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TechnoratiLong-Time Environmental Activist: 'It's About the Confrontation'
Earth First! Co-Founder Reflects on Technology, Protests, Environmental Battles Ahead in New Book
Earth First! made headlines with its tree-spiking in the 1980s, but the guy who helped make the anti-logging tactic famous didn't invent it.
![[Activist and author Mike Roselle reads from “Tree Spiker: From Earth First! to Lowbagging: My Struggles in Radical Environmental Action” at a book signing at Fact & Fiction On Campus in the University Center on Tuesday afternoon. (Photo by LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/Roselle.jpg "Roselle.jpg")
Mike Roselle even titled one chapter of his new book "Why I Quit
Spiking Trees." In it, the co-founder of Earth First!, the
Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society described how the
practice brought old-growth timber cutting to national awareness,
but became a public relations disaster for the protesters.
"I think the Wobblies can take credit for it if they want, but it's been around as long as logging," Roselle said, referring to the Industrial Workers of the World union organizers who spiked the trees of nonunion mills in the 1930s. "The anti-spiking laws in California date back to the 1880s."
In his book "Tree Spiker," Roselle claimed his colleagues always marked the trees they spiked to draw attention to their protest. But when an unmarked tree wrecked a bandsaw and injured a millworker in California, the environmental organization's image became one of eco-terrorists.
Roselle and fellow Earth Firsters denied involvement with the mill injury, but the logging confrontations were growing more violent. The group publicly foreswore tree-spiking. The point, Roselle said, was to draw as much notice to a problem as possible without getting anyone hurt.
"You can stand and fight and do so nonviolently, or you can do so violently," Roselle said. "The trouble with violence is it's a sure losing strategy in this country. Martin Luther King set a decent example for how it should be done."
Roselle and co-writer Josh Mahan visited Missoula on Tuesday to promote the book. Mahan said the two of them spent five years writing down the incidents and organizing the story.
Although Roselle is now deep in a new project, Climate Ground Zero, that uses the Internet and instant messaging to network, he was somewhat wistful for the old days when technology was a telephone wired to a wall.
"I think all this new social networking has caused people to retreat into their own personal world, rather than engage directly," he said. "You've got all these Web sites with buttons to click to participate. But when you have a rally, our experience is 10 percent of the people who push that button will show up.
"Now you've got flash mobs and sky art, like the Climate 350 people who all stood together and made a 350," he said. "No mining company executive is shaking in his boots when he sees 500 people standing together in a field. It's about the confrontation. That's what these actions lack - they're creative but they're not creative confrontation."
Looking back, Roselle didn't think of anything he'd want to undo, but he did wish one part of his logging battles had come out differently. He told of meeting a former Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, logger who was cutting down big trees along Washington, D.C., boulevards. The logger started talking about how "those spotted owl people put me out of work," and Roselle braced for a resumption of the old arguments.
Instead, the logger said he just wished the logging opponents had bought up his equipment, the way commercial fishermen had their boats and catch permits compensated when the government closed fishing areas.
"We left them high and dry," Roselle said. "They got kind of a raw deal. So now, when we work with the coal miners, we're always thinking about the economic future for all miners. There's no reason to victimize more people in this process. We owe them a debt for all they've done and all they've been through. When things get polarized, it's hard to keep that in perspective."
After spending more than 45 years as a protester and guerrilla theater organizer, Roselle remains in the fray. His latest foe is the mountaintop-removal coal operations of West Virginia.
"When I get out of bed, I want to know who I can (expletive) with?" Roselle said. "When you see they're violating the last of the roadless areas, or polluting our air and water or killing our life-support system, how can you not be angry? I've got to do something to challenge them in order to look at myself."
26 Comments so far
Show AllGood job to the author for coming out with his stories. They will be priceless for people really wanting to do something about the environment. Today's radicals need to know how other generations have dealt with their movements. And what is more important than the environmental movement? It is all I have known my entire life. But trust me, if the internet becomes too powerful of a political statement, it will be monitored and mummed. Corporate people with politicians in their pockets will regulate the internet so people do not protest online. People too ignorant or too powerful cannot dialogue or give thoughtful solutions -- rather they mum others -- shut them right out. People who have vested interests, like corporate America does, can and will mum their opposition if they become seemingly powerful. Because how unAmerican to not believe in jobs? Get the nomads and indigenous addicted to wage based economies then blame the environmentalist for industry dying. The ignorant will call the unemployed and homeless lazy but I know what corporatism does to a society when it ends (and it always ends). It will abandon them and how nice for the environmentalist to care for them. I'd rather see a dead wage based economy than a dead planet. As long as we can feed ourselves by growing our own food, having access to clean water and clean air, then we should be ok. We'll figure out the rest. Corporatism is not necessary -- unless it is corporations we have to buy our water and air from... and that might be next in line. First water will become the hottest commodity then air... good luck to us all. I don't have that much faith in humanity, obviously.
