There is a clear case to be made for the connection between ecology
and anarchism.1 Many philosophers, academics, and radicals have
elaborated this over the past two centuries2. But reviewing the history
of this theoretical relationship is not the goal here. The movement
surrounding anarchism in the past 200 years has certainly included its
fair share of theory, yet what has rooted anarchist ideas so deeply in
human society is the prioritization of action. It is this action-based
relationship between the ecological movement and anarchism that we
explore.
How has anarchism inspired and shaped ecological action in recent
history, and how might it continue to? The experience of Earth First!
over three-and-a-half decades embodies the most critical aspects of this
question.
While Earth First! (EF!) has never considered itself to be explicitly
anarchist, it has always had a connection to the antiauthoritarian
counterculture and has operated in an anarchistic fashion since its
inception3. In doing so, it has arguably maintained one of the most
consistent and long-running networks for activists and revolutionaries
of an anarchist persuasion with the broader goal of overturning all
socially constructed hierarchies.
In Oppose and Propose: Lessons From Movement for a New Society, which
covers an under-acknowledged antiauthoritarian history, author Andrew
Cornell makes a case about MNS carrying the legacy of nonhierarchical
radical activism from the civil rights and anti-war era of the ’60s into
the anti-nuke era of the ’80s. Cornell points to MNS essentially
carrying the torch just long enough to spark what would become the
global justice movement of the late ’90s.
A similar case can be made for Earth First!, particularly within the
decade between the formal end of MNS and the 1999 uprising against the
World Trade Organization in the streets of Seattle. Except rather than
formally calling it quits, as MNS did in ’89, EF! stuck around,
stumbling through several waves of internal strife and state repression
to continue into its 35th year as a decentralized,
horizontally-organized, anticapitalist, antistate force to be reckoned
with.4
As many anarchist-oriented projects come and go, it is worthwhile to
explore how and why those efforts that persist over decades are able to
do so. Even more importantly, in this time of global urgency surrounding
an escalation of overlapping ecological crises (extinction, extraction,
climate change, etc.), and the recuperation of environmentalism by a
“green” industrial economy, the story of Earth First!—for all its
imperfections and baggage—has crucial lessons for ecological
revolutionaries.
When Earth First! had its first peak of notoriety in the mid-to-late
’80s, it was swarmed by academics and journalists looking to study its
motivations, culture and worldview. Countless research papers and
several books surfaced to explore the movement from its infancy to its
initial split. The split, as it has thus-far been presented in the vast
majority of the published history, was between the original
narrowly-focused faction advocating explicitly for wilderness
protection, and an opposing faction oriented towards a broader analysis
focused on challenging the capitalist system along with its pillars of
patriarchy, racism and other forms of domination.
While the latter faction got tagged with the label of being “the
anarchists,” there are plenty of examples of anarchism being a
significant inspiration to both camps. The cause of the split was a
divide between folks with a strongly US-flavored individualist tendency,
à la Ed Abbey,5 and the more classically socialistic
mass-movement-types who might best be represented by the organizing of
Judi Bari.6 On one side was the group rallying around the iconic
identity of the “rebellious redneck,” attempting to capture rural
support in a practical, populist style.7 The other is often credited
with a familiarity with the theoretical writings of Murray Bookchin,
originator of the theory known as social ecology and its political
program, libertarian municipalism.8 Many of this second group came with
the stigma of being “urbanites.”
The record shows the black-clad socialist-leaning end of the
anarchist spectrum as victors over the cowboy-hat-and-belt-buckle rugged
individualists, with a climax at the 1990 EF! Rendezvous, resulting in a
burned American flag and a changing of hands for the movement’s
mouthpiece, The Earth First! Journal. At this time the EF! Journal
shifted hands from co-founder Dave Foreman’s control to a formal
editorial collective. This ushered in a stronger sentiment of autonomy
and decentralization in the minimalist structure of EF!, as there was no
longer a central figure associated with its primary means of
communication.
Yet there are also plenty of examples showing overlap between the two
factions since day one. For example, the frequent use of the pen-name
Leon Czolgosz—the anarchist assassin of US President McKinley—appeared
prominently throughout EF! Journals in the early-to-mid ’80s, and Dave
Foreman’s co-authorship of Ecodefense with the ghost of famed IWW
organizer “Big Bill” Haywood, who was exiled from the US to Russia along
with Emma Goldman in 1917.
While Foreman became a lightning rod in the debate, particularly
highlighting his increasingly conservative views on immigration, his
initial anarchist tendencies that inspired the founding of EF! are
present in passages throughout his autobiography, Confessions of an
Eco-Warrior.9
Unfortunately, most of the well-documented and published research on
EF! ends around the time of this split. Books like Coyotes and Town Dogs
by Susan Zakin, Green Rage by Chris Manes, Eco-Warriors by Rik Scarce,
and essays by academics like Giorel Curran10 and Bron Taylor11 all taper
off in the mid ’90’s. Even books that were published more recently,
such as Treespiker (2009), written by EF! co-founder Mike Roselle, lose
track of the EF! movement by the early ’00s.
Others have opted to ignore EF!’s role in the ecology movement
completely, such as the documentary film by Mark Kitchell A Fierce Green
Fire, released in 2013, and the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance,
co-authored by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay.
Kitchell’s film is an excellent historical overview of the
environmental movement and the influence that direct action has had on
it, including features on Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and the seldom talked
about Love Canal hostage-taking incident12 that sparked the modern
concept of environmental justice. But the film fails to even mention the
undeniable impact that EF! had in the trajectory of the movement.
