Nonviolent

Direct

Action

E A R T H D AY

Wall Street Action

Who is destroying tlie Earth - Are we all equally to hiame?
NO! We say go to the source. We say: Take it to Wall Street!

MondayApril 23,1990

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ACTION HANDBOOK

Earth Day Wall Street Action Handbook

Contents
Why Wall Street? Coalition Principles
Coalition Structure

Action Endorsers
(As of March 20)
Alliance for Nonviolent Action (Ontario), Amis/es de

laTerre (Quebec), Antioch Greens (OH), Ascutney Greens

Nonviolence Agreements
The Action Action Scenario

(VT), Bhopal Action Resource Center, Big River Earth First!

(MO), Boulder Green Alliance (CO), Central Vermont Greens, Clamshell Alliance, Columbia Students in Soli darity with Nicaragua, Din6 Green Alliance (NM, AZ), Eco logical Front (MA), Eleutheros Productions (NY), Environ mental Project on Central America, Food Not Bombs,

Types of Resistance and Participation

"Getting Arrested on Wall Street" Scroll of Anger and Mourning
Video

Hudson Valley Federation of Coops{NY), Huron Valley

Greens (Ml), Left Green Network, Love Canal Homeown ers' Association, Mobilization for Survival, National Tox

Afnity Groups Support Roles Nonviolence Preparation Decision Making Legal Information
Features

ics Campaign, National Toxics Campaign Fund, Neither

East Nor West (NY), New England Green Alliance, New

Options Newsletter, New York Marxist School, Ocean Valley Greens (MA), Putney Greens (VT), Red Balloon

Beach Greens (CA), Orange County Greens (NC), People for a Socially Responsible University (U. of Mass.), Pioneer (NY), Relocation Assistance and Information Network (PA), Sabotage Bookstore Collective (NY), Seeds of Peace, Socialist Party, U.S.A., Stop the Slaughter Coalition (VT), Student Aaion Union, Tampa Bay Greens (FL), Vermont

Our Strategy for Survival

Take Back the Earth

Just What is Capitalism?

A D i f f e r e n t K i n d o f Va l u e

All Species Project, Vermont Pledge of Resistance, Vermonters Organized for Cleanup, War Resisters League,
Wisconsin Greens, Youth Greens.

The Selling of Environmentalism The Greening of the Boardrooms? Responsible Corporations?

A Blast From the Past

What is Wrong With Capitalism and

Statism?

Acknowledgements This handbook was produced and edited by

members of the Central Vermont Greens, Put

Social Hierarchy and the Domination of

Nature

From Here to There: Building a North American Pro-Democracy Movement

Corporate Greedheads Doin' It For the Dough: Chemicals, Energy, Food, Paper
and Lumber, Drugs and Cosmetics
Problems and Alternatives: Central America,

ney (VT.) Greens, Youth Greens, Left Greer Network, Red Balloon Collective, Vermont All Species Project, Vermonters Organized for Cleanup, The Guardian and many others. Spe cial thanks to Brian P. Graphic Arts, The Gady, Z Magazine, and our generous donors.
^ ^

Homelessness; Biotechnology, Transporta

Maps . , .
Our maps got lost in the mail from
New York as we were going to press in

tion, Racism, Oil Spills, Distribution of

Wealth, Forests, etc.
Coalition Statements

Some Green Perspectives Suggested Reading

Contact List

Vermont! If your Handbook doesn't have a map inserted, call the Ofce for your very own copy. So much for instant
communication...

Call to Action
Gathering and Preparation Sunday evening. Arrive early Monday. Theater and events through the afternoon.

T o d a y ,e v e y r b o d y s iu jm p n igo n e ilt e n o r v n imentai bandwagon. As we approach the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, corporations and poli ticians are saying they are on our side. They are waving the green ag of ecology, making a mockery of people's desires for a truly democratic and ecological world. Corporations and their government allies are trying to deect attention away from themselves - away from their boardrooms where decisions are made dally that result in the poisoning and devastation of the earth and its peoples. Like a cancer, this system eats away at everything from the forests to the oceans to our own bodies; yet its representatives will be using the occasion of Earth Day to travel into our communities to mingle and parade with us. They will proclaim that "all of us", not they, are to blame.
The polluters would have us believe that we are all

chemicals are dumped and polluting plants sited in the poorest neighborhoods, native people are driven from their homelands, and women everywhere are reduced to objects of desire, as they are robbed of reproductive choice
and forced to do the most menial work.

So

come

to

Wall

Street!

Wall Street is the center of this system. Wall Street

houses the banks, stock traders, insurance operators and

corporate headquarters. It is a faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy where our future is bought, sold and traded at whim. Wall Street is the symbolic center of an economy
based on limitless greed and speculation.

just common travelers on "Spaceship Earth", when in fact

a few of them are at the controls and the rest of us are

On Monday April 23, the day after Earth Day, people from aaoss the country v\ill meet to Shut Down Wall Street! We will ll the streets with people, disrupting
"business as usual" with our own Celebration of Life. We

choking on their exhaust.

will bring costumes, music, theater, trees and symbols of

The corporate economy is Incompatible with eco logical responsibility. The entire system depends on the ability of a few to convert the planet and all its people Into prot. Its appetite is limitless and will not be satiated until the entire planet is consumed. We are already witnessing
changes in the earth's climate that, if unchecked, will

both corporate waste and the earth's regeneration. Afnity

groups prepared in nonviolent direa action will blockade

the Stock Exchange and other centers of corporate plunder. We will illustrate the connections between the poisoning
of the earth and the destruction of our communities. We

make life as we know it impossible. Meanwhile, the corporate elite is proting from destroying forests, build ing nuclear weapons, and poisoning our food and water. They prot from an economic system in which 40,000 children under age 5 die every day from preventable
causes, millions of Americans are homeless, AIDS kills as corporate medicine yawns, and North Americans of non-

will demonstrate that the only real solution to the ecologi cal crisis is to end oppression in all its forms: oppression by
corporations, governments, and patriarchal and racist in

stitutions. Weseekan end toall formsof social and ecologi cal injustice. We want grassroots political and economic democracy: people empowered to meet our common
needs together in a truly ecological manner.

European descent are systematically kept down. Toxic

Join us!

Earth Day Wall Street Action

P.O. Box 1128, Old Chelsea Station, New York, N.Y. 10011 (212) 925-7976, (201) 846-5934

Why Wall Street?

THE CSE FOR GREEN DIRECT ACTION
The direct action of a social movement has often
succeeded in breaking through political stalemate, shift ing the momentum of an issue in its own direction. In the United States in the late 1950's and early 1960% the civil
rights movement's direct actions againstjim Crow laws in the South inspired the nation and the world, bringing

dogmatic pacism in many movements make the emer

gence of an extra-electoral direct action movement prob
l e m a t i c . Ye t i f w e d a r e t o m a k e o u r a c t i o n s m i l i t a n t a n d

creative, non-violent and confrontational, spontaneous

about an end to legal segregation. The anti-war move ment's mobilizations played an important role in limiting
the damage to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by compel

and coordinated, a social ecological alternative would be powerfully voiced and our commitment to such an alter native would be conveyed to millions of Americans.
Direct action would draw attention to the ideas of those

of us advancing the anti-authoritarian left tradition

through an ecological critique, making people aware that anewpoliticalalternativeisemerging. Directactionsalso

ling presidents to forestall bombings and call short inva

sions, as well as shifting public opinion against the war.

In fact it was partly as a result of the inspiration provided

by the U.S. civil rights and anti-war movements that

provide a clear indication of the urgency of the present

crisis, integrating fragmented single-issue energies while facilitating dialogue between otherwise isolated activists. When Greens call actions, it gives us the ability to better

many European Greens rst became politically artive.

Direct action should not be misunderstood simply as

a means to achieve reforms within the system, however.

