#Environmental Police

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic_micromessaging_965 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally.

[commiepinkofag]

Green Scared?

Some Lessons from the FBI Crackdown on Eco-Activists, 2023

For years, the FBI targeted ecological activists as their #1 priority. This is one of the chief reasons environmental devastation has continued unchecked.

At the end of 2005, the FBI opened a new phase of its assault on earth and animal liberation movements — known as the Green Scare — with the arrests and indictments of a large number of activists. This offensive, which they dubbed Operation Backfire, was intended to obtain convictions for many of the unsolved Earth Liberation Front arsons of the preceding ten years — but more so, to have a chilling effect on all ecological direct action.

In this analysis, originally published in Rolling Thunder in 2008, we review everything we can learn from the Operation Backfire cases, with the intention of passing on the lessons for the next generation of environmental activists.

Download | Read Online

[kropotkindersurprise]

March 5, 2023 - Hundreds of forest defenders chased away police from a security post in Weelaunee Forest at the construction site of Cop City. The activists burned security and construction equipment and destroyed infrastructure. Thirty-five people were arrested by police, you can donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to help them out. [video]/[video]/[video]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Content warning for police violence, anti-indigenous racism, ableist language, and sexual violence.

RCMP officers referred to First Nations pipeline opponents as "orcs" and "ogre" during a police raid at a blockade of Coastal GasLink pipeline construction in November 2021, according to audio recordings played in court Wednesday. The recordings were played as evidence in B.C. Supreme Court in Smithers in an abuse of process application filed by Sleydo', also known as Molly Wickham, a Wing Chief of Cas Yikh, a house group of the Gidimt'en Clan of the Wet'suwet'en Nation; Shaylynn Sampson, a Gitxsan woman with Wet'suwet'en family ties and Corey Jocko, who is Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) from Akwesasne, which straddles the Quebec, Ontario and New York state borders.  The accused were found guilty last week of criminal contempt of court for breaking a 2019 injunction that impedes anyone from blocking work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline.  The abuse of process application alleges RCMP used excessive force when they were arrested and that they were treated unfairly while in custody. The filing asks that if the judge doesn't stay their charges, then it would be appropriate to reduce their sentences based on their treatment by police.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

[progressivemillennial]

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.2.4 Are anarchists in favour of “absolute” liberty?

No. Anarchists do not believe that everyone should be able to “do whatever they like,” because some actions invariably involve the denial of the liberty of others.

For example, anarchists do not support the “freedom” to rape, to exploit, or to coerce others. Neither do we tolerate authority. On the contrary, since authority is a threat to liberty, equality, and solidarity (not to mention human dignity), anarchists recognise the need to resist and overthrow it.

The exercise of authority is not freedom. No one has a “right” to rule others. As Malatesta points out, anarchism supports “freedom for everybody … with the only limit of the equal freedom for others; which does not mean … that we recognise, and wish to respect, the ‘freedom’ to exploit, to oppress, to command, which is oppression and certainly not freedom.” [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 53]

In a capitalist society, resistance to all forms of hierarchical authority is the mark of a free person — be it private (the boss) or public (the state). As Henry David Thoreau pointed out in his essay on “Civil Disobedience” (1847)

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

[nando161mando]

Greta Thunberg arrested by Dutch Police at a climate protest in the Hague

'Dutch police using controversial bokkepootje wrist bend on 4’11” Greta Thunberg for protesting climate collapse and genocide at The Hague'

[bugboy-behaviour]

‼️‼️URANIUM IS BEING ILLEGALLY TRANSPORTED ACROSS NATIVE LAND‼️‼️

[bfpnola]

i dont even have the capacity right now to make as robust of a post as i would like but i really think we all need to be aware of these updates regarding the stop cop city movement taking place in atlanta, georgia, united states of america. bold added for emphasis in the quotes below:

According to the state of Georgia, buying $11.91 worth of glue can land you on a RICO indictment, if the glue is used to protest the police. That’s exactly what it says in yesterday’s indictment against 61 people who have allegedly been protesting Atlanta’s potential Cop City. If you don’t know what Cop City is, it’s a plan to spend at least $90 million and destroy over 300 acres of forest to build a sprawling training center with a mock urban neighborhood to practice police tactics, specifically tactics of repression. Now, sweeping and overreaching charges claim that “militant anarchists” are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to stop this repression training center from being built. But, the indictment proceeds to lay out actions like handing out fliers, giving people food, and even running a bail fund to help arrested protesters as grounds for this case. The social media activity of people involved is referenced, simple acts of free speech are cited, and even ideas like solidarity and mutual aid are discussed as problems which somehow add to the necessity for this indictment.