The Jensen, et al, Deep Green Resistance (DGR) book, which inspired a
parallel organizational effort, also left EF! out of their narrative.
While there is much content of interest, Deep Green Resistance
essentially presents a revisionist history of ecological struggles,
painting DGR as the only radical option in the environmental movement,
and further indicating the strong Maoist influences that anarchists have
suspected of the organization since its inception.
For these reasons alone, an EF! movement overview from a grassroots
perspective, particularly highlighting the past decade-and-a-half, is
much needed.
Thoughts on EF! Strategy and Context
EF! has often been lumped in with non-violent movements, even though
“nonviolence” has never been a guiding tenet (with the exception of a
very few EF! groups.)
The most often discussed example of this was in the midst of
anti-logging campaigns in Northern California, where famed organizer
Judi Bari made headway in bridging the interests of working class
loggers and anti-corporate environmentalists by convincing EF!ers in the
region to swear off tree spiking, and embrace a rhetoric of
non-violence.
But the larger debate has manifested in a much more general way, most
visible in the chosen tactics of EF! affinity groups. The overwhelming
number of EF!-affiliated actions involve classically executed civil
disobedience, where EF!ers establish blockades or occupations in which
people depend on the police to react with a certain amount of restraint
and caution in the process of evictions, resulting in quite predictable
arrests. Often, small-scale property damage and disruptions of the less
civil sort also occur publicly, but these tend to be peripheral to the
planned actions.
This approach can seem strange for people who live in countries where
engagement with the state tends to occur on much different terms.
Perhaps it is this reason that organizing under the EF! banner has been
seen primarily in “first world” countries.
EF! affinity groups have shown that blockades can be an effective
form of resistance because they take a financial toll on industrial
opponents, not only in the form of forced work stoppages, but also in
significant costs associated with increased security and insurance
premiums and most of all, the expense of dealing with negative public
relations.
There are other important aspects of this form of resistance as well.
For one, it allows an opportunity to attract a broader base of public
support. Even in places and times where militant revolutionary sentiment
is not present, EF!’s style of resistance allows space for a larger
spectrum of allies, particularly from impacted local communities and
mainstream environmentalists who are receptive to the need for direct
action. In many cases, these groups may lack the courage, skills or
privileges that allow for effective action, but will contribute towards
campaigns in many other ways: food, supplies, monetary assistance, and
so on.
And perhaps most importantly, the civil disobedience style of action
that EF! is most known for allows deeper relationships of affinity to
form through shared experiences of public confrontation. Time and again,
we have heard stories of these relationships in the streets or the
backwoods giving birth to stronger affinity groups capable of greater
organized attacks that do not rely on civility and expectations of
arrest, as in the case of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which grew
almost simultaneously in the 1990s from the anti-roads occupations in
the UK and anti-logging blockades in the US.
Ironically, another example of the issues surrounding nonviolence
rhetoric can be seen in the guidelines adopted by the organized factions
of the ELF.
The connections between EF! and the ELF are quite clear. Though the
organizing of each occurred independently, we still see much crossover
in culture and attitude, including strategy, tactics and philosophy. Yet
while the ELF presents a more militant approach, they also take the
rhetoric of nonviolence more seriously than EF! has, articulating a
definition of violence (essentially, direct impacts to living beings)
and a position against engaging in it. All printed materials produced by
ELF cells, their support groups and their press offices stress not
intentionally harming living things. This language did not come from
EF!, but from the animal liberation movement, specifically the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF).
It’s at this juncture where we can see another significant cross-pollination between the modern anarchist movement and EF!
Earth First! and Animal Liberation
Since the earliest days of EF!, there have been both staunch vegans
and committed hunters involved. But there has been sufficient
commonality, and a shared rejection of anthropocentrism, to avoid much
conflict. As a result, the nuances and contradictions—such as
prioritization of sentient animals over the integrity of whole
ecosystems13—have gone unexplored, perhaps in an attempt not to upset
the tenuous dynamic.
But there are some noteworthy challenges over the last couple of
decades. As Judi Bari’s anti-capitalist analysis increased EF!’s appeal
to crowds of college students and anarcho-punks, the prominence of
animal liberation activists co-mingling with EF!ers increased.
And just as Bari herself didn’t fit the label of the
urban-dwelling-university-Marxist, neither did some of the anarchists
who brought animal liberation into EF! circles. The most prominent of
these was Rod Coronado, a Native American of the Pascua Yaqui Nation,
who participated in EF! gatherings during the ’80s and gained notoriety
for acts of sabotage that sunk half the Icelandic whalers fleet costing
them $2 million, in addition to an arson at Michigan State University
which caused $125,000 worth of damage and destroyed 32 years of fur
industry research as part of the ALF’s “Operation Bite Back.”
Coronado’s roots in the animal liberation movement are illustrative
of the movement itself. Coronado got started by sabotaging trophy
hunters with other anarchists while visiting the UK. Similar hunt
sabotages in the ’70s are how the ALF began. His specific involvement in
these actions make up a large part of the initial cross-pollination
between anarchism, animal liberation and Earth First!
Through the ’90s and ’00s, these overlapping movements became a
prominent force in direct action struggles. In the US, the FBI
identified each of them as constituting significant “terrorist” threats,
though none had actually caused bodily harm, only economic damage.
While the ambitious direct action culture surrounding the ALF can be
credited with lending inspiration and courage to radical
environmentalism, and EF! specifically, valuable questions should also
be asked about this relationship. Such as:
Does the philosophy of animal liberation contradict biocentrism by
prioritizing sentient animals over plants, mountains, rivers, etc.?