At their best, direct artion movements are anti-systemic

explain the sweeping nature of our positions to activists

who otherwise might have assumed we were simply

movements representing the potential for a direct demo cratic future, working for the transformation of society. Direct action is an expression of people's desires for a new
way of life, embodied in the communities we create

environmentalists. This is precisely what organizing the Wall Street Action is beginning to accomplish. We have waited too long for a revitalized popular
movement to bring about fundamental social change. A new social movement, combined with a decentralized,

with a decentralized participatory emphasis in funda

mental opposition to the currentanti-democraticcontrol by entrenched elites.

The ecological aisis is an outgrowth of the crisis in

yet continentally coordinated, political organization, is urgently needed. As part of this movement we need to engage in an ongoing educational process, as well as
develop a democratic-decentralist organization, which

society; a society marked by race, sex and class divisions. By taking direct aaion at Wall Street we are pointing at the root of the social and ecological crisis in capitalist and statist systems, systems which have developed out of, and

are interconnected with, other forms of hierarchy and domination, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and the attempt to dominate nature. Wall Street is
specically a symbol of capitalism: with its endless need

would be controlled by its members, able to weather the inevitable ups and downs of a popular movement. We need to better communicate with those presently active around single-issue concerns to begin drawing out the

to expand, its exploitation of human labor and its putting of prot ahead of all else, capitalism is inherently anti democratic and anti-ecological the future of life de
pends upon capitalism's abolition.

In our struggle fora socially just, ecological society, we

in the Greens and other social movements need to be

aware of the history of direct action, as well as continue the 1960's New Left's emphasis upon participatory de

mocracy. After ve years of organizing in the United States many Greens are taking the next step of entering
into coalition with a wide spectrum of activists to take
d i r e a a c t i o n a t Wa l l S t r e e t . T h i s i s c r u c i a l f o r t h e f u t u r e

of a direct action ecology movement which until now has been ignored by Greens.
The politics of confrontation are difcult to artualize in the US: middle-class lifestyles, heavier police taaics

than in Europe, and the near hegemony of a particularly

O f

connections between issues. We need to better explain

our perspeaive, engaging in a genuine dialogue with those experienced in organizing and direa aaion. And perhaps most importantly, we need to think through our relationship to the most oppressed in the United States. We need to consider ways of coloring in the Green in the Rainbow, of bringing to the I^ainbow Coalition's con stituency a sense of the need for a whole new system, not simply new laws and different candidates for the same ofces. If we are to participate in a movement directed at achievingglobal peaceandjustice, it is critical thatwelink our vision to the needs of the most oppressed in the United States- a "rainbow from below" is one way to think
of this.

W all Street symbolizes more thanjust corporate power .

It symbolizes a social systemcapitalismthat compels corporations to pillage the planet and exploK its human beings. The whip of competition compels corporations to behave this way. Corporations must externalize every social and environmental cost they can outside the pricing system of the market. They must prot, grow, and accumulate faster than their competitorsor else their competitors will gain the upper hand and the less ruthless corporate competi tors will nd themselves headed for bankruptcy or a take over by the more aggressive corporate baricudas. The law of life under capitalism Is "grow or die." There is no way It can be balanced with the environment. Capitalism is a social "megamachine," In Lewis Mumford's apt phrase. Even though it is the labor and actions of individual people that sets the dynamic in motion, it is a social system with a dynamic that grinds on beyond the will of its members. We can no more ask capitalism to internalize all costs in the market process or to stop growing than we can ask a plant to stop photosynthesizing. Capitalism is simply not struc tured to do such things. Capitalist growth is to the biosphere what a cancer is to an organism a growing threat that requires radical treatment, not palliatives. The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street symbolizes the height of capitalism's feverish irrationality. Nothing of practical use value is produced there. Only a tiny fraction of
the stocks and bonds and other nancial instruments traded

The West German Greens

Many tend to assume that the German Greens are

simply an electoral party, that they grew out of elections because of the proportional representational system the 5% rule which allows parties which achieve more than 5% of the vote to enter parliament. What is forgot ten is the history of extra-electoral movements which pre dated the emergence of and Intertwine with the Greens. This "prehistory" includes: the German S.D.S.;
the feminist movement; the citizen's initiatives; the

ecological, anti-nuclear, and disarmament campaigns; and the autonomous (autonomen) and squatters move
ments. The direct aaions of these and other "new social

movements" have transformed German politics over the last two decades, making participation in the Greens a relatively mild form of protest. The Greens are one organization within a myriad of groups which comprise
this broad movement.

By the late 1970's the new social movements had

grown so large that many argued for entering elections as the "anti-parties party," to further advance the move ment. Large-scale marches, occupations and blockades, and militant civil disobedience helped create an atmos to their call for the fundamental restructuring of society. The Greens brought together a wide variety of single-issue concerns into a somewhat coherent framework of oppo sition, while proposing democratic-ecological alterna tives to capitalist and statist social systems. As the new

phere which both inspired the Greens and loaned support

there raise new capital for new productive investments. Most of what goes on there is similar to a gambling casino. Investors (who are mainly the elite, tiny fraction of the population with money to invest and who sit on the boards of the big institutional investors) are mainly betting on the future performanceofthenancialinstruments they buy and sell. If they are lucky, they can make enourmous paper profits even though nothing of use value to ordinary people has been produced. If they are unlucky, they may lose their capital even though nothing of use value to society has been destroyed. The 1990 Earth DayWallStreetAction is nottherst time radical ecologists have gone to Wall Street to call for alter
natives to this madness. The antkiuclear Clamshell Alliance

of New England called for a demonstration on October 29, 1979, the ftieth anniversary of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. Clamshell's objectives were to demonstrate the connections between nuclear power and other social and
environmental issues and to build links between the anti-

social movements have receded in West Germany in

recent years, however, the compromise and self-interest

of many Green ofce-holders has increased, resulting in

the current domination of the party by the so-called realists who advocate reform within the system rather than revolution. Many Green members of parliament, for instance, have refused to "rotate" out to let their replace

nuclear movement and the movements for peace, freedom, and social justice. The 1979 coalition included many grass roots groups that are no longer around. But it also included groups that are still with us today and active in the 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action, including Clamshell Alliance, Mobilization for Survival, and the War Resisters League.
More than 2000 activists lled Wall Street andl045 were arrested In acts of ci\Al disobedience. The demonstration

ments ll their seats, becoming quite cosy with the parties the Greens' opposition to NATO and the authority of the
State stied their role as a movement of fundamental
(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

they once opposed. The West Berlin "realist" reversal of

was covered by the TV and radio networks and was front page news in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

W h y ? . .( C O N T I N U E D F R O M P R E V I O U S P A G E )
opposition. Many radicals, eco-socialists and undogmatic movement to organization and the organization's inter nal strurture should both, therefore, be given careful consideration by Greens working in North America, al
though the German Green example shows that proce
dural devices alone are not sufcient. A fundamental

strategies. Local elections can beagood way to raise Issues

for public debate, while advancing the principles and goals of the popular movement. Local campaigns need to

leftists have nov^ left the party. The relationsliip of

be confederally linked in order to avoid falling into parochialism, not losing sight of the need to confront centralized power and develop an international move
m e n t .

Unlike the antagonism which has developed between

the Greens and the autonomous direct action movement

commitment to principles, such as opposition to the state and capitalism, and caucuses that advance these prin ciples within the Greens, such as the Left Greens and the
therefore essential.