...

U.S. police killed more people than ever last year and have not changed or reformed since the murder of George Floyd, and the people in Atlanta organizing against Cop City are very much aware of this. Yet instead of acknowledging the simple fact that cops should not kill, and that their power should not be endlessly expanded while they murder without consequence, the state of Georgia is instead choosing to grossly overreach. They’re instead trying to tie the movement to Stop Cop City to George Floyd and say that efforts to limit police violence are criminal rather than justified. Regardless of whether or not activists and organizers fighting the massive police repression training center were in the streets in 2020, they are informed by the knowledge that sparked the biggest protest movement this country has ever seen: police murder without consequence, and expanding police power, means more violence, more killing, and more repression of movements to improve society. We must be clear that anyone who opposes police murders and the expansion of the police state is fighting on the side of justice. The details listed in the RICO indictment, like small Venmo charges, an individual signing their name as ACAB, and people attending a concert show that the state is very much on the other side, the side of ruthless oppression. But maybe even more clarifying is the broad, sweeping condemnation of basic tenants of human goodness. The state lists, “mutual aid, collectivism, social solidarity” as tenants of anarchism that run rampant in the movement to stop Cop City. The charges condemn, word for word, “the notion of social solidarity,” which, “relies heavily on the idea of human altruism.” In a tale as old as time, the indictment of these activists and organizers, of these people, these residents of Atlanta, is more an indictment of the state than of the movement opposed to the state’s interests. The state is revealing itself to be the real villain.

...

The state has given the people of Atlanta, and everyone opposed to the eradication of democracy, no choice but to fight tooth and nail. They have gone for the nuclear option, and in doing so have exposed themselves. They have revealed the fascist underbelly they typically try to keep hidden. They have exposed that when people exercise every democratic avenue available, and are on the verge of success, they will resort to anti-democratic tactics to crush dissent. Beyond just this RICO case, the city of Atlanta is challenging the 100,000+ signatures gathered by grassroots organizers and volunteers working their asses off. Mayor Andre Dickens and his team are using the exact same regressive signature checking and discounting strategy he formerly opposed now that he wants to ram Cop City through against popular opinion and against the democratic process. Between the Mayor, the police, and the state, what choice do we have but to fight. When the government declares itself opposed to the very ideas of solidarity, mutual aid, and care for one another they seek to crush resistance. But instead they spark it. People everywhere are seeing the illegitimate nature of the institutions that kill, repress, and incarcerate anyone struggling for a better world. People everywhere see that institutions opposed to collectively looking out for each other, which seek to ban compassion and care with the threat of violence, have no legitimacy and must be opposed. They cannot be upheld or sustained. In a world where we need each other more than ever we can’t abide a repressive state that would rather police us into an early grave than grant us the resources we need to survive. And although it won’t be easy to overturn the system of capitalism and the violent police state that works to uphold it, we’ve been given no choice. We will Stop Cop City in Atlanta, and we will stop every attempt to build a Cop City anywhere. Officials in other Georgia counties, Baltimore, Ohio, and elsewhere are currently proposing their own Cop Cities, mimicking what they see in Georgia and attempting to build up their capacity to suppress dissent rather than building up their capacities to help people survive and thrive. We will out organize and out mobilize and out build the oppressive systems and institutions that seek to turn this country and the planet into one large police state. We have to. Be careful, but be determined. And get organized. Solidarity.

