Earth First!

Earth First!, a radical ecological movement that insists on making "No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!," has had strong anarchist influences and tendencies since its origins in the United States in 1980. The Earth First! Direct Action Manual explains an "emphasis on decentralized and non-hierarchical organizing" means that "Earth First! also intersects with anarchist movements." It elaborates, "To the nihilism embedded within anarchy, EF! brings a warmth of heart, a connection to place, and a nourishment that isn't accessible in modern society." Earth First! gave early expression to influential ideas such as monkeywrenching (ecological sabotage) and rewilding, and has had a tremendous impact on the global environmental movement.

Earth First! has been active in the United States, Australia, Iceland, Italy, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Prague, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, Belgium, Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa.

One of the major impacts of Earth First! has arguably been to empower more moderate environmental groups, through the use of what political scientists call the radical flank effect. Friends of the Earth founder David Brower once remarked, "I thank God for the arrival of Earth First!, they make me look moderate." Still, some mainstream environmentalists have condemned the network's militant tactics. For example, the National Wildlife Federation's president Jay Hair denounced Earth First! as "outlaws and terrorists."

Earth First! members have played leading roles in forming other important anti-authoritarian ecological and climate justice groups. The Earth Liberation Front first formed at an Earth First! gathering in the United Kingdom in 1992. Earth First!ers played an important role in building the Mountain Justice movement resisting strip mining in Appalachia. Many of the founding members of Rising Tide North America first met at Earth First! gatherings and at the first Mountain Justice Summer.

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The Monkey Wrench Gang

A major inspiration for Earth First! came from the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, a self-described anarchist whose father was rumored to have been a member of the anarchistic labor union the Industrial Workers of the World.

Abbey's novel described four wilderness lovers who used "monkeywrenching," meaning the sabotage of equipment, to stop ecological destruction in the southwestern United States. Characters picked up survey stakes, burned down billboards, destroyed a bridge and plotted against the Glen Canyon Dam. The fictional crew made decisions based on consensus: "'No voting,' Doc said. 'We're not going to have any tyranny of the majority in this organization. We proceed on the principle of unanimity. What we do we do all together or not at all. This is a brotherhood we have here, not a legislative assembly.'"

Founding of Earth First!

Frustrated by the compromises and conservatism of America's mainstream environmental movement, a handful of long-time environmentalists in the southwestern United States found hope in Abbey's portrayal of a group that took direct action and made no compromises in defending the Earth. In 1980, Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, and Howie Wolke were returning from a trip to Mexico, where they had been reminiscing along with Bart Koehler and Ron Kezar about their experiences in spineless environmental nonprofits. They started hatching plans for a new group and jotted down some firm positions including "No strip mines, period," "No nukes, period," and "No logging in roadless areas, period." Foreman suggested "Earth First" as a group name. "It needs an exclamation point," he remarked after seeing it on paper.

In April 1980, Earth First! erected a stone monument for Victorio, an Apache who led a raid on a mining camp on 28 April 1880. One of their most high-profile early actions, on 21 March 1981, involved the unfurling of a vinyl banner down the Glen Canyon Dam, designed to look like a crack.

In September 1980, Foreman drafted a "Statement of Principles" that contained clear anarchistic notions including an opposition to "state capitalism" and "father-figure hierarchies" and an insistence that humankind "has no legitimate claim to dominate Earth." The draft also proposed that "Earth is Goddess," an idea Foreman got from reading the anarchist pagan writer Starhawk.

Early on, Earth First! connected with anarchist history in several ways. They published a Little Green Songbook modeled on the anarchistic Industrial Workers of the World's "Little Red Songbook" in the Earth First! Journal written under the pseudonym Leon Czolgosz, the name of President McKinley's anarchist assassin. The co-founder Howie Wolke reflects, "There was also the anarchist thing, which evolved from our refusal to have a formal structure: a movement not an organization, no officers, leadership by example and initiative, and so forth. Whether or not this was a good idea is water under the bridge, but by the time Foreman and I quit EF! in 1990, ideological anarchy appeared to be deeply imbedded in the group’s fabric (and gawd help us all if as individuals we fail to have at least a little anarchist within)."