(autonomen) in Germany, the analogue in the US might

Youth Greens, as well as a radical popular movement are

North American Greens

in the United States, the existing system of winnertake-all elections means that a national Green presence

be a creative combination of educational work (public forums and community assemblies, study groups, yerIngand leaetlng, street corner speakouts, etc), local elec toral campaigns, direct actions and the creation of freespaces and counter-Institutions, such as squats, alterna tive art and music spaces, Inner-city collective gardens,
etc. - ail of which would begin to constitute a revolution

canbest be created through the direct actions of a popular

movement, like the Wall Street Action, rather than, for

ary dual-power, operating outside of, and In fundamental opposition to, the state while engaging - not wlthdrawng from - everyday struggles. This dual-power would be
based in communities aaoss the continent, laying the basis for popular revolution.

example, through attempts to enter into national elec tions as a third-party. The example of other third party attempts should be instruaive, for example the collapse of Barry Commoner's Citizens Party in the early 1980's. The corporate control of the media and the high-nance nature of presidential elections raise tremendous ob stacles to launching national campaigns. But more fun damentally we should oppose in principle the system which presidential elections attempt to legitimate. To enter Into a national presidential campaign would be to betray thedlsenfranchlsed andpoliticallydlsempowered, while raising expectations that somehow if the Greens
were in the White House everything would be all right,

The late 1980's were a time of rapid change, from China to Eastern Europe and South Africa. The 1990's can be a time of change in our own country If we respond to our situation, clearly articulating not only our critique of the existing system, but also viable alternatives. The Increasingly rapid destruction of the ecosphere and irra tionality of social life create a heightened sense of ur gency. This handbook and the many people and organi zations involved In the Earth Day Wall Street Action are developing a comprehensive framework to address the Issues confronting us, while beginning to create genuine
alternatives we seek dialogue, and choose to act. Wall Street is a center of the system we oppose. By

thus deecting attention from the need for a completely

new society. The Green alternative means dlrert-democracy, not a

new elite or comfortable participation in a representa tional system. This does not rule out local electlonsas part ofa broader revolutionary strategy, however. Atthelocal
level municipal elections can complement direct action

taking direct action there we can Ignite a new opposi tional force In the long-term struggle for a new society, one in which humans no longer dominate nature because they have overthrown the structures and belief systems through which humans dominate each other.

COALITION STRUCTURE
This action was initiated by a coalition of Greens and other
groups, including ecofeminists, anti-toxics and peace activists and many others. We have developied a list of local contacts in as many areas as possible (see back cover). Most decisions are made by local organizers and by working groups, based on parameters laid out by the sponsoring organizations. There is a coordinating council to decide major policy ques tions and coordinate regional organizers and working groups. The council meets only when necessary (roughly monthly), to carry out the mandates from the sponsoring groups. It is made up of two delegates from each of the sponsoring organizations (preferably one man and one woman), and includes members from other organizations, action working groups and afnity groups, etc., at the council's discretion. New organizations join on the basis of general political agreement with the principles of
the action and a commitment to devote time and resources.

Regional action groups made up of presently unafliated activ ists join the council on the same basis; action working groups were to be added as norvvoting members, however ongoing task groups have generally been developed at the council meetings. The council makes decisions by seeking consensus, with a twothirds vote as a fallback only after objections are fully heard and an attempt has been make to include dissenting views.

Coalition Principles
The following points serve as a basis of agreement for groups who join the coordinating council (see below) to help shape the action. These points serveasbroad policy guidelines, condensed for publicity materials and expanded upon in this handbook. Local activists are, of course, free to prepare organizing materials oriented toward their particular constituencies: 1. The military-industrial systems of both the East and the West are the root cause of social and ecological destruction. Both systems demand growth for the sake of growth, and thrive on the centralization of power, competition for resources, and a
relentless militarism. Growth-oriented economics, whether

Providing decent housing, fulfilling work and adequate means of support for everyone Free public health care and child care Cancelling Third World debts Solar-based renewable energy to replace nuclear power
and fossil fuels

Organic family farms and community agriculture in place of toxic agribusiness Full tecyclingofwastes,aban on incineration and on the production of toxic chemicals Community control and ownership to end land Rebuilding and expanding public rail transportation and bicycle use. Vastly expanding public parks, wilderness areas and wildlife habitat; ban clearcutting, herbicide and pesticide use and other abusive practices on the land. 4. We take a principled stand against all forms of domina tion, oppression and hierarchical social structures. Our vision of an ecological society requires an end to racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and all forms of coercive human relationships. 5. A political movement to articulate the Green alternative needs to be independent, outside of and basically opposed to the establishment political parties. We are evolving a new politics based on locally-rooted grassroots groups that are engaged in a
m ix of extra-electoral and electoral activities and coordinated on

speculation

explicitly capitalist or claiming to be socialist, is incompatible with ecological stability. 2. Genuine grass-roots political and economic democracy are necessary for the realization of both human and broader ecological needs in a mutually harmonious manner. This includes (1) decentralization of political and economic power under direct face-to-face community control; (2) cooperative organization and community ownership of productive resources, with community control of distribution and consumption pat terns; and (3) workers' control of the immediate labor process. Fully participatory confederations of democratic community
assemblies should make decisions about common needs and

questions of distribution and sharing of resources. 3. We demand a sweeping program for social and ecologi cal reconstruction, beginning with the thorough demilitariza tion of our economy and culture. Some elements of such a program include: Cutting military expenditures on the order of 95% via a
non-nuclear, non-interventionist, home-based de

a regional, national and international basis.

6. We seek to build a broad-based ecological movement

that opposes capitalism because it is destroying the planet. Our perspectives should be expressed to the public through our slogans and our imagery with an unmistakably Green identity, substantially expanding upon the opposition to capitialism that
we inherit from the more traditional left.

fense policy

Nonviolence Agreements
For the purpose of building trust and acommon foundation of safety among the large numbers of people coming to the Earth Day Wall Street Action, participants are agreed to the following: 1. Our attitude will be one of openness and basic respect toward all people we encounter. 2. We will not engage in physical violence or verbal abuse toward any individual. We want the political focus to stay on
scenario beforehand with the authorities. Within the frame

work of these nonviolence agreements, afnity groups are encouraged to take initiative to effectively obstruct the opening of the Stock Exchange and otherwise illustrate a Green message.

why the system has to be replaced, not passing judgement upon

people caught up in it. 3. We will not damage property. This is not an ideological the action's political message clear and focused, we do not want to give the corporate media or provocative agents the opportu nity to turn public attention toward a sideshow of property damage. 4. We will not bring or use any drugs or alcohol other than for medical purposes. 5. We will carry no weapons. 6. No one is authorized to negotiate an orchestrated arrest

defense of private property or an equation of property-damaging sabatoge with violence. It is a recognition that in order to keep

THE ffcTioN
From the start of planning for the W all St.
Action we have recognized that people will be willing to engage in varying levels of resistance^ ranging from traditional forms of civil disobedience to street
To do this well we are encouraging people to:
1) reaaivate local direct-action networks;

theater and mobile tactics. We have also empha sized the need for the action to be based upon the
coordinated efforts of autonomous afnity groups working within the political principles and guide

2) get in touch with people they know and trust to form afnity groups; 3) get in touch with us for direct-action preparation if they would like to be in an afnity group but are not
presently.

P r i o r To A c t i o n :
We plan to prepare and distribute a yer for people
who work in the area, explaining the action and our opposition to the system that they are caught up in, not

lines of the action. To be most effective in achieving

our goal of disrupting and hopefully shutting down Wall Street it is aucial for us to irther develop a sufcient strategy. The following combines the ideas
advanced in Action Committee discussions, at

them personally. We will encourage them to join us or take the day off. Press Conference: Friday morning; featuring repre
sentatives of sponsoring organizations and East German

Coordinating Council meetings and at the local New York Organizing meetings.
In order to have an empowering and successful action

Greens. Explain the politics of the action, draw attention

to a radical alternative, etc. Public Forum: Friday night; an educational compo

there are some basic things for us to i<eep in mind. For

instance, we'll need: 1) a well thought out general scenario.

