The Impossible Community: An Interview With John P. Clark on Grassroots Revolution

by Alyce Santoro / truthout

Photo: Bloomsbury Academic

To social ecologists, environmental issues are, at their core, socio-economic issues. The same sense of separateness that justifies our exploitation and domination of one another makes possible similar acts of violence against nature. As long as we remain oblivious to underlying flaws in our collective logic (i.e.: that it is reasonable to endlessly consume non-renewable resources on a finite planet; that peaceful, just societies can emerge out of competitive, hierarchical frameworks) any responses we could devise will be insufficient to significantly alter our current course. A social ecological approach to “saving the environment” would require balancing relationships between humans and other humans, and between humans and all other phenomena. It sounds like a tall order…and it is. In light of the obvious destructive effects of systems within which we are obliged to strive for quantity of goods for one over quality of life for all, we are now faced with two choices: pull off the impossible, or perish.

John P. Clark, a social ecologist/cultural theorist/activist operating out of Loyola University in New Orleans, specializes in the “…potential of apositive practice of social transformation and social regeneration based on nondominating mutual aid and cooperation”; In other words, tall orders. His latest book, titled The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism, outlines historical cooperative political/social/ecological movements, provides examples of successful initiatives currently in progress, and suggests that the present and future wellbeing of all life on earth is dependent upon grassroots revolution of thought and action.

An Image from the Future: A Review of “The East”

The East playing a little game of “spin the bottle.”

[Warning: Spoiler Alert]

By Scott Parkin/ Earth First! Newswire

True Blood’s Eric Northman and Juno lead a state-smashing anarchist collective seeking justice against corporate crime lords?

All I can say is “where do I sign up?”

True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page star in director Zal Batmanglij’s new film “The East.” It’s a provocative new film trying to undermine the usual parade of boring formulaic summer crapola and start a conversation in the wake of popular movement frenzy from Occupy Wall Street to the Tar Sands Blockade. I saw it at a special screening in Berkeley with Batmanglij doing a question and answer at the end of movie for a rowdy crowd of  lefties.

I love movies and I love anarchists. So the tale that Batmanglij and co-writer (and the film’s lead) Brit Marling weaves is one part love story, one part espionage thriller and all anarchy. They tell the story of undercover corporate spy and ex-FBI agent Sarah Moss tasked with infiltrating an anarchist group, “the East,” wanted for executing covert attacks upon major corporations. Shot in an amazing 27 days in Baton Rouge, the film delves into questions around justice, violence, community, commitment, and ultimately…which side are you on?

Batmanglij and Marling spent the summer of 2009 traveling through the North American anarchist scene researching the film. As a loud and proud anarchist, two months is enough to get a tone and feel for our world, but not enough to really understand the politics or the participants in it.

Here’s a couple of things that stood out to me.

Arson Attack on Seattle “Green” Development

The arson of some townhouses under construction was recently claimed by anonymous Seattle Anarchists.  This is the communique they left, citing their reasons and expressing their joy:

“Just before midnight, Monday Feb 25, we strolled over to the townhouses under construction on 24th and Norman in the Central District. After slipping inside, we set one ablaze. Oh what ease! Oh what fun!

Sustainable development is a myth that makes us sick. By furthering gentrification and ecological destruction, these buildings dress disaster up as progress, promising a “green” future that will never be.

Our attack was just one more opportunity to joyously reject the status quo. It was another attempt to shed the subjugated subjectivity forced upon us by Capital and the State. We act against civil society and its attempts at domestication. Fuck that shit.

Get Your Ass Out to Texas and Fight the Tar Sands Pipeline!

[The following is an excerpt from a letter to friends, family and allies written by a scout working with a group of Earth First! folks in the woods of east Texas. They are calling on you to join them ASAP in a full time direct action camp that is growing as you read this. To read the original call to action from this group, and find out how to contact them, click here.]

Greetings. I’m writing to you from the Tar Sands blockade (TSB) in rural east Texas. It’s shaping up to be quite possibly the epic eco-defense battle of our generation. The action is due to start Monday, and so I’ll likely be away from computers for awhile and mobbin’ around the woods for at least a few days. There’s a chance I may be arrested, but it’s unlikely. More likely scenario is that many of us will simply be maintaining phone and online silence during the upcoming showdown.

 

Not the “No trespassing” sign that Woody Guthrie was talking about.. This one is directed at protecting land in Texas from the Keystone pipeline.

BACKGROUND: TransCanada (TC) is a multi-billion dollar corporation engaged in exploiting the Alberta Tar Sands, the most ecologically destructive project on planet Earth. They are trying to move large amounts of bitumen south through Canada and eight US states using a series of massive pipelines, one of which is called “Keystone”. TC has a history of oil spills across the continent and these pipelines are so massive that there will most certainly be oil spills poisoning watersheds if the pipelines are completed.