This article makes important points re the need to maintain organized actions against bad policies. We can't just talk amongst ourselves on cyberspace.
Environmentalists do have to take into account the need for jobs. We will broaden our base if workers know that we do care about their well being. If an environmental win means thousands of lost jobs, those people need alternative employment.
That's what sustainable, green job policy is all about.
The idea of the government buying up the equipment and compensating the people whose professions have outlived their usefulness is an intriguing one. Maybe the government would think twice about building war machinery and compensating the out of work troops if they would have to buy it all back once lasting world peace is achieved.
u brew did you even notice that what we discuss here
is the way to neuter capitalism .to stop all things
it has done to our planet and its population human and
otherwise all of it in a malevolent way. maybe less
brew and more thought is needed! part of the problem or the
solution? we need to have massive confrontation in the
us on a daily or weekly basis as the first step in
reclaiming whatever democracy we had. the bully always
gets nervous when it gets pushed back. and while it does
by nature it has to be nonviolent it does need an edge!
You can't use violence because the (corporate) state has a monopoly on violence (Max Weber). They get very angry when you tread on their turf.
Having grown up in the NW and lived in a small town where the fight for the forests was red hot, I find it hard to hear someone who has been on the front lines of that fight say "We left them high and dry". No, WE did NOT leave them high and dry. The timber industry left them high and dry. The land owners and the mills and the big logging companies knew exactly what was going on and they new that one of two things was going to happen: they'd run out of trees to cut down or the Clinton Administration was going to reign them in and make them follow the laws that had been in place to keep them from over cutting for a long long time. The latter happened and it worked out beautifully for the industry owners because they could blame all those lost jobs on "those environmentalists". I feel for those that lost their jobs. It wasn't their fault, yet they had the wool pulled over their eyes and the environmental movement has paid dearly for letting that blame be laid on our doorstep. From a PR standpoint we should ALWAYS be ready to point out who is at fault when jobs are lost due to industry irresponsibility.
Re Pearl of Earl October 28th, 2009 12:35 pm
Well said. I would add only that it seems to me the height of stupidity to be shipping raw logs to Japan, only to have to buy back the finished dimension lumber.
...furthermore spiking is an excellent tactic in a time when (in canada) it's impossible to get the hundreds of activists it takes to occupy and protect a stand of trees until the logging company gives up. One, or a few people, can spike and protect a forest with no fanfare, no confrontation, no injuries to anyone - logger or activist. Spike high so as not to injure the fallers. Publicize the action once the work is done to insure the company does not continue to log the immunized forest.
The millworker injured (the ONLY injury ever - though falsely - attributed to spiking) was injured because the mill was cutting costs and had removed the mandatory safety shield from the mill saw. The blade may just as well have shattered from the common rocks embedded in a tree when it falls as from a spike. The millworker himself blamed and sued the company, not the activists.
Sure there will be howls of indignation and condemnation. But the trees will remain standing. It takes a diversity of tactics to slow the awful machinery of destruction. In some situations monkeywrench is absolutely necessary in order to give the more 'acceptable' forms of action such as letter writing, market campaigns and other kinds of lobbying time to work.
peace
Unfortunately, the thind that has felled the greatest and most ecologically irreplacable trees in the Southeastern US is not loggers, but a little aphid carried in from Japan, which is thriving because deep winter cold snaps have become rare.
prd412, I wasn't aware of this.
Have you read Janisse Ray's work? She talks about the Southern pine forests being converted to pine plantations.
I'm referring to the Hemlock Wolly Adelgid. The old-growth Eastern Hemlocks in the southern appalacians are the closest thing in the eastern US to Redwoods or old-growth Douglas Firs. They have alredy been wiped out from Virginia and West Virginia except the highest elevations. The infestation is now moving into Tennessee and North Carolina. The growth northward into Pennsylvania (or at least the colder Allegheny plateau) is slower. Unlike the Chestnut and Elm that were wiped out earlier. The Hemlocks are an irreplacable part of the Appalacian stream-hollow ecosystems and will cause the loss of the Brook Trout and some bird species from many hollows.
But the chamber of commerce stifled the program to encourage the predator insects that would control the alien aphids. That and a million other beneficial programs.
Yes, but what is the driving the logging? Corporate profits. What disrupts climate so that invasive species like your aphid can cause havoc? The demand for ever increasing economic growth, meaning ever increasing resource extraction, energy use, consumption, pollution, in other words, corporate profits. As Michael Moore says, "capitalism is evil, and you can't reform evil."