Tendencies and Debates

Earth First! has seen a number of different tendencies, with vastly different takes on where social justice, animal liberation, insurrection, and the critique of civilization fit into the movement's vision of defending the Earth. To understand these different tendencies, it helps to start with EF!'s quasi-official philosophy known as Deep Ecology. Coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, Deep Ecology argued that wilderness should be protected for its own sake, not simply (as the "shallow ecologists" argued) for the economic or aesthetic benefits it provides to humans. A major feature of Deep Ecology was biocentrism which put all life, rather than just humans, at the center of moral consideration. By 1982, Foreman and other Earth First!ers adhered to the philosophy of Deep Ecology. According many Earth First!ers, Deep Ecology extended Anarchism's commitment of liberating all humans to a broader goal of liberating all beings.

Social Justice

By the late 1980s, a tension had emerged between an older generation of Earth First!ers, who saw wilderness protection as the movement's sole mission, and a younger generation of members who wanted to integrate social justice concerns into EF! While both sides supported decentralized organization and found inspiration in anarchist history, the old guard largely found social justice themes to be a distraction while the younger folks tended to make anti-authoritarianism a more central concern.

Alien Nation, a group of Earth First!ers from Olympia, Washington, calling themselves "eco-mutualists" and "anarchist communalists," tabled at the 1987 Earth First! Round River Rendezvous. They argued, "We must live in a harmonious relationship with each other and the natural world without dominance of any sort as part of our lifestyles." When Edward Abbey came to their table, a debate developed over Abbey's anti-immigration comments and a crowd of about thirty people listened in. The Rendezvous Committee shut down the discussion and told Alien Nation they weren't allowed to sell literature anymore (while other groups continued selling literature). At night, Earth First! members shouted at Alien Nation members, "No more Earth First! wimps" and "Down with humans." In the November 1987 issue of Earth First! Journal, Alien Nation announced they were leaving Earth First! and warned that an "extremely right-wing" orientation pervaded the "upper echelons of EF!"

At July 1990's Rendezvous, critics of the EF! Journal's editorial approach, wanting more action reports and an open letters policy, formed an advisory committee which included at least a couple self-identified anarchists. In September issue, a number of staff members announced their resignation, voicing concerns that the shifting emphases on social justice and action reports detracted from conservation biology coverage. Announcing he'd step own at the year's end, Journal editor John Davis wrote, "For the record, I cast my vote with Paul Watson, Kris Somerville, Nancy Morton, Dave Forman, Howie Wolke and others in this issue who warn that EF!is being sidetracked by anthropocentric concerns."

A northwestern U.S.-based labor organizer organizer, Judi Bari became a key figure in the social justice tendency within Earth First! Bari argued that a deep ecological outlook necessarily meant confronting social hierarchies such as patriarchy and capitalism. Beginning in 1991, northeastern U.S. Earth First!ers began publishing a biocentric journal called ALARM, meant to be a social justice-oriented alternative to the Earth First! Journal. They published important texts including Bari's influential "Revolutionary Ecology" that proposed a confluence between biocentrism and social justice. Bari wrote, "[T]here is a parallel between the way this society treats women and the way that it treats the earth. And this is shown in expressions like 'virgin redwoods' and 'rape of the earth', for example."

Bari's organizing helped confront some of the individualistic, misogynist and xenophobic tendencies that ran through some of Earth First!'s old guard. Bari describes the group's transformation from having "the reputation of being macho, beer-drinking eco-dudes" to actually being a mass movement combining "the more feminine elements of collectivism and non-violence with the spunk and outrageousness of Earth First!"

Rewilding and Biodiversity

The first issue of Earth First (later Earth First! Journal), in 1980, insisted "it is time to recreate wilderness: identify key areas, close roads, remove developments, and reintroduce extirpated wildlife." In a 1986 article on "Wilderness Recovery," Reed Noss wrote, "From its beginning, EF! has insisted that we not only need to save existing wild areas, we also need to restore wilderness quality in every bioregion."