For over seven years, the fund—a nonprofit fiscally sponsored by the Network for Strong Communities—has provided legal defense and bail support for Atlanta. For aiding #StopCopCity protesters, the three fund organizers were arrested on charges of money laundering and charity fraud. Of what did this “fraud” consist? The warrants cited standard nonprofit reimbursements such as COVID tests and forest clean-ups in their rationale for the arrests. In the words of Kamau Franklin, an organizer with the Atlanta-based collective Community Movement Builders: “This is an arrest which is meant to, again, criminalize the movement, chill dissent, stop organizing, and stop activism from happening to stop ‘cop city’.” In so much as the work is radical, it will be under attack. Organizing that challenges capitalism, White supremacy, policing and prisons, and imperialism always carries risk. In the case of the bail fund, for example, what can movements do in the face of state repression? Potentially by shining a light on how mutual aid funding strategies are under siege, a clearer picture may emerge of ways to protect this valuable activity. Multiple people have noted that the Atlanta arrests represent yet another novel authoritarian and growingly fascist tactic to intimidate grassroots organizing and also draws on a long tradition of state repression against the Black freedom struggle. If successful, it could have far-reaching impacts on the swell of bail funds, abortion funds, transgender healthcare funds, and immigrant justice funds that have grown in recent years.

...

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund arrests did not occur in a vacuum. There is a long history of state repression against radical, grassroots power-building efforts—and those efforts continue today. Historian Say Burgin and political scientist Jeanne Theoharis aptly point out that across 1960 Southern sit-ins, 1961 Freedom Riders, and 1964 Freedom Summer, bail funds were a critical organizing effort for crystallizing and sustaining solidarity action. Where politically motivated captivity for civil rights activists loomed, bail funds responded. Mutual aid funding for these bail efforts were not just tactical, they were cultural. Mutual aid fundraising, in these contexts, gave everyday people a way to invest and engage in the very struggles they supported and needed. Mutual aid would provide yet another cultural outlet for radical, anti-repressive intent. This opportunity to mobilize people in radical efforts clarifies a threat to stakeholders in White supremacist institutions.

...

There are also increasing examples of state actors co-opting both the language and practices of mutual aid. In an interview with mutual aid organizer and writer Dean Spade, the Chicago Community Bail Fund highlighted examples of sheriffs welcoming the arrival of bail funds to support unaffordable bonds, city council-supported ordinances to protect bail funds “while continuing to take the money of Black and Brown community members paying bond for their loved ones,” and the city of New York’s own philanthropically backed bail fund created in 2017. As members of the Chicago Community Bail Fund reflected on New York’s system: “In effect, New York was funding the arrest, prosecution, and release of people caught in its criminal legal system instead of not arresting or prosecuting them in the first place.”

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Cop City: Racist police terror continues in Atlanta

By Lev Koufax

On Jan. 18, police and officials demonstrated just how far they would go to secure the Cop City site for what is really a domestic military base. In short, they would kill to do so.

That day, a Georgia State Trooper executed a queer environmental activist of color, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (known by the nickname Tortuguita.)

[annoyinganarchopunk]

i hate how everyone seems to hate ai until its convenient or entertaining to them. ill be honest i used to play around with chat bots and yeah it was fun but no amount of entertainment can justify the environmental impact it has.

like its genuinely crazy. mfs will talk about recycling for the environment and then go and ai generate shitty cat photos.

ive met people who will actively acknowledge that ai usage has a terrible impact on our already depleting water sources then turn around and make it spit out 5 shittily generated videos. like what???

i dunno call me the fun police or whatever but i do believe that ai is going to be the death of society someday. and in the event ai takes over and starts tryna kill anyone who has opposed it, im not against the idea of ai, okay listen i named myself after an android from dbh i do genuinely love the idea of being able to incorporate machinery into society and evolving. but i do believe we have unlocked it too early. i do not believe we have made the necessary steps to ensure ai can be used to help us without it actively destroying our planet and our ability to intake and output information. if ai will not be the death of us or our planet, it will be the death of critical thinking and problem solving skills.

i dunno, its just annoying and hypocritical. like you cannot claim to be an eco warrior then turn around and tell ai to write an essay for you.