Does this philosophy create limitations on EF!’s long-term biocentric
goals by encouraging rigid guidelines on violence and sentience?
Does it lessen EF!’s connection to land-based communities by
dismissing the interests of animal farmers and hunters that are often at
the forefront of threats from industrial expansion?
These are subjects with plenty of gray areas. Yet, these topics have
also been increasingly divisive among those engaged in eco-resistance.
The divisions have been fueled in large part by DGR co-author Lierre
Keith’s other book, The Vegetarian Myth. Unfortunately Keith’s
authoritarian attitude and anti-transgender position have stifled what
could have been a much more productive discussion resulting from her
book.
Yet it is possible to explore disagreements between animal liberation
philosophy and EF!’s biocentrism, while continuing to deepen
commitments to fighting together on common goals.
A Review of Insurrectionist Tendencies in Earth First!
The rise of insurrectionary anarchism has been one of the most
frequent crossovers between EF! and the anarchist movement over the past
decade.
At the 2013 Earth First! Rendezvous in North Carolina, a small
pamphlet addressed to Earth First! was circulated under the title “The
Issues Are Not the Issue: A letter to Earth First! from a Too-Distant
Friend,” credited to the pseudonym ST (an author affiliated with
CrimethInc.) A discussion group accompanied the pamphlet on the topics
addressed by the writer, who acknowledged that “none of this [was]
particularly new,” hearkening back primarily to the essay “Earth First!
Means Social War,” a popular but rambling piece of prose published by
the EF! Journal in 200714. The “Issues” essay can be summed up as: EF!
spends too much effort on organized campaigns and not enough on
fomenting general revolt.
While there is merit to this idea, the critical tone is played out.
At its worst, it’s dangerous to those aiming to sustain an ecological
resistance—not dangerous as in exciting (as are many of CrimethInc.’s
rants15) but dangerous as in potentially dragging EF! back through the
mud, which played a negative role in periods of stagnation and
repression, and worse, paved the way for blunders like the development
of the cult of DGR.
The sentiment in “Issues” actually predates the “EF! Means Social
War” article by seven or eight years. ST makes a vague reference to
similar critiques that surfaced earlier in British EF! circles. These
references point to another essay, called “Give Up Activism,” which
circulated as a pamphlet, and was later published, ironically, in the
Earth First! Journal.
In the following years, the influence of Green Anarchy (GA), both as
an ideology and a publication, also coming to the US via the UK, began
reshaping Earth First! The GA movement and its magazine contributed
significantly to developing the theory that surrounded EF!’s basic
tenets. But it also included GA folks attending EF! gatherings to
convince other participants to abandon activism and organizing, which
people affiliated with Green Anarchy view as perpetuated by a civilized
mindset.16
Green Anarchy attempted to narrow the definition of direct action to
militant acts of sabotage, either carried out by underground groups or
by mobs, opposing any efforts at publicly organized resistance, calling
it “Leftist.” While many insurrectionary anarchists might balk at a
claim that they are influenced by GA, they would be hard-pressed to deny
its influence.
“Issues,” “Social War,” and Green Anarchy were all also predated by
another similar trend and its accompanying publication, Live Wild Or Die
(LWOD). Like the others, it was militant, anarchist, anti-Left, and
anti-civilization. It was also well-circulated at EF! gatherings. Rumor
has it that it may have actually been edited and produced by anonymous
collective members of the EF! Journal. Unlike the others, it wasn’t
trying to coax people away from organized campaigns, sustained road
blockades, and Earth First!’s unique activist culture in general, but
rather hoped to accentuate these.
In the years following the circulation of LWOD, when EF! was at its
peak, the Earth Liberation Front flared up across the US—often in tandem
with public ecodefense campaigns. Much of the anti-globalization
movement that gridlocked urban streets during the trade summits of this
time also descended from regional EF! campaigns. Not to mention Ted
Kaczynski, dubbed the Unabomber by the government for his targeting of
university professors involved in questionable technological research,
made use of LWOD’s published target list, as well as drawing inspiration
from articles in the EF! Journal.
In comparison, a couple years into the publication of Green Anarchy
magazine, the ecological movement experienced a lull accompanied by the
most severe repression it had experienced. Unfortunately, folks had
created a movement that was learning how to skin roadkill, dream of
insurrection, and cheer for indigenous uprisings in faraway lands, but
was too ideologically isolated and marginal to effectively withstand the
wave of FBI repression that hit among key players in the rising
ecological resistance efforts of the mid-2000s.
The median age range of participants in EF! dropped by nearly a
decade in those years. By the 2007 Round River Rendezvous (EF!’s annual
summer gathering in the US), also the year “EF! Means Social War” was
published, there was hardly a person over thirty in attendance. The
following year, at the Rendezvous in Indiana, there was a well-attended
discussion led by young anarchists out of the insurrectionist milieu on
whether or not EF! should continue to exist at all. Earth First! endured
two hard blows over the last ten years: many newer activists became
convinced it wasn’t as cool as it had been in the ’90s; and many older
activists became convinced that affiliation with it wasn’t worth the
surveillance and repression.
As a result, with the exception of a few groups and campaigns across
the US and UK, very few were using the Earth First! banner. In its
place, myriad groups became more prominent, further fragmenting what was
left of EF!. Examples include Cascadia Forest Defenders and Mountain
Justice in the early 2000s; Root Force and Rising Tide in the mid-2000s;
and Tar Sands Blockade and Appalachia Resist! in the last few years.
