Come make some Bitterroot memories in the land of breathtaking natural beauty, where you are afraid to look away… You may encounter lynx, grizzly, wolf or cougar, but probably not because they have 3.6 million acres of protected wilderness to hide from you (the Frank Church and Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness). Help defend the Big Wild from the oily hands of resource extraction.
This will be an 8-day campout gathering of resistance to dirty, destructive energy extraction. Some of the areas we will focus on are: the Alberta Tar Sands & Utah Tar Sands, Black Mesa, Mountaintop Removal and Fracking.
This is an invitation for indigenous, activist and local speakers to teach us about your campaign. We are also encouraging musicians who perform environmental and social justice music.
Northern Rockies Earth First! “Where the Road Ends and the Wild Begins”
Directions for this year’s Earth First! Round River Rendezvous will be posted on these web sites:
If you are flying, come into the Spokane, WA airport or Lewiston, ID or Moscow/Pullman or Missoula, MT. If you are coming from the Idaho side you will head east on US 12. From Missoula you will head west on US 12. As of this writing the site is under many feet of snow. Keep an eye on the web sites or contact us.
The site will be between Kamiah, Idaho and Lolo, Montana.
END:CIV examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?”
The causes underlying the collapse of civilizations are usually traced to overuse of resources. As we write this, the world is reeling from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, and political turmoil. Every day, the headlines re-hash stories of scandal and betrayal of the public trust. We don’t have to make outraged demands for the end of the current global system — it seems to be coming apart already.
But acts of courage, compassion and altruism abound, even in the most damaged places. By documenting the resilience of the people hit hardest by war and repression, and the heroism of those coming forward to confront the crisis head-on, END:CIV illuminates a way out of this all-consuming madness and into a saner future.
Backed by Jensen’s narrative, the film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land. The film trips along at a brisk pace, using music, archival footage, motion graphics, animation, slapstick and satire to deconstruct the global economic system, even as it implodes around us. END:CIV illustrates first-person stories of sacrifice and heroism with intense, emotionally-charged images that match Jensen’s poetic and intuitive approach. Scenes shot in the back country provide interludes of breathtaking natural beauty alongside clearcut evidence of horrific but commonplace destruction.
END:CIV features interviews with Paul Watson, Waziyatawin, Gord Hill, Michael Becker, Peter Gelderloos, Lierre Keith, James Howard Kunstler, Stephanie McMillan, Qwatsinas, Rod Coronado, John Zerzan and more.
“A fierce critique of systematic violence and industrial civilization, End:Civ is not intended for garden-variety environmentalists. If you are anywhere below, say, an 8 on that sliding scale of pissed off, then this film is going to scare you — which means you should watch it.” -Eugene Weekly
“A tour de force film from Franklin López which does more than justice to Derrick Jensen’s thesis that industrial civilization is destroying life on the planet. Employing all the contemporary audio visual techniques our digital world makes possible for a single brilliant penurious filmmaker, López harvests sounds and images from our demented world to relentlessly show the rape of the mind and the earth. To those outside the small choir who see the message of resistance as obvious, this powerful film makes them deal with it either by denial or acknowledging, yes I see it is obvious.”
James Becket
-Director of The Best Revenge
“Franklin Lopez is a fantastically talented filmmaker, who has created a powerful and important film about the most important topic ever: how to stop this culture from killing the planet.”
-Derrick Jensen, Author of Endgame
“By far the most routinely praised contemporary media activist is Franklin López. His shows and films not only possess a distinctive look and feel, but they also contain a wicked sense of humor that is often sorely lacking among alter-globalization activists. López’s work engages in constructing a new vision where popular culture serves the interests of the poor and dispossessed, where humor is reignited within activism, and the D.I.Y. ethics of punk and hip-hop allow those with talent and gumption to be the media, once again.”
-Chris Robé, Pop Matters
“Franklin Lopez’ END:CIV is a labour of love, a stunning 75 minutes film…”
John Zerzan, author of Future Primitive
“It brought me to tears…” “I recommend it to people”
-Alex Smith, Host of Radio Ecoshock
“Franklin Lopez’s END:CIV project is awesome.”
-Shannon Walsh, Director of H2Oil
“Both the quantity and the quality of this movement’s filmmaking is increasing. This is the big battlefield on which we fight right now.”
-Michael Rupert, CollapseNet.com
Franklin López will be touring with END:CIV in 2011.
The END:CIV DVD by PM Press can be ordered now.
If you wish to book a screening in your town or want to order a DVD, simply click on the links below.
Louise Benally, Indigenous Environmental Activist and Long Time Resident of Black Mesa is Speaking at UNM!
Dine’ families and elders have been resisting cultural genocide for over thirty five years and are targeted for unjust large-scale coal mining operations and forced relocation policies of the U.S. government in Black Mesa/Big Mountain, AZ. Throughout those thirty five years the U.S. government and Peabody Coal have forcefully relocated thousands Dine’ people away from their ancestral homeland, the land that they belong to, in the name of greed, energy and progress. Many families and elders have refused to leave, even though they are under constant pressure to do so. Their daily lives have become a direct action to save their land base, to maintain their traditional life ways, and to take a stand against global warming and globalization. They are not creating a new way of sustainable living, but are struggling to live as they always have—with the earth and not against it.