2) a decision-maicing struaure for afnity groups to discuss ideas and coordinate actions, i.e., a spoices council of delegates from afnity-groups, for use in both planning for and during the aaion (see seaion on afnity groups). 3) ways to communicate information about the changing situation at the action to the afnity groups, e.g., walkie-talicies, cellular-phones, runners. As vital as the autonomy of afnity-groups is, we em phasize the equal importance of coordination between af nity groups and an overall strategy which allows us to be exible in countering the tactics of the police and re sponding to unexpeaed conditions. For instance, if the
police completely surround the Exchange, only allowing

nent of the projea to radicalize Earth Day, featuring speakers from sponsoring organizations, East German Greens and others to explain the political reasons for the action, including a question and answer session. (Loca
tion to be announced)

Rally/Afnity-Group Congress: Sunday night; an essential event for all who wish to participate in Monday
mornlng'saction. Final spokescouncilmeeting, lastminute

direct aaion preparation for those not in afnity-groups, speakers, music, etc. Go over scenario with current
information, coordinate afnity-groupactions. (Location to be announced)

employees to enter at a few "check points," we may want to have some afnity groups blockade those few places while the rest go to surrounding streets, sidewalks and
intersections to blockadeapproaches to the "check points". It is important that we control the situation, not the police.

The more people act in concert with others, the more of an empowered and meaningful action we will have. and will come to check it out, or get involved however they can, and we do need to think of how these people can play a part in the action. But to be most effective, as many people as possible need to be self-organized and clear about their intentions in advance, ready to synchronize their actions as part of a well thought out strategy while
retaining their autonomy of action.

Many people will hear about the action at the last minute

Action Scenario
As the action nears, with additional afnitygroups forming and more people visiting the site, the action scenario will become clearer. We encourage people to tour the area before the action if possible and to consult the map in this handbook to become familiar with the Wall Street area.
Very Early Morning: Groups metat various locations in the area surrounding the Stock Exchange, then con
verge at a predetermined time upon the Exchange to

GETTING

ARRESTED STREET

ON

WALL

7?jeresa Freeman,Vermonters Orgarwed for Cleanup

For me, it's a long leap in tactics to consider anrest, to

commit ciwi disobedience. I and my kids are victims from a toxic waste site, and for the past seven years, I have attended hundreds of meetings, made the riglit phone calls, organized petition drives, and produced turnouts for hun dreds of hearings. At least four major laws were passed because of our good work. The laws are there, remaining cold black on white paper. No enforcement. We are, then supposed to organize that leg of the ght. We have been told for years that change happens oh so slowiy. Be patient. Be nice to these bureau
crats. "RieyVe just folks, too. But hundreds are sick because

blockade all possible entrances. The main point at this time will be to shut down the Exchange, not allowing
people in to start the day. We will focus on blockading with both our bodies and physical objects, such as boxes,

throughout the morning. Mid-Morning: MembersoftheGreen Committees of Correspondence and victims of corporate abuse plan to march to the Exchange with the Scroll of Anger and Mourning which contains testimony from communities
around the country.

of killer chemicals in our midst, our family included. Some are dead, others are dying before our eyes. Coping with the angry feelings is like trying to manage toxic waste. It's a lesson in complete failure. The angry feelings shouldn't be inside all of us just like the toxic waste
shouldn't be created. We shouldn't have our lives disrupted

Late Morning: An afnity group spokes council meeting will be held to assess the situation and decide upon further action. Lunch Hour: Many people working in the area of the Exchange will be lling the streets in search of food and
ashort reprieve from their jobs. At thistime we think that

so industry can make money without concern for the people and the planet. It'sjustwrong. Plain wrong to be so egocervtrie. So, the logic follows that if they can act egocentrically, so can we. We can display our anger and hate for them, in the same way they do to us. Industry shows us an unemotional persona, cold steely
eyes, as they pump the killer chemicals into the earth. Just
doin' business.

a confrontational attitude would be inappropriate and instead plan such things as street theater, music, and perhaps workers giving accounts of on-the-job sabotage and other messages of internal subversion. Afternoon: A march through thestreets, followed by: A War Chest Tour: Going to various governmental, corporate and nancial targets in the Wall Street area while protesting, revealing facts about various corpora
tions, guerilla theater, etc., and/or:

Decentralized Actions: Afnity groups fanning out to different locations in thearea, while a large group engages in large-scale civil disobedience.

These cold steely eyes of determination are exactly what I will show when I am blocking the doorway on Wall Street. No emotion. Rage contained, but placed in the way of business as usual. No amount of rationale can take away the death and destruction caused by the chemical companies. No understanding of what is needed to make a business deal can excuse the blatant disregard for life. No cash-ow charts, noprot margins, no forgivenessforthese industries and people who operate in their private vacuum of only one vision today and to hell with tomorrow. So, standing up for the principle of People Before Prots, 1 will be hauled away on Wall Street April 23, It will be a joy.
It will give me strength to ght back, to make a point about

the deaths we don't deserve to count. For the many who have died, I will mourn. I will call out their names though many
are nameless, and my heart will heal as I have tried to do

something to stop this madness. 1 will begin to heal because I will take a step, and I will be proud to walk with my sisters and brothers to make this point. I will be doing the right thing. I will be walking with many of our forefathers and mothers who dreamed of a real democracy. Thomas Paine, Jo Ann Robinson, Ella Baker, and Mother Jones would be hereifthey lived. But their spirits are in us as we continue their long ght for justice. We can count ourselves among the many who have valued people before prots. It is a good day!

Ty p e s o f R e s i s t a n c e & P a r t i c i p a t i o n
Civil Disobedience:
For afnity-groups intending to get arrested at the doors of the Exchange, surrounding sidewallcsand streets, etc. Some tactics suggested include: standingandilnking arms, two or three people deep, to prevent passage into the Exchange and surrounding area; chaining ourselves together, and then perhaps to a nearby physical structure;

Mobile Clusters:
For those not necessarily interested in getting ar rested, but willing to risk arrest through the use of mobile
tactics. Well coordinated and exible tactics, including:

human-chain and physical barricades; street blockades;

taking over intersections; festive marches to slow down

sitting in tightly-packed groups; chaining doors shut; non-cooperation (going limp; holding on to each other during attempted arrest); getting onto the oor of the Ex
change; blockades of nearby streets or avenues; etc.

trafc; street corner speak outs to draw attention, explain the action, slow things down; actions at decentralized locations around Wall Street; using the police to blockade for us, e.g., if we sit down in an intersection, it is likely, but not denite, that police will reroute trafc, at which time it is sometimes possible to return to the sidewalk without

Street Theater/Protest:
People doing street-performance. All Species Project activities, bannering and other aeative/theatrical tactics.

being arrested, or to beat a more hasty retreat to another

Some suggestions include: wearing animal costumes/

masks; using large banners and placards to convey aspects

of the Green alternative; creating, on one street, a scene of what the future will look like if fundamental social

change doesn't occur, and on another a possible direct democratic/social ecological future; setting up giant loud

speakers to play rock music around the Exchange, a la the Papal Nuncio in Panama; a bicycle brigade touring the
area; wrapping the Exchange with a huge art work; attaching an umbilical cord to the George Washington statue and then connectingit to the Exchange todraw the connections between government and corporations and

the role of wealthy white slave owners in the "founding"

of the country; contamination squads in proteaive suits surveying the area; a huge piece of black material rolled out in the street to represent an oil spill, perhaps depicting the names of various corporations on its surface; tie! ng up

the Exchange's phone lines; bringing potting soil, plants,

trees, and other examples of the earth's regenerative po tentiality, as well as examples of the waste of capitalist accumulation, e.g., garbage, waste barrels, sludge, etc Imagination At The Helm!

V I D E O
The Video/Media Convnittee of the Earth Day Wall
Street Action is lool^ing for individuals who own or have access to video camcorders (all formats), and whowould be interested in taping the Wail Street Action snd or other Earth Day-related events. We hope to pool the resulting tapes to produce a videocassette focusing on the radical aspects of Earth Dayl 990 for use in future organizing to build a radical ecological movement, in addition, tapes of the Wall Street direct action

may also be used as evidence in the legal defense of those

arrested.

