deep green resistance: strategy to save the planet

[miss pixie]

 

taken from website: http://deepgreenresistance.org/

 

Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and a movement being born — the only movement of its kind.



 

As an analysis, it reveals the last 10,000 years of human history–the rise and dominance of civilization–as the culture of death that is now threatening every living being on Earth.

 

As a strategy, it critiques ineffective lifestyle actions and explains their inevitable failure to stop the destruction of people, species, and the planet. In contrast, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction.

 

As an aboveground movement, just now taking its first steps, Deep Green Resistance is based on this analysis and implementing this strategy. And we’re recruiting.

 

No more ineffective actions – piecemeal, reactive, and sad. No more feel-good, magical-thinking, navel-gazing, consumer-based, capitalist-approved denial and dead ends.

 

The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This will require defending and rebuilding just and sustainable human communities nestled inside repaired and restored landbases. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.

 

DGR’s strategy involves two separate parts of the movement – an aboveground and an underground. The aboveground works for sustainable, just, and participatory institutions, and assists the frontline activists with loyalty and material support. And In any resistance scenario, the underground dismantles the strategic infrastructure of power. This is a basic tactic of both militaries and insurgents the world over for the simple reason that it works. But such actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. This means that any strategy aiming for a just future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures. Which means that the different branches of resistance movements must work in tandem: the aboveground and belowground, the militants and the nonviolent, the frontline activists and the cultural workers. We need it all.

 

And we need courage. The word “courage” comes from the same root as coeur, the French word for heart. We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love.

So while DGR is about fighting back, in the end this movement is about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being. With love as our First Cause, how can we fail?

 

Want more? Here’s the strategy:

[Alan Durant]

Hi Roger,

I was kind of speaking to everybody. However, as you say you don't have a plan and I'd like someone to have one for consideration. I'm keeping my input a tribe free area as I got dizzy last time.

Best  Alan

[Roger Hicks]

The point I'm making, Alan, which surely we have to discuss, is the urgent need to start organising OURSELVES, peacefully and grass-roots democratically, instead of leaving it to the state and capital to do for us, which is what got us into the mess we are in and is preventing us from getting out of it.

How do we go about organising ourselves? That is the BIG question. You don't like my suggestions, preferring to keep this a "tribe-free area", which obliges you, I think, to make an alternative suggestion. Let's hear it.

The reason Communism failed so catastrophically, and the reason social democracy (our welfare state) also fails, is because they were (are) implemented from the top down by the state, in the case of the latter using money generated by a capitalist economy.

[Alan Durant]

Hi Roger, this must be a first I actually agree with you, (mostly).

The problem with Socialism and Communism is that they can't work unless there is complete ownership and control by people. We learn best by experience and if people had power to make decisions I think that constructive ideas would come out. Likewise I think that most people don't realise the seriousness of the situation we are in. They think they are being lied to as an excuse to put up taxes and prices. At some level they feel that the multinationals and other representatives of capital can tell the politicians what to do. Time and experience would probably allow people to produce a way out of our present situation. But, do we have time?

My problem is how to convine people or even if its possable to do so.

 

Best  Alan

[Roger Hicks]

Alan, how can "people" organise ownership and control of land and capital without first organising themselves?

They can't. In the Soviet Union, the communist party stepped in, took control of the state, and the rest is history, which we can't afford to repeat.

What attracted me, and I guess most others, to the Dark Mountain Project is its recognition of just how dire our situation is, that we can no longer avoid the approaching catastrophe. I don't think we need to convince anyone here of that. The point of this project is to ask, What can we do about it? Even if we can't avoid catastrophe, we can surely still reduce its scale, and improve our (children's) chances of survival and recovery. That's what I understand this project to be about. Rather than just giving into despair or resignation, or selfishly just enjoying the time remaining to us.

Personally, I'm motivated - in good part, in so far as I am aware of my motivations - by a sense of responsibility towards my tribe and nation, which I want to outlive me by many generations. I think of my forebears, who worked and fought and sacrificed so much (some of them their lives) for me and my generation, and feel that I owe the same to the next and future generations.

[Alan Durant]

I was sort of looking for a way that people might be inspired to organise themselves.

