NEC Co-directors
Combing through EcoNews archives for this month’s Flashback on the Northwest Forest Plan, Time and Sid’s legacies tell us the story of the first year of what was then called “Option 9.” As many recall, Option 9 was by no means perfect, and now this already too thin paper barrier is being gutted, placing hundreds of thousands of acres of critical forest habitat and carbon sinks on the chopping block, up for sale under the false guise of “fire prevention”
Simultaneously, we are watching with growing fury as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is re-opened for drilling, as Environmental Justice is removed from ecological analysis (a key part of the fight against toxics), and as Richardson Grove is yet again threatened by road expansion to support corporate suppliers.
It’s been a hell of a first few weeks of Trump Administration 2.0, and the NEC looks to the past as we advocate for the future. Much of what we are witnessing is the resurgence of a time 30 years passed — a re-invigoration of neoliberal sate and economic policy, a stripping away of the comforting illusions that have hampered our collective efforts since the ’90s. Movements for the Earth and its life were hit with the double whammy of Clinton’s limited gestures and Bush’s rabid surveillance campaign to crush domestic dissent during Post-9/11 Green Scare. Clinton’s non-enforceable gesture towards Environmental Justice did nothing to enhance Bush’s humanitarian failings during Hurricane Katrina.
Both administrations valorized the global economy and consumer cultures. Clinton hit the gas on worker exploitation and the use of artificial fertilizers and polluting toxics in Mexico by signing H.W. Bush’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law (1994)–the trade agreement which Zapatistas regard as the “death certificate for the Indian peoples in Mexico.” W. Bush further expanded free trade through powers granted via the Trade Act of 2002–removing Congressional authority to amines international trade agreements, limiting the abilities of worker and environmental advocate to influence global economic practices.
Say nothing of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (2006) and other “ag-gag” laws which targeted eco and animal advocates for activities as mundane as picketing slaughterhouses–all part of the mid-2000s Green Scare.
The legislative and executive works of the last several decades were not to the overall benefit of environmental, animal, or human rights. We have see war and extraction–especially for energy infrastures–continue in a mostly unlimited, but ever glossier, more efficient, more technologically advanced fashion. We have seen dissent attacked by an ever-expanding militarized polling apparatus, there US’s war machine turned inward on its citizens.
We are in a political moment wherein the illusions of comfort handed to movements in the 1990s are being stripped away. Movements from 1960-1990s gained riots volume, and internationalist call for the people of Earth to align with collective interest and turn away from this planet-poisoning war machine. Our predecessors and friends in this work were hunted and punished severely. Yet, we must not ignore what a stripping of this white sheet signifies in our current time.
Trumps’s executive orders make clear the efforts to attack those who align ourselves with the Earth and collective freedom starkly apparent. Just as the NEC announced our shift toward worker collectivity and a model that celebrates queer, Indigenous leadership, Trump and his cohort made public their hatred of a diverse society. The hostile effort to bring both diverse peoples and diverse ecologies under heel is unified. We are also unified.
No matter what Trump or any other government or corporate official throws our way, we will continue to highlight the diversity of voices and tactics calling for a cleaner, more whole Earth.
In ’94, Tim urged environs to shore up our dedication to each other, encouraging us to be loyal to the planet against industry, to become as dedicated to the natural world as industry is to the US dollar. We heed this voice, we stay firm, on the ground, in active struggle, collecting stat, supporting other activists, and not shying away from the bullies with lawyers and dollars to spare.
To be queer, to be Indigenous, to be Earth Protectors, who are collectively oriented away from profit, away from hierarchy, means putting ourselves in the crosshairs. This does not surprise us, because we embers the legacies of those who have ravaged the earth and their corporate and authoritarian descendants, who continue to threaten the Earth and all its Life–human, elemental, animal, and otherwise.
The NEC is what it has always been–passionate Earth lovers, on the ground activists, artists, poets, people getting our hands dirty doing land restoration, and putting out this publication for over half a century. We are in a battle of competing possible futures, and we aren’t backing down.
In the winter, through the darkness, we dance, run, fight, love, and sing with our ancestors. May our words and actions call out to the legacies of all Earth warriors before us. We gift our shared vision for the future to these voices: to Avalon, to Haunani Kay Trask, Tortuguita, to David “Gypsy” Chain, to Toypurina, to Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay, Berta Càceres, Candice King, to Adela, to Aragorn!, to Judi Bari, June McCovey, Brian Tripp, to the Unnamed But Always Remembered Dead…To Sid. To Tim.
“You cannot seriously address the destruction of wilderness without addressing the society that is destroying it.” –Judi Bari, in “Revolutionary Ecology” (early 1995)