When: Friday, April 29th at 5:00 PM
Where: The UNM Main Campus, Sub Ballroom C, University of New Mexico
Who: The KIVA Club and BMIS (Black Mesa Indigenous Support) are putting on the event
Contact: Stephanie @ ssalaza4@unm.edu or
Derek @ 215-820-3444 or email Bobadochie@aol.com
Today in Salt Lake City, RAN has joined with climate activists, air quality advocates and local labor organizations to tell coal giant Ambre Energy that the coal rush is over.
Coal kingpin Ambre Energy is making a major push to build America’s first West Coast coal port in the Pacific Northwest. That’s right: Ambre has chosen the breathtaking Columbia River as its main artery for the Longview coal port, which would ship millions of tons of coal each year to Asia. And that’s why the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters was chosen as the site of the protest today.
More than 50 people from labor organizers to environmental activists have come out today to draw a line in the sand. They are saying, “We don’t want this dirty coal burned here in the U.S., and we don’t want it burned anywhere else, either.” They held three big banners right in front of Ambre’s headquarters: “Stop Coal Exports,” “Ambre Energy: Exporting Pollution,” and “Clean Energy Clean Air.”
Here’s how RAN’s own Scott Parkin, who helped organize today’s protest, put it:
Plain and simple, coal export terminals continue the mining and burning of coal at a time when phasing out coal is essential to our health. With Ambre Energy’s coal export terminals, the U.S. is exporting our problems, our pollution, instead of solving them with clean energy advancements.
As the U.S. begins to shift away from carbon-emitting, coal-fired power plants, coal producers are gearing up to ship more coal overseas. Advocates for clean energy, the environment, and public health and safety have coalesced to oppose Ambre, which is leading the push for West Coast export terminals. If Ambre’s Longview terminal goes through it will open the way for dozens more like it, continuing the mining and burning of dirty coal for decades.
Several different organizations participated in today’s rally, including the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. Jim Cooksey, a representative of the union, had this to say about the protest:
We are concerned about the exporting of coal to overseas markets in that there are no environmental standards once the coal leaves our borders. The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers understands the issue of climate change and is looking to secure alliances with other labor and environmental organizations to find solutions that protect workers and the environment.
Today’s protest at Ambre’s headquarters comes on the heels of a 50-person rally yesterday in Longview, WA where residents who will be directly impacted by the export terminal gathered. They are demanding that the permit for the Longview terminal be revoked immediately.
Controversy over the Longview terminal has been building. Just last week it was revealed that Ambre Energy planned to construct the Longview export terminal with the capacity to annually ship up to 60 million short tons of western U.S. coal, even as it told state and local government officials that it would build a facility one-twelfth that size.
U.S. coal exports to China and India are expected to increase to 86.5 million tons, up from 79.5 million tons in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Peabody, the No. 1 coal producer in the U.S., has said it will release plans for its own West Coast port by the end of this quarter. If people are successful in stalling Ambre’s Longview terminal it would have a ripple effect across the sector, challenging the plan to develop coal export capacity along the coast.
Within the past few months, the western United States has become the center of attention for coal companies seeking to export coal to Asia. Because of their strategic location as a transport hub from Wyoming and Montana to China and other overseas markets, King Coal is attempting to buy up ports along the Pacific Northwest Coast for coal export.
With it’s North American headquarters in Salt Lake City, Ambre Energy is leading coal export expansion in the northwest United States. They are building a coal export terminal on the Columbia River in Longview, Washington to ship coal mined in Wyoming and Montana to overseas markets.
Coal is leading source of greenhouse gas emissions and public health issues, like asthma and cancer, as well as adversely effecting wilderness and communities through devastating extraction practices. It’s time to replace dirty coal with more sustainable clean energy solutions.
Join Rainforest Action Network and Peaceful Uprising as we take action to reclaim our future from King Coal.
Communities around the world are under attack from extractive industries that poison our families, kill our loved ones on the job, and destroy the ecosystems we cherish. The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s resources.
Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.
For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.” From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.
On April 20th take it to the point of production. Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice zone.
Join Earth First! Durango (which doubles and triples as chapters of Root Force and Rising Tide) and the GroundUp Arts Collective for an afternoon of education, outreach, and solidarity with the resistance communities of Black Mesa, Arizona.
Saturday, November 13th, 4PM @ the GroundUp Arts Collective, 1051 East 2nd Avenue in Durango, Colorado.
We will be joined by Black Mesa resister Louise Benally, who will talk about the on-going struggle, and the Beehive Design Collective, who will be presenting their True Costs of Coal graphic.
We are also seeking other relevant presenters, performers, musicians, artists, etc. who would like to take part in the event. Contact earthfirstdurango@riseup.net for more information.
Admittance will be based upon a sliding scale monetary donation and/or food drive donation, but no one will be turned away due to lack of donations or funds.
All proceeds go to support the upcoming Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS) caravan and resister families on the ground on Black Mesa.