While most of the local or issue-specific manifestations that
spiraled out of EF! were tamer and media-friendly, most noteworthy
Rising Tide, an opposite effect also occurred. A glimpse of this could
be seen in the short-lived Root Force project. Root Force, birthed
through the EF! Journal in 2006, sought a more targeted movement
strategy focusing on stopping the expansion of key global infrastructure
projects. The project was modeled on Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
(SHAC), an animal liberation campaign targeting companies affiliated
with vivisection giant Huntingdon Life Science (HLS), which successfully
applied pressure via direct action to sever contracts that supported
the operation of HLS.
Inspired largely by Derrick Jensen’s Endgame books, Root Force’s
ambitious, militant rhetoric resulted in a semi-vanguardist organizing
approach that soon faded into a scaled back effort, and eventually
became just a website offering anti-infrastructure news, strategy and
analysis.
Enter Deep Green Resistance
While tension between EF! and Deep Green Resistance (DGR) has
primarily concerned criticism of DGR’s rigid structure, represented most
clearly by a mandated rejection of transgender people,17 there is
something deeper.
In several ways, EF!ers participated in allowing DGR to develop, some
even subtly nurturing it in hopes that it might be able to fill the
niche that was left by what appeared to be EF!s fading, perhaps pushing
the no-compromise envelope even further than EF! had been able to.18
But that’s no longer the case—EF! no longer appears on its way out,
and DGR does not appear to be growing, at least not outside of Facebook.
Still, seeing the success that DGR enjoyed momentarily leaves one
guarded of critiques like the ones in “Issues.”19 Not because EF! is too
thin-skinned to be criticized, but because the organizing that appears
in the vacuums that we leave is, at least in part, on us.
A Voice for the Underground and for Caged Warriors
One of the things that sets EF! apart from other eco-groups is the
consistent vocal support for incidents of ecological armed struggle
around the world, including the US.
While most environmental groups have generally shied away from
militant actions, dismissed them—or worse, falsely accusing them of
being done by state provocateurs—EF! has consistently stood up for
militant underground groups’ actions, celebrating their attacks and
publishing their communiqués.
Since the inception of the Earth Liberation Front, which appeared in
the early ’90s, first in the UK, then in the US, it has always had ties
to EF!. Essentially, EF! operated as an aboveground support network and
mouthpiece for ELF actions. The same can be said to an extent for the
ALF, though it was initiated in the late ’70s, prior to the existence of
EF!, and has always maintained a larger base of support among the
mainstream animal rights movement.
In the wake of the Green Scare—a phrase used to describe a series of
events in which both underground and aboveground Earth and animal
liberation activists were arrested and accused of terrorism—the stories
of individuals from active cells of the ELF have become public
knowledge. The relationship between the ELF and EF! was exposed by these
cases to be very strong, with direct connections between people who
were involved simultaneously in major EF! blockades, the EF! Journal and
some of the most notorious instances of ELF sabotage.
One take on this situation is that this relationship was too close,
and that people involved in underground actions should have avoided the
aboveground movement entirely. But a more realistic assessment of the
Green Scare is that while many major ELF actions seemed to be undertaken
by superheroes of fictional proportions, they were actually carried out
by small groups of normal people, just like anyone else. In many cases,
they may have once stood next to us at a campfire or protest.
We now know that many of those indicted for ELF crimes knew each
other from their participation in aboveground direct action campaigns or
participation on the Earth First! Journal collective, where they built
enough trust and respect for each other to undertake attacks that caused
over a hundred million dollars in damages to corporate and government
targets in over 1,000 reported actions in the US alone.
The largest of known ELF cells, what the media referred to as “The
Family,” operated with more than a dozen active members, torching a
lumber company headquarters, a US Forest Service office, genetic
engineering test sites, a ski resort and a slaughterhouse, among others.
Members of the cell were only arrested after it had disbanded and one
of the members with a heroine addiction, Jake Fergusen, became a
government informant.
Despite the wave of indictments, grand juries, new laws aimed at
Earth and animal activists, and accusations of terrorism, the ELF
continue their strikes to this day, claiming recent actions in the US
and in several other countries, including Russia, Mexico, Indonesia,
England and Germany.
In communiqués from ELF cells in these other countries, it has not
been uncommon in the last few years that an action will be claimed by
both the ELF and another explicitly anarchist group, most commonly an
ad-hoc faction of the Federation of Informal Anarchists (or FAI in the
Italian acronym).
There are countless peasant and indigenous groups who choose the path
of armed self-defense and rebellion around the world that get direct
support from people involved with EF! or coverage in the pages of the
EF! Journal and Newswire. Even considering strategic and ideological
differences, EF! continually offers these groups a public voice to
amplify the feelings of urgency and anger that their actions express,
particularly in the moments when members of these groups have been
captured by the state.
Eco-Prisoner Support
While prisoner support has been a long-standing tradition of
anarchists worldwide, EF! is one of the few environmental groups to
acknowledge the existence of ecological political prisoners. It has been
a source of support for many ecologically oriented prisoners over the
past 30 years by publishing addresses and stories to encourage
correspondence and circulating the EF! Journal to prisoners around the
world.
In the past decade, the numbers of these prisoners has spiked,
resulting from the increase of state resources and policies directed at
labeling ecological saboteurs as terrorists. This is done partly at the
behest of industrial corporations profiting from creating ecological
crisis, as we have seen in the agenda of the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC).20
This repression is not only targeting underground activists. For
example, ALEC is responsible for creating and lobbying for laws to
generalize the criminalization of dissent, such as the Animal Enterprise
Terrorism Act (AETA21) which sent six members of the SHAC group to
prison on charges related to their aboveground organizing.
