Earth First!

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Image:Earthfirstmonkeywrench.gif

Earth First! is a radical environmentalist movement, pioneered in the early 1980s by Arizona desert activists Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and others.

Contents

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The early years

During the group's early years (1980-1986), Earth First! mixed innovative publicity, such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon Dam, with far-reaching wilderness proposals that went far beyond what the mainstream environmental groups were willing to advocate, and with conservation biology research from a biocentric perspective. The group's proposals were published in a periodical, Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, informally known as the Earth First! Journal. Edward Abbey's writings were a major inspiration. Abbey himself was revered by the early movement, and often spoke at early Earth First! gatherings. An annual gathering of the group was known as the Round River Rendezvous, from a phrase taken from Aldo Leopold's book, A Sand County Almanac.

In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action in the Earth First! Journal brought Earth First!ers from around the United States to Willamette National Forest to defend the forests of the Santiam and nearby watersheds from logging company Willamette Industries. Finding logging road blockades that were being carried out by Corvallis, Oregon-based Cathedral Forest Action Group offering too short term a protection, Marylander Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting as a more effective civil disobedience alternative.

On May 23, 1985 Mike Jakubal made the first Earth First! tree sit. When U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived, Mike Roselle, Ron Huber and others were arrested sitting at the base of the tree in support. This first EF! tree sit lasted less than a day -- Jakubal came down in the evening to look over the remains of the forest that had been cut down around him that day, and was busted by a hidden Forest Service officer -- but the tree-sitting concept was proven sound. Huber and Jakubal, in the company of Mike Roselle, brought the concept to the June 14th Washington EF! Rendezvous; on June 23, a convoy of activists from there and elsewhere arrived at Willamette National Forest, and set up tree platforms in a location threatened with imminent destruction, the "Squaw/Three timbersale". While at one point up to a dozen trees were occupied, a July 10 sneak attack took down all the trees with platforms but Ron Huber's. The other sitters had gone for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber remained in his tree, dubbed Yggdrasil, until July 20, when two Linn County sheriff's deputies, lifted to him in a crane box wrestled him from the tree. (Action diaries, legal papers, tickets, digitized audio recordings, newsclips and other sources about Earth First!'s 1985 tree-sitting actions in Oregon have been archived by Ron Huber

Later, from about 1987 on, Earth First! became primarily associated with direct action to prevent logging, dam building, and other forms of development which may cause destruction of wildlife habitats or the despoilation of wild places. This change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First!, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or involvement in the counterculture. Dave Foreman has related that this led to the introduction of such activities as a "puke-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, heckling of Edward Abbey at a 1987 Earth First! rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the Earth First! Journal on such topics as anarchism, with which Foreman and others did not wish to be associated. Most of the group's "old guard," including Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, Christopher Manes, George Wuerthner, and Earth First! Journal editor John Davis (but not Mike Roselle) became increasingly uncomfortable with this new direction, and eventually severed their ties to Earth First! in 1990. Many of them went on to launch a new magazine, Wild Earth, and a new environmental group, The Wildlands Project. Roselle, on the other hand, along with activists such as Judi Bari, welcomed the new direct-action and leftist direction of Earth First!

Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First! began an increasing promotion of and identification with "Deep Ecology," a philosophy put forward by Arne Næss, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which holds that all forms of life on Earth have equal value in and of themselves, without regard for their utility to human beings. Earth First!ers use this philosophy to justify an an ecocentric view of the world in which intrinsic values for organisms and ecosystems outweigh their resource values. The motto of Earth First! is "No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!"

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Earth First! since 1990

Since the departure of the old guard in 1990, action within the Earth First! movement has become increasingly informed by anarchist political philosophy, with a rotation of the primary media organ among publishers in differing bioregions, an aversion to organized leadership or administrative structure, and a new trend of identifying Earth First! as a movement rather than an organization. Earth First! resembles a decentralized, locally informed activism based on communitarian ethics. A common theme in recent years has been that "there are no members of Earth First!, only Earth First!ers".

In the field, individual citizens and small groups form the nuclei for grassroots political actions, which may take the form of legal actions--i.e. protests, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns--or civil disobedience--tree sitting, road blockades, and sabotage - called "ecotage" by some advocates when it is done as a form of ecodefense. Often, disruptive direct action is used primarily as a stalling tactic, to prevent environmental destruction while lawsuits (which take more time) can secure long-term victories.

A very popular combination of tactics is road blockades, activists locking themselves to heavy equipment to immobilize it, tree-sitting to prevent logging, and sometimes sabotage of machinery.

Earth First! was at first known for providing information in the Earth First! Journal on the practice of tree-spiking, which can be injurious, and monkeywrenching (or ecotage). In 1990, however, Judi Bari led Earth First! in the Northern California and Southern Oregon region to renounce these practices, calling them counterproductive to an effort to form a coalition with workers and small logging businesses to defeat large-scale corporate logging in Northern California.

In 1990, a bomb was placed in Judi Bari's car, crippling her, and leading to false charges by police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she was responsible for the bomb. Bari died in 1997, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict exonerating her and awarding her estate and fellow Earth First!er Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were awarded for violation of the two Earth First! leaders' First Amendment rights to organize politically in defense of the environment. Juror Mary Nunn told reporters the jury unanimously agreed with Bari's and Cherney's claims that the FBI and Oakland police attempted to frame the pair and falsely smeared them in the media as a way to neutralize them and Earth First! by making the public believe they were terrorists who used bombs. This verdict has only fueled speculation about what really happened.