like unless youre actively offsetting your carbon and hydrological footprint by planting trees or donating to re-foresting organisations (which i doubt any of them do, lol.) youre still contributing loads to the crash of ecosystems and freshwater supplies. even then i dont think that the only reason to be supporting re-foresting should be to offset ai use. just plant some trees instead of planting trees AND fucking over your writing skills.

its wild people get called soft or woke over this. mf i just care about not treating water like its an infinite resource when groundwater (40% of the planets freshwater) is being pumped from the ground too fast for it to replenish for the sake of shit like cooling servers.

i do believe humanity is getting ahead of itself, i do not believe we are at a point where ai can be used in a way where it is safe for both the environment and society itself. and because of that, i really do believe humanity as a whole needs to step back and prioritise not killing the rock we live on before we try to make dbh real.

anyways guys i think a red cherry shrimp in my aquarium is eggnant!!!!! wish me luck this could mean i wont have to spend $10 on 5 shrimp :)

[kropotkindersurprise]

January 21, 2023 - A black bloc attacked the building housing the Atlanta police foundation during a protest march over the police murder of Tortuguita. [video]

[climatecalling]

The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, believed to be the first environmental defender killed in the US, is the culmination of a dangerous escalation in the criminalization and repression of those who seek to protect natural resources in America, campaigners have warned.  ...

Georgia’s response to the protests follows an alarming pattern of environmental and land rights defenders across the US being threatened, arrested and charged with increasingly drastic crimes, including terrorism, for opposing oil and gas pipelines or the destruction of forests or waterways, advocates claim.

“This was meant as a chilling deterrent, to show that the state can kill and jail environmental defenders with impunity. It reflects a trend towards escalation and violence to distract from the real issue of advancing corporate interests over lands,” said Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance.

The current crackdown on environmental and land rights defenders can be traced back to the aftermath of 9/11 and the expansion of the definition of terrorism which sparked a wave of arrests known as the “green scare” targeting so-called eco- terrorists.

This then spurred the subsequent proliferation of state legislation criminalizing – or at least attempting to criminalize – all kinds of civil disobedience including Black Lives Matter protests and opposition to fossil fuel projects like gas pipelines, defined as critical infrastructure, essentially to protect business interests over environmental and Indigenous sovereignty concerns.

[sparksinthenight]

“the route endangers several national parks and will displace tens of thousands of people from their homes. At least 47 protesters have been detained or arrested by Ugandan security forces since September 2020, some more than once, according to an analysis conducted last year by Global Witness.”

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.2.6 Why is solidarity important to anarchists?

Solidarity, or mutual aid, is a key idea of anarchism. It is the link between the individual and society, the means by which individuals can work together to meet their common interests in an environment that supports and nurtures both liberty and equality. For anarchists, mutual aid is a fundamental feature of human life, a source of both strength and happiness and a fundamental requirement for a fully human existence.

Erich Fromm, noted psychologist and socialist humanist, points out that the “human desire to experience union with others is rooted in the specific conditions of existence that characterise the human species and is one of the strongest motivations of human behaviour.” [To Be or To Have, p.107]

Therefore anarchists consider the desire to form “unions” (to use Max Stirner’s term) with other people to be a natural need. These unions, or associations, must be based on equality and individuality in order to be fully satisfying to those who join them — i.e. they must be organised in an anarchist manner, i.e. voluntary, decentralised, and non-hierarchical.

Solidarity — co-operation between individuals — is necessary for life and is far from a denial of liberty. Solidarity, observed Errico Malatesta, “is the only environment in which Man can express his personality and achieve his optimum development and enjoy the greatest possible wellbeing.” This “coming together of individuals for the wellbeing of all, and of all for the wellbeing of each,” results in “the freedom of each not being limited by, but complemented — indeed finding the necessary raison d’etre in — the freedom of others.” [Anarchy, p. 29] In other words, solidarity and co-operation means treating each other as equals, refusing to treat others as means to an end and creating relationships which support freedom for all rather than a few dominating the many. Emma Goldman reiterated this theme, noting “what wonderful results this unique force of man’s individuality has achieved when strengthened by co-operation with other individualities . .. co-operation — as opposed to internecine strife and struggle — has worked for the survival and evolution of the species… . only mutual aid and voluntary co-operation … can create the basis for a free individual and associational life.” [Red Emma Speaks, p. 118]

