Lughnasadh 2012
We Are the .00018 Percent!
Does Earth First! carry the capacity for a justice based approach to overpopulation?
-Skyler Simmons
The Luddites
And The Politics Of 21st Century Technology
-Ned Ludd
The History of Luddism
Through The Movement's Songs
-Theo Simon
King Ludd in the Countryside
-Simon Fairlie, from The Land, UK
Keren Kayment Le Yisrael
and Environmental Racism in Palestine
-Ben Lorber
The Earth First! Journal is the voice of the radical environmental movement.
Get your daily dose of news and updates from the frontlines
of eco-resistance at the Earth First! Newswire
New Issue Out Now: Lughnasadh 2012
SUBSCRIPTIONS We are able to keep this publication alive primarily thanks to paid subscriptions, which are now $30 a year for a quarterly publication. The Journal is back to being bound like a magazine, rather than a newspaper format. You can subscribe right now, for yourself or as a gift to someone (including one of the prisoners on our waiting list) by clicking here!
NEWSLETTER For those subscribers who requested to receive a copy of Earth First! News in the mail recently (that was our effort at a small supplemental photocopy-able newsletter), we are bummed to tell y'all that we will not be producing that as a separate project for the time being. The intention was for another collective to take this on, and none have stepped up so far. We simply do not have the time or money to continue doing it. If you wanna help make it happen, get in touch. In the meantime, we'll continue to post daily news online via Newswire.EarthFirstJournal.org, and also post PDFs of the recent newsletters (which also run in the quarterly Journals) for distributors to copy and print.
CONTRIBUTORS We are searching out writers, artists, photographers and poets from the frontlines of the eco-resistance. If you think this might be you, click here for details.
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Earth First! Journal
PO Box 964
Lake Worth, FL 33460
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: The website EarthFirst.org is NOT a movement-oriented project. There is no accountability on where the 'donations' go, nor the content that is posted. Unless this changes, we ask that you please do not use that site. If you have donated there in the past, we suggest you ask for a refund so that your money goes to a project which is accountable to the EF! movement, such as the Journal, or directly to one of the many active campaigns out there.
Lughnasadh 2012 - Volume 32, Issue 3
For The Long Haul
Editorial by Britni
Before my ah-ha momentthe point when I became a lifer in the eco-resistanceI hadnt considered myself an environmentalist as much as an animal and social justice activist. Even my actions with Everglades Earth First! against Scripps Biotech were for the animals in the labs more than those dwelling in the Briger forest across from the university where I am finishing the final year of my degree in Feminism, Gender, Sexuality and Visual Studies. The intersections are clearer to me nowall human and nonhuman forms of oppression are integralbut in the Summer of 2011, I had my doubts.
Last year at the Night Heron Activist Center in Lake Worth, I recall asking Russ (a Journal editor and Everglades Earth First! organizer) how the anti-Scripps campaign was going. Id participated in several demonstrations and court hearings, some of which were my introduction to activism at age 17. I dryly noted my frustrations with the last hearing Id been to about Scripps expansion onto the Briger.
We engaged with the law and the law shrugged. Without the support of the courtsand having little to no experience with the process of resistance after authoritative law made verdictI assumed it was time for quits. I set the stage for my moment: So, whats the next campaign?
Russ, rightfully annoyed, told me it sounded as though Id given up the fight. Ah-ha! I sat in silence for a while. I was embarrassed that I hadnt imagined the longer, more bitter struggle that loomed ahead. After much mulling, I recognized that the fight goes on with or without me. I chose to come along.
This moment of clarity helped me navigate how my background in social justice made sense in a biocentric movement. And it became even clearer while I co-facilitated a workshop on consent during my first EF! Rendezvous in the beautiful Pennsylvanian Allegheny forest this Summer. Members of the hydraulic fracturing resistance movement taught me how, in our culture of non-consent, fracking industries steal and destroy land for gas extraction, ruining communities and livelihoods. This same structure of domination and subordination translates in our personal and intimate relationships.
Learning consent and unlearning behaviors that marginalize people means learning to voice our needs and desires and unlearning lifetimes of silence. For others of us it means being an ally by allowing space and respecting boundaries to foster this growth. Learning our right to a culture of consent is a vital process amongst ourselves and against environmental devastation. Before my Ah-ha moment, I envisioned what it looked like to endlessly defend the rights of humans. Now I am humbled to defend biodiversity in tandem. Struggling for the wild means also resisting what suppresses the wild within us all, and therefore confronting both environmental and social oppressions. Only when we have sovereignty over our own bodies, communities, land and resources of the land can we consider ourselves truly liberated. Its a long road ahead, and on it we must unify biocentrism and anti-oppression work as vital and complementary movements. I thank everyone I worked with on the Earth First! Journal as a short-term collective member and everyone I met this Summer in the Allegheny at the EF! Rendezvous for learning and loving with me.
Cheers to the Wild Revolution!