While this sentiment is very strong in the US, we are seeing it
spread to other countries as well, such as in the Il Silvestre cases of
Swiss and Italian eco-anarchists accused with the legal language of
terrorism for planning to attack a nanotech laboratory owned by IBM. The
trend has also spread to Latin America, where environmentalists are
working with indigenous groups to resist industrialization.
The practice of political prisoner support has also seen friction
between Earth First! and anarchists on several occasions. In one
example, the long-standing Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) Federation was
hesitant to accept eco and animal prisoners onto their national listing
of prisoners to support, starting with the imprisonment of Rod Coronado
in the mid-90s. When the Green Scare hit in 2005, this tension
resurfaced and ultimately, the culture of the ABC network shifted, with
many supporters of eco-prisoners taking active roles in the
organization.
Eco-Liberation Against Oppression
While EF! gained a reputation in the ’80s as beer-swilling macho
guys, in part rightly so, there is certainly more to the story. The
women involved at that time also speak of a powerful feminist
presence.22 And there is ample evidence that expressing active
solidarity with indigenous and land-based communities has been a
priority for many EF!ers since day one.23
Still, along with much of the early environmental conservation
movement, EF! came out of largely white, middle-class, single-issue
oriented activism. That’s left a lot of baggage to unpack. EF! has had
rocky moments in its history, namely with xenophobia and racist
misanthropic ranting about population control.
Today, the movement’s most prominent organizers have worked to
confront that history as well as more recent manifestations of similar
attitudes, and worked to strengthen EF!’s affinity with marginalized
communities and individuals with whom they share basic values.
In the past decade, groups like Trans’ and Women’s Action Camp (TWAC)
and Rising Tide, both beginning as offshoots of EF!, continue to have
much crossover with the organization. These groups represent an
important piece of EF!’s recent history, and they also point to the
likely future of EF! and the broader ecological resistance movement.
TWAC formed as a pro-feminist, queer-and-trans-positive space outside
of the patriarchy and gender norms that often surfaced at EF!
gatherings and actions. Beginning in 2004, TWAC was initially an “all
womyn’s24 affinity groups and action camp” established in forest defense
campaigns in the Pacific Northwest. In the following years, the name
TWAC appeared and spread from the Pacific Northwest to Florida, with
TWAC-oriented affinity groups also appearing at all recent EF!
gatherings.
Along with providing more inclusive spaces for discussion and action
trainings, TWAC actions can also be credited with pushing back the
boundaries of conventional activist media strategy, coordinating actions
that use the language of anti-oppression prominently. In a way, this
has succeeded in demystifying public discourse around liberatory
language.
Rising Tide also surfaced in the mid 2000s, first in the UK, then in
the US. The US group, which started as the Earth First! Climate Caucus
in 2006, soon became Rising Tide North America (RTNA), including
contacts in Mexico and Canada. The group focuses primarily on supporting
environmental justice struggles of communities on the front lines of
issues related to climate change and carbon extraction, with a secondary
focus on exposing false solutions to climate change, in particular the
market-based approach of making carbon offsets into a capitalist
commodity.
Some initial concerns were raised regarding Rising Tide drawing
people and energy from EF!. While that did happen to a certain extent,
there have also been benefits, including increased movement building and
organizing experience with frontline communities. Rising Tide reaches
people that EF! has historically had less successful relations
with—namely the environmental justice movement, led by people of color
and low-income folks. Today, there may be more people from EF!
organizing as Rising Tide than EF!
Disappointment with DGR
When Deep Green Resistance (DGR) came on the scene, it was not
uncommon to hear EF!ers expressing high hopes that they would bring new
energy and strategic thinking … and boy was that a let down!
The people at the top of DGR consistently disrespect potential allies
in transgender, anarchist25 and animal rights circles, then preach ad
naseum against “horizontal hostility” (meaning the denigration of other
activists’ efforts) whenever they were challenged.
In 2013, the EF! Journal Collective adopted a position explicitly
taking issue with the persistent anti-transgender attitude of Keith and
Jensen, and the policies they enforce for DGR, using their influence as
renowned authors. DGR’s position against trans people stems from
adherence to a theoretical trend of second wave feminism. This view
thinks that if gender is a social construct designed to repress women,
any expression of gender is therefore an affront to women. While EF! has
long held a critique of patriarchy, seeing it as having cleared a path
for industrialism, it takes more than the absence or presence of a penis
to maintain patriarchy. The controlling and dominating behavior
exemplified by DGR’s authority figures is a far greater concern than the
fabricated threat of transgender people against a particular sect of
feminism.
Thankfully the debate surrounding DGR has presented another
opportunity for today’s anarchist and ecological resistance movements to
clarify and strengthen its position of solidarity with trans people.
Making strides towards the queering of activist counter culture has
become a priority for many EF! organizers.
Despite the disappointment with DGR, the primary reason that people
were drawn to it—a desire for deeper strategic thinking— remains largely
unsatisfied. Sadly, DGR has lost all the credibility it may have had.
Even Aric McBay, the primary author of the strategy sections in the book
upon which the movement is based, parted ways with the organization,
citing frustration with the group’s anti-transgender policy.26
An Image from the Future of Ecological Resistance
Around the world, both ecological consciousness and rebellion against
the state are becoming more the norm. In the last year, uprisings in
Turkey, Brazil, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Ferguson28 (to name but a few)
have at times dominated news’ headlines. Two years prior, capitol
squares were occupied in Spain and Greece, riots occurred in England,
and First Nations’ blockades erupted across Canada. Even glimmers of
revolt in the belly of the US Empire, with the Occupy encampment on Wall
Street, an attempt at a general strike to shut down Oakland’s ports,
and over 400 Occupy-related direct action camps in public spaces across
the country. And shortly before that, of course, was the Arab Spring.