Tom,
If Michael Moore did indeed say this, "capitalism is evil, and you can't reform evil", then he is either protecting the current President or capitalism or both.
If Capitalism is NOT reformed, it becomes evil.
The regulations swept away by the Reagan administration need to be reinstated.
The "trickle-down theory" has long been proven to be another scam fed to the people by our government.
Capitalism is not the problem, we are the problem.
Continuing to elect the same elitists with a record of supporting corporate interests over and over again is a sign of insanity or stupidity or both.
I support corporate and environmental regulations, and end to NAFTA, single-payer health care, end to war, free public college education; all of which Dennis Kucinich will enact as President.
The stocks went up last week when Walmart said they expected greater profit in the next quarter. Ive said this before so if you've read it, I apologize. Stopping the corporations profit is the only thing they care about and their profit comes largely from consumers. Stop consuming. Only essential food (and try to find a family owned grocery store, not one of the chains) essential travel and essential medicines. Nothing more. Buy the children's Christmas presents at the thrift stores, they'll love you and it will help them with their own Christmas giving. Tell the children why you're doing it. Tell the family you won't be travelling to see them this holiday, and tell them why.
If you're lucky enough to still have a job take your paycheck to the bank and cash it. Keep just enough in your account to pay bills that are too distant to pay in person in cash. If you're one of the really lucky ones who's invested in a pension get out of it. I got out of mine in 1990 when I discovered that they couldn't tell me what companies our fund was supporting and I'd have to do the research myself. I already had a full-time job; chasing down shell corporations was beyond my skills. Don't buy stocks, ever again. Invest in our communities instead. Tear up your lawn and plant a victory garden instead. That's what they did in England during WWII and it worked.
Martin Luther King and Gandhi both used boycotts and non-cooperation. Turn off the T.V. except Link and Free Speech TV. Let the coporate media use their programs to catch some other pair of eyes to sell to the advertisers; tell them your eyes are not for sale.
We have to stop cooperating with our current economic system. Yes, it will be hard; everyone wants to help the economy so people get their jobs back but that's not going to happen. They love this jobless recovery; it's providing them with loads of cannon-fodder. We need to opt out of this economy and start building our own small local ones. What's the point in trying to save an economy that's destroying the planet it lives on? They won't give us a new one, we're going to have to build our own.
I wonder how many of us on CD are actually doing as you suggest...I do everything I can. It would be great if there were a quiz or something so we had a better idea of who or how many were already doing as you suggest.
We are doing what we can. We buy about 90% of our groceries at the Farmers Market. We eat little flesh, most of it seafood from local businesses. We travel as little as possible. We love shopping at thrift stores, where the most incredible bargains can be found. When we have to buy new, we buy American made products, preferably Union made, when available. My Union made jeans just cost $38 instead of $14, and I was glad to do it. When we do this by ourselves, it is irrelevant. When tens of thousands do it, it will be an inconvenience. When tens of millions do it, it will be a movement. When hundreds of millions do it, we win!
From the article:
"You can stand and fight and do so nonviolently, or you can do so violently," Roselle said. "The trouble with violence is it's a sure losing strategy in this country. Martin Luther King set a decent example for how it should be done."
Yep, and the corporatists came up with a game plan to prevent MLK's method from working again -- do not televise it, and when you report it, minimize the numbers and importance. Promote balloon boy stories instead.
Exactly!
And then, if those frustrated with the inefficacy of NV action break the windows of a few robber-banks - demonize with extreme prejudice!
Roselle made a lot of good points. I likewise laughed at the spectacle of ineffectiveness of the 350 demonstrations.
The only way NV is going to work again is to get participation up in the many tens of millions - general strikes, and sit-in's so large that they cause the breakdown of the economic and physical, infrastructure, including sanitation and food of a major city. People have to be willing to risk their lives.
"The only way NV is going to work again is to get participation up in the many tens of millions"
This is the point where the leftists scatter like cats. Some leftists will recognize an inherent value in mass participation. Other leftists won't. This is a fatal division among leftists, which in the USA creates further fragmentation until they can fragment no more. This is liberal fundamentalism/extremism, enabled by petro-opiate addiction. When the petro-opiates run out, USan leftists will suddenly discover their ability to unite in common cause, but also when the petro-opiates run out, the elites will find new opiates to replace those, to keep the people addicted, and the left hopelessly fragmented. This is why we need localism. Local independence stifles the elites' opiate rackets that enlists rightists as brownshirts and lets leftists scatter like cats. With true economic/political independence from elites, the people will unite on a foundation of solidarity and inter-dependence among people, to keep the elites down, and ensure universal equity/justice.