Solidarity means associating together as equals in order to satisfy our common interests and needs. Forms of association not based on solidarity (i.e. those based on inequality) will crush the individuality of those subjected to them. As Ret Marut points out, liberty needs solidarity, the recognition of common interests:

“The most noble, pure and true love of mankind is the love of oneself. I want to be free! I hope to be happy! I want to appreciate all the beauties of the world. But my freedom is secured only when all other people around me are free. I can only be happy when all other people around me are happy. I can only be joyful when all the people I see and meet look at the world with joy-filled eyes. And only then can I eat my fill with pure enjoyment when I have the secure knowledge that other people, too, can eat their fill as I do. And for that reason it is a question of my own contentment, only of my own self, when I rebel against every danger which threatens my freedom and my happiness…” [Ret Marut (a.k.a. B. Traven), The BrickBurner magazine quoted by Karl S. Guthke, B. Traven: The life behind the legends, pp. 133–4]

To practice solidarity means that we recognise, as in the slogan of Industrial Workers of the World, that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Solidarity, therefore, is the means to protect individuality and liberty and so is an expression of self-interest. As Alfie Kohn points out:

“when we think about co-operation… we tend to associate the concept with fuzzy-minded idealism… This may result from confusing co-operation with altruism… Structural co-operation defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy. It sets things up so that by helping you I am helping myself at the same time. Even if my motive initially may have been selfish, our fates now are linked. We sink or swim together. Co-operation is a shrewd and highly successful strategy — a pragmatic choice that gets things done at work and at school even more effectively than competition does… There is also good evidence that co-operation is more conductive to psychological health and to liking one another.” [No Contest: The Case Against Competition, p. 7]

And, within a hierarchical society, solidarity is important not only because of the satisfaction it gives us, but also because it is necessary to resist those in power. Malatesta’s words are relevant here:

“the oppressed masses who have never completely resigned themselves to oppress and poverty, and who … show themselves thirsting for justice, freedom and wellbeing, are beginning to understand that they will not be able to achieve their emancipation except by union and solidarity with all the oppressed, with the exploited everywhere in the world.” [Anarchy, p. 33]

By standing together, we can increase our strength and get what we want. Eventually, by organising into groups, we can start to manage our own collective affairs together and so replace the boss once and for all. ”Unions will… multiply the individual’s means and secure his assailed property.” [Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 258] By acting in solidarity, we can also replace the current system with one more to our liking: “in union there is strength.” [Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism?, p. 74]

Solidarity is thus the means by which we can obtain and ensure our own freedom. We agree to work together so that we will not have to work for another. By agreeing to share with each other we increase our options so that we may enjoy more, not less. Mutual aid is in my self-interest — that is, I see that it is to my advantage to reach agreements with others based on mutual respect and social equality; for if I dominate someone, this means that the conditions exist which allow domination, and so in all probability I too will be dominated in turn.

As Max Stirner saw, solidarity is the means by which we ensure that our liberty is strengthened and defended from those in power who want to rule us: “Do you yourself count for nothing then?”, he asks. “Are you bound to let anyone do anything he wants to you? Defend yourself and no one will touch you. If millions of people are behind you, supporting you, then you are a formidable force and you will win without difficulty.” [quoted in Luigi Galleani’s The End of Anarchism?, p. 79 — different translation in The Ego and Its Own, p. 197]

Solidarity, therefore, is important to anarchists because it is the means by which liberty can be created and defended against power. Solidarity is strength and a product of our nature as social beings. However, solidarity should not be confused with “herdism,” which implies passively following a leader. In order to be effective, solidarity must be created by free people, co-operating together as equals. The “big WE” is not solidarity, although the desire for “herdism” is a product of our need for solidarity and union. It is a “solidarity” corrupted by hierarchical society, in which people are conditioned to blindly obey leaders.

[nando161mando]