Action. That's what's needed now, and action is what you are seeing. Activists are literally dug in at a number of locations where the timber industry and US Forest Service has planned new roads and timber sales in critical wildlife habitat. We're talking about entrenched, organized, long-term resistance evolved much beyond the occasional hit-and- run banner action. Despite what you might read in the press, either the mainstream media or the snarky alternative media, not only is Earth First! more active now than ever, we are playing a leading role in helping to frame the debate over wilderness and wildlife protection. We are also setting the agenda for the future. You don't have to take my word for this, just read it here in the Earth First! Journal.
It doesn't seem, as our detractors and naysayers would have us believe, that we are in much danger of losing our focus. I talk to people now and then who have been to a Rendezvous or two, or maybe an action or a meeting and think that they have it all figured out. Maybe they are just too scared or lazy to act and are looking for rationalizations. Maybe they've read some of the scandalous bunk that has been written over the last few years. Maybe they heard someone give a speech. The problem is, trying to figure out Earth First! by going to a Rendezvous is like trying to figure out Yale by going to a frat party. And if you believe all the media swill, you'd probably think we're a naked voodoo hippie cult living off tofu or road kill.
In the local communities where Earth First! and other radical environmental groups have been waging intensive campaigns a clearer image of our movement begins to emerge. Changes are taking place across the nation that will truly have long-term impacts on the conservation movement. As one Idaho County Sheriff's Deputy recently stated to a reporter in Dixie, "If you listen to the rhetoric, you'd think all Earth First!ers had two heads and carried a bucket of tree spikes. It just ain't true. If I drove all the way out here and saw all these clearcuts, I'd be concerned, too."
And Earth First! campaigns are scoring victories in places like Louisiana, Wisconsin and Maine. A recent Pew Foundation-financed poll concluded that the public has little confidence that the mainstream environmental movement is capable of or willing to deal with the rapidly deteriorating ecological crisis. By standing between the machines and the destruction, grassroots groups are sending a clear message to the public about what has to be done. People need to take personal responsibility for what is happening and act. When we do this, even the most formidable of our adversaries can be overcome.
The publics' discontent with the nationals has even reached the US Congress. Now, members of Congress, from all sides of the aisle, are willing to support far-reaching legislation like the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act and Zero Cut, even though this same legislation is opposed by most of the national environmental groups. This strong public support for the environment has caused the right-wing Republicans to do a full retreat on gutting the Endangered Species Act and weakening other laws. Clearly, support for the environment is far deeper than the skeptics who lobby Congress for the Group of Ten were telling us just last year when they said to expect less and prepare to compromise more. It is not the conservationists who are considered radicals now, it is Newt Gingrich.
That's the good news. The bad news is, of course, that even in the light of changing attitudes, public support and new momentum, things are still getting increasingly worse. Democrats, eg President Clinton, rather than being a barrier against bad legislation, are now a major threat with their own legislation. They seem intent on giving the timber, mining and grazing industry everything they want. Unbelievably, many of the largest environmental organizations in the country are going along with it, just to get more of these Democrats elected! It is no wonder that many environmentalists like David Brower are supporting the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader. The message here is, if they want our vote, they must earn it.
And if that ain't bad enough, we are sometimes are own worst enemy. Grassroots organizations are still too inward looking. We need to focus our energy less on turf and personality conflicts and more on old-fashioned grassroots organizing. We can alter the balance of power in this country by using language that unifies people and clearly presents our message. And of course, we have to focus our attention on the appropriate targets. In most cases, ecological destruction is caused by criminal corporate behavior and government refusal to curb it. Lifestyle and moral issues like the ones surrounding diet, meat-eating and hunting, religious or spiritual perceptions of wilderness and nature are all important and merit serious discussion. But this is not achieved by equating barnyards with Nazi concentration camps, fisherpeople or women with murderers, blaming all the ills of society on Judeo-Christianity or western thought, on white males, undocumented Mexican immigrants, computers or even television. This is not to say that any or all of these factors lack an ecological cost. All human activity has an ecological cost. But at the same time, all humans are potentially capable of contributing to a solution.
We should think very carefully before we make any of these issues a litmus test on whether or not someone is a good activist or a bad activist. It is impossible to determine the quality or quantity of someone's action by whether or not they put cheese on their pizza or believe Elvis is still alive. If they are actively involved in protecting the life- support system of planet Earth, then that should be good enough.
If the future looks bleak for the environment, then at least, it is looking better for our movement. For some of us, the next few months will be crucial. At the time of this writing the timber beasts are being held at bay by Earth First! activists in Warner Creek, Headwaters Grove, China Left and Cove/Mallard. To be sure, the corporate greedheads and their lackeys in the Forest Service will be planning a showdown at the barricades soon, with all the might in their arsenal. But we are ready for them, and the world is watching.