This news was often side-by-side with stories of the rise of the
global hydraulic fracking industry; the nightmare of expanding and
exporting tar sands oil; the boom in pipeline construction and
subsequent spills or explosions; poisoned water from mining disasters;
outrage against Monsanto’s biotech mega-farms; failure after failure in
UN and other international bodies’ attempts at addressing the crises
surrounding climate change, etc.
The relations between these uprisings and these harsh ecological
realities have been peripheral at best (except for Turkey, where the
rebellion was spurred from the clearing of trees in a public park). But
the potential for drawing out these connections is staring us in the
face. The vast majority of Earth First! campaigns stem from a microcosm
of the same power dynamics that tend to spark rebellions around the
world: greed, corruption, land and power grabs, resource control, and
brutal repression that often fan the flames of resistance.
Earth First!, with all its affiliates and offshoots, clearly has a
contribution to make in that discussion, but there are other places
outside of EF! worth a look as well, especially regarding the
relationships between mass movements and affinity groups, and more
specifically, aboveground and underground participants.
The following is only a brief glimpse of some recent campaigns and
social struggles that deserve the attention of movement strategists.
Anti-Gold Mining Resistance in Greece
Over the last 10 years,
opposition to the construction and expansion of gold mining operations
in northern Greece has shown instructive examples of community-led
militancy. Villages in the mining region, in particular Skouries, have
led the struggle with a series of road blockades, conflicts with the
police and large-scale acts of sabotage. Part of the recent history of
the anarchist movement’s relations to anti-gold mining struggles goes
back to an underground action in the late 1990s by Nikos Maziotis, a
well-known figure today who was arrested in 2011 in connection to the
armed anarchist group Epanastatikos Agonas.29 Along with underground
support, the effort to stop the gold mines has generated widespread
support, connecting itself with the mass movement opposing the greed and
corruption associated with social cuts and austerity measures being
pushed by the European Union.
The ZADists of France
Out of a decades-long effort by local farmers
to stop an airport from clearing around 4000 acres of farms and
forests, an anarchist-led occupation of the land turned into an
inspiring model of ecological resistance. ZAD, a play on the airport
project’s acronym, was a village-scale squat. After a series of eviction
attempts in 2012 – 2013, where farmers would arrive at the protest camp
using their tractors to prevent excavators from destroying the squatter
camps, the project was delayed. The spirit of the ZAD has since been
revived in an occupation of a site slated for dam construction. The most
recent occurrence at this site was the murder of a ZADist during a
confrontation with police attempting an eviction, which sparked an
international outpouring of solidarity actions.
Defending Land from Coal Mining in Germany and Scotland
Once again,
a long-term community-led struggle gives way to anarchist land defense
camp offering a glimpse of the potential for militant ecology. In two
recent cases, the Hambach forest occupation in Germany and the Mainshill
camp in Scotland, anarchist and environmental organizers showed an
ability to embrace a wide range of tactics in resisting coal, an issue
which has become a worldwide hot button over the past decade due to the
climate crisis. In the case of Mainshill, a compiled list of action
between 2009 – 2010 includes a dozen acts of sabotage intermixed with
roadblocks, home demos and community organizing. The Hambach campaign,
which is fighting the largest coal mining operation in Europe, has seen a
similar range of tactics.
Fifteen Years of Resistance to Shell in Ireland
Before pipeline
resistance became all the rage in North America, the folks from the
Rossport area of County Mayo, Ireland, were setting the stage. A mix of
community activists who trace their roots to anti-colonial Irish
struggle and young anarchist climate justice organizers combined to
inspire on ongoing opposition to pipeline and refinery construction
which has been able to embrace acts of sabotage in broad-daylight
against surveying and construction materials, amidst months of ongoing
daily road blockades, all the while expressing solidarity with Shell’s
worldwide opposition, namely those resisting the oil and gas industry in
the Niger Delta.
Anti-Road Forest Defense: Khimikhi in Russia
Amazing accounts of a
forest defense in 2010 against a road between Moscow and St. Petersburg
boasted of blockades, tree spiking and arson to construction equipment,
where anti-fascist groups got involved to confront the fascist thugs
brought in to support the development company’s security. The resistance
seemed to climax at a solidarity protest in which masked anarchists
trashed the local city hall building—in the middle of the day—where the
construction was approved.
Anti-Pipeline Fights in Canada
The last several decades of
collaboration and crossover between anarchists, ecologists and
Indigenous communities in the occupied territory of Canada has offered
inspirational guidance to the direction of a revolutionary, militant,
non-authoritarian environmental movement. While there has been many
examples to cite, especially amidst the anti-2010 Winter Olympics
campaign and the 2012 explosion of Idle No More organizing, a specific
case which stands out is the fracking resistance in Elsipogtog, where
Mi’kmaq warriors from the First Nations in what is known as New
Brunswick fought against plans with a full spectrum of tactics,
including the confiscation and arson of company equipment, along with
barricades where cops cars were set on fire during a stand-off in 2013.
There are many more examples as well, all around the world,30 of
underground actions effectively running concurrent with aboveground
movements—some with explicit ecological aims, others with general
anti-system rage. Most of these actions go underneath the radar of
people not reading the dozens of communiqués posted online at
international anarchist and insurrectionary sites like ContraInfo or
325.NoState. (Worth noting is that for every person arrested in relation
to underground activity, actions multiply in their honor.)
While few, if any, of these groups embrace a strict policy relating
to the use of violence, their actions tend to target property, not
people.