Additional Information
Housing: Housing and parking for buses will be

SCROLL OF ANGER AND M O U R N I N G The following letter was sent to each of the 250 local
group across the U. S. afliated with the Green Comnvttees
of Correspondence:

arranged for everyone who needs it and gets in touch with the Wall Street Action ofce early enough for us to make
arrangements.

Support Camp: a safe space, perhaps in Battery Park, where participants in the Wall Street action can gather during or after the aaion to nd friends, relax, discuss further action, etc. may be organized. This would help keep us together through the action, fostering a sense of
community and solidarity, while providing a place to

meet and nd out what is going on. Those interested in

Street Aaion ofce.

doing this type of support work should contact the Wall

Has your community suffered from runaway corpora tions? From corporations with special tax breaks that make your nancial burdens even greater? From corporations that depress wages and contaminate the air, water, and soil and habitat on which you depend for a healthy and functioning neighborhood? From all three?
We have an idea whose time has come, we think, and we

Support Phone: There will be a phone number for support people to call to help keep track of individuals in jail and to coordinate the efforts of support people, the
Legal Committee and action participants. People who are coming to the action but don't want to risk arrest are

want to share it with you. Because only you can make it work.
We are members of a coalition that has formed to do an

urgently needed to help staff the phone.

Childcare: We are trying to arrange for childcare for

anyone that may need it. If you would like to help, please
contart the Wall Street Action ofce.

action on April 23 on Wall Street on behalf of Earth Day. We want to shut it down for a day to commemorate the sufferings of people and habitats everywhere from the un restrained rush for prot-above-all by the Corporate Struc ture and to point the way to a society based on true ecology
and democracy.

Legal: Lawyers will be provided for all those arrested at the action (see the Legal section).
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M AT I O N :

Contact the Earth Day Wall Street Action ofce:

P. O . B o x 11 2 8 Old Chelsea Station

New York, New York 10011

(212) 925-7976.

Our idea is this. We invite you and thousands of people all over the land to write down in a paragraph of not more than 200 words what your community has suffered from one or more out-of-town corporations, send it to us, AND, if it all possible to come to Wall Street yourself, or send someone in your place, who will speak your story at a microphone right on the site of the action. Before going to New York we will take your stories, put them on a long scroll, a long Scroll of Anger and Mourning, and take it with us to be prominently displayed during the speak-out, Wehopeyoulikeit. We think it's a winner. Andeverybody we have talked to nds it exciting and very do-able. We request that you take this idea up with your group. If they are interested and have a story that should be told, try to get it on paper in no more than 200 words. In addition ask someone in the group to practice telling the story in front of a microphone in lessthan 90 seconds. If your group does not have immediate knowledge of a corporation's practice in your general community contact someone that does and invite them to Wall Street to tell their story; or if they cannot; to work with them to write up the story, Our strong hope is that one or more of your group will
come to Wall Street for the action. There w/ill be a choice whether to do civil disobedience or not.

Our deadline? It is your interest to get your story in as fast as possible. Send your story to John Rensenbrink, 60 Ham mond Street, Cambridge, MA. 02138.
iss/cpf

Afnity Groups
Street Action can sometimes be difcult and confus

L a r g ed e m o n s t r a t i o n sl i k et h eE a r t hD a yW a l

Afnity Group Roles

Each afnity group will need to have specic mem bers take on roles that help sustain the group, before and during the artion. Afnity groups should try to meet at least a few times before the artlon, to get to know one another better, clarify a plan of action for Wall Street, and clarify any special needs people in the group might have.
Roles and other tasks should rotate among group mem

ing for people. Getting lost in a aowd, being pursued by police, dealing with the legal system these are all things that people might be experiencing for the rst time. In thelatel960% many activists came to see that people might act more effectively in tense situations if they could count on the support and shared thiriking of a close-knit group of like minded people.

bers to encourage as many people as possible to assume posltlonsof responsibility and shareexperience and power. Rotation of responsibilities makes for better decision making and more creative experiences and learning dur ing the action. Group spokespeople: Each group should have one or

more people designated to speak for the group. Afnity

groups should be represented at action planning meet ings, both In New York and in your local area, so that different groups' actions can be better coordinated. You

might also want to choose a media "spoke" to talk to the

press, both before and during the action. Facilitators: Instead of having a xed "chairperson",

afnity groups rotate the role of facilitator. Facilitators aid the group in dening decisions that need to be made, help everyone through the stages of reaching agreement, keep
Since the huge Washington, D.C. antiwar sit-in on

May Day 1971 and the large anti-nuclear power actions of

the later 1970's, people have been encouraged to come to demonstrations not just as individuals, but as members of an afnity group. Direct aaion afnity groups usually range from about 5 to 20 people. Often, they come to an aaion together from a common home community, or ganization or circle of friends. Sometimes, people come together for an action preparation session ("nonviolence training") and choose to stay together for the action. People who do one action together often choose to stay together and work on local issues as an ongoing organizIngcollecti ve. Afnity groups have become an important model of decentralized organization and embody the merging of the political and the personal. The concept of an afnity group originated with the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAl) In the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War. In the late 1930's, afnity groups in Spain fought to take control over communities, factories and farms. Large portlonsof the countryside and much of the city of Barcelona were managed by citizens and workers directly, freed from all constraints of outside ownership and control. In the peace and anti-nuclear movements, afnity groups have often evolved as living and working collertlves, aeating models of cooperation and non-sexist relationships among people. By working In afnity groups, we begin to create In our dally lives the social and political foundations for an ecological society.

discussion owing and to the point, make sure everyone has an equal chance to speak, and test for agreement on each decision. Facilitators help guide the process of the
decisions.

meeting, but have no special say over the content of

Process watchers : Person(s) to aid the facilitator in

guiding the process of the meeting, watching for people's

individual feelings and helping assure everyone's partici
pation.

Note-taker and time-keeper: Essential roles at every

meeting. Agenda items should be given designated time

slots, and the discussion should only go over time if everyone agrees to do so.

Support people : People who participate as full members of the group, but choose not to risk arrest at the action. Support people agree to be responsible for the group's needs during the action (see below). Sometimes they choose to stay near the sidelines, but often they participate fully with their afnity group until the police
give an arrest warning (see Legal).

Support
Support people choose not to risk arrest for any number of personal, nancial, health or emotional rea sons, but are full participants in the action from the begin

ning. In fact, support people carry out some of the most essential, though often unglamorous, tasks necessary for
the smooth functioning of an afnity group.

Before the action : Support people should know everyone in the group and their tentative plans for the day. It is helpful to make a list (strictly condential within the group) of people in the group, including who will risk arrest, whether people plan to give their name (or any name) upon arrest, special medical needs, contacts for bail money if necessary, people to call at home and other special needs. Facilitate gathering of food, supplies, etc. During the action : Keep in touch with your group as long as possible. Keep track of changes in strategy, location, morale, etc. Hold ID's and wallets for people who will decline to give information to the authorities. Know to what degree each person will cooperate with authorities in order to be released. Keep track of any incidents of rough handling by police, including badge numbers. Be ready to follow police wagons or buses to nd out where people will be processed, and follow the arrest and jail process as closely as possible, in coordina tion with other support people. After the action: In some cases, people in your group (especially noncooperators) might be held for several days. Follow up on people's individual needs, including railing people back home. Know how long each person is willing to stay in iail so you ran bring ID and/or bail

back home, too. If things go on for several days, there will be various emergency staff and "core support" needs to help ll. Each afnity group needs at least one support person who is willing to stay in New York until everyone
in your group is released.

money if necessary. You might want to call the media

Clusters
Actions such as this are most effective when afnity groups are able to work together in clusters to partially coordinate their action plans. It may be useful to hold a meeting of everyone coming to the action from your immediate area to discuss how different groups' actions might work together. For example, a regional cluster might choose to take responsibility for blockinga particu lar entrance to the Stock Exchange, plan a large street theater piece for lunch hour, coordinate home support as
a unit, arrange car pooling, supplies, or other functions. Participation in a cluster Is encouraged; however individ

ual afnity groups remain the basic decision-making unit for the action and participate in other levels of coordina tion only as they wish to do so, within the basic guidelines
of the action.