Some theories have focused on Mike Sweeney, Bari's estranged ex-husband, who is alleged to have a history of domestic violence and political bombings dating back to the 60's. This theory has been advanced by Kate Coleman, author of The Secret Wars of Judi Bari, as well as Bruce Anderson, editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser. This theory (and many others) advanced by Coleman and Anderson are dismissed by Friends of Judi Bari as part of a smear campaign. Bari's supporters, on the other hand, believe there is evidence the FBI helped plan the bombing [1], although there has never been a government investigation into this claim. Special Agent Richard W. Held, who supervised the Bari case for the FBI, was controversially dismissed from the lawsuit early on in 1997 [2]. Held was also the director of COINTELPRO operations in Los Angeles directed at the Black Panther Party during the 1970's and was involved with the COINTELPRO operations directed at Geronimo Pratt and Leonard Peltier.

Earth First! has never advocated the use of bombs or explosives in any way, due to the risk of harming living things.

Some critics of the movement still call Earth First! activity eco-terrorism, though Earth First! proponents say that the term more accurately describes the people who destroy the environment. In response to being labeled terrorists, some have adopted the neologism terrist instead.

Earth First! was parodied in a December 2003 episode of The Simpsons, titled "Lisa the Tree-Hugger," and mentioned in the second Jurassic Park movie.

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Earth First! in the UK

The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.

Earth First! in the United Kingdom started in 1990. The movement was inspired by the U.S. group but was completely independent. The start of the movement can be said to have been the start of grassroots environmental direct action, civil disobedience and passive resistance actions.

Earth First! consisted of a loose collection of groups and activists with no central organisation. There were gatherings twice a year. Most actions were organised by individual groups and attended by members of other groups in the movement. Coordination happened through personal contact and various publications including the Earth First! action update, and later SchNEWS; Do or Die was a space for more indepth discussion and info.

The first big Earth First! actions focused around the importation of tropical hardwoods. The first major action happened in London at Tilbury Docks and the second major action the Merseyside Dock Action attracted over 200 people who blockaded Liverpool Dock. This action coincided with the Earth First! roadshow, in which a group of American Earth First!ers toured the country. This campaign also focussed on timber-yards, most notably Timbmet, and shops that sold such wood. Ethical shoplifting of this stolen property happened, some under the name CRISPO (Citizen's Recovery of Indigenous Stolen Property Organisation), and would often be given to the police to return to it's rightful owners. Other campaigns were very varied, according to local concerns, and included the Carmageddon campaign, which kicked off in 1991 with reclaiming streets, a precursor to Reclaim the Streets actions.

Earth First! groups, together with many others, then became involved in road protests, as an attempt to reverse the Government's road-building programme (which was subsequently slashed by a third, 3 times). The first road protest happened at Twyford Down where a permanent protest camp was set up against the M3 extension. The Dongas tribe arose from this camp. The first tree-sits happened at Jesmond Dene in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1993, organised by the Flowerpot Tribe [3]. There were many subsequent road protests including Newbury bypass, the A30, the M11 link road protest in London, where whole streets were "squatted."

Swampy became well known during the eviction at the A30 camp, although there were many other smaller road protest camps. Some camps did actually result in roads being cancelled, the first such cancellation occurring in London.

The focus of Earth First! then broadened, to include the Manchester International Airport protest, protests about genetically engineering, peat bog campaigning and numerous others. A notable protest has been at the Nine Ladies stone circle, where a camp successfully helped prevent quarrying near the stone circle.

The movement can be said to have given rise to a number of other groups, notably Reclaim the Streets and Rising Tide and most recently the group, Plane Stupid which is using direct action to try and stop airport expansion because aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change. This has been highlighted by George Monbiot and Mark Lynas

An early debate in the movement was about the use of criminal damage as a protest technique. Earth First! as a whole did not condone or condemn criminal damage, instead it focused more of passive resistance techniques. Actions involving criminal damage did happen often under cover of night and under the name of Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and were often attributed to elves and pixies, giving a distinctly British feel to the movement.

Lock-ons were a particularly common technique, where a protestor chained himself to a solid object. Initially Kryptonite lock bike locks were used, and this developed into a range of more ingenious techniques, such as drain pipes in blocks of concrete. Camps were often in treetops or underground, making arrest particularly difficult.

The movement continues today and there is a yearly gathering.

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Books about Earth First!

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Books about the early Earth First!

  • Davis, John, ed. The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism (1991) (ISBN 0879053879)
  • Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (1991) (ISBN 051788058X)
  • Foreman, Dave. Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching (1985) (ISBN 0963775103)
  • Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (1990) (ISBN 0316545325)
  • Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors (1990) (ISBN 096226833X)
  • Zakin, Susan. Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (1993) (ISBN 0816521859)
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Books about the post-1990 Earth First!

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Books critical of Earth First!

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See also

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External links

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Earth First! today

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Other links of interest, because of their historical ties to Earth First!

Earth First was also the name of a fictional xenophobic neo-Nazi movement on the television program Babylon 5.de:Earth First!

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