Categories Archives: The Solution: Resistance » Indirect Action

Visit the global The Solution: Resistance » Indirect Action archives for posts from all DGR sites.

Eco-Sabotage is Planetary Self-Defense

Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared on the Deep Green Resistance Blog. We think this analysis is relevant to all regions.

Max Wilbert and other members of Deep Green Resistance Seattle participated in a May “ShellNO” protest against Shell’s arctic drilling rig. Their display of signs reading “Sabotage the Machine” and “Eco-Sabotage is Planetary Self-Defense” attracted a lot of attention. Elliot Stoller conducted a short video interview in which Wilbert explains his concern about ineffective tactics and strategies in the face of dramatic threats to biodiversity, climate, and social justice.

Wilbert discusses DGR’s radical evaluation of systems of power and what might actually work to alter their destructive course: targeting critical communication, electrical, and oil infrastructures, and addresses some common questions about what that means for the safety of activists who undertake such work, and what sort of life humans can live without the comforts and elegancies of industrial civilization.

Please share this radical analysis, and help put sabotage on the table as a viable tactic in our struggle for life and justice!

Sabotage the Machine

Derrick Jensen on Resistance Radio

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Almost every Sunday, Derrick Jensen interviews an activist, biophile scientist, land restorationist, or other person similarly engaged in building a culture of resistance. The interviews are always worth listening to, packed with interesting information and insights drawn out by Jensen’s experienced questions. The interviews have always been available as mp3 downloads or audio streams from PRN.FM (you can also browse just the interviews related to Deep Green Resistance).

We’ve now made Resistance Radio available on youtube as audio with a still image of the interviewee, accessible to those who prefer to browse youtube or want to add the episodes into playlists. We’ll keep adding new interviews as they’re released. See them all at the Deep Green Resistance youtube channel, and please share these important conversations widely!

(reposted from the Deep Green Resistance blog)

Mid August Report

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Table at Earthfest

By Ben Barker, Coordinator of Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin

For the past several months, the Wisconsin Chapter of the Deep Green Resistance movement has been building its own capacity and helping the international movement with campaigns and projects.

We recognize that one of our major goals as a chapter of the larger DGR movement is to simultaneously support DGR as a whole and bring the movement to our locale. Without a strong international movement, local resisters would have little support in their efforts. Yet, without resistance happening locally, the more broad structure would be irrelevant and ineffective.

In Wisconsin news, our group recently set up a literature table at Earthfest, an annual environmental festival in Sheboygan, WI. The mission of Earthfest is as follows:

Since 1990, Earthfest’s mission is to provide a joyful, annual, free family festival in Sheboygan to promote community spirit and a healthy environment through music, art, education, lectures, stories, demonstrations, and local foods.

From behind our table, we engaged in conversation with several folks about our organization and perspective. As is predictable given the tone of the so-called environmental movement in the United States, many whom we spoke with were not of the mind that resistance is even a possibility. They know the problems, but don’t know what we can honestly do to stop them. This is a major reason why DGR Wisconsin participated in Earthfest; we want to bring a radical analysis into the environmental milieu. The festival now being over, and many of our pamphlets seeing the fresh eyes of it’s attendees, it’s hard to say what impact our presence will have. Though, we will keep spreading the seeds of resistance and attempt to build a movement to save the planet.

Many thanks to organizers of Earthfest for putting the event on and allowing us to participate.

As always, the resistance needs you, and our group has expanded it’s options for getting involved, so please consider joining us in our fight for the future.

Grassroutes Caravan Calls for Bicyclists, Welcomes DGR

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Flyer for kick-off event. View facebook event here.

Grassroutes Caravan is a mobile bicycle village of resilience that is heading to Chicago to protest NATO this May. GRC organizer and member of DGR Wisconsin, Thistle Pettersen, says there is still room in the village for more riders and a DGR crew would be welcomed with open arms!

A recent article on Examiner.com explains more about Grassroutes Caravan and this year’s ride:

Each year, the Grassroots Caravan sponsors a cycling trip to different points in the Midwest. This year’s event is entitled Cycles of Revolution: ¡Brake the Banks!. Forty people participated in the group’s annual trip in 2008 to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. This year’s trip is limited to 50 participants.

According to their website, this trip is to “promote and demonstrate peaceful forms of cooperative, collaborative democracy in the face of the endless wartime rhetoric of NATO.” Using bicycles as the vehicle to travel to Chicago is in tune with the NATO summit, because the wars NATO engages in are frequently fought “to secure oil and gas resources,” of which the bicycle uses none.

The Cycle of Revolution will stop in three communities along the route to participate in community events. As has been tradition in the previous three trips the group sponsored, particpants engage in community service in exchange for places to stay during the journey. Currently, approximately 20 people have signed up for the event, which leaves Madison on May 13. A kick-off fundraiser is scheduled for May 5 in Madison. The group has been holding fundraisers since January.

To get involved in Grassroutes Caravan, you can apply to ride or get in touch with the organizers.

Derrick Jensen speaking event in Madison, WI (4/17)

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Poster: distribute!

Our planet is under serious threat from industrial civilization. Yet activists are not considering strategies that might actually prevent the looming biotic collapse the Earth is facing. We need to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. We need a serious resistance movement that includes all levels of direct action–action that can match the scale of the problem.

Writer and activist Derrick Jensen has been discussing the inherent destructiveness of industrial civilization and urgently calling for resistance against it for decades. Derrick is the acclaimed author of fifteen books, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, and Deep Green Resistance, a book, co-authored with Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, which inspired the formation of a movement by the same name. Author, teacher, activist, small farmer and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he has been hailed as the philosopher poet of the environmental movement.