D I R E C T A C T I O N P R E PA R AT I O N The purpose of preparation, or nonviolence training, is for

participants to form a common understanding of direct action and noviolent methods. It gives a forum to share ideas on noviolence, oppression, fears and feelings. It allows people to meet and build solidarity with each other and provides an oppor tunity to form afnity groups. It gives people a chance to learn aboutan action, its tone, and legal ramications. Ithelpspeople History and philosophy of direct action and nonviolence, including role plays on the use of nonviolence and nonviolent re
sponses to violence.

Roleplays and exercises in decisionmaking, conflict reso

lution, and quick decision making. A presentation on the legal ramifications of civil disobedi ence, and discussion on noncooperation and bail solidarity. Exercises and discussion of the role of oppression in our society and the progressive movement. What is an affinity group and what are the roles within the
group.

to decide how they will participate in an action. TTirough role

playing, peoplelearnwhatto expect from police, ofcials, other
patlicipants in the action and themselves.

Nonviolence preparation can range from a several hours to several months. Most typical in the U.S are sessions that run up to eight hours and have 1025 people with two trainers

A sharing of fears and feelings related to nonviolence and

nonviolent action.

leading the discussion and roleplays. Areas covered in a

sessionare the following:

Decision Making
Decision making for the Earth Day Wail Street action
is basically a hybrid of consensus decision making and more conventional voting procedures. Consensus is an ideal method for making group decisions by mutual the best thinking of everyone involved. Everyone has an

consent, and has long t)een the preferred decision making

process for afnity groups and other groups that work closely together over a long term. Our coalition for the

interest in implementing decisions because everyone participated in their aeation. Consensus at its best offers a cooperative model of reaching group unity, an essential step in creating a culture that values cooperation over
competition.

action is made up of people with very different experi ences and ways of working, so we often take votes at monthly coordinating council meetings, especially for
procedural and administrative decisions. This gives us time for more extended, consensual discussions of more important policy matters.

A consensus decision requires a number of (generally exible) steps: Gather information, ideas, and specific proposals. "Brainstorm" possibilities if there is no clear
proposal.

Dealing with one proposal or suggestion at a time, ask for clarifying questions and give proponents time to
answer them.

Consensus
Formal consensus decision making originated in the

Ask the group for concerns, reservations, amend

religious meetings of the Quakers and has been adapted

over time for secular purposes. Under consensus, the group only takes actions that are consented to by all members. In some cases, the group takes no action until

ments or objections. Whether or not a proposed change is a "friendly amendment" is sometimes up to the original

proponent, or if an idea Is being developed from scratch, it is up to the group as a whole. Straw polls can be taken to weigh options, but excessive use of polling may move Restate the (modified) proposal, then ask for reser vations and objections. If there are no objections, afrm that the group has reached consensus. If there are objec tions, each one should be stated clearly, and it is up to the group to decide if the objector's concerns can be met. If the group gets polarized, it is useful to have the major proponents of each position meet to hash out their
differences, either outside the main meeting, or some the group unintentionally into a voting process.

consensus is reached, though many political groups have prearranged fallbacks to make sure things move ahead. In a decentralized coalition process, individual groups gen erally have the option of acting as an autonomous group when the larger group is deadlocked. For each decision, it is important to knowin advance what will happen if the
entire group cannot agree. Consensus does not imply that everyone is always in

perfect agreement, but an action must not violate any one's basic beliefs, and those who hold disagreements should be willing to step aside temporarily to permit the group to act. Good use of the consensus process results in creative and intelligent decisions that truly incorporate

times with the rest of the group observing (the "shbowl" method). Creative syntheses of ideas are appropriate from anyone in the group at (just about) any time. Test for consensus on the newly modified proposal.

If there is consensus, record the decision carefully and

take some time to clarify how the decision will be imple mented. If not, either table the idea for now, or form a subcommittee to bring a better proposal to the next

others feel the consensus process itself is too burdensome and subject to the "tyranny of the minority." Many political groups now use a hybrid process which, in its
various incarnations, seeks to meet everyone's needs as thoroughly as possible.

meeting. Adequate preparation is an essential part of

consensus process.

If you cannot agree to something the group is decid ing, your options include:
go along."

Non-support: "I don't see the need for this, but I will

Meetings of the coordinating council for the Earth Day Wall Street Action use a consensus-seeking process whereby proposals are discussed by the group in an effort to reach a sense of the meeting that incorporates every
one's ideas. Most decisions to date have been made by

Reservations: "I think this might be a mistake, but I Standing aside: "I personally do not agree with this,

can live with it."

but I won't stop others from going ahead." Blocking consensus: "I cannot allow the group to do

this; it is against my basic principles." Temporarily withdrawing from the group: "I no longer feel a basis of cooperation between the group and myself."

consensus. We freely use polling to test the sense of the group, and those representing small minority views have generally agreed to accept small modications or stand aside. We are committed to fully hearing objections and attempting to include any dissenting views in the formu lation of our policies. However, we have agreed that when
an issue is deadlocked, we will allow a decision to go

Vo t i n g
Processes based on voting are usually advocated as a

matter of efciency. Some have difculty with this, preferring everything to be decided by consensus, while

forward if it is agreed to by two-thirds of the mandated representatives present at the meeting. Most decisions for the action are to be made by individual afnity groups, and by regional organizing groups working as a cluster for the day of the action. A two-thirds fallback allows those decisions necessary to coordinate the actions of partici pants to be made in a coordinating body that will only meet four or ve times during the planning of the action.

Ye r U n d e r A r r e s t !
The New York Police Department has extensive experi
ence in mass protests and has adopted mass procedures designed to remove people from the demonstrations with a minimum of work for the and reducing the possibility that violence will arrest site of courts, erupt.

Try to make sure that someone knows you are iDeing arrestedshout out your name to someone who can
provide that information to demonstration coordinators.

However, the guidelines for this demonstration call for no negotiations with the police department regarding pos

sible arrests. Accordingly, it is impossible to predict how

people will be treated.

In confronting the center of American corporate power and ecological plunder on April 23, 1990, you may nd yourself surrounded by people in blue uniforms insisting
you come with them. Youareunderarrest. Whathappens
next?

Any resistance to arrest will probably result in addi tional charges being led. "Going limp" is a form of resisting arrest and may be charged as such. At the time of arrest, the police have disaetion as to what booking procedure they will use. You will either be given a summons and released with a few hours, or you will be put "through the system"spending as much as 48 hours in jail before you get to see a judge. The former is to be hoped for and expected, the latter is to be prepared
f o r.

An arrest takes place whenever the police act in a

manner that indicates that you are not free to leave. They

Summons Procedure
After arrest you will be taken to 1 Police Plaza, in
downtown Manhattan, close to Wall Street. A police

do not have to pronounce any magic words. If you have

any doubts as to whether you are under arrest, ask.

Neither do the police have to read you "your rights" or any other television nonsense. The police have the right to ask you background or "pedigree" questionsyour name, address, place of employment, etc. Your failure to answer these questions will lengthen your period of incarcera tion. The police also have the right to search you,
including a strip search by same sex ofcers. Searches, however, are rare.

ofcer will ask you background questions. You will then be issued a pink slip of paper with a court date, usually a
month from the arrest date, telllngyou to appear in court.

Save this paper. You will then be released.

A summons is generally issued in mass arrest situ ations. The charge is generally disorderly conduct or trespassing; minor offenses in New York roughly equiva

lent to a trafc ticket. Sometimes, you may be issued

another kind of document, called a Desk Appearance Ticket for more serious chargesresisting arrest, inciting to riot, and obstruction of governmental administration.
Yo u w i l l t h e n b e r e l e a s e d .

your name and number to demonstration coordinators.