In February 1990, Newsweek reported that Earth First! members wanted to "rewild" large tracts of the United States. By August, Foreman quit Earth First!, perceiving that the network had lost its focus as it had broadened its concerns from conservation to include social justice.

In 1991, Foreman founded a new magazine called Wild Earth, focused on conservation and featuring articles by prominent biologists and ecologists. The inaugural issue explained, "Wild Earth's overall goal is the restoration and protection of much - preferably at least half - of this continent as true Wilderness." In 1992, Wild Earth (with funding from North Face clothing company founder Doug Tompkins) distributed 75,000 copies of a special issue outlining ambitious plans for rewilding contiguous areas of North and Central America. In 1998, Wild Earth premiered the biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss's influential paper "Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation" that described rewilding as the restoration of "cores, carnivores, and corridors."

Going further, anti-civilization anarchists in the Earth First! movement and its orbit would define rewilding as an undoing of domestication.

Starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Earth First!ers and others influenced by EF! founded and worked for a number of grassroots biodiversity organizations that used litigation and other legal tactics to pursue a no-compromise agenda. For example, the EF! activist Todd Schulke co-founded the Center for Biological Diversity. Other examples included the Native Forest Network and Wild Alabama. In contrast to the Big Green national organizations, these more grassroots groups rejected insider politics and bureaucratic structures. They continued to publish articles in the Earth First! Journal and attend EF!'s annual Round River Rendezvous. These groups operated on small budgets from sympathetic funders such as Tompkins and the Foundation for Deep Ecology.

Anti-Civilization

While Earth First! has consistently criticized the anthropocentrism of so-called Western Civilization, many members have gone further and argued that the collapse of civilization altogether was inevitable and/or desirable. While the social justice groups typically emphasized community and workplace organizing and the grassroots biodiversity groups emphasized litigation, the anti-civilization currents were more likely to focus on rioting and property destruction.

In 1988, Earth First!ers launched the inaugural "Industrial Civilization Collapse" edition of Live Wild or Die, an anarchist magazine whose contributors called for moving "beyond Earth First!" and engaging in "a revolution of desire, a feral revolution." Live Wild or Die has been described in the following terms: "Edited by rotating teams of anarchists and espousing an anti-civilization perspective a decade before the rise of Eugene’s primitivists, Live Wild or Die was the most radical environmental journal of its time, and perhaps, of all time."

In the close orbit of the Earth First! movement, Britain's Do or Die (1992-2003) and Eugene, Oregon's Green Anarchy (2001-2008) magazines went on to espouse insurrectionary, anti-civilization anarchism.

Do or Die, in its 10th issue, titled "Down with Empire! Up with the Spring!," called for an ecological revolution based on four pillars: (i) Growing counter-cultures, (ii) defending the land and seas, (iii) preparing for crises, and (iv) supporting rebellion in the Global South and indigenous communities.

In the the USA's Eugene, Oregon, Green Anarchy grew out of the green anarchist milieu that produced the country's most active Earth Liberation Front cell. Altogether rejecting the left, Green Anarchy published articles and action reports emphasizing "autonomous and uncivilized rebellion."

Major Campaigns and Events in the United States

Redwood Summer

In 1989, Bari organized timber workers in northern California into the Industrial Workers of the World Local #1, often known as “Earth First!-IWW Local #1”. The Earth First!-IWW local organized a campaign against Georgia-Pacific's exposure of PCB to its workers. The local joined with other Earth First! chapters to plan Redwood Summer, a 1990 mobilization against corporate logging inspired by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's 1964 Freedom Summer. By identifying timber corporations as a common enemy, Bari helped join together groups that the ruling class sought to pit against each other. Bari's biographer Steve Ongerth writes, “Indeed, even some of the timber workers whom the media claimed were the sworn enemies of Earth First! were also members of the IWW and covertly working with Bari and Cherney There were even a handful of timber workers who had openly declared their alliance with Earth First! and their support of Redwood Summer.”

On 24 May 1990, days before Redwood Summer was slated to begin, a bomb went off in Bari's car, injuring her and Darryl Cherney. The FBI and Oakland police arrested them and accused them of attempting to transport the bomb to use in an act of ecological sabotage. Bari and Cherney sued the FBI and police for discrimination, wrongful arrest, and violation of their First and Fourth Amendment rights. In 2002, after Bari had died of cancer, a federal court ruled in Bari and Cherney's favor and awarded them $4.4 million.

Cascadia Free State

Cascadia Free State. Source: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/11/warner-creek-EF-96.jpg

At Warner Creek, Oregon, members of Earth First! conducted an 11-month blockade from 1995 to 1996 that successfully protected the Warner Creek forest from logging. Activists established a "Cascadia Free State" in the middle of the only road to the forest, complete with "a watchtower, a moat and drawbridge, a wide variety of barricades, and frequent trainings and planning meetings for establishing other 'Free States'."

Earth First! Journal reported:

The barricades begin below a former Forest Service gate, which has been converted into a wall by three barrels of cement fortified with rebar, 'locking' it permanently closed. If the Freddies do visit, they will first be greeted by a gatekeeper on the 15-foot high log wall and will soon need to ask very politely to enter if they expect the drawbridge to be lowered over the moat that is under construction. Friendly folks can come on up to the tent village where a large, dry living space has been created with tarps and equipped with a kitchen area, pantry, media table, and a warm fire circle. Tipis, shelters and tents are scattered all around, including one pitched right over the steel door lockdown set up in front of the gate. Above the gate stands a large, beautiful tipi constructed of downed trees and waterproofed with cedar bark found on the forest floor.

People dug large ditches in the road, chained themselves to logging trucks and concrete-filled barrels, and erected a bipod that trucks could not drive past without endangering the inhabitants. One supporter held a 75-day hunger strike. Over the course of the summer, other free states emerged in Oregon and Idaho. The camp attracted many visitors. One resident estimated that between 500 and 1,000 supporters had come to see it and help out. In August 1996, Forest Service authorities arrived and let the protesters know the Clinton administration had decided not to allow logging in the forest. It turned out they told the truth, but at the time they refused to provide documentation. So, four women--Lupin, Raven, Hemlock and Madrone--refused to leave and were arrested. A bulldozer destroyed the camp, but the campaign had won.

Murder of David Chain

On September 17, 1998, the Pacific Lumber logger A. E. Ammon in California's Humboldt County cut down a tree that killed EF! tree-sitter David Chain. EF! supplied video, taken an hour before the death, showing the logger swearing and threatening to "drop a tree" on the protesters. The sherriff refused to investigate and allowed the company to continue logging in the forest.

Shortly afterwards, EF!ers set up a blockade and the police poured a cup of pepper spray onto the faces of two women. Blokcaders regrouped that night. The next morning police returned and wrung out a piece of pepper spray-drenched gauze directly into the eyes of another woman. These incidents, together with several pepper-spraying incidents in the fall of 1997, radicalized the movement and planted serious tactical questions about the effectiveness of Gandhian nonviolence. Earth First!ers went on to become organizers and participants in the Black Bloc at 1999's World Trade Organization protest in Seattle.

Earth First! in the Climate Movement

With public awareness of global warming escalating in the mid-2000s, Earth First! shifted much of its focus from forest defense to struggles against fossil fuels. Forest defense remained a priority, but rhetoric often highlighted forests' carbon-sequestering role and how deforestation accelerates climate chaos. In July 2004, Earth First! blockaded the Maine governor's mansion in protest of proposed Liquified Natural Gas terminals. The terminals were later defeated. At the annual winter gathering in February 2006, Earth First!ers formed the Earth First! Climate Caucus. By May, this caucus had morphed into Rising Tide, a no-compromise climate justice network that works closely with EF! and uses the same direct action tactics. In 2012 and 2013, Earth First!ers played a central role in the Tar Sands Blockade that used tree sits and lockdowns to delay the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Earth First! around the world

China

Yangtze River Delta Earth First! authored a chapter in the 2014 edited collection Grabbing Back. They write that in China people frequently resist ecological degradation by collectively engaging in "road blockades, sabotage, mass demonstrations, and arson." For example, when a paper pulp factory polluted nearby water sources, villagers responded with revolt. "Over a hundred villagers made use of wood and rocks as obstacles outside the gate of the manufacturer and shattered police cars on January 10, 2007."

Italy

Since 2008, Earth First! Italia has had groups in Rome, Padova, Pravado, and the Torino-ValdiSusa area. They have campaigned against urbanization and nuclear energy, and in defense of the Pineta regional park.

Iceland

In 2004, the eco-anarchist group Killing Iceland formed, and they have worked closely with Earth First! They later changed their name to Saving Iceland. They report: "We have done numerous large-scale direct actions, often entirely closing down building work on aluminum smelters, mega dams, and geothermal plants."

Britain

By 1991, British Earth First!ers were organizing anti-road actions, and that fall they formed the Reclaim the Streets (RTS) network that illegally took over streets in order to hold public block parties. Throughout the 1990s, EF! stopped the construction of at least six road projects that had been already started. The Earth Liberation Front first formed at an Earth First! gathering in the United Kingdom in 1992.

Bookchin's Critique

The prominent anarchist Murray Bookchin distributed an article called "Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology" to attendees at the US Greens' conference in 1987. "Social Ecology" referred to Bookchin's social theory positing human hierarchies as the root cause of ecological destruction. "Deep Ecology" was the term coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess for a radical environmental philosophy proposing biocentrism (putting life first) as an alternative to anthropocentrism (putting humans first). This meant that Deep Ecologists saw all life as having intrinsic value, deserving protection for its own sake, not just for the sake of humans who used or enjoyed wilderness.

Bookchin accused Earth First! of being influenced by misantrhopic and racist elements of Deep Ecology. He pointed out that Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman callously described an Ethiopian famine as a good thing since it would lower the world's human population. Similarly, the Earth First! Journal published an article, written under the pseudonym Miss Ann Thropy, celebrating the AIDS epidemic on ecological grounds. Bookchin criticized those Deep Ecologists who supported strict immigration restrictions in order to stabilize the United States population. Resenting how leading Earth First!ers seemed to blame ecological crises on ordinary people instead of on hierarchical and capitalist social systems, Bookchin denounced Deep Ecology as "black hole of half-digested, ill-formed, and half-baked ideas" and an "ideological toxic dump."

In 1989, Bookchin and Foreman held a public debate, in which Bookchin showed some degree of sympathy with the emerging social justice-oriented wing of Earth First! Discussing Judi Bari's influence, Bookchin commented, "[I]n the past year, Earth First!’s northern California groups, and possibly others as well, appear to have veered toward a degree of social activism and perspective that is far more consistent with social ecology than with a deep ecology perspective."

Bookchin also clarified that he shared Earth First!'s opposition to anthropocentrism, while disagreeing with their proposed alternative of biocentrism:

Why must I be forced to choose between “biocentrism” and “anthropocentrism?” I never believed that the Earth was “made” for human exploitation. In fact, as a dyed-in-the-wool secularist, I never believed it was “made” at all. I also don’t believe that humans should “dominate” nature — the ultimate impossibility of this is a key idea in social ecology...We have no need for “biocentrism,” “anthropocentrism,” or for that matter any “centrism,” nor for any ideology that diverts popular attention from the social sources of the ecological crisis... What I must stress is that social ecology is neither “biocentric” nor “anthropocentric.” Rather, it is naturalistic. Because of this naturalist orientation, social ecology is no less concerned with issues like the integrity of wild areas and wildlife than are “biocentrists.” As a hiker, an ecologist, and above all a naturalist who devoutly believes in freedom, I can talk as passionately as any deep ecologist about the trails I have followed, the vistas I have gazed at, or the soaring hawks I have watched for hours from cliffs and mountain peaks. Yet social ecology is also naturalistic in the very important sense that it stresses humanity’s and society’s profound roots in natural evolution.