The Earth First! Journal Needs Your Support!

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Sonoran Desert and the desks of the Earth First! Journal!!! After spending a week in southern Oregon for this summers’ Round River Rendezvous, the Earth First! Journal Collective has been hard at work on the next issue of the Journal.

With many thanks to a generous donation from our poetry editor, we were able to mail out the Lughnasadh July/August 2009 edition of the Earth First! Journal. We hope all of our subscribers have received their copy of the EF! Journal and encourage folks to e-mail us if there is ever a problem with your subscription.

Next week we will mail out our annual summer donation letter and want to thank everyone for making a contribution of any size to help with finances. The financial state of the Journal does not effect the quality of the publication but it certainly makes it difficult to mail it out, as well as keep the bills paid! Luckily…

There are many ways to support the Earth First! Journal

The following is a list of possibilities, please e-mail us if you have questions, need materials or want to inform us that you, in fact, put on a benefit show and are going to mail us a donation to help your favorite publication from the direct action environmental movement!!!

1. Become a subscriber to the Earth First! Journal

Subscribing to the EF! Journal is the best way you can support the publication! You can also ask your local library, infoshop, collective house, university library or club if they would consider a subscription to the EF! Journal. E-mail us if you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the EF! Journal as an incentive to begin subscribing!

2. Host a benefit show in your hometown!

Benefit shows come in all shapes and sizes, from live music events to bake sales.

The Earth First! Journal recently asked the band, The Devil Makes Three, if they would play a benefit show to help raise funds for legal support with the anti-I-69 campaign—and they did! Over $700 was raised in one night! A big thanks to Lucia, Pete & Cooper of The Devil Makes Three for your support!

The Earth First! Roadshow also did a kick-ass job of raising tons of money for the Journal, as well as spreading the word about our 30-year histroy of campaigns, and educating folks about the need for good security culture—through in-depth presentations to more than 70 audiences across the country! Thank you Roadshow crew for all your support!

Other benefit show ideas include: hosting a film screening or short film fest, hosting a vegan social with food and games, chili-making contest, set up a community variety show or organize a pledge-drive bike ride.

3. Table at an event with Earth First! merchandise

We can start you off with copies of the EF! Journal and send you a merchandise catalog to order items at bulk rates. All our merchandise is viewable at our “store” on this website.

4. Buy Earth First! merchandise

There is a growing variety of trinkets and literature available from the on-line store. Every order over $40 will receive a free copy of the EF! Journal 20th Year Anniversary edition—an awesome compilation of the history of Earth First! and the campaigns that define our no compromise movement. Includes more than 45 amazing articles from founding members of Earth First!, as well as Rod Cornoado, Karen Pickett, Paul Watson and many more.

5. Become a distributor of the Earth First! Journal

If you regularly table at events, help run a bookstore or info shop that sells other periodicals and movement merchandise or are going on tour with your band and would like to help spread the work of the Earth First! movement—you could become a small distributor for the EF! Journal! You can also ask your local independently-owned bookstore or food co-op if they would like to subscribe or distribute the EF! Journal. E-mail nettle(at)earthfirstjournal.org for more information and to receive a catalog of all our merchandise

6. Join the Earth First! Journal Collective

Short-term editors are needed to be an essential part of our collective in Tucson, Arizona. Short-term editors spend a couple months in production on a single issue of the EF! Journal. If you have a strong interest in the content that appears in the pages of the EF! Journal, can handle spending most of your time working in front of a computer and would enjoy working in a small collective, please send an e-mail to: wildginger(at)earthfirstjournal.org to find out more information.

7. Buy ad space in the Earth First! Journal

We are currently looking for advertisers who do not go against our ethics. With a limited selection of businesses and organizations to ask if they would like to advertise in the EF! Journal it is somewhat difficult to find them. If you are interested in advertising with the Earth First! Journal, please e-mail us at: ads(at)earthfirstjournal.org for more information and receive our ad rates.

With that said, all donations are greatly appreciated! You can donate to us through our website, give us a call to place a debit or credit donation at: 520-620-6900 or send checks and money orders to:

Earth First! Journal
PO Box 3023
Tucson, AZ 85702

Thank you for your support!

For the Wild,

-the Earth First Journal collective

Call for Direct Action Camp at 'Feral Futures' Gathering in Colorado

‘Feral Futures’ is a free, informal, and loosely structured anarcho-primitivist/anti-civ gathering taking place in Southwest Colorado from the New Moon at the end of May (around the 24th) to the Full Moon at the beginning of June (around the 6th or 7th). Dates are approximate. Folks are free to come and go as they please. The site is at a sacred hot springs along a wild river in National Forest bordered by Wilderness Area.