They will insure that you have legal representation, at no

charge, for your court date. Legal representation will t)e a provided at you rst court appearance by demonstration coordinators. If you decide to continue through the system and need a lawyer to representyou at your trial, the

The following advice is designed to increase your chances of gettinga summons/DAT, rather than be placed through the system: 1. Cooperate with arresting ofcers by providing them with the background information and valid iden tication. If the police cannot verify you identity, you are more likely to be ngerprinted and placed through the
system.

demonstration coordinators will try to nd you legal

representation but cannot guarantee it. You may have

to nd your own lawyer to represent you at a trial, should

you decide to continue through the system. Of course, you have every right to retain your own counsel of choice at any point in the legal process.

2. If you are from out of town try to provide, in

addition to the above, a local, veriable address and

Almost all demonstration charges are disposed of by

"adjournment in contemplation of dismissal," or "ACD."

telephone number. The police may contaa your "local address''by telephone to seek verication. 3. Possession of drugs, weapons, and other contra band will result in you being put through the system. 4. Seriousness of your activity. Sitting in a street and refusing to move, blocking the entrance toa building, and related conductgenerallyis treated by asummons. Resist ing arrest by going limp is usually treated by a DAT. More serious infractionsrunning from the police, destroying property, assaulting as police officerwill usually result in you being put through the system. Spitting at the police will result in your being through the system. The police are terried of AIDS and no amount of public information seems to make any difference. 5. Use of false names is always illegal and quite risky. If the police decide to ngerprint you, your real identity will be discovered and you face a charge far more serious than the one for which you were arrested. It also greatly complicate the work belong done outside to affect your release, since the attorney may not know your alias. 6.1f you have any outstanding warrants against you,
you will be place through the system.

An ACDis notaplea of guilty,does notrequire an admis sion of guilt, and may not be used against you in any way in the future. You have no "criminal record." If you do not get arrested again for six months, the charges are auto matically dismissed. These are almost always a good deal.

Through the System

Being put through the system gives you a chance to experience wiiat thousands of poor youth and people of
color experience every day. it is not pleasant.

Initially, you will be taken to Central Booking, also at 1 Police Plaza, and you will be photographed (mug shot) and ngerprinted. You have no right to refuse these piaures, and you will not be released until they have been taken. You will also be interviewed by a representative from pretrial services and asked various background questions. The purpose of this Interview is to enable
pretrial services to make a recommendation as to whether

7. If you are a juvenile, an illegal immigrant, or here from another country on visitor status, you face special risks and should seriously reconsider the decision to be arrested. After all, the purpose of massive civil disobedi ence is to overload the government en masse, not to permit the government to single you out for special
hassles.

you should be released without ball. It is important to give them the name and telephone number of someone who can verify the information you give them. You \^ill also have a chance (maybe) at this point to make your one telephonecall. Foiiowlngthis process, which may take up to ve hours, you will be taken to one of the precincts in Manhattan and held In a small cell for as long as fortyeight hours. Finally, you will be brought to court at 1(X) Centre Street (close to Wall Street), where you will wait for
hours In another cell.

After being given a summons, you are free to leave and

rejoin the demonstration. A further arrest, however, will

usually result in your being put through the system. Your court date will appear on the summons. If you do not show up on that date, or within 30 day later, a
warrant will be issued for your arrest. Persons arrested at

It is at this stage of the process that a lawyer will see you. Demonstration coordinators are planning to have attorneys present who will represent you at this stage. If no attorney is present for you, you will be given a legal
aid lawyer.

the same time may be given different court datesa tactic often used to prevent mass demonstrations at the court house. However, because of the 30 day rule, you have some exibility in schedulingyour court appearance. You should plan to arrive with as many of your colleagues as possible. (Warning: If you are given a DAT you must show
up at the scheduled court date.) Keep your summons and send a readable copy with

The purpose of your rst appearance is to determine your conditions of release and to enter a plea. In reality, given the present overcrowding of the court system, most cases in New York are disposed of at this stage of the
proceedings. As a result, some legal aid attorney will try

to get you to plead guilty in exchange for "time served"

the time you have already spent in jail. After two days day in a tiny cell, eating (or refusing) hamburgers and baloney sandwiches, It Is tempting to plead guilty and get it over

with. The decision is yours to make to make after consult ing counsel. However, as a general mie, Itlsbetterto plead not guilty and discuss the matter later, after you have had a bath and adecent meal. You will always have the chance to plead guilty at a later proceeding, ifyouare offered an ACD (see above), you should probably take it. If you plead not guilty, the court then takes up the issue ofbail. Almost everyone Is released upon their own recognizanceupon a promise to appear for their court dates. You should tell your attorney all the good things about you that will convince the court that you are a stout, upright citizen and will honor your obligationlocal ad dress or local ties, long residence in the same location, steady job, loving family, serious student, Congressional Medal of Honor, good friend of the president, etc.

medicine will have their medication conscated and will

not be able to persuade anyone to return it Male prisoners who are believed to be gay are kept in

special, segregated cells called "homo pens" by the progresslve-mlnded NYPD. You should decide where you want to be and gauge your dress accordingly.

For More Information

A legal team Is being assembled to help deal with arrests. If you have further questions, contact Ronald L
Kuby, Law Ofce of William M. Kunstler,

13 Gay Street, New York, NY, 10014, (212) 924-5661.

A Word About fail

A short stay In jail is no fun, but it's not as bad as it's made out to be. You will have the opportunity to meet young people whose background may be quite different than yours. Most of them have made this trip beforeleam from them. Bring cigarettes, even if you do not smoke. They are the jail system of barter. Menthol Is preferred. Once you are in the system, the only way out is to wait until you get to see a judge. Be prepared for the wait. Sometimes the authorities will allow you to have a paper back; usually not. Make sure that your personal matters are taken care of. The jail guards do not care about your pets, children, or you. People who require dally doses of

LEGAL

U P D AT E

Our lawyers have conveyed two p/eces of new informaHon which everyone should keep in mind. They reect the latest realities in the ever-changing maze of the New York City legal system. 1. Do not enter a plea by mail. This will denitely separate your case from others arrested at the action. 2. Do not, under any circumstances, sign a Judicial Waiver if you are offered one. This will put your case before one of the retired New York judges that have recently been hired to help meet the backlog.. This will seriously impair your chances of a fair hearing. TTiis applies especially to Summons Arraignments at 346 Broadway.

Features =
Our Strategy For Survival
Sotisowah (John Mohawk)
Excerpts from A Basic Call to Consciousness, by Sotsisowah Oohn Mohawk). Sotsisowah is a Native American writer and activist, and member of the Haudenosaunee tribee. It is important that we who are seeking ways of survival in the 20th century begin by establishing new denitions and new elds of visions as we try to better understand the past. We need to look to history primarily because the past offers us a laboratory In which we can search to nd that inherent process of Western Civilization that paralyzes whole societies and makes them unable to resist the process of colonization . We need to Identify that process which so often leads people who are honestly seeking to resist and destroy colonization to unconsciously recreate the elements, of their own oppression. And, lastly, we need to
understand that within colonization are the exact elements

way of life by which people survived within their own environment, and their own environment was dened in the area in which they lived. Thus the process of survival involved the use of locally developed technologies which met the specic needs of that area. It was mentioned earlier that technologies have political cousins, and locally devel oped technologies have cousins too. Decentralized tech nologies which meet the needs of the people which those technologies serve will necessarily give life to a different kind of political structure and It Is safe to predict that the that the political structure which result will be anti-colonial In na
ture.

of social organization which are leading the world today to a crisis that promises a foreseeable future of mass starvation, deprivation, and untold hopelessness.