The skills, experience and culture of groups such as EF!, who
straddle the line of aboveground and underground action, can play a
significant part in creating contexts where things like anti-industrial
blockades and office occupations occur in tandem with generalized
uprisings, providing inspiration and social space for militant attacks
and strategic sabotage to also take place.
It’s not exactly a new formula for subverting society. And contrary
to common sentiment among cynical US anarchists, it’s not something that
only happens outside the US. That is illustrated by a 2013 document
leaked by the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and Pennsylvania
State Police.31 In the document, a presentation intended to profile
groups seen as threats to fracking companies, the JTTF creates a
timeline of regional opposition to fracking in which several EF!
blockades and tree sits are interspersed with a drive-by shooting and
multiple alleged attempts at incendiary device attacks on fracking
sites, between July 2012 and May 2013.
The future of ecological resistance is not something that needs an
elaborate blueprint, rigid structure or dizzying intellectual dogma.
It’s not some fantastical super hero comic book or bad movie plot (where
you have to share a communal meal in straightjackets with the mates in
your clandestine cell to prepare for the jam, as depicted in the film
The East 32).
In short, we need to continue doing much of what we’ve been doing. We
have the basic elements for fomenting ecological rebellion. It’s the
scale of our opposition that is lacking. As we’ve been seeing in recent
uprisings around the world that can all change very quickly. With this
in mind, the following questions are offered to those desiring to take
steps toward heightened ecological, anti-authoritarian struggle.
How do we amplify ourselves further? How do we make our actions more easily replicated?
And perhaps most importantly, how to we personally move our
relationships from acquaintances at a protest to co-conspirators in
ecological resistance?
These are questions that anarchists have grappled with over the
course of the past 150 years in the movement’s modern history—a history
that essentially paralleled the rise of industrialism. Viewed in that
context, the ambitions of Earth First! can easily be seen as a
continuation of anarchist ambitions, as there is little doubt that the
coming generation of struggle for a free society will need to be more
deeply rooted in ecology.
Panagioti Tsolkas has been an EF! organizer and on the EF! Journal’s
Editorial Collective since 2010, though he is currently taking a hiatus.
He has been a part of both Earth First! and anarchist movements in the
US since the mid ’90s. He grew up in a Greek-American immigrant family
and currently lives in the Everglades bioregion of sub-tropical south
Florida. He’s never attended university and believes credibility in
presenting an analysis of a movement should come primarily from lived
experience rather than deskbound study.
Details about EF! gatherings, contact info for local groups, updates
from actions, and general news/analysis can be found at:
earthfirstjournal.org
Posted by Perspectives on Anarchist Theory
(
anarchiststudies.org/perspectives/ ) on the Institute for Anarchist
Studies website (
anarchiststudies.org).
Notes
1 The perspectives presented come from a first-hand perspective. The
author has no credentials in academia. On the contrary, he doesn’t have a
High School diploma.
2 A few familiar, albeit very Eurocentric, examples might include:
Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid; the writings of French geographer Elisee Reclus,
transcendentalists like H.D. Thoreau and Romantics such as William
Blake; Emma Goldman’s naming of her publication Mother Earth; the
earlier experiences of the Diggers, Luddites and other rurally-based
radical movements, and more recently, the writings of Murray Bookchin
who has been explicitly exploring anarchist theory and social ecology
since the 1960s.
3 This is the case particularly in the US, UK and Australia. Although
there is a history of EF!-affiliated activity in other countries,
including Japan, The Philippines, Sierra Leon, Poland, France, the
Netherlands, Iceland, Italy and France, I have found much less
background information in these places to make as clear a case.
4 The Center for Consumer Freedom and the FBI has considered EF! a
primary domestic threat for many years. As recent as Oct 2013, the US
Army has released a manual listing Earth First! as terrorist threat.
Source:
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/10/14/u-s-army-lists-earth-fi...
5 Abbey was the author of cult classic The Monkeywrech Gang, a
fictitious book that inspired environmentalists in the ’70s to rally
around sabotage as a tactic, spurring the start of EF! While Abbey was
consistently anti-authoritarian in most of his views, he also dabbled in
some questionable rhetoric regarding immigrants and borders. In
particular, an essay on immigration included in a collection of his
work, entitled One Life At A Time Please, has been frequently referenced
by notoriously bigoted right-wing xenophobes affiliated with the racist
John Tanton network in attempt to maintain a foothold of influence and
credibility in the environmental movement.
6 Bari was best known for her staunch position as an IWW labor
organizer who brought loggers and environmentalists together to fight
the Maxxam corporation, a multinational company which was liquidating
its “assets” (jobs and trees), after getting caught up in the Savings
& Loans scandal. She wrote a popular booklet “Revolutionary Ecology”
calling for a more thorough anti-capitalist analysis from EF! She was
later injured in a car bomb that pointed to FBI involvement, and died in
1997.
7 Ironically, this group was also more deeply embracing of the
hippy-esque spirituality of Deep Ecology, perhaps imagining themselves
capable of tapping into the religious fervor of rural Baptists.
8 This clash manifested in a book, Defending the Earth, which was
co-authored by Bookchin and EF! co-founder Dave Foreman in 1991.
9 Take this example of Foreman’s thoughts on borders and bioregions:
“One of the key concepts of bioregionalism is that modern political
boundaries have no relationship to natural ecological provinces.
