probably suffice to say that these so called “green” solutions are neither green nor are they true solutions.
If you don't believe me maybe you can ask the researchers from Bangor University
who recently found that the creation of oil palm plantations for biofuel are actually releasing prehistoric supplies of carbon dioxide
and inadvertently accelerating the rate of climate change.
Or maybe you can ask the indigenous people in Mexico who are protesting the development of wind farms
which will destroy the aquatic habitat that they depend on for survival.
And then there's the people of Baotou, Mongolia whose crops are failing
because of the radioactive pollution seeping out of tailing ponds by factories
which produce the rare earth metals necessary for solar panels and electric cars.
And then, of course, there's Kari-Oca Declaration signed by 500 indigenous people in Brazil
exposing the so-called “green economy” as unsustainable and declaring resistance to it.
[Audience member applaud and whistle in support]
[Sam:] My point here is that we have to realize that there is no clean, green way to maintaining this way of life.
If we want future generations to live on a living planet
we are gonna have to drastically change the fundamental structure of this society.
So the 3rd, and I'm sure not the final fallacy that's perpetuated by the personal lifestyle choice movement,
is that individuals are primarily responsible for the destruction happening to this planet.
If we remember the liberal/radical chart
then maybe we'll remember that thinking that individuals are the main focal point of social change
falls pretty squarely on the liberal side.
As radicals we know that destruction isn't just a pastime taken up by individuals, but it's institutionalized.
This is something that's systemic.
The attention to the individual over these institutions is a misplacement of blame
from those that are truly responsible to you and I.
And if you think that changing our own lives is going to fix these systemic problems, then I ask you to consider these facts:
More than 90% of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry.
Individual consumption is never more than a quarter of total consumption.
And municipal waste, or waste produced by individuals and small businesses,
accounts for only 3% of the total waste produced by the United States.
So given these facts it should be pretty clear that we can't solve the current water crisis
by taking shorter showers and we can't meaningfully reduce waste output by riding bicycles or recycling.
Even if everyone participates in this, which is something we don't expect to happen,
we are not going to make a dent in the kinds of problems that we now face.
So it should suffice to say that the logic behind personal lifestyle choices has a bit more holes than Swiss cheese.
But not all lifestyle activism is ineffective.
The main difference between effective lifestyle activism and ineffective lifestyle activism
is if lifestyle activism is seen as a strategy taken up by individuals
or if it's a strategy taken up by groups who can wield their power to make political change.
So while individual lifestyle choices are absolutely liberal,
lifestyle changes can become radical if they are used as a tool,
taken up by communities for targeting specific economic, political, and social institutions.
A really good example of effective withdrawal tactics or effective lifestyle choice tactics
is in the American Revolution, believe it or not.
In the American Revolution colonists' strategy included economic withdrawal.
So boycotting things like tea to wool.
Political withdrawal, in the form of building colonial court systems, and state and colony-wide governance.
And on a different level they withdrew their allegiances from the British crown and put it in other fellow American resistors.
So all of these different kinds of lifestyle choice withdrawals came together in a culture of resistance that actually won.
Withdrawalist communities, or communities that live off of the map or outside of normal society's grip,
can also be radical and be support for resistors who are engaged in more direct forms of resistance.
So this is a picture of the Zapatista movement. They had a withdrawalist community.
They were food self-sufficient, they had their own schools. This was radical withdrawal at its best.
And then there's also the Quakers who have historically used their withdrawalist communities
to house active resistors like the abolitionists.
The moral of the story with lifestyle activism here, fundamentally, is that we need to stop acting like individual resistors
and start acting like a resistance movement.
[Audience indicates agreement]