Alan
Roger Hicks said:

Alan, how can "people" organise ownership and control of land and capital without first organising themselves?

They can't. In the Soviet Union, the communist party stepped in, took control of the state, and the rest is history, which we can't afford to repeat.

What attracted me, and I guess most others, to the Dark Mountain Project is its recognition of just how dire our situation is, that we can no longer avoid the approaching catastrophe. I don't think we need to convince anyone here of that. The point of this project is to ask, What can we do about it? Even if we can't avoid catastrophe, we can surely still reduce its scale, and improve our (children's) chances of survival and recovery. That's what I understand this project to be about. Rather than just giving into despair or resignation, or selfishly just enjoying the time remaining to us.

Personally, I'm motivated - in good part, in so far as I am aware of my motivations - by a sense of responsibility towards my tribe and nation, which I want to outlive me by many generations. I think of my forebears, who worked and fought and sacrificed so much (some of them their lives) for me and my generation, and feel that I owe the same to the next and future generations.

[bert louis]

.. looking for a way that people might be inspired to organise themselves?

Don't look any further and know that the talent for organizing ourselves is one of the features of the human species. Organising allows people to get things done that are to big for one.

How do we organise? A question for science I believe, but  for the purpose of this talk I suggest that at least these two conditions must be met:
a) there must be a purpose. 
b) there must be a rule of law.

-  A shared purpose is necessary to get all the noses in the same direction (for the organising itself it does not really matter what that purpose is.)
- A rule of law is necessary to keep the people within a moral code, and to exorcise those that break the behavioural code.

So Alan,  maybe you are actually looking for a new purpose?

[Maurice Spurway (Mozz)]

Roger,

... when you say, about violence, that it "will only harden attitudes and state repression in defence of the status quo", are you sure that state (and corporate) repression is capable of being hardened even more?

 

It is true that disruption and militance are key aspects of Deep Green Resistance.

(militant = vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause ---- dictionary.com)

 

To those of us that have adopted the principle of "non violent direct action", it's very difficult to understand the need for violence.  It is "the line that must not be crossed".  This is what I thought.

Then I read Premise 15 from Derrick Jensen's book endgame : "Love does not imply pacifism"

Here is Jensen talking about it here ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e75I4ysssoA&feature=player_embedded

 

Play it ... he makes a good case for the need for violence, when you are faced with the kind of unstoppable violence practiced by industrial civilization, that could end life (or our life) on this planet.

It doesn't mean that I - personally - will be using violence in my activism.  I'm a pacifist.  But I understand the thrust behind his argument.  And I do feel a need to express my activism with more ... militance.

 

M.

Roger Hicks said:

Maurice, I don't think it is fair to say that this thread was "hijacked". My initial response, in which I criticised DGR's militancy and offered my own Darwinian perspective in its stead, was perfectly on-topic.  True, I was then forced to defend my approach from some pretty harsh and damning attacks - not just on my views, but also on my integrity - which, you are right, really belonged on another thread. 

My apologies to Miss Pixie and others for any annoyance caused.

I'm pleased to see the thread back on-topic and will repeat my initial response of rejecting DGR's militancy and the violence it implies, which I am sure will only harden attitudes and state repression in defence of the status quo, making our task of effecting any real change not just more difficult - and it's difficult enough already -  but quite impossible.

Let us use the priceless freedoms and means (relative wealth) we have in western democracies to create grass-roots democratic alternatives to a society that is still, as it always has been, organised very much from the top down by state and capital. We have been dreaming of, and some actually creating, alternatives for decades, but they have remained few in number, pretty isolated from each other, and thus had little effect on society and our situation at large.

We will never all agree on a single alternative (such as "communists" and "socialists", with catastrophic consequences, have tried imposing on society), and thus need a framework within which a multitude of alternatives can flourish and cooperate, and in extremis be prevented from coming to blows. 

I call these alternatives tribes and nations, because this acknowledges the need to tap into and harness our deeply tribal human nature, along with the energy and sense of identity and purpose that flows from it, but if others want to call them something else, that's up to them. Hopefully, we can argue and disagree about names, without it distracting us too much from our cause, on which the survival of our civilisation (although not in its current form) depends.