This article reminds me of how I often feel about environmentalism. It seems as though we rarely actually succeed, and there is almost never any immediate gratification of the sort Mr. Roselle might get from actual confrontation. I once wrote a poem that started with this line:
"When is it appropriate to get very angry
At the ignorant masses consuming us to death?"
A classmate found it moving, but I still am not sure if such an approach would be effective, particularly in our very ignorant country, where those masses have many guns and closed minds. Maybe being confrontational would help. Maybe not. Let us hope the twitter generation can organize a few effective confrontations, where I can go try out my anger.
"No mining company executive is shaking in his boots when he sees 500 people standing together in a field. It's about the confrontation. That's what these actions lack - they're creative but they're not creative confrontation."
I agree with Rob Chaney. It is about the confrontation.
All of these organized, permitted, "demonstrations" are not going to change the actions of the corporations or of our government.
It's really a joke to them. What is there to be afraid of?
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress...
power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will."
-- Frederick Douglass, 1857 speech, West India Emancipation
Confrontation is a good thing. The corporations are confronting you. They WANT you to back away, cuz if you do, they'll take it all.
The unfortunate truth is: confrontation is NOT something people like Roselle do on their own. Our capitalism (which I support, btw) is DESIGNED to aggressively seek out opportunities until it meets resistance. And if it doesn't meet resistance, it doesn't THINK about it, it just pours itself into a new opportunity for profit.
Resistance, confrontation, are thus not the handmaidens of anarchy. They are the things that reign in our greed and, in so doing, define what it is we find sacred in our lives.
Its been said that capitalism is the engine of our society. But we don't ride on the engine. It is only through confrontation that seats are designed, with seatbelts. Make the engine serve you, through confrontation, or it'll serve itself.
"Resistance" and "confrontation" as you say really represent, grass-roots democracy. You imply that it is democratic power that reigns-in corporate abuse. However, Capitalist accumulation, with the concomitant environmental and social costs (externalized by the corporations as part of maximizing profits, aka, privatizing profits and socializing costs) inherently concentrates wealth and therefore power. This leaves "resistance" or democracy with very little power to check capitalist (in this case, environmental) destruction. This explains why people's movements like environmentalism, (or, peace or health care reform, for that matter) have had little effect. Therefore, if you support capitalism, you are ultimately anti-environment and anti-democracy. "A capitalist democracy is nothing more that democracy for the capitalists."
We have been indoctrinated to believe that capitalism and democracy are mutually reinforcing. The reality is the opposite, they are antithetical to each other.
Check out:
John Bellamy Foster's "The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet"
Good Post Tom,
But we don't have Capitalism any more in the USA. We have Corporate Communism: the belief that all power and wealth should reside within the boardroom. We have socialized all the banks and all property ownership (Fred and Fannie Mac are 80% of mortgages in the US.) Capitalism requires competition according to Adam Smith's definition: certainly, Walmart and Microsloth have no meaningful competition. Most of the Big Pharms and Big Oils and Big Banks and Big Defense companies and armies of sub-contractors are gluttons of Corporate Welfare paid for by the taxpayer.
War and Monopolies are a tax by any other name, and must be framed as a tax revolt question, imho. In this regard, we must give in to the gun nuts, and the teabaggers and join them in restoring the Bill of Rights and Democracy. In 1775 we had slavers and Yankees and we were able somehow to come together as a Union against the tyranny of MONOPOLY (the British East Inda Company, which had been given exclusive rights, like Walmart, to sell to the colonies by King George III.)
As revolting, as my suggestions are, they are the only way to slay the Federal hydra, which is growing exponentially every day we sleep in our separate camps.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
RE:Corporate Communism
No need to invent new terms. Capitalism tends towards monopoly. Recall the anti-trust legislation of New Deal and earlier. Maximizing profits is axiomatic of capitalism, not competition. Capitalists don't want competition; it limits profit. So, as capitalists seek to undo restraints to increase profits (that protect the environment, or keep investment banks hands off commercial banks, for example), capitalism moves toward monopoly capitalism. Note, that the bank bailout has resulted in a huge consolidation of big banks. Goldman Sachs was able to knock out its main competitor, Lehman Brothers. There's nothing new about this. It's just new to our generation. Americans have no connection to their radical past. They take the 8 hour day and the weekend for granted. They don't realize that hundreds of thousands had organized and took a beating to achieve them. "He who controls the past, controls the future." The first step is to connect to our real history.
Check out: "Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States" by Sharon Smith