We are pleased to host Derrick Jensen for a public speaking event on “Civilization and Resistance,” with a Q&A session after the talk. Please join us for this exciting opportunity at the University of Wisconsin’s Varsity Hall (inside Union South), located at 1308 W. Dayton Street in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, April 17^th starting at 6:00 p.m. This is a free event and is sponsored by Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin, UW Society & Politics, Distinguished Lecture Series, and The Madison Infoshop.

Derrick will speak to the following questions during his talk:

How do I know civilization is not redeemable? Why does industrial civilization need to be dismantled?
Do you think our advanced society has the capability to find technological solutions to the energy and resource problems facing us?
If Industrial Civilization is dismantled, what about people who live in cities or rely on it for their subsistence or medical needs? What makes you think that a small group of people have the right to bring down an entire system that will result in countless deaths?
The dismantling of civilization would be a violent act, and violence is never the answer. Ghandi was a pacifist that led a successful revolution, so couldn’t a nonviolent movement of the masses put enough pressure on those in power to transform our society?
I am skeptical that any actions I take will be useful towards bringing down civilization. Why should I take large-scale direct action against the system when almost nobody else, especially in the first world, is?

Coalition Intends to Sue EPA for Failure to Enforce Clean Water Act at Power Plant

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from Milwaukee Riverkeeper

Yesterday, the Cleaner Valley Coalition, of which Milwaukee Riverkeeper is a member, called on the EPA to take stronger steps to clean up pollution at the We Energies Menomonee Valley coal-fired power plant.

Two members of the Coalition – the Sierra Club and its attorneys, Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), filed a Notice of Intent to Sue the EPA for failing to comply with its duty to ensure that a new water pollution permit is issued for the plant.

The Valley power plant has been operating with an expired water permit since 1987; the expired permit fails to include standards necessary to protect fish and aquatic life and recreation in the Menomonee River. As detailed in a report from the Sierra Club, it is estimated that billions of fish and other aquatic organisms are killed each year by water-intake systems on outdated power plants, including coal-fired power plants like the one in the Valley. Water-intake systems suck in water to cool the power plant, then spew hot water back out into local waterways.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) has been working to revise the permit for years (the Valley’s permit is the longest expired water permit in the country). Milwaukee Riverkeeper and the Cleaner Valley Coalition believe the delay has been way too long.

If the WDNR does not issue a permit in the next few months to address the threat to our waters, then EPA should take immediate action. The EPA has 60 days to respond to the NOI. If it does not respond, or fails to take necessary action during this period, Sierra Club and MEA can proceed to file a lawsuit in United States District Court.

To read the full press release and article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel click here.

DGR Wisconsin to attend Milwaukee Planning Meeting to Protest NATO/G8 Summit

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Members of Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin will be representing our group at the upcoming Organizer Planning Meeting to Protest NATO/G8 Summit. The meeting is taking place on Saturday, February 18th, 2012, in Milwaukee, WI.

Here’s a short description from the organizers of the meeting:

Antiwar, student, and labor [and radical environmental!] organizers from around the city of Milwaukee will be meeting on Saturday, Feb. 18, 1 pm, at The Center Street Library (2727 W. Fond du Lac Ave.) for a planning meeting to found a Milwaukee Coalition to protest the NATO/G8 Summit in Chicago this May.

from Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement

Learn more about the NATO/G8 Summit at http://cang8.wordpress.com/

DGR Wisconsin Member Interviewed for Aligned Project

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DGR Wisconin member Thistle Pettersen, holding "No Blood for Oil" sign

View the accompanying article and video at the Chicago Tribune website

Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin member Thistle Petterson was interviewed in the Chicago Tribune about her organizing involvement in the group Grassroutes Caravan, which plans to bring a group of at least 50 bike riders to Chicago during the G-8 and NATO summits to protest for a living planet and an end to imperialism. Their bike ride is called Cycles of Revolution: Brake the Banks.

DGR Wisconsin supports Grassroutes Caravan and their goals of human-scale, direct democracy. We are proud and excited for our member and supporters involved in this project.

DGR Wisconsin participates in anti-mining protest

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from http://ashlandcurrent.com

Citizens from around the state are planning to protest the proposed Assembly iron mining bill Wednesday and Thursday, according to the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

A “Bury the Bill” rally will take place on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the State Capitol on the State Street steps.

Then, Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., a “People’s Tribunal” will take place in the north hearing room of the Capitol building’s second floor.

The Wednesday rally will feature speakers including Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Director Mike McCabe, Laura Gauger of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, Ben Manski of Wisconsin Wave, and attorney Glenn Reynolds. Photos and maps of the area around the proposed open-pit iron mine in Ashland and Iron Counties will be available for public viewing, and a short performance will demonstrate the impacts the bill could have on the Northwoods.

At the Thursday tribunal, anyone who wants to speak publicly will be invited to speak about the proposed legislation and mining in general.

The Wednesday protest and Thursday Tribunal are hosted by Madison for the Penokees. Participating organizations include the Penokee Hills Education Project, Mining Impact Coalition of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, SaveTheWatersEdge.com, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Sierra Club, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, Midwest Environmental Advocates, Madison Infoshop, Family Farm Defenders, Take Back the Land-Madison, Groundwork White Anti-Racist Collective, Deep Green Resistance–Wisconsin, Lake Superior Greens, Madison-area Urban Ministry, and People Empowered to Protect the Land of Rosendale.