Fanning the Flames of Resistance

A benefit for those resisting the Green Scare

...featuring Derrick Jensen

Green is the new Red…the 1950s had their vast Communist conspiracy, Congressional hearings, blacklists, and red-baiting. Today, we have “Eco-Terrorists…” secret databases, Congressional hearings, indictments, grand juries, raids, surveillance, arrests, convictions, and potential life sentences.

On December 7th, 2005 federal and local law enforcement began the largest roundup of alleged environmental and animal liberation activists in American history. Over the next several months, the number of arrests, indictments, and subpoenas would mount in what the government called “Operation Backfire” and what activists would eventually term THE GREEN SCARE.

In the so-called "War Against Terrorism"…

…the terrorists aren’t the ones behind bars.

Join acclaimed activist and author, Derrick Jensen, for a night of dialogue, debate, controversy, and an exploration of the nature of injustice in a so-called civilized world.

Cost:

$10 sliding scale donation at the door
(generosity greatly appreciated)
No one turned away for lack of funds.
All proceeds to benefit non-cooperating victims of the Green Scare
* Government agents subject to a $975 surcharge*

When:

Thursday, July 27th- Saturday, July 29th

Where:

Santa Barbara, San Diego, Los Angeles

For additional info:

www.EcoPrisoners.org/fundraiser.htm

Info [at] EcoPrisoners [dot] org

www.DerrickJensen.org

www.EcoPrisoners.org

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Thursday, July 27th... Santa Barbara

7:00pm- 9:00pm

Lowis Lowry Davis Center

1232 De La Vina Street, Santa Barbara, Calif., 93101

(At the corner of De La Vina and W. Victoria Streets)

Directions:

101-North… Exit Carrillo Street, turn right. Go 4 blocks NE to Chapala and turn left. Go 4 blocks until you see the Unity Shoppe on the left. The parking lot entrance is just before the Unity Shoppe building on the left. The Davis Center is at the far end of the lot.

101-South… Exit Mission Street, turn left. Go NE to De La Vina Street and turn right. Go several blocks SE and turn left on Victoria St. Immediately look for the parking lot on the right hand side.
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Friday, July 28th... San Diego

7:00pm- 9:30pm

Che Café

At the UC San Diego campus, La Jolla, Calif., 92093.

(Building 161 on the UCSD campus map)

Off I-5 / La Jolla Village Dr. / Gilman Dr.

Directions: http://checafe.ucsd.edu/directions.html

http://checafe.ucsd.edu/

Venue: (858) 534-2311

For map, please visit: http://checafe.ucsd.edu/map.html
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Saturday, July 29th... Los Angeles

7:00pm- 9:30pm

Sandpaper Books

3706 N. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, Calif., 90065

(Near Figueroa St. & W. Avenue 37 off the 110 Freeway)

www.SandPaperBooks.com

Venue: (323) 223-8020

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For additional info:

www.EcoPrisoners.org/fundraiser.htm

Info [at] EcoPrisoners [dot] org

www.EcoPrisoners.org

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What’s the Green Scare?

The term Green Scare, alluding to the so-called Communist Red Scare of the 1940s- 50s, is in reference to legal and extra-legal targeting of the environmental and animal rights movements and its sympathizers by the United States government. Often referred to as “eco-terrorists” by U.S. officials and in sensationalized media stories, environmentalists and animal rights activists have—in increasing frequency—been subjected to grand jury subpoenas and imprisonment; ongoing government surveillance; warrantless searches of their homes and vehicles; surreptitious tracking through global positioning devices; interception of their mail, phone calls, and emails by federal agencies; and indictments and arrests based solely on the testimony of undercover FBI informants.

Additionally, several activists are facing up to a decade in prison for doing nothing more than giving a controversial speech or running a campaign website. And nearly a dozen individuals face a life sentence in prison after being charged with crimes relating to the destruction of property. Despite the absence of a single injury or death being attributed to any so-called “eco-terrorist,” the U.S. government considers environmental and animal activists to be the “Number One Domestic Terrorist Threat.”

