The Girls and The Grasses

Donate here: https://givebutter.com/girlsandgrasses

Global warming. Biodiversity collapse. Rampant inequality, war, and sexual abuse. The problems we face today are overwhelming and getting worse.

Eco-feminism has answers. From the philosophy of domination to the practicalities of overpopulation, there are links between the oppression of women and the destruction of the planet. Those links can be used to harm, as we see today. But they can also be used to heal. Women from Rachel Carson to Vandana Shiva have recognized this.

On November 20th, we hosted this exporation of eco-feminism with a special 3-hour live streaming event, The Girls and the Grasses. We discussed ecofeminism, why it is important, and how it will save the planet. We also discussed the role women play in the environmental movement and heard from women on the front lines of resistance to ecocide.

The mainstream environmental movement is funded mainly by foundations which often do not support foundational or revolutionary change. Radical organizations like Deep Green Resistance therefore rely on individual donors to support our activism around the world, which is why The Girls and the Grasses is also a fundraiser. We’re trying to raise funds to support global community organizing, fund our mutual aid and direct action campaigns, and sustain our core outreach and organizational work.

Feminism is an environmental issue, and environmental destruction is a feminist issue. So whether or not you are in a financial position to donate, we hope you will enjoy this special event!

— The name for this event comes from an essay with the same title by Lierre Keith. —

Posted in Movement Building & Support, Women & Radical Feminism | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Activists Occupy Site of Proposed Mine That Would Provide 25% of World’s Lithium Supply

For Immediate Release

Contact:   

Max Wilbert and Will Falk via our Contact Form

Activists Occupy Site of Proposed Mine That Would Provide 25% of World’s Lithium Supply

Lithium is the miracle element powering your smartphone and under the hood of every electric car. But will batteries save the planet or cause more harm? The controversy is heating up in Nevada.

RENO, Nevada — Activists aiming to stop an open-pit lithium mine launched a permanent protest encampment last Friday. They invite supporters to join them.

Despite winter conditions at Thacker Pass, the site of the proposed $1.3 billion Lithium Americas mine, protestors have erected tents, a wood stove, and protest signs. Lawyer Will Falk, who is on site, says they mean to stay for as long as it takes to protect this old-growth sagebrush mountainside.

“Environmentalists might be confused about why we want to interfere with the production of electric car batteries,” says Falk. “But, it’s wrong to destroy a mountain for any reason – whether the reason is fossil fuels or lithium.”

Activists are prepared to remain in place and block all construction, mining, and road-building activities until Lithium Americas abandons their plan to destroy Thacker Pass. They are demanding:

  • The establishment of a protected area at Thacker Pass preserved for the enjoyment of future generations, for wildlife including the Kings River pyrg, and for water quality;
  • An immediate abandonment of the Thacker Pass lithium mine project by Lithium Americas corporation; and
  • A sincere apology from Lithium Americas Corporation for claiming that Thacker Pass is a “green” project.

The Thacker Pass mine proposal, located roughly 130 miles northeast of Reno, is one of a handful of large mining and energy projects fast-tracked by the outgoing Trump administration in what a December article in the New York Times called an “intense push” to “find ways to increase domestic energy and mining production.”

Though Lithium Americas claims they “strive to build a business where the well-being of the local community is essential to its success,” this fast-tracking comes despite objections from local residents, ranchers, and environmental groups, who are concerned about project impacts on wildlife and rural quality of life.

Project documents detail potential harm to many species.

  • The threatened Greater sage grouse, whose populations have been reduced by between 97% and 99% from historic levels, and for whom the Thacker Pass area represents the best remaining habitat in Nevada. Thacker Pass is located in the Lone Willow population management unit, which is home to between 5 and 8% of the entire global population. This project would sever a key connectivity corridor between portions of the habitat;
  • Lahontan cutthroat trout, a federally “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act which exists in only a small fraction of its historic range, including the Quinn River basin downstream of Thacker Pass;
  • Pronghorn antelope, whose migration routes would be severed by the mine; and
  • A critically imperiled endemic snail species known as the Kings River pyrg that is known to reside in only 13 isolated springs. According to one group of scientists, “the Thacker Pass Project area might contain the entire known population of Kings River pyrg, thereby putting the species at risk of extinction.

Other species who will be harmed by the project include Burrowing owls, Golden eagles, several bat species, native bees and other pollinators, Crosby’s Buckwheat, and rare old-growth big sagebrush. Impacts on the community include increases in heavy truck traffic, noise and light pollution, air quality issues, and reductions in the water table.

Lithium Americas has already built roads, drilled boreholes, constructed a weather station, and dug a 2-acre test pit. They plan to build large tailing ponds for toxic mine waste, drill new wells, build a sulfuric acid processing plant, import more than 170 semi-loads of sulfur (a byproduct from oil refineries) per day, pump 850 million gallons of water annually, and dig an open pit of more than 2 square miles into the pristine Thacker Pass mountainside.

Despite claims this will be a “carbon neutral” mine, the project will burn some 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day.

The encampment went into place on Friday, the same day the Bureau of Land Management handed down the permit for the mine. For now it is home to only a few people. But Max Wilbert, another organizer of the protest and author of Bright Green Lies, a book looking at the environmental harms of renewable energy projects, expects that more people will come as the weather improves.

“Many see Nevada as a wasteland,” Wilbert says. “But in truth it’s one of the last wild places left. Where else can you find silence, clean air, starry nights, and solitude? As soon as people spend time in these wild lands, they fall in love with them, and want to protect them.”

Join the Occupation

For more information, to support the campaign, or to join the occupation, visit www.ProtectThackerPass.org. Feel free to reproduce this press release in your publication.

Posted in Mining & Drilling | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Drawing The Line: Stopping the Murder of the Planet

Thank you to everyone who watched #DrawingTheLine yesterday! The event was a success thanks to our donors, supporters, volunteers, and friends. The video is now live on Facebook and YouTube for viewing, and we’re asking for more support!

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=788240121908598&ref=watch_permalink

YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiUb2VmHsIM

DONATE: https://givebutter.com/deepgreen

PHOTO: Black bear mama and cubs, taken by Derrick Jensen.

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Resistance Profile: Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND)

Editors note: this material is excerpted from a Deep Green Resistance  database called “Resistance Profiles,” which explores various movements, their strategies and tactics, and their effectiveness. Image credit: public domain.

Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND)

  • Active: 2005 – 2013
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Type: Underground Resistance Movement
  • Success: Medium

Goal

Majority or total control of oil production/revenues in the Niger Delta (for the Ogoni people) and withdrawal of the Nigerian military from the Niger Delta.

Strategy

Totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil in the Niger Delta, force the multinational oil companies to discontinue operations, and likely precipitate a nationwide budgetary and economic crisis.

Tactics

  • sabotage of oil infrastructure
  • bombing near military, government or oil industry infrastructure or buildings
  • theft
  • guerrilla warfare
  • kidnapping of foreign oil workers for ransom (MEND has a very good record of returning them unharmed)

MEND uses speed boats in swarm-based maneuvers to quickly attack targets in succession. Multiple highly maneuverable, well trained and armed units have kept the government and Shell’s defensive systems off-balance defending their sprawling networks (1,000 oil wells, 6,000 km of pipeline over 70,000 square miles).

Very effective use of system disruption: targets have been systematically and accurately selected to completely shut down production and delay and/or halt repairs.

Organization

MEND, an umbrella organization, has evolved into a conglomeration of distinct militant groups with constantly shifting alliances and loyalties. Command and control is believed to be hierarchical. Leaders are frequently deposed or replaced by rivals, due to internal conflicts over proceeds from criminal and political activities, and due to Ijaw tradition of choosing tribal leaders on a rotational basis

Above/Underground

Underground cells with a few spokesmen that communicate with the international media

Security

Leaders are always on the move and extremely cautious. They do not take telephone calls personally, knowing that soldiers hunting for them have electronic devices capable of pinpointing mobile phone signals. During raids, fighters wear masks to protect their identity. All communication with the media is conducted using aliases. MEND does not reveal identities of its rank and file and conducts all recruiting clandestinely. The fluid and contradictory organization structure may or may not be by design but is very effective at obscuring the leadership and increasing the operational security of key individuals

Recruitment

Draws its fighters from communities across the delta: ethnic militias in the west and from cults (criminal gangs) in the east

Effectiveness

Has not yet achieved its goal, but its strategy and tactics have been effective, resulting in a cut of more than 28 percent of Nigeria’s oil output from 2006 to 2009. In August 2009, the government offered a 60 day amnesty: militants who handed in their weapons were pardoned for their crimes, given job training and were paid US $410 per month until they found work. But the ceasefire and amnesty ended in December when MEND attacked a Shell/Chevron pipeline amidst questions about President Yar’ Adua’s health and impatience with the slow pace of job growth.

