Earth First!: the Rise of Eco-Action Humboldt State

EARTH FIRST!: THE RISE OF ECO-ACTION HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY By Sierra Braggs A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Humboldt State University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts In Social Science Program in Environment & Community November 7, 2012 EARTH FIRST!: THE RISE OF ECO-ACTION HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY By Sierra Braggs Approved by the Master’s Thesis Committee: Faculty Name, Major Professor Date Faculty Name, Committee Member Date Faculty Name, Committee Member Date Faculty Name, Committee Member Date Faculty Name, Graduate Coordinator Date Dr. Jená Burges, Vice Provost Date Academic Programs ABSTRACT EARTH FIRST!: THE RISE OF ECO-ACTION Sierra Braggs This thesis examines the change in Earth First! praxis elaborated by North Coast Earth First! (in Northern California) from 1985-1990 in order to identify how Judi Bari’s theory of “revolutionary ecology” emerged as political force from within a movement founded upon wilderness preservationism and the exclusion of people from nature, creating space for alliances between environmental activists and timber workers to emerge and exposing an emerging politics of encounter underway in the North Coast. Assessments of Earth First! typically focus on its proliferation of direct action interventions against industrial destruction and Judi Bari’s leadership in diverging from traditional EF! wilderness preservationism, most notably her attempts to build alliances between EF! activists and timber workers. To date, scholars have failed to assess how the structural formation of EF! as a decentralized anti-authoritarian non-organization has facilitated not only the proliferation of direct action interventions against industrial destruction, but also a highly reflexive radical environmental praxis. I argue that the shift toward what Jonathan London has termed a “post-wilderness environmentalism” was fostered by a “culture of anarchism” combined with an emergent “politics of encounter” operating within the larger Earth First! movement. The thesis elaborates a better iii understanding of Earth First! organizational structure, movement agenda, and cognitive praxis, highlighting open membership, oppositional systems of information, insurgent learning spaces, and commitments to anti-authoritarian politics as critical to an innovative radical environmental praxis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A POST-WILDERNESS ENVIRONMENTALISM....... 9 Toward a Post-Wilderness Environmentalism ............................................................. 11 CHAPTER 1 “TIMBER WARS” ..................................................................................... 21 Deep Ecology & Radical Environmental Movement ............................................... 26 Jobs v. Environment .................................................................................................. 31 CHAPTER 2 EARTH FIRST!: THE RISE OF ECO-ACTION ....................................... 35 Cultural Expression ....................................................................................................... 40 Earthen-Spirituality ................................................................................................... 40 Subcultures ................................................................................................................ 44 Repertoire of Political Action ....................................................................................... 48 Image Events ............................................................................................................. 49 Monkeywrenching .................................................................................................... 51 Round River Rendezvous ......................................................................................... 52 Language of Resistance ................................................................................................ 55 Friction .......................................................................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 3 NORTH COAST EARTH FIRST!: THE IMPACT OF REVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY .................................................................................... 65 Redwood Encounters .................................................................................................... 68 Pacific Lumber Company ......................................................................................... 71 v Headwaters Campaign .............................................................................................. 76 Direct Action ............................................................................................................. 79 Revolutionary Ecology ................................................................................................. 83 Leadership ................................................................................................................. 86 Breaking with Tradition ............................................................................................ 90 CHAPTER 4 REDWOOD SUMMER: FROM ECOTAGE TO MASS MOVEMENT .. 95 Music ......................................................................................................................... 97 Proliferation ................................................................................................................ 101 Beyond Redwood Summer ......................................................................................... 103 CONCLUSION: THE PROLIFERATION OF ECO-ACTION ..................................... 108 Significance of Earth First! ..................................................................................... 109 Limits of EF! ........................................................................................................... 110 Contributions of NCEF! .......................................................................................... 111 Limits of NCEF! ..................................................................................................... 112 Blue-Green Alliances .................................................................................................. 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 121 vi 1 PREFACE Insights into Earth First! in this thesis are largely informed by my own affinity for radical environmental work in the redwoods of Northern California. My relationships with Earth First! and present day forest defenders, as well as, warriors for justice have generated the networks from which my deepest learning has been informed. My participation in skill shares, direct actions, and several collective popular education sessions from within these networks has facilitated major sites of knowledge production where this research has been mutually informed/informing of understanding of social and environmental struggles in the redwoods. In addition to my participation in several activities organized by forest defenders, I have also facilitated a number of coyuntur@s. Coyuntur@ means “conjunctural analysis” and is comprised of collective popular education encounters that seek to generate a shared analysis, both historical and present oriented, of the conditions of struggle – political, economic, social, etc. - in any given local. This method emerges from the Latin American Studies tradition and accounts for the particularities of a socio- historic moment within in which a social movement finds itself.1 Coyuntur@ attends to the externalities of social movements, but without the structural bias present in Political Process Theory (PPT). Unlike PPT, coyuntur@, does not offer theoretical “causes” for the emergence or success of social movements. Rather, 1 Servicio Jesuita a Refugiados--México, Servicios Informativos Procesados, “Methodology of Coyuntural Analysis, Notebook #1: The Epistemological Review of Coyuntural Analysis,” 7. 2 coyuntur@ seeks to generate a shared analysis, from within social movement, in order to advance strategic interventions by said movement.2 Bevington and Dixon identify the disjuncture between American social movement theory (primarily based upon PPT) and the movements it seeks to represent as grounds for new theoretical innovations needed within the field. Careful to avoid accusing movement activists of “anti-intellectualism” (which is common within academia) as the primary cause for this disjuncture, they instead point to the irrelevance of PPT to American social movements, noting that it is either inaccurate or obvious to activists. Instead they call for social movement researchers to engage social movements directly so as to generate “movement-relevant theory.” Furthermore, they note that activists are “fully capable of developing and elaborating sophisticated theory relevant to the movements in which they are engaged.” They note that “foremost in generating useful findings is to start by locating the issues and questions of most importance to movement participants.”3 In an effort to generate such “movement-relevant theory” I have used coyuntur@ and history-telling as the primary methodologies for this thesis. In the Spring of 2007, I was invited to facilitate

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