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About Derrick Jensen:

Derrick Jensen is an activist, author, small farmer, teacher, and philosopher whose speaking engagements in recent years have packed university auditoriums, bookstores, churches - you name the place. His acclaimed book, A Language Older Than Words, has been said to accomplish the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader’s heart, as well as energizing the mind.

A typical Jensen event is multidimensional and feels a bit like traveling
beneath the earth among tree roots, as they twist their way into soil, rock, river beds and accompany fish, insects, discarded tires, cellophane wrappers, animal minds, history, and human instinct on strange and interlocking journey.

Speaking in an almost improvisational style, Jensen explores the nature of injustice, of what civilizations do to the natural world and how, in the face of the resulting horror that is one of the all too apparent consequences of grave injustice, civilized human beings create intricate systems of denial, silence, abnegation, deception and self-hatred to keep it at bay.

He also reaches back to our collective childhoods, to the reality of magic in life, to discuss how nature has spoken to us and to how we must remember all the conversations we’ve had with her and renew them. It’s his antidote to cynicism and apocalypse. That there is a language much older than the lying language we use daily, without being aware, to dispel the horrors of modern living and dying.

If there is a connection between Tiger Woods, newspaper journalism, the bad moods of trees, child abuse, amnesia, school, language, and salmon, Jensen finds those connections in a most personal way and exploits them so that the listener can actually experience the intricacies of Jensen’s point of view.

It is indeed a heart rending, mind expanding, and ultimately healing exercise to explore Jensen’s root system, with him not so much as a guide, but an experienced fellow traveler.

Books:

Endgame, vol.1 & 2

Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control

Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution

Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests

The Culture of Make Believe

A Language Older than Words

Listening to the Land

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My Five Most Influential Books

An interview with Derrick Jensen published in "The Ecologist" (March 2004)

Question One: Which book first made you realize that something was wrong (with the planet/political system/economic system, etc)?

My Answer: It wasn’t a book. It was the destruction of place after place that I loved. And it was the complete insanity of a culture where so many people work at jobs they hate: What does it mean when the vast majority of people spend the vast majority of their waking hours doing things they’d rather not do? The culture itself convinced me something was wrong, by being so extraordinarily destructive, of human happiness, and far more importantly, the world itself.

That said, Neil Evernden’s The Natural Alien was the first book I read that let me know I was not insane: that the culture is insane. It was the first book I read that did not take the dominant culture’s utilitarian worldview as a given.

Question Two: Which one book would you give to every politician?

Answer: One that explodes.
Before you freak out, let’s change the question and see what you think:
Which one book would you give to Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels?
Let’s ask this another way: Would a book have changed Hitler? I don’t think so. Unless it exploded.

And before you freak out at the comparison of modern politicians to Hitler and his gang, try to look at it from the perspective of wild salmon, grizzly bears, bluefin tuna, or any of the (fiscally) poor or indigenous human beings. Those in power now are more destructive than anyone has ever been. And they are for the most part psychologically unreachable. And if someone does reach some politician, that politician will no longer be in power.

I recently shared a stage with Ward Churchill. He said the primary difference between the U.S. and the Nazis is that the U.S. didn’t lose.

I responded with one word: “Yet.”

Question Three: What book would you give to every CEO?

Answer: See above.

Question Four: What book would you give to every child?

Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside, and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads.

That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind in the Willows, which would I hope remind them to go outside.

Question Five: It’s 2050. The ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising. You’re only allowed one book on the Ark. What is it?

Answer: I wouldn’t take a book, and I wouldn’t get on the ark. I would kill myself (and take a dam out with me). I do not want to live without a living landbase. Without a living landbase I would already be dead. No book would even remotely compensate. Not a million books. Not a million computers. Not a million people would compensate.