After hearing the news of David "Gypsy" Chain's death in Headwaters forest this September, I was hungry for information about this tragedy. All I found was two sentences in USA Today, a paragraph on the last page of the New York Times and nothing on any of the major television networks.
This was in sharp contrast to the reports that accompany violent attacks on the US government, its citizens or economic interests here or abroad by supposed "terrorists." Why then is it that the terrorist-like actions of corporations like Maxxam/Pacific Lumber (PL), including the murder of a young American nonviolent protester, are largely ignored by the mainstream media?
Media censorship and misinformation help absolve corporations of responsibility for atrocities like David's murder and the destruction of the last great ancient forests. Media bias is one of the largest obstacles the Earth First! movement must overcome, for the terrorist actions of Maxxam/PL that culminated in David's murder are only the latest shots across the bow of our nonviolent resistance.
David's death demonstrates that society's concern for preventing violence does not extend to the Earth and those protecting her. If it did, the media would report his murder, as well as the ecologically disastrouspractices of Maxxam/PL and other timber corporations, as the acts of terrorism they are. This atmosphere, where our own nonviolent actions are seen as criminal and those of corporations like Maxxam/PL are viewed as legitimate, brings Earth First! to a pivotal point in its defense of Headwaters and other ancient forests. As a movement that represents an uncompromising stance towards preservation of fast disappearing biodiversity in North America, we are now forced to accept that destruction of human life is not above our opposition in its pursuit of short-term profit.
Earth First! now finds itself at the turning point visited by other nonviolent movements. In British-occupied India, nonviolent protesters where slaughtered at Amristar. In apartheid-era South Africa, nonviolent protesters were gunned down in Sharpesville. And in Derry, Northern Ireland, peaceful marchers inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights marches were shot dead by British soldiers. These tragedies forced those movements to reevaluate their strategy, as should the Earth First! movement following David's senseless murder.
Our strategy should not just be about adhering to a chosen philosophy but also protecting our friends from death. While David's murder leaves many struggling with deep sorrow and anger, it means nothing to those who caused it. Where Earth First! views protesters like David as practitioners of a morally righteous philosophy, corporations, like Maxxam/PL, see David and other forest defenders as impediments to progress and profit. They have always been prepared to engage in violent actions to remove us. They show no evidence of moral consciousness about the crimes they commit daily against the Earth or those humans who peacefully try to prevent them.
For centuries here in North America people like Earth First!ers, who shared a worldview that recognized the interconnectedness of all life, lost their lives in the struggle to defend Mother Earth. In acknowledgment of this fact, one of Earth First!'s first actions in the early '80s was to erect a monument to the Mimbres Apache warrior, Victorio, who engaged in armed struggle against the mining and cattle industries invading his Gila homeland.
Today's Earth First!ers continue that tradition in places like Fall Creek, Oregon, where forest defenders follow the example of the Lakota leader Red Cloud, who won the only unconditional surrender by the US in a guerrilla war and kept the mining industry out of his homelands. Though such historical recognition of the roots of eco-defense may not bode well with the ardent pacifists within Earth First!, it is appropriate when the economic policies practiced by corporations like Maxxam/PL are the modern day equivalent and continuation of campaigns that in the last century targeted indigenous Americans.
For our allies in other countries who have never left this struggle, the recognition of the need to apply a variety of tactics in the battle for Mother Earth is a lesson already learned. We must also learn that the preservation of our last ancient forests might once more necessitate tactics other than passive civil disobedience.
While Earth First!ers hope that peaceful settlement can be achieved where we are engaged in environmental defense, we must learn from the history of our own resistance and take notice of the behavior of corporate interests in other countries where they commit ecological crimes. In almost every case, opposition to environmental destruction begins with words, peaceful negotiations and other democratic means in an attempt to appeal to the common sense and morality. But, as it has in Headwaters, such pleas almost always fall on deaf ears, drowned out by the voice of corporate dollars.
David's murder forces us to ask ourselves which is greater, our moral commitment to passive nonviolence or our dedication to preventing the destruction of this planet's last ancient redwood forests? Are we prepared to sacrifice more of our peaceful warriors to preserve our moral high ground? Or are we ready to explore a strategy that still rejects physical violence but also targets the financial base of corporations like Maxxam/PL.
It is not that the present strategy in Headwaters and other Earth First! forest campaigns is failing, it isn't. It's not because Earth First! compromised its adherence to nonviolence that David was murdered; it was because Maxxam/PL is willing to ignore it. Earth First!ers must ask whether strategies like those at Headwaters, including prohibiting the destruction of timber industry equipment, give Maxxam/PL an advantage over forest defenders who adhere to tactics that make violence against nonviolent participants likely.
Inevitably we must question whether the murder of David Chain is possibly the Earth First! movement's own sobering example of the partial failure and inappropriateness of a passive nonviolent strategy against an opponent with absolutely no regard for life, be it human or otherwise. This does not mean that violence is the alternative; Earth First! has far from exhausted the alternatives to passive nonviolent strategy.
Earth First! need not meet violence with violence. To do so would violate the moral principle that most separates us from corporations like Maxxam/PL. The willingness to sacrifice our own freedom and lives if necessary in defense of Mother Earth, not by placing ourselves at the mercy of the merciless but by targeting the inanimate tools of destruction, does not violate that principle.
We need not advocate the abandonment of tactics that respect the rights of Earth-destroying property, but we must not prohibit tactics that target them either. A re-evaluation of Earth First!'s tactics does not mean compromising the principles David practiced, it means recognizing that the destruction of earth-destroying property is not a violation of the principles of nonviolence. Neither Gandhi nor King ever labeled such actions counterproductive.
In Earth First!'s quest for a just response to David's murder and the continuing destruction of ancient forests, we need not respect the arbitrary laws that sanction the death of nonviolent protesters and the homelands of endangered nations. We must accept that the conditions that first gave rise to monkeywrenching in the 1980s have only changed in that they are now worse.
A strategic and philosophical acceptance of the need to break unjust laws is the ultimate expression of our love for Mother Earth and proof to corporations, governments and the public that these forests are worth protecting at great personal cost. Whether blockading roads or tearing them up, locking down to logging equipment or destroying it, all actions aimed at preserving ancient forests that do not result in personal injury or loss of life are necessary if we are to stop the destruction.
Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front, all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent. When regulatory agencies like the California Department of Forestry and timber corporations like Maxxam/PL realize that Earth First!ers will meet crimes against nature with unpredictable intervening actions, targeting the machines and profits they care so much about, they will begin to make a serious effort to limit their ecologically destructive behavior.
And while deep sadness is in order in response to David's murder so is a focused determination fueled by the same values of love and respect that David exemplified in his defense of ancient forests. Let equally selfless action aimed at timber corporations like Maxxam/PL be our tears and the relentless targeting of their economic interests be the wail of our sorrow.
The only crime we should ever fear committing is allowing the last ancient forests to fall. In Headwaters, Cove Mallard and the Cascadia Free State, Earth First! has demonstrated our commitment to defending the last remnants of America's ancient forests. But we are far from victory. Earth First! must now advance our campaigns to a level that will force the timber barons out of ancient forests, while minimizing the threat of physical violence to ourselves and our opponents. Anything less and we may be left with our morally superior philosophy intact but without the world's ancient forest ecosystems.