The current crisis which the world Is facing is not

difcult for people to understand. In the Western Hemi sphere, the United States with six percent of the world's population, uses forty percent of the world's energy re sources. The world's supply of fossil fuels Is nite, and It Is estimated that within 30 years, at the present rate of con sumption, the peoples of the world will begin to run out of some of these sources of energy, especially petroleum and natural gas. As the planetbeglnsto run short of cheap energy, it is predictable that the world market economy will suffer and the people of the world who are dependent on that

A strategy for survival must Include a liberation theol ogy call It a philosophy or cosmology If you will, but we believe It to be a theology or humanWnd will simply con tinue to view the earth as a commodity and will continue to seek more efcient ways to exploit that which they have not come to respect. If these processes continue unabated and unchanged at the foundation of the colonizer ideology, our species will never be liberated from the undeniable reality that we do live on a planet of limited resources and that sooner or later we must exploit our environment beyond it's ability to renew itself. Our strategy for survival is to create and imple ment liberation theologies which are consistent with and complementary to a liberation theology which arises out of our culture and Is a product of the natural world. It happens
that we, the Haudenosaunee, have fallen heir to a liberation

political structure which may be the oldest continuously op

erating governmental system In the world. We know that our traditional technologies arose from our traditional worldview, and that our political structure was largely a product of the technological and worldview elements of our society.

economy will suffer likewise. When the reality of world

population growth Is placed beside the reality of the current relationship of energy sources and food production, it be comes obvious that worldwide famine is a real possibility. The roots of a future world which promises mis ery, poverty, starvation and chaos He in the processes which control and destroy the locally specic cultures of the people of this world. To the extent that the people and areas of the world are dependent upon the giant multi-national corpora tions which control production, distribution and consump tion patterns and to that extent only the future is a dark and
ominous one. For this reason, the denition of colonialism

needs to be expanded in the consciousness of the peoples of planet Earth. Colonialism is a process by which indigenous cultures are subverted and ultimately destroyed in the inter ests of the worldwide market economy. The interest of the worldwide market economy, quite contrary to all the teach ing of the colonists, are exactly the interest which promise to create a crisis for humanity in the decades to come. The dialectical opposite of that process would be a rekindling on a planetary basis of locally based culture.
Prior to the advent of colonialism, culture was dened as the

Ta k e B a c k T h e E a r t h
Chaia Heller, Burlington Ecofeminist"

F o rt h o u s a n d so fy e a r st h ep a t r i a r c h yh a sw a g e daw a r
against women; a war in which it controls and violates our

bodies with rape, battering, forced motherhood, and condi tioned self-hatred. As well assigning women the exclusive sexual functions of reproduction and providing men pleasure, the patriarchy reduces women to instruments of labour; Cur rently women do two-thirds of the world's agricultural and industrial work while owning less than 1% of the world's land and property. There is another war on the planet; a war against nature. Industrial capitalism, in both its state and corporate forms, has emerged as an economic system which reduces human labor and all of nature into lifeless objects, cashing them in for the prot of a few elite, white men. Western industrial society treats nature with the same condescending and paternalistic attitude historically reserved for women. Patriarchal thought denes women as irrational, passive and in need of men's control. According to this view, men's protection of women is "traded" generously for complete access to women's bodies and labour. In the same way, nature is also dened as a passive, irrational "thing" to be protected and plundered according to men's needs. The justication for the domination of nature ows smoothly out of the justication for the domination of women. Within western society, all forms of human and natural life are dened asa mere "resource" to be controlled and squandered for
the enhancement of "civilization". Ecofeminism is amovement of women who understand the

saves womcw's lives. We choose to fight for our ow survival, as well as forthe survival of others. Fighting for our own liberation as women Is Inextricably linked to the survival of the planet. In addition, ecofeminism demands more than ecological survival. We ght so that we may ourish. We will be free from the shackles of the state and the church who want to deny women the choice to parent when and j/we choose and to love
w h o m e v e r w e c h o o s e . We d e m a n d t o b e f r e e f r o m c o n s t a n t

threats and acts of violence: We will be free from rape and battering in our homes, in the streets, and harrassment on the job. We will ght for our passions, our pleasures, creating
democratic communities in which work, art and ethics are both

mutually and ecologically enhancing. Already, women all over the world are striking out against the devastation of women and nature. In the Chipko movement In India, women are saving entire forests through direct action. Women In the South Pacic are speaking out against the poisoning of their bodies and their land from the nuclear testings of the 1950's. In Israel, Jewish and Palestinian women are speaking out for the right to peaceful cooperation between their peoples and for an end to violence, poverty and oppression perpetuated by the Israeli, Arab and American governments. The ecofeminist movement In the U.S. is lagging way behind in the ecological and land reform movements of women all over the world. We must respond.
It Is time to take It to Wall Street. Last time we were there

was in 1984 for the "Not In Our Name" action; the demonstra
tion in which over 1000 women took to the streets of New York

connection between the war against women and the war against nature. It is women working together to ght all forms of social and ecological exploitation in order to Increase our chance of survival. Ecofeminists see the oppression of women, people of color, children, lesbians and gays and the destruction of nature as linked and mutually reinforcing in a system of domination which is legitimized and perpetuated by various institutions

City. We were there to inform the world that the U.S. corpora tions could no longer wage war against people all over the world
in the name of American women. In that action, we swarmed

the headquarters of the corporations and banks that manufac ture and nance everything from nuclear weapons to apartheid
In South Africa.

such as the state, the military, religion, the patriarchal family

and industrial capitalism. We ght for the freedom and self-

determination of all oppressed peoples as well as for a harmoni

ous relationship with nature: We realize that until we are all free from social and ecological exploitation, no one is free. Women feel directly the destruction of the planet: In so-

called "developing countries", lands are conscated and poi

soned, making it impossible for women to feed their children. All over the world women are subject to forced sterilization,

literally worked to death in factories, and poisoned by toxic chemicals. Everywhere, the toxics that are dumped into water, dumped into backyards, impair women's reproductive systems,
poisoning their breast-milk, their food and their children. and care-taking activities, women have been socialized to care

Inheriting thousands of years of compulsory motherhood

This year, in 1990, we will return to Wall Street with others in the ecology, labour, peace and human liberation movements to shut down the headquarters of the perpetrators of the war against women and nature; the perpetrators of the war against the planet itself. We will disrupt the lethal ow of the day-to-day activity of the corporate elite who whimsically murderthewills and bodies of women all over the world, stripping the earth of its creativity and diversity. The patriarchy has determined the fates of women's bodies. Now capitalism seeks to determine the fate of the earth. We will not have our fate determined by a few corporate and govern mental elite whoseonly aspirations are to increase theirown per sonal power and wealth. Women from all over the country will gather at Wall Street to throw a wrench into the gears of their deadly machine, saying "No More. We will take back our lives!
We will take back the Earth!"

only for others, never for themselves. Understandably then, some feminists fear that ecofeminism could be yet another set up for women, compelling them, in the name of ecology, to take

on the house-cleaning chores of the world. However, ecofem inists need not fall into the trap of janitorial martyrdom: Fighting oppressive and ecologically destructive institutions

Just What is Capitalism?

Howard Hawkins, Left Green Network

Al o n g ,c o m p l i c a t e dh i s t o r i c a lp r o c e s sl e dt ot h es u p r e m
acy of thecapitalistsystcm of endless growth. It involved many, sometimes bloody, social struggles before the capitalist ethic of insatiable needs and individual greed prevailed culturally over such earlier ethics as "moderation in all things" and the golden rule, notions which had their counterparts in cultures through out the world. To be sure, many forms of pre-capitalist society were hierarchical and oppressive. But they were not acquisitive. Elites which controlled disproportionate resources were bound by tradition to provide for all within their domain. Hoarding behavior and the selsh spirit of capitalism were universally regarded as indecent, immoral, and the height of anti-social
behavior.

Endless growth Is thus not simply a policy that can be changed at will under capitalism. It is a compusion that is structured into the capitalist system. Capitalists have no choice in the matter. If they start cutting into prots out of a concern for the environment or social needs, they will lose out In the competitive struggle Capitalism thus has the motivation of acancer cell. Itgrows and spreads with no sