Your country needs you
How much does it annoy you that the Earth is being destroyed by a few, to benefit a tiny minority, at the expense of the vast majority? Enough to do something about it? Derrick Jensen mounts the barricades
If someone put a plastic bag over your head, or over the head of someone you love, and said he would give you money if you leave it there, would you take it?
And if you said no, what would you do if he insisted, even at gunpoint?
Would you still take it? Or would you fight back?
Before you answer, read the following sentence.
The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
That seems so self-evident I’m embarrassed to write it, but it’s a notion that entirely escapes our public (and private) discourse. Recently I read a tiny article on page seven, I repeat SEVEN, of the San Francisco Chronicle. It stated simply, that every single stream -- every single stream -- in the US is contaminated with toxic chemicals, and that one-fifth of all animals and one-sixth of all plants are at risk of extinction within the next 30 years. (Given that every mother’s milk is contaminated with toxic chemicals, why should we expect streams to be less endangered?). And on page one? A huge article waxing lyrical about Elvis memorabilia.
Think about it for a second: what is the real source of life? Of food, air, water? Is it the economic system? Of course not: it’s the landbase.
Last week I learned the air in Los Angeles is so toxic that children born there inhale more carcinogenic pollutants in the first two weeks of their lives than the EPA (which routinely understates risks so as not to impede economic production) considers safe for a lifetime. In San Francisco it takes three weeks.
We’re poisoning ourselves. Or more accurately, we’re being poisoned by those in power, those who make the rules, including those who negotiate among themselves the best ways to remove barriers to their unbridled exploitation of our landbases, people like these negotiators in Cancun. They’re killing us (and the world) as surely as if they put guns to our heads and pulled the triggers.
If I could say just one thing to these negotiators in Cancun, as they hide behind their phalanxes of armored policemen, it would be this:
‘When he was on trial for his life in Jerusalem, part of Adolph Eichmann’s defense was that no one ever told him what he was doing was wrong. He was, he contended, merely a bureaucrat implementing policies assigned from on high, making trains run on time, as it were: damn the cargoes, full speed ahead. Of course the courts rejected his arguments, and rightly hanged him as a mass murderer. But I will not allow you even that excuse. What you’re doing is wrong, your crime worse even than Eichmann’s, because you’re not merely following destructive policies, you’re helping form them.’
And if I could say one thing to the police aiming their weapons at protesters, at the poor, it would be this:
‘Point your guns in the opposite direction. You have far more in common with us than with those you’re protecting, and you have more to fear from them than from us. Fire your tear gas and rubber bullets at those who partition the planet, who try to tell us everything can be bought and sold, everything belongs to those who have money, everything belongs to those in power, everything belongs to them. If you value your own life or the lives of your children, fire your bullets not at those who resist the destruction of our communities, of our world, but at those who formulate the rules by which this destruction is carried out.’
Those in power often con the rest of us into being proud of being good, defined - by them and by us - as being subservient to their laws, their edicts. They con us into forgetting that those in power can and usually do legalise reprehensible activities that increase their power (e.g. stealing land from the indigenous, invading countries with desired resources, debasing the landbase, all done legally, because those in power declare it to be so) and criminalise non-reprehensible activities that undercut their power. Last month, for instance, I read that people were being arrested in New York City just for pasting up pictures of Iraqi citizens, in other words, humanising the US’s latest targets. And that a law is being considered in the Oregon legislature that would mandate 25 year minimum prison sentences for anti-war protesting.
Another way to say this is that those in power make the rules by which they maintain and extend their power. And then those in power hire police and military to keep people in line: when you take away the rhetoric of protecting and serving, the job of police and the military boils down to being muscle to enforce the edicts of those in power.
That is what I would say to those police protecting the negotiators. And then I would say, Do not be a collaborator in the destruction of your own community. Join us. Fight for your own life, and for the lives of your loved ones. It’s been done before. Come, join the protests.
And I would say this: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and really stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
And finally, I would return to this: If someone put a plastic bag over your head, or over the head of someone you love, and said he would give you money if you leave it there, would you take it?
And if you said no, what would you do if he insisted, even at gunpoint?
Would you still take it?
Or would you fight back?
Derrick Jensen is an activist and author. His most recent
book is The Culture of Make Believe (Context,
2002)
PULL QUOTE
If I could say one thing to the police aiming their weapons at protesters, at the poor, it would be this: point your guns in the opposite direction.