[Alan Durant]

Hi Bert, I think the most important word was the one you seem to have overlooked, inspired. The rest is pretty self evident, no?

 

Alan
bert louis said:

.. looking for a way that people might be inspired to organise themselves?

Don't look any further and know that the talent for organizing ourselves is one of the features of the human species. Organising allows people to get things done that are to big for one.

How do we organise? A question for science I believe, but  for the purpose of this talk I suggest that at least these two conditions must be met:
a) there must be a purpose. 
b) there must be a rule of law.

-  A shared purpose is necessary to get all the noses in the same direction (for the organising itself it does not really matter what that purpose is.)
- A rule of law is necessary to keep the people within a moral code, and to exorcise those that break the behavioural code.

So Alan,  maybe you are actually looking for a new purpose?

[Alan Durant]

Hi Maurice, perhaps just withdrawing cooperation with the present system while being prepared to defend ones self if attacked works. Initiating violence I think just alienates the mass support that would be needed to change the system. I've written this but I'm not sure its always true?

Best  Alan
Maurice Spurway said:

Roger,

... when you say, about violence, that it "will only harden attitudes and state repression in defence of the status quo", are you sure that state (and corporate) repression is capable of being hardened even more?

 

It is true that disruption and militance are key aspects of Deep Green Resistance.

(militant = vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause ---- dictionary.com)

 

To those of us that have adopted the principle of "non violent direct action", it's very difficult to understand the need for violence.  It is "the line that must not be crossed".  This is what I thought.

Then I read Premise 15 from Derrick Jensen's book endgame : "Love does not imply pacifism"

Here is Jensen talking about it here ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e75I4ysssoA&feature=player_embedded

 

Play it ... he makes a good case for the need for violence, when you are faced with the kind of unstoppable violence practiced by industrial civilization, that could end life (or our life) on this planet.

It doesn't mean that I - personally - will be using violence in my activism.  I'm a pacifist.  But I understand the thrust behind his argument.  And I do feel a need to express my activism with more ... militance.

 

M.

Roger Hicks said:

Maurice, I don't think it is fair to say that this thread was "hijacked". My initial response, in which I criticised DGR's militancy and offered my own Darwinian perspective in its stead, was perfectly on-topic.  True, I was then forced to defend my approach from some pretty harsh and damning attacks - not just on my views, but also on my integrity - which, you are right, really belonged on another thread. 

My apologies to Miss Pixie and others for any annoyance caused.

I'm pleased to see the thread back on-topic and will repeat my initial response of rejecting DGR's militancy and the violence it implies, which I am sure will only harden attitudes and state repression in defence of the status quo, making our task of effecting any real change not just more difficult - and it's difficult enough already -  but quite impossible.

Let us use the priceless freedoms and means (relative wealth) we have in western democracies to create grass-roots democratic alternatives to a society that is still, as it always has been, organised very much from the top down by state and capital. We have been dreaming of, and some actually creating, alternatives for decades, but they have remained few in number, pretty isolated from each other, and thus had little effect on society and our situation at large.

We will never all agree on a single alternative (such as "communists" and "socialists", with catastrophic consequences, have tried imposing on society), and thus need a framework within which a multitude of alternatives can flourish and cooperate, and in extremis be prevented from coming to blows. 

I call these alternatives tribes and nations, because this acknowledges the need to tap into and harness our deeply tribal human nature, along with the energy and sense of identity and purpose that flows from it, but if others want to call them something else, that's up to them. Hopefully, we can argue and disagree about names, without it distracting us too much from our cause, on which the survival of our civilisation (although not in its current form) depends.

[Roger Hicks]

Maurice, Thanks for the link to Derrick Jensen, which made interesting and persuasive listening. He makes some very good points. However, this quote from him I found troubling:

 

"I'm interested in confronting and dismantling power"

 

Because the power of the state doesn't only oppress, but also protects and defends our freedoms from those who would oppress us even more and deny us our freedoms. 

" . . are you sure that state (and corporate) repression is capable of being hardened even more?”

I'm surprised you ask that question, because I would have thought it obvious from looking at other countries (e.g. Iran, Syria, China, the list goes on and on) that repression can be a great deal worse than it is in the capitalist West. We couldn't even have this conversation in most countries on an open forum, since the authorities would suppress it.

