Amidst all the controversy over violence and whether or not it should be discussed or even obliquely advocated in the Journal, one basic point seems to have been overlooked: Earth First! is not a violent movement. We never have been and never will be. Violence is not the inclination of the vast majority of EF! activists and, equally important, it is not what an even greater majority of those who contribute to our campaigns would support. Openly advocate, say, political assassination in the Journal, and see how long before a new office space has to be found, a new basecamp site, new food donations, new funding sources and so on. Like any guerrilla movement, we live or die on whether or not the larger community will shelter us and underwrite our action campaigns. Advocate killing or bombing and watch this movement starve.

Our enemies understand this all too well, which is why we regularly have to fend off attempts to link us with the Unabomber. Here on the north coast of California, the timber industry concocts a steady stream of fake sabotage and fake threats of violence because they know the best way to discredit and undermine support for nonviolent activists is to attribute violence and sabotage to us. For those who think that sabotage might be effective against the likes of Maxxam's Charles Hurwitz, owner of Headwaters forest, remember that he received a $1.6 billion federal bailout. He has enough pocket change to amply guard and insure all his equipment against damage by any would-be ninjas in camo. Distancing ourselves from violence (and in most cases, sabotage as well) is a prerequisite to successful organizing. Nonviolence is our strength. When was the last time anyone heard of the FBI infiltrating an armed group and provoking them to nonviolence? ("Psst, hey kid! Forget about bombs, let's go do a sit-in!")

Theoretical discussions about whether or not violence is ultimately the only effective recourse are just that - theoretical - because EF! will never convert to violence as a policy, and fortunately so. Intellectual laziness, lack of discipline, failure to build institutional wisdom, lack of competent strategy and ego-driven leadership often impede the potential effectiveness of EF! actions. But bring a load of grenades to basecamp and those flaws become tragedies. Those who believe in violence are ultimately wasting their time and that of the rest of us as well. For their own sake, they'd be better off simply starting their own paper, printing exactly what they want and setting about the arduous task of organizing whatever kind of violent movement they think will work. Proselytizing among the unbelievers will only leave everyone frustrated. If a violent radical environmental movement is ever organized (and lasts more than a year or two) it would be its own separate thing and not part of EF!

The real threat to environmental and animal rights activists is not so much that we'll go out in the streets and be shot, but that we'll be ignored. In many ways these movements have marginalized themselves into irrelevancy, stuck in the literal and metaphorical ghetto of basecamps and secretive affinity groups. Many groups have let basic outreach and organizing skills atrophy in favor of the same media stunts performed by the same few people. All the ingenious remaking of history over Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. only detracts from the real work of organizing and developing effective movements.

Instead of printing any more oh-so-much-more-militant-than-thou posturing passing itself off as critique, I suggest that the space would be better used for articles designed to improve basic organizing, strategy and movement-building skills. If EF!'s past use of nonviolent activism has not been altogether effective, it is not nonviolence that is at fault, but the skills of the activists. Introducing violent methods into an ineffective, dogmatic, nonviolent group would only result in an ineffective, dogmatic, violent group.