Join the Caravan in Support of Indigenous Communities Resisting Massive Coal Mining Operations on Their Ancestral Homelands of Big Mountain & Black Mesa, AZ
These Front-Line Resistance Communities, in their Struggle for Life, Land, & Future Generations, Have Always Maintained That Their Struggle Is For Our Collective Survival. May They Be Supported Now and Always!
November 20-27, 2010
Greetings from Black Mesa Indigenous Support!
We are excited to extend the invitation from Dineh resisters of the Black Mesa region to join BMIS’s caravan to support their ongoing struggle. On behalf of their peoples, their sacred ancestral lands and future generations, these communities continue a 36 year long struggle against the US Governments forced relocation efforts, Peabody Coal’s financial interests, and an unsustainable fossil fuel based economy. They continue trying to halt and repair the devastating impacts of colonialism, coal mining, and forced relocation of their communities, sacred lands, and our planet. As one of their resistance strategies they call upon outside support as they maintain their traditional way of life in the face of the largest relocation of indigenous people in the US since the Trail of Tears.
By assisting with direct, on-land projects you are supporting a broad movement for climate justice and families right to stay on their ancestral homelands in resistance to an illegal occupation. The oil spill in the Gulf highlighted the dangerous and unsustainable reality of our fossil fuels based economy. Another example of this dangerous reality comes from Black Mesa. The recently approved carbon capture storage project will capture the coal firing plant emissions and use clean water to pump the carbon an estimated 9,000 feet into the ground to be stored near their major aquifer. False solutions to climate change and large scale coal extraction must be stopped! We propose participating in this caravan as one small way in supporting these courageous communities who are serving as the very blockade to coal mining on Black Mesa!
Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS) is a volunteer-run collective, in solidarity with the Diné families and elders in Black Mesa/Big Mountain, AZ who have been resisting cultural genocide for over thirty-five years — targeted for unjust large-scale coal mining operations and forced relocation policies of the U.S government. Throughout those thirty-five years the US government and Peabody Coal have forcefully relocated thousands of Diné people away from their ancestral homeland, the land that they belong to, in the name of greed, energy and progress. Many families and elders have refused to leave, even though they are under constant pressure to do so. Their daily lives have become a direct action to save their land base, maintain their traditional life ways, and take a stand against global warming and globalization. They are not creating a new way of sustainable living, but are struggling to live as they always have — with the earth and not against it.
The resisting families are encouraging people to come to Black Mesa now. They request support all year long. One of the primary ways that non-native people who support the Diné live out solidarity is to honor the direct requests of these families and extend an invitation to all people interested in supporting their resistance, to come to Black Mesa, to their threatened ancestral homelands, walk with their sheep, haul water and wood, and do whatever they ask. By coming to Black Mesa, supporters can assist the elders and their families in daily chores, which helps visitors to engage with the story that they are telling, as well as to claim a more personal stake against environmental degradation, climate change, and continued legacies of colonialism and genocide. One can assist by being there so they can go to meetings, organize, weave rugs, visit family members who have been hospitalized, rest after a difficult winter and regain strength for the upcoming spring. With spring comes planting crops, shearing sheep, and lambing. Come for a month. Or longer.
Supporting these communities, whose very presence stands in the way of large-scale coal mining and further environmental degradation, is one way to work on the front lines for climate justice and against a future of climate chaos. There are also opportunities for long-term, committed supporters and organizers off the land.
BMIS is looking for Regional Coordinators to organize year-round support and work towards movement building, which would maintain and enhance communication channels between the Big Mountain resistance communities and networks that are being established to support the Big Mountain resistance, as well as other local forms of indigenous resistance, while building shared analysis, vision and movements for the liberation of all peoples and our planet. We are looking for organizers to connect to local climate justice, anti-racism, and decolonization projects, set up sheepherder send-off parties which can double as political education and fundraising events, put on screenings of “Broken Rainbow”, as well as host speaking engagements, give report-backs from the land and coordinate other educational events to spread the word about the struggle. We hope to connect with folks who will organize local responses to calls to action from the land, look into and spread information about corporate and political connections to Peabody Coal, and build a local capacity to fight racism and participate in multiracial movements for justice.
Contact us for more information if you are interested in supporting this struggle, and please visit our website for a deeper analysis and more info: www.blackmesais.org blackmeasis@gmail.com, 928.773.8086, P.O. Box 23501, Flagstaff, Arizona 86002
I sometimes wonder what it will be like when it all comes down, when this fucking crazy machine comes to a grinding halt. I’m talking about the capitalist machine and the
industrialized addicted society that kneels to it.
I’m talking about america…
I think about what the streets will look like when the plants push up through the concrete; when the grocery store shelves empty and the only reminder of times long gone are the plastic bags blowing in the streets like sagebrush across the desert. I think about the shattered windows and broken doors—they did little to keep out the looters or the stones hurled by rioters. I think about the vulnerability of the cities when the electrical infrastructure fails and the power plants shut down—their demise a product of human’s irresponsible abuse and depletion of natural resources. I think about cars abandoned on the side of the road…left behind, forgotten, and worthless without their precious fuel…
Southwest Earth First! 