I'm not a pacifist. If I thought that using force against the state would help achieve our goal of halting the infinitely worse violence we are committing against our planet and future generations, I would sanction it, but, as I've already said, I'm pretty sure that it will just make matters worse, leading to increasing suppression by the state and eventual loss of our freedoms, and with them the potential to change things grass-roots democratically from the bottom up, as we need to do.

The focus of our activism needs to be on creating an alternative to the existing socio-economic order, which we have the freedom and the means to do, but currently aren't doing, because we lack a shared conceptual framework and sense of purpose. We are all pulling in different directions, and thus going nowhere, other than the catastrophic direction in which the existing power-political and socio-economic forces (deeply rooted in our blind Darwinian nature) are driving us.

A major obstacle is the assumption (hard - but not unchangeably - wired into our tribal nature) that a shared conceptual framework and sense of purpose also implies a shared (tribal) identity (thus the idealistic, and power-politically exploited, notions of “one human race” or “the family of man”). We need to develop strong tribal identities (in place of allowing the state and capital to control and exploit our inherent tribal nature), which embed us firmly and responsibly (free, but not to do whatever we want) in our own particular society (not defined by a proprietary state as “society” is now), but which at the same time embrace a unifying conceptual framework and sense of purpose in respect to sharing the planet in a rational, just, humane and sustainable fashion.

[Roger Hicks]

Maurice, I thought I'd  come back and thank your for introducing me to Derrick Jensen, because he is saying exactly what I am in respect to us "identifying with the system [of state and capital] that is abusing us" (On Identification), which is the root cause of our problems, and for which I have a Darwinian explanation. If someone else thinks they have a better explanation, let me hear it, but please don't reject mine just because it's "Darwinian". 

The majority of people defend the system because they depend on and identify with it, seeing any attack on it as an attack on themselves, which they will, naturally enough, resist. Added to which, we ALL depend on the system, including those criticising or attacking it.

Thus the need to create a just, humane and sustainable alternative, which we can gradually transfer our activities and dependencies to, each when we are ready and at our own pace, because coercion will simply provoke more resistance and be counterproductive.

It's going to take years and decades to create - even once we get started, which we haven't done yet - which means that we will necessarily remain dependent (though ever decreasingly) on the existing system for some time yet.

Once the necessity and attractiveness of the alternative, which we have yet to create even the plans for, becomes more apparent - through demonstration, rather then just talking about it - developments should snowball, so that what seems light-years away at the moment, can hopefully be reached before all is lost.

[zulema]

http://deepgreenresistance.org/

With Respect, I think that you are still missing the point of what Deep Green Resistance is about, Derrick often says, 'WE NEED IT ALL!"  DGR is very clearly an Aboveground movement in its infancy. Militancy and disruption do not only mean violence, and certainly the Aboveground would have an absolute firewall between it and any underground actions. The website makes this very clear. The writing is far more resonant with the principles of deep Ecolgy than Anarchist anti Civ.

 

What DGR and Derrick's many previous books ( Listening to the land, A Culture Older than Words and Endgames 1 and 2 ) All available to borrow in the Uk through Interlibrary loans!) are proposing is that we fight back against the abuses of civilisation and work to protect and restore our landbases. Telling stories and making art may be one way of doing that, what I really like about Jensens work is it is NOT prescriptive of 'one true way" unusually.

 

This is from a US group Fertile Grounds website,  http://fertileground1.ning.com/

WE BELIEVE:

1.    That human survival is dependent on healthy, diverse ecosystems.

2.    That industrial civilization is undermining every living system on the planet.

3.    That the rights of life trump the perceived rights of commerce.

 

4.    That most injustices are systematic and deliberate.

 

5.    That the scale of planetary degradation is massive and should be met with solutions that match the scale of the problems.

6.    That the modern environmental movement will need to undergo a fundamental transformation for it to be successful.

7.    That technological innovation will not prevent the systematic degradation of our planet.

8.    That this culture will not make a voluntary change to a sustainable lifestyle.

9.    That protective use of force is justified in defending our landbase.

10.    That our current civilization needs to be replaced by thousands of cultures that are fully integrated into their local ecosystems.

 

 

With best wishes,

 

Zulema