environment

Terania Creek, a rainforest under threat from logging, Australia, 1979: hippies swarm worksites, spike trees, sabotage or sit in front of dozers, play a sort of honor-system treesitting game, barricade roads, tie trees together with cable, pour gasoline near illegally parked cop cars and divert a creek to flood the road, all while keeping their spirits high with omm circles, communal kitchens and childcare. Environmental Blockades: Obstructive Direct Action and the History of the Environmental Movement, published in 2021, “aims to inform the theoretical and practical concerns of both [activists and academics].

Everything in the world has been defined, or in terms of my current metaphor, “boxed up.” I aim to convince the reader that these boxes should be fully opened to reveal the more accurate defining characteristic of the world, which is its abstractness and lack of definition. I am not discussing scientific or physical phenomena, such as north and south or positive and negative, but that of the human condition. We’ve placed fulfillment into a narrow economic understanding and created models of a meaningful life by means of film and television that are unattainable for most people.

Art by Rosie The Earth wants us. She gives her love freely, her abundance, creating and sustaining our ways of life. She is the maker of our stories and the place in which our stories live on. In her loving embrace, I find my home. It is in this home that I find community, purpose, and joy. Earth is family. And I shall protect her as such. I have come to believe that all relationships compel the behavior necessary for their maintenance.

Content Warning: Movie spoilers

Downy hair of the earth overtrodden in crushed dense wandering tracks—flesh of earth shaped by the imperfect impressions of travelers on whose feet travel worlds Cutting shifting tracks with days passing and passing lives, lives that slip away like mud washing from a disaggregating trail like displacing sediment along wending riverbeds Sense of place not my own placelessness abides in the places I pass through unbelonging thrives where I fail to inhabit

Art by Rosie NATURE, as a concept, is near impossible to define. The word itself evokes multiple meanings that are dependent on your cultural background, your place of origin, your religious beliefs - but now, more than ever, “nature” is being defined as a finite place of resources or a commodity that you can choose to participate in or not. When questioning and examining where the prevailing beliefs about nature and its value come from in the Western World, it is absolutely critical to look at the historical context that predates our current mess of rising temperatures and oil spills and examine the cultural attitudes and mindsets that European settlers brought into the Americas— mindsets that are still prevalent today.

Author’s note: Matt is a Sag sun with a cap moon and rising in cancer. By most reputable accounts, 2022 was the hottest year in human history, on pattern with climate trends since the turn of the century. The uncomfortable truth is that we have moved past the point of preventing a climate disaster, just preventing a more catastrophic climate disaster than the one unfolding before us. Property is no longer billed as ‘climate-friendly’ and now billed as ‘climate-resilient.

Wednesday afternoon April 6th students and community members rallied in front of the EMU to demand the University of Oregon move off fracked gas and electrify its infrastructure. They also continued to call on the City of Eugene to ban the use of so-called “natural gas” in newly constructed buildings, and transition to the use of electricity for all buildings. The event was organized by UO Climate Justice League’s Fossil Free UO campaign.

The Urban Farm has been a center for community and ecological knowledge sharing at the University of Oregon for decades. Now, in the wake of a second 500 million dollar donation by Phil and Penny Knight, construction for phase 2 of the Knight Campus has brought the farm under the chopping block. The student-led organization Save the Urban Farm has been leading opposition to the project. Their main concerns lie in the use of the space known as the back 40 as a staging area during construction, and in impact on the eastern border.

In a unanimous vote, workers at the 29th & Willamette Starbucks store officially won a union Wednesday afternoon. There were 17 yes votes, zero no votes, and no contested ballots. The bargaining unit contains 28 people in total for the new union. Workers and supporters gathered at the GTFF office to watch the ballot count over Zoom. The process was very deliberate, with a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) employee opening the return envelope.

With no given public notice, no required public comment period, and without objection from the Bureau of Land Management, the Roseburg based timber company Roseburg Forest Products (RFP) is moving forward with plans to cut a road through a section of old growth forest that under any other circumstances they would not be allowed to log. In the Big Tom area, not far from Drain, the proposed road cuts between four northern spotted owl nests.

Over 200 members of the Eugene community gathered at Washburne Park on Friday, February 4th, to participate in a strike for intergenerational climate justice organized by Sunrise Eugene. More than 100 local middle and high school students walked out from their classrooms to join the march that began at South Eugene High School. Chants could be heard from blocks away as the group of young activists approached the park.

The world is fucked, and that’s okay. This is the core thematic message of Desert, a long-form manifesto covering climate collapse and its meaning for the Anarchist movement. Written by an anonymous ecologically inclined anarchist, Desert prefaces itself by almost immediately asking the reader the question, “what if we don’t win?” It’s a hard prospect to think about, much less seriously engage with, but Desert doesn’t shy away from it. The text makes a convincing point for thinking about it; after all, lots of people come into the movement full of revolutionary ambition and zeal, dead-set on toppling the hegemonic power structures of our world and/or saving the environment from said power structures, only to burn out and give up in disillusionment.

Photography from CNN If you identify as an anti-capitalist, you likely possess some basic knowledge of the struggles that North American Indigenous peoples have long waged against colonial and neoliberal threats of capitalist development of Indigenous land. One recent example is the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in 2016-17. Hundreds were injured during those protests, which rank among the largest and most publicized Indigenous land struggles in recent American history.

We realized shortly before entering 2022 that we would be remiss if we did not document and discuss the Global Witness report that came out in September 2021. Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines: “Murders of environment and land defenders at record high” September 13, 2021 –The Guardian “It Was The Deadliest Year Ever For Land And Environmental Activists” September 13, 2021 –NPR Or read the report itself. Scrolling through web page after web page of search results pertaining to the report, one thing is obvious— the news coverage and media attention is nothing compared to the coverage of the infamous Gabby Petito case, which hit the headlines the same week as the annual Global Witness report.

A zine about the biomass industry and Eugene’s ‘green’ image. Also why thats a load of… well read it. Download here!

In this collaboration between Insurgent and Cascadia Forest Defenders, we present a special printing of Long Live Eco Terror by anonymous. Download here!

Older News is still good news. After final confirmation from Constitution Court, the resolution will effectively halt purchasing of bottled water with student fee monies. University of Oregon student government approved today the Take Back the Tap resolution, which prohibits the expenditure of student fee monies on bottled water. The resolution was authored by the Climate Justice League, a new student group on campus, as well as members of student Senate.

A zine about the biomass industry and Eugene’s ‘green’ image. Also why thats a load of… well read it. Download here!