Bioregionalists argue that human society—and therefore, politics and
economics—should be based on natural ecosystems. They find affinity with
Indian tribes and with Basque, Welsh, and Kurdish separatists, and have
no sympathy with the modern nation-state, empire, or multinational
corporation.” From Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. (Harmony Books. NYC,
1991. pp. 43)
10 Curran’s 2006 book 21st Century Dissent: Anarchism,
Anti-Globalization and Environmentalism includes several chapters
regarding EF! and its offshoots
11 Taylor’s recently wrote “Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the
Means” published by Worldwatch Institute in their State of the World
2013 book
12 Two government representatives from the EPA were held hostage in
New York, May 1980, by low-income homeowner who were being poisoned from
the dumping of toxic chemicals. Two days later, their demands were met.
13 The most glaring example: are the lives and freedom of mink caged
for fur worth the immediate risk posed to the populations of songbirds
and other small prey by large, sudden releases of predators into an
area?
14 The author of “EF! Means Social War” went on to publish Politics
is Not A Banana in 2009, making the EF! Social War piece seem dry and
textbook-like.
15 The CrimethInc. magazine Rolling Thunder, for example, calls itself “a journal of dangerous living.”
16 This occurred most notably during the EF! Round River Rendezvous
of 2005, in the Mount Hood area of Oregon, ironically the same time and
location where the FBI began Operation Backfire, later known as a
starting point of the Green Scare (see below), by sending a wired
informant to secure evidence against ELF participants.
17 “[M]y group and the other [DGR] chapters were presented with a choice: put up with trans phobia or hit the road.” Source:
http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/how-derrick-jensens-deep-green-resistanc...
18 For example, the EF! Journal published a section of the DGR book
in its pages in 2012, and EF! organizers of the 2012 Winter Rendezvous
in Utah invited discussions from DGR organizers.
19 During the writing of this essay, a new publication inspired by
GA, entitled Blackseed, released a first edition featuring an
all-too-familiar slam of EF!, this time focusing on a hollow position
that EF! is allegedly fortifying the rhetoric of nonviolence to pacify
ecological resistance.
20 ALEC is an alliance of politicians and businesses formed to lobby the government for right wing and capitalist interests.
21 Leaked documents from ALEC show that this law was initially
intended to have an even broader scope as the “Animal and Ecological
Terrorism Act,” but it ended up being tested out on animal activists
first, likely for fear that broadly including environmentalists may have
triggered a stronger backlash.
22 Karen Pickett and Karen Coulter, both prominent organizers
involved with EF! since the early ‘80s, often speak to this at EF!
gatherings.
23 The first EF! action on record involved erecting a monument to
Apache warriors who raided a mining camp. In 1980 Earth First! erected a
monument dedicated to Victorio for his successful raid on Cooney and
the killing of Cooney and his men. It read, in part, “ This monument
celebrates the 100th anniversary of the great Apache chief Victorio’s
raid on the Cooney mining camp near Mogollon, New Mexico, on April 12,
1880. Victorio strove to protect these mountains from mining and other
destructive activities of the white race. The present Gila Wilderness is
partly a fruit of his efforts…
24 The spelling “women” was initially used by the organizers in this
group, though most TWAC organizers have opted to drop the “y” spelling,
as it has come to be associated with anti-trans sentiments of a second
wave feminist trend.
25 Jensen: “The Black Bloc spends more time attempting to destroy
movements than they do attacking those in power…” “The anarchists are
liars. It’s what anarchists do.” Sources:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206 http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/insurgent-g/17597
26 McBay: “I find these transphobic attitudes to be disgusting and deeply troubling”. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Green_Resistance.
28 As this article goes to print, the US is experiencing a nationwide
response to multiple racist police killings, including riots and road
blockades in many states simultaneously, going on for several months
sparked by the uprising in Ferguson, MO.
29 The case of Epanastatikos Agonas (EA) is one of the clearer recent
examples of the potential for aboveground and underground resistance as
part of a mass revolutionary movement influenced by anarchism. For
instance, as an October 2011 trial date approached for members of EA
facing charges related to a decade of attacks on government and
corporate targets, nearly 3,000 supporters reportedly marched down
central Athens in solidarity with the imprisoned members chanting “The
State is the only terrorists! Solidarity with the guerrilla fighters!”
Their widespread support was visible all over the country in
demonstrations, graffiti, posters and postings on dozens of websites.
The EA members were eventually released on a technicality in 2012, and
fled underground. Maziotis has since resurfaced and been returned to
prison. The Earth First! Journal and newswire covered struggles in
Greece extensively over the last several years.
30 Mexico, China and Indonesia all come to mind as places where
recent militant environmental movements, indigenous struggles and
anarchist groups (above and under ground) have been able to open space
for what may be the future of environmentalism and anti-capitalism.
31 Source:
earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/02/15/leaked-pennsylvania-jttf-presentation-profiles-earth-first/
32 Yes. This scenario really happens in the terrible 2013 eco-terror
thriller film The East. And yes, they call their actions “jams.”
source: Institute for Anarchist Studies
http://anarchiststudies.org/2015/03/31/no-system-but-the-ecosystem-earth-first-and-anarchism-by-panagioti-tsolkas-1/
About the IAS
The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), a nonprofit foundation
established in 1996 to support the development of anarchism, is a
grant-giving organization for radical writers and translators worldwide.
To date, we have funded some ninety projects by authors from countries
around the world, including Argentina, Lebanon, Canada, Chile, Ireland,
Nigeria, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. Equally
important, we publish the Anarchist Interventions book series in
collaboration with AK Press and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, the
online journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, and the new Lexicon
pamphlet series as well as organize the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition
conference and offer the Mutual Aid Speakers List. The IAS is part of a
larger movement to radically transform society as well. We are
internally democratic and work in solidarity with people around the
globe who share our values.