We would like to provide space at ‘Feral Futures,’ closer to the parking, for a direct action camp encompassing things that are not necessarily within the traditional framework of “primitivism” and/or “rewilding,” but can nonetheless be utilized in an anti-civ praxis, if folks are interested in facilitating such workshops. We are also hoping the Earth First! Road Show will be stopping by!

Right now we are seeking folks who would like to facilitate workshops and skills shares either deeper in the woods at the anarcho-primitivist part of the gathering or closer to the parking in the action camp part of the gathering. We are seeking folks who can facilitate trainings in rewilding, survival, and earth skills, as well as folks who can facilitate direct action trainings, civil disobedience workshops, know your rights trainings, anti-oppression trainings, etc.

If you are interested, and for site directions, contact feralfutures@riseup.net

www.myspace.com/feralfutures

'Wild Roots, Feral Futures' Anti-Civ/Primitivist Gathering in Colorado

An informal anti-civ, primitive living skills, and rewilding gathering in the Wild Rockies of Colorado

Summer 2009! New Moon of May to Full Moon of June

(May 24th — June 6th, 2009)

‘Wild Roots, Feral Futures’ is a free and informal primitive gathering taking place this summer in Southern Colorado. The site is on National Forest land, bordered by Wilderness. Our base camp is a natural hot springs along a wild river.

Though a communal kitchen will form, be prepared for self-sufficiency with both food and water. Come prepared for rain, cold, heat, sun, etc.

Dates are approximate. You may come and go as you please.

We are seeking folks who are interested in facilitating workshops and trainings in primitive living and rewilding skills, as well as anti-civ strategies and tactics.

For more information, or to get involved, contact feralfutures [at] riseup [dot] net

See you in the woods!

—The Feral Futures Crew

www.myspace.com/feralfutures

WilderPress! on MySpace (yeah yeah, I know)

www.myspace.com/wilderpress

Tucson Environmental Radicals Target Homes, Cars

Tucson vandals claiming to act in the name of animal rights and the environment have begun targeting the homes and cars of earth destroyers and animal exploiters.

In two separate incidents on Feb. 19, a researcher at the University of Arizona had her water valve cemented shut, and an employee of a mining company had her tires flattened and her windows etched with hateful sayings.

A group called Tucson Hooligans Attack at Night, Duh – or, Tucson H.A.A.N.D. – claimed responsibility for the acts in a news release on an independent media Web site. No phone number for the group was listed.

The post said the group cemented the water meter of researcher Katalin Gothard because of her research with monkeys, and that Kathy Arnold’s car tire was slashed and her window etched because of her job with Augusta Resources Rosemont Copper Project. Augusta wants to open a 1.2-square-mile open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains.

The group also claimed responsibility for a Jan. 15 incident in which expletive-laced slogans were etched on the windows and garage doors of the home of Si Schorr, a Tucson attorney and former chairman of the Arizona Transportation Board. The group said he was targeted for his support of an Interstate 10 bypass route that environmentalists say would damage valuable habitat.

The incidents were confirmed by police.

.....

In its news release, Tucson H.A.A.N.D. dedicated its most recent actions to four animal-rights activists recently arrested by the FBI for alleged attacks on animal researchers at the University of California. The four are being charged with using “force, violence, or threats to interfere with the operation of the University of California in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” according to a San Francisco FBI news release.

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• Click here to read more » » »

The original Indymedia post: Tucson H.A.A.N.D. Attacks Vivsectors’ home and Mining Scumbag

A Message from the WilderPress! Editorial Collective

A Letter from the Editors, WilderPress! Issue #1:

We must first begin by thanking all those involved with making this publication possible—to Maria’s Bookshop and Durango Natural Foods for their interest in stocking WilderPress! and supporting free speech; to those wild folks who submitted their thoughts, feelings and stories—without you this would not be possible; to all those who pick this up, read it, and evaluate their position on the environmental movement or at least how they live their daily lives…we bow to you.

We need a drastic change in philosophy and action across the globe. There is no better place to start, and no better place to defend, than our own backyard. There is no greater fundamental challenge to human beings than the collapse of the very biosphere that supports life as we know it. A biosphere, that quite simply, we are destroying.