Further learning

Articles

Posted in Defensive Violence, Property & Material Destruction, Reclamation & Expropriation | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Report says Seattle has highest number of murdered Native American women

The CDC says native women have up to a 10 times higher rate of experiencing violence on reservations but until UIHI’s report there was little data of urban living which accounts for the majority of the native population. The group says 71% of Native American live in urban cores across America.

“In Washington State and Seattle in particular had some of the highest rates of missing and murdered indigenous woman in the 71 cities in which we looked.”

Full story here

Report says Seattle has highest number of murdered Native American women

Posted in Colonialism & Conquest, Male Violence | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wasting time on bandaids in an insane system

recent article in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound describes legislation to make shipping fossil fuels through the Salish Sea safer.

It’s all about tug boats and the speed of ships and modeling risk.

At no point in the discussion–either in the article, or in the legislature–is there any mention of whether it is sane or just to be shipping any fossil fuels through the Salish Sea, given the catastrophic devastation that would occur if there is a major spill, and given the catastrophic devastation that will occur when those fossil fuels are burned or turned into plastic.

It’s like the doctors in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany who helped sick prisoners by sneaking them an extra piece of bread, or keeping them in the sick ward just an extra day or two to let them rest. These doctors did what they could to alleviate the suffering, but at no time did they question the sanity of the system–the concentration camps themselves.

We who wish for no fossil fuel shipments at all are not the crazy ones. It is the system that is insane. It is the system that must be stopped. Until we stop the system, we are simply putting a bandaid on a wound, while enabling an insane system to continue killing everything around us.

We spend a lot of time and energy on bandaids. We could and should be spending that time and energy stopping the system instead.

***

In 2018 there were about 10,000 vessel transits (to and fro) through the Salish Sea including tank barges, cargo and passenger ships, articulated barges, and tanker ships.

This is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years with container and grain ships, additional oil tankers, Xylene tankers, and an unknown number of ships associated with 12 LNG projects around the Salish Sea currently under development.

In 2016, a total of 450 million barrels of oil were shipped by ship, rail, and pipeline through Washington State and the Salish Sea.

1 barrel = 42 US gallons

Posted in The Problem: Civilization, Toxification | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Seattle: A City on the Cutting Edge of Empire

Seattle is the “cutting edge” of hyper-modern industrially-outsourced capitalism.

This is why, despite having the most progressive city government of any big city in the country, Seattle has been unable to address a crisis of homelessness or pass taxes on big corporations. The liberal, progressive culture of Seattle will never provide real solutions to the problems of capitalism and industrial civilization.

Despite any claims to the contrary, Seattle is an oligarchy run by the rich, for the rich. The city was created as an imperial outpost of a society hellbent on logging all the old growth forest and stealing all the land from the indigenous inhabitants. Today, it has morphed from primarily a lumber and salmon extraction site to a central managerial site for global techno-capitalism.

The psychology of an exploitative colonial state is reflected in Seattle’s dominant news organizations.

The Seattle Times is a deeply conservative paper with entrenched business-friendly views. Like any other major news source in the country, the Times covers local corporations, war, poverty, and other topics from, at “best,” a centrist liberal perspective. They never critique capitalism and they never dig to the root of problems. The vast majority of their content consists of bourgeois trifles. The Times is a paper of and for business.

The Stranger, Seattle’s bi-weekly free newspaper, is a case study in the rise of neoliberal, post-modern culture. For decades, The Stranger has been defined by page after page of “sex industry” ads, advertising strip clubs, sex chat, and more (this weeks issue, page 17, contains this choice ad: “Sex offender registration got your down? We might be able to help you remove that requirement”).

Over the past decade, this type of content has migrated from the back pages to the front. Over the same time frame, The Stranger has also launched it’s own amateur porn festival (“Hump”).