Earth First! means a world without borders

By an editor of the EF! Journal

Jaguar photographed in arizona

Solidarity with immigrants against borders is one of the most practical and relevant places for the biocentrist—deep ecologist, eco-anarchist, Earth First!er.. or whatever you may call yourself—to present our vision of the world beyond civilization. The border is not just a line between two places. Its a scar on the earth, and in our lives, where empire and ecocide have met. Millions of people in North America feels this environmental and social tragedy in a deep and direct way.

The reality of this has been close to home for us here at the Earth First! Journal/Newswire, from life in Arizona in the midst of the SB 1070 law and the militarized border lands, to our new office in the south, which is now embroiled in the battles surrounding anti-immigrant legislation. Georgia became the first state following the footsteps of Arizona’s “Papers Please” law—HB 87, they are only awaiting the Governor to sign it into law—and, despite mass opposition, Florida is not far behind, with SB 2040.

"We will not comply," blockade at Sheriff Arpaio's Maricopa County Jail in Arizona after SB1070 goes into effect, July 2010

Arbitrary borders divided by walls and high-tech surveillance are becoming one of the most drastic symbols of literal human division and disconnect from the wild world around them. The same principles of rewilding that apply to keeping healthy, biodiverse habitats also apply to the re-wilding the free spirit of our species. What borders walls do to the endangered Jaguar, immigration laws due to our own wild spirits.

The past two issues of the EF! Journal have run excellent articles on borders, immigration, biocentrism and ecological resistance. Check ‘em out below.. May they assist in fueling the flames of immigrant solidarity and rebellion.   For freedom of movement to all species!

The Capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida is occupied by immigrants, predominantly from indigenous campesino communities in Central America.

Razing Arizona: the ecological battle against borders (an overview of pro-immigrant, anti-border articles from the past 10 years of the EF! Journal. In Spanish and English.)

Borders & Bodies (a personal reflection from an EF! Journal editor of borders, colonization and empire from the Arizona border to the coasts of Florida.)

(Also, don’t miss the coming issue of the EF! Journal, this June, for a fresh new article on the Center for Biological Diversity’s effort to defend Jaguars from extinction in the US by the racist border wall.)

Check out news and video from the growing resistance in Florida.

Simultaneous protests for immigrant farmworker solidarity take also place this week. Here, at a grand opening of Grocery chain Public in Lake Worth, FL, new home to the Earth First! Journal.

Letter Bomb Explodes at Swiss Nuclear Industry Office

March, 2011 cover of radical ecological Italian magazine Terra Selvaggia, attributed to the eco-anarchist group Il Silvestre

A letter bomb exploded at the offices of Swissnuclear in the northern town of Olten a spokesperson for the Swiss police said. “At about 8.15 am, while opening the letter, it exploded,” and injured two people.

A statement from the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation was found in the remains of the boobytrapped letter, Swiss federal prosecutor Carlo Bulletti said, quoted by the Swiss news agency ATS on Friday.

Authorities said the letter written in Italian was postmarked from abroad and referred to three eco-anarchists, Costantino Ragusa, Silvia Guerini, and Luca Bernasconi, connected with the group Il Silvestre detained in Switzerland in connection with an attempted bombing at the Swiss headquarters of IBM in Zurich. Il Silvestre opposes nanotechnology, biotechnology, the state and the military and publishes the magazine Terra Selvaggia.

On the same day, an Italian military officer was injured in an army barracks in the Italian port of Livorno by a letter bomb apparently sent by the same anarchist group.

The FAI has also claimed responsibility for a letter bomb sent to a Greek top security prison where a number of anarchists are incarcerated, Greek police said on Friday.

Thursday’s incident occurred near a Greenpeace demonstration outside the headquarters of Swiss power firm Alpiq, not far from the Swissnuclear office.

The group cancelled its demonstration following the explosion, distancing itself from the action.

“We distance ourselves with the greatest firmness from this explosion. Greenpeace has nothing to do with this attack,” Florian Kasser, who heads Greenpeace’s energy campaign in Switzerland, told AFP.

In a statement, Greenpeace said the demonstration was being held to demand Alpiq formally withdraw a request to build new nuclear power plants in Switzerland, which has suspended plans to replace its ageing reactors following Japan’s nuclear disaster.

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper, Heinz Karrer, who heads Swiss energy group Axpo, acknowledged that “at the moment, it is unthinkable to talk about another new nuclear power plant.”

Riot in the streets of London!

Several hundred masked protesters clashed with police, attacked shops and occupied a top store in London after hundreds of thousands of people rallied against government austerity measures. Clad in black and covering their faces with scarves, the protesters clashed with police, hurling fireworks, petrol bombs and paint. Clothes store Topshop and bank HSBC had their windows smashed, while some protesters hurled missiles at London's landmark Ritz Hotel. Others lit a bonfire at Oxford Circus, in the heart of the shopping district.

Riot cops, bagpipers, steel bands, choirs and dancers were also out for the event.

Watch a video of the event: