Want to get involved with the Seattle chapter of Deep Green Resistance?
We focus on building a culture of resistance, fighting destructive projects and culture, and advocating for strategic resistance to industrial civilization.
The Seattle chapter is recruiting new members and allies in Seattle, Issaquah, Kent, Renton, Lynnwood, Federal Way, Tacoma, Kirkland, Shoreline, Bellevue, Monroe, and all surrounding regions.
An update for Secwepemc Women Warriors Against Imperial Metals at https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/fqBgb/fp/a2BcQb?feed=updates
On the 20th day after the Imperial Metals Mount Polley disaster and the 7th day of the sacred fire, camp members are treated to a very special feast. The day was spent preparing, feasting and reuniting with family and loved ones. Elder Jean Williams from Soda Creek brought a spring salmon from Nuxalk, potatoes and corn and proceeded to instruct camp members on the traditional way of cooking salmon. The food was cooked over a newly finished food pit and was more than enough for camp members and visitors.
Evelyn Camille, Gary Billy, Stewart Dick arrived in time to eat with us from Kamloops and Neskonlith. The meal was delicious and filled our bellies full. While we ate, we discussed with our new arrivals the information we had collected and made plans with them to move forward. We decided to announce a community feast for this Thursday and invite Likely residents as well as Secwepemc to gather around the fire to do the same thing we did today. We have fish and food to share.
We are gathering our data on the spill and after speaking with, among others, an environmental technician working at the lake, are anxious to release a report this week on all that we’ve learned.
“Tactics for what?
There’s been a lot of heated debate about “diversity of tactics,” particularly since Occupy.
How many blog inches have been devoted to arguing about whether it’s wrong or awesome (or varying degrees of okay in which particular circumstances) to break windows at a demonstration? How many conflicts among demonstrators have occurred between those who want to do it and those who want to prevent it from being done?
By itself, the question is useless.
Focusing on tactics misses the point. We can argue with each other for a million years whether property destruction is violence or not, whether voting is violence or not, and whether violence in the abstract is good, bad, or a necessary evil. But it is all empty debate if we avoid the main topic we should be discussing: what’s it for?
Action for action’s sake is a stupid waste of time and energy. Everything we do should fit into an overall plan. A tactic cannot be judged outside its context. It should be a manifestation of a political line, in harmony with a strategy that has consistency between its short-term and long-term aspects. It should serve a specific goal.
If you argue for a tactic, you should be able to explain how it gets us where we need to go. This shouldn’t be vague, but worked out as a rational theory. Only with that understanding can the actual employment of that tactic, and its results, be judged as effective (or not).”
The Deep Green Resistance News Service is the informational wing of Deep Green Resistance, and publishes original essays, videos, interviews, radio, and commentary as well as republishing notable news from other resistance and justice-oriented communities.
Follow the DGR News Service to stay updated on resistance to oppression around the world.
Freedom School is an amazing intensive training in anti-racism theory and practice that is put on several times each year by some friends of ours. Read more about Tyree Scott Freedom School here:
Two passionate environmentalists discuss the merits and issues of “Alternative Energy” technologies. They argue that it is not the path to a secure and sustainable future, that it threatens human rights, and that it is the wrong path for morally-conscious environmentalists.
Topics discussed include the alternative energy industry, community-scale implementation, environmental complications of alternative technologies, and more. This talk was given at PIELC (Public Interest Environmental Law Conference) in 2014 in Eugene, OR.
Editor’s Note: this article, by DGR member Will Falk, is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in a long while. Please, take the time to read this article and share it with your friends. Thank you.
– Max W (DGR Seattle)
By William Falk / Deep Green Resistance San Diego
It is long past time we honestly assessed our capacity for violence. Violence – unconscionable violence many seem unconscious of – rages on around us. I write “unconscionable” because what other word describes the images of Palestinian children on hospital beds with half their heads caved in? I write “unconscious” because how many of us actively sit in the despair these images produce?
Within violence there are two extremes: the decision to die and the decision to kill. The decision to die and the decision to kill can be as easy as deciding what to have for dinner. For the wolf, the decision to kill and the decision what to have for dinner are literally the same. For the moose hunted by the wolf, the decision to die becomes the decision to be dinner. For the moose, the decision to die means sacrificing her body to the sacred cycle so that life may continue.
It is becoming increasingly clear the dominant culture must be stopped. The more effective we become resisting, the more violence will be visited upon us. Will we be strong enough to decide to die for a better world? Will we be strong enough to decide to kill for a better world? If this sounds too extreme, then I ask you” what decisions were faced by Tecumseh, Nat Turner, Crazy Horse, Denmark Vesey, and Padráic Pearse when they picked up rifles and hatchets to meet bullets and swords?
***
I experienced the decision to die and the decision to kill simultaneously the two times I tried to commit suicide. I am compelled to write about my suicide attempts because in what was designed to produce my own death, I produced new life. And, in the process of healing, I see that I am privy to experiential wisdom that most never will be. I’m not saying that anyone should visit the dark places I have, but now that I have returned from those dark places I feel a responsibility to describe what I’ve seen.
Read the full article on the Deep Green Resistance Southwest website.
DGR Seattle supports and will continue to support the Unist’ot’en Camp through fundraisers, work details, media, and caravans to support the camp. Salute to these brave land defenders!
Please contact us if you are interested in supporting the Unist’ot’en Camp or participating in our solidarity campaigns.
The Seattle chapter of Deep Green Resistance is just getting started. Get in contact with us if you want to get involved in our work.
Activists blockade the road to Mauna Kea in October 2014.
This comes from our friend Anne Keala Kelly, an award-wining native Hawaiian journalist and activist whose previous film, Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i is a powerful indictment of American settler-colonialism in the Hawaiian islands.
Mauna Kea is majestic. Environmentally, it’s one of the most extraordinary places on earth. Located on Hawai’i Island in the middle of the Pacific, with an above sea elevation of 13,800 feet, when measured from its base beneath the ocean it’s more than 33,000 feet high. It is the tallest mountain in the world. It’s also a target for a form of exploitation that threatens the island’s ecosystem and the cultural, spiritual and religious survival of the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians).
“Why The Mountain” will be a 30-minute documentary film that explores why Hawaiians and environmentalists oppose the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), and why the astronomy industry is determined to construct this 18 ½ – story building on Mauna Kea.
Environmentalists argue that because the largest fresh water aquifer for Hawai’i Island is on Mauna Kea, the potential for irreversible harm is too high a price to pay. They say to build a football stadium size structure and its accompanying 5,000-gallon container for hazardous chemical waste, is an unnecessary risk. And given the toxic chemicals in use by the 13 telescopes already on the summit, the TMT increases the threat to the watershed and endangered and threatened species’ habitats.
But for Hawaiians, what began as an agreement to allow one telescope on Mauna Kea over 40 years ago has turned into a generational struggle to protect the mountain from further harm and desecration. Traditionally, the Hawaiian people have regarded the summit as sacred. Now it’s also a symbol of cultural erasure and the ongoing assault on Hawaiian spiritual and religious practices, and rights to self-determination.
Read more about the issue and follow the progress of this project on the film blog.
Get involved in local resistance efforts, such as Deep Green Resistance Hawai’i.
