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Strategy to Save the Planet

“Building a culture of resistance” is a large undertaking, but necessary to achieving the  political activism that the planet needs.  A culture of resistance is a dedicated alliance of people and their affiliates that together work for long-term social change.  The book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, describes several such cultures, from the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to the British Women’s Social and Political Union of the early 1900s, to the contemporary Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta and the many Arab Spring protesters.  Cultures of resistance provide material, spiritual, emotional and psychological support for their members.

The goal of Deep Green Resistance Four Corners is to build such a culture to support activism that defends the land, air, water,  and life of the Colorado Plateau.  Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting additional examples of cultures of resistance: the indigenous affiliation MASTA (Moskitia Asia Takanka) of Honduras, organized to protect the tropical rainforests of the Tawahka, Miskitu, Garifuna, and Pech peoples; the Burmese women’s human rights movement of the 1990s; and the alliances of First Nations tribes fighting against Alberta, Canada’s tar sands pipelines.  We invite suggestions and commentary on alliances like this, that effectively organize resistance to human rights and environmental atrocities.  Post a comment or email: deepgreenresistance4corners@riseup.net.

Who we are…

Deep Green Resistance Four Corners is a new affiliate group of Deep Green Resistance International.  Our mission is to protect the land, water, air, and human and non-human inhabitants of the Colorado Plateau, based on the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, by Lierre Keith, Aric McBay, and Derrick Jensen.  We are slowly building this site, so in the meanwhile please see more at the main DGR website (deepgreenresistance.org):

What is Deep Green Resistance?

Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and a movement being born, the only movement of its kind.



As an analysis, it reveals the last 10,000 years of human history–the rise and dominance of civilization–as the culture of death that is now threatening every living being on Earth.

As a strategy, it critiques ineffective lifestyle actions and explains their inevitable failure to stop the destruction of people, species, and the planet. In contrast, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction.

As an aboveground movement, just now taking its first steps, Deep Green Resistance is based on this analysis and implementing this strategy. And we’re recruiting.

No more ineffective actions – piecemeal, reactive, and sad. No more feel-good, magical-thinking, navel-gazing, consumer-based, capitalist-approved denial and dead ends.

The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This will require defending and rebuilding just and sustainable human communities nestled inside repaired and restored landbases. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.

DGR’s strategy involves two separate parts of the movement – an aboveground and an underground.* The aboveground works for sustainable, just, and participatory institutions, and assists the aboveground frontline activists with loyalty and material support. And in any resistance scenario, the underground dismantles the strategic infrastructure of power. This is a basic tactic of both militaries and insurgents the world over for the simple reason that it works. But such actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. This means that any strategy aiming for a just future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures. Which means that the different branches of resistance movements must work in tandem: the aboveground and belowground, the militants and the nonviolent, the aboveground frontline activists and the cultural workers. We need it all.

And we need courage. The word “courage” comes from the same root as coeur, the French word for heart. We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love.

So while DGR is about fighting back, in the end this movement is about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being. With love as our First Cause, how can we fail?

Want more? Read an excerpt of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.

*Note: We are strictly an aboveground movement. We will not answer questions regarding anyone’s personal desire to be in or form an underground. We do this for the security of all involved with Deep Green Resistance.