Arm The Homeless

A friend and fellow activist was speaking at a lecture about taking down civilization and said, “As a long time grassroots environmentalist I’ve been intimately acquainted with the landscape of loss and have grown accustomed to carrying the daily weight of despair.”

If you have read or heard these words before and often feel the same way, know that you are not alone.

I’m not writing this to convince you that climate change is happening and that civilized humans are responsible for it. This should be apparent and common knowledge by now.

I’m going to move the conversation forward; way forward.

For those who deny the reality that we are approaching catastrophic ecological collapse as a result of the lifestyle of the dominant culture, I suggest you stop reading here. You have better things to do such as going to the grocery store or pre-ordering Mass Effect 3.

For those who understand that we are at the tipping point of world destruction, this message is for you. We don’t have much time.

I’ve been putting off writing this column for a while so that I could adequately ease you into these subjects and thought processes. If you thought my previous columns were radical, please secure your tray in the upright and locked position.

Imagine for a moment that aliens descended upon Earth and began deforesting the Amazon rain forest and 98 percent of the planet’s old growth forests, poisoned our food, air, and water, put dioxin in every mother’s breast milk, altered the climate, dumped unimaginable amounts of pollutants into the streams, lakes, rivers, and oceans, and extracted massive amounts of resources at the expense of humans and nonhumans. What would we all do? What’s your first instinct? The majority of us would fight back. Not with petitions, Facebook groups, or campaign contributions, but with and organized resistance. Most of us would fight back directly and fiercely because our futures would depend on it.

Everything I’ve described above is occurring at this very moment, only this time the dominant culture is the culprit. Yet, we are complacent in the face of ecological annihilation.

These realities roll under us like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor. Look. It won’t go away. And we continue the dance of world destruction.

It’s evident that the dominant culture will not undergo a voluntary transformation into a sane and sustainable way of life. Most would agree for various reasons.

If this is the case, what does that mean about our strategy and our tactics? We see protests, sit-ins, banner drops, groovy green light bulbs and recycling bins, yet every day that passes the planet is in worse shape. Maybe a change in tactics and strategy are needed.

We don’t need more environmental organizations, we need organized resistance groups. We need not speak truth to power via protests, but force power to change through sabotage and sustained blockades at major nodes of industry.

Find the levers and apply pressure, that’s how we win this war. Indeed, it’s been a war ongoing for thousands of years.

Direct action is the only means in which true social and political change occurs. Those in power are not going to change because we ask nicely. Force is the only language they know.

At the expense of the revolutionary tone, I wept the other night when I found out that TransCanada is going to continue its Keystone XL tarsand pipeline project within the U.S. NASA climate scientists have said that this will mean “Game Over” for the climate. One of the extensions will be built from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast.

This can be stopped. All of it. Not just TransCanada but Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chesapeake Energy, and every hydraulic fracturing project T. Boon Pickens has ever started. In order to actually win against these mass murderers and sociopaths, we need and organized political resistance both aboveground and underground.

I’ll leave you with a question and then a quote. Question: If such a resistance movement already existed, would you join it? If not, why? This movement does exist, and it’s closer to home than you think. Seek them out and you will find them.

And for a quote that a good friend of mine once said, “During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Jews who resisted had a higher chance of survival than those who went along.”

Now, please give a moment of silence for the 200 species of plants and animals that went extinct today as a result of this genocidal culture and do the same tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day until we end this ecocide once and for all.

(Source: ocolly.com)