The Stranger personifies the post-modern “sex-positive” culture, which has been driven by a multi-billion dollar corporate porn industry and a complete inability to engage with the realities of sexual exploitation. Instead of grappling with the commodification of patriarchal sexuality represented by mainstream porn, The Stranger has chosen to simply stick its head in the sand and instead promote imaginary “feminist porn.”

Originally, this article was going to recommend Real Change, the newspaper distributed by homeless people around Seattle, as an alternative to The Stranger and The Times. While not explicitly an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist publication, Real Change covers local news with a much more serious lens than either The Stranger or The Seattle Times.

However, even Real Change falls prey to the neoliberal thinking that typifies Seattle. The latest issue (March 6-12, 2019) includes an article titled “Disputed Awareness: Anti-trafficking campaigns miss the mark, sex workers say.” The article highlights the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), an organization founded by Robyn Few who was federally charged in 2002 for promoting prostitution across state lines.

As one formerly prostituted woman described, “that’s pimp shit.” Radicals have been opposed to prostitution for hundreds of years because, as an industry, it exploits primarily women and girls and because it promotes the idea that bodies can be bought and sold. Even Marx and Engels, writing in the Communist Manifesto nearly 175 years ago, said that “It is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.”

The relationship between the destruction of the planet, patriarchy, and the exploitation of women in prostitution has long been established. Shiela Jeffries, in her book The Industrial Vagina, writes that “as foreign mining and logging companies open up new areas for new forms of colonial exploitation they set up prostitution industries to service the workers. These industries have a profound effect on local cultures and relations between men and women.”

We can do better than this. As the world is torn by climate chaos, capitalist wars, proto-fascist terrorism, blatant and widely accepted racism (as long as the emoji are multi-racial, nobody seems willing to confront capitalism’s fundamental racism), increasing inequality, ecosphere collapse, and hyper-normalized patriarchy and objectification, Seattle deserves news sources that tell the truth.

Deep Green Resistance Seattle aims to tell the truth, but our ability to cover major issues is hampered by our small numbers and lack of funding. If you are interested in getting involved in this organization for the purposes of providing an alternative to these media failures, or to support our work, please contact us.

Posted in Repression at Home, Strategy & Analysis, The Problem: Civilization, Women & Radical Feminism | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Porn, Trafficking and the Social Construction of Masculinity

Posted in Male Supremacy, Pornography, Prostitution, Rape Culture | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Arundhati Roy on Armed Struggle vs. Passive Resistance

“Fighting people will choose their own weapons. For me, the question of armed struggle versus passive resistance is a tactical one, not an ideological one. For example, how do indigenous people who live deep inside the forest passively resist armed vigilantes and thousands of paramilitary forces who surround their villages at night and burn them to the ground? Passive resistance is political theater. It requires a sympathetic audience. There isn’t one inside the forest. And how do starving people go on a hunger strike?

In certain situations, preaching nonviolence can be a kind of violence. Also, it is the kind of terminology that dovetails beautifully with the “human rights” discourse in which, from an exalted position of faux neutrality, politics, morality, and justice can be airbrushed out of the picture, all parties can be declared human rights offenders, and the status quo can be maintained.”

– Arundhati Roy, via https://bostonreview.net/global-justice/arundhati-roy-thinking-about-empire

Posted in Strategy & Analysis | 1 Comment

The Erasure of Reality

Here at Deep Green Resistance, we have been censured and attacked for believing that women are female and men are male. The fact that disagreeing with basic biology, millions of years of human evolution, and our own lived experience is politically dangerous is reflective of what our society has come to. It is not considered acceptable to go against mainstream dogma. And currently, mainstream dogma is erasing the entire concept of woman, in favor of amorphous “self-definition” which could harm or eliminate every single sex-based protection women have fought for.

We are a holistic organization. We see the inherent connections between the oppression of women, racism, and the destruction of the planet. These systems of power are all interlinked. It is no surprise that in late capitalism, basic realities of human existence are being dismantled. We live in a “post truth” era that is distinctly Orwellian.

In the face of this, we must be relentless truth tellers. We call males males. We call green technology bullshit. We call this culture one of colonialism and imperialism. We call this “democracy” bankrupt. And we have a plan to dismantle the bloated power of this society.

Posted in Male Supremacy | Tagged | 1 Comment