The hour is upon us. How will we choose to act in the vital years to come? Surely we cannot be so ignorant as to continue down a path in which we destroy our own home for short- term economic gain. Prosperity does not have to equal growth. Yet the forests continue to fall, the oceans continue to die, the land continues its path to infertility, more rivers lay tame—shackled by concrete and steel—more children starve, more cultures crumble to the great corporate tyrants of the world…the biosphere suffers—business as usual…

Many humans live in a world plagued with denial and apathy, particularly in the United States. It is easy in this county—one that prides itself on skewed view of individualism and materialism—for people to turn their backs on issues such as environmental degradation and social injustices, as long as the issues don’t seem to directly affect their day-to-day accumulation of “stuff.” Unfortunately, the idea of individualism that has developed in this country is not one made of many positive attributes. Instead of individualism defining our creativity, and fueling a free society where all citizens are supported, and where all share the benefits of each others hard work, it reveals itself as radically possessive, hubristic, and self-centered, complete with an obsessive drive to compete with neighbors and fellow human beings. The “American Dream” has become more and more of a rat race and more and more of a nightmare.

No one seems to question this system or its affects…it is simply what they have been inculcated and conditioned to do, and they deny that anything is wrong, blaming their headache, beer gut, and insomnia on “just a long day at work” or “our busy schedule”, swearing that next week will be different, that they will do something to change the way they feel, that they aren’t going to take it anymore. Bullshit. All the while Americans fuel their obsession and addiction to material possessions, and continue to ignore the consequences of an all too affluent lifestyle—mostly because, until now, the consequences have rarely had direct effect.

The reason we bring all this up is not only to increase awareness of what should already be too clear, or to condemn a system we are increasingly sickened by, but rather to pose a new year’s resolution for the whole nation, or at the very least one for Durango and the Four Corners. This is our call to action—a call for a change we so desperately need, a lifestyle we secretly, and not so secretly, long for, and a revival of the body, mind, and spirit we used to possess. In 2009 let us drop this futile concept of individualism we have nurtured for all too long; it is very much overrated and certainly not in tune with the sustainable, livable world we so direly need to foster. Let us remember what it means to support our family, our neighbors, our community, our nation, and our world—human and non-human alike.

WilderPress! is here to provide a voice for the natural world, and those dedicated to its defense. We are here to promote free speech, creativity, thought, theory and action. The environmental crisis is like no other challenge humans have ever faced, and we must approach the struggle with multifaceted strategy. Awareness and solidarity are our most powerful weapons and we must come together to ensure a future that supports life, not destroys it. The environment is in peril and no longer does economic status, religious affiliation, political standing, ethnic background or geographic location determine where we stand. We are all living beings, and we all need a healthy Earth in order to survive. Everyone is affected equally by the degradation of the environment, and everyone will pay the price should we choose to continue…

The time has come to rise up in defense of Mother Earth, in resistance against those who are willfully enslaving and destroying the natural world, and in solidarity with those who know humans cannot continue on our current path of destruction. We must reclaim our place as responsible members within the greater community of living beings upon this planet, and act accordingly. This means taking action against the systematic ecocide perpetrated by industrial civilization and resisting the destruction of the Earth by any means necessary. The future of all life on Earth—human and non-human alike—depends on a healthy land base. The sooner the destruction is stopped, the better. Inaction is complicity. Complicity is abhorrent. We must come together in the name of something greater than ourselves, and yet intricately intertwined with our very being and exsistence. Let us vow to never let our children use the word wilderness in the past tense…

This is for our children, for the planet, and for ourselves… This publication is in solidarity with those who continue to fight for a livable world, where all life is valued, and to those who wish to join the battle. This is to the defense of wild places, by wild people, at whatever cost, and by any means necessary. The time to resist has come… Let us love together and laugh together and fight together for a better world. See you in the woods…and please don’t be too late…

—The WilderPress! Editorial Collective

Earth Warrior

by Dee Allen, WilderPress! Issue #1

Our eternal parent
Bore countless offspring
And in her most agonised moments,
She summoned only one.
Proud son of the Pascua Yaqui nation
Answered the call.
Cries for help felt throughout his bones & sinew
Like sudden tremors. Time to act.
Honourbound in defence of the mother of all,
Every whale was spared of the fisher’s net & harpoon.
Every whaling ship sank into the deep cold blue.
Every old-growth forest did not suffer slashing & burning.
Every cage became an open cage.
Every trap became a damaged trap.
Every chief executive & their company underlings
Shamed for their crimes.
The animal nations & nature live much longer
Because of the Earth Warrior
Galvanizing two movements that are but a
Continuation of an old indigenous struggle.
Proud son of the Pascua Yaqui nation
Answered the call long ago.
Man-spirit and world-spirit are one.
He rescued countless lives from captivity
But who will rise to save the Earth Warrior
From the cage surrounding him?
Even warriors need heroes.

W: 10.22.08 [For Michael Sykes.]


















(Although to our knowledge currently free, this was one of the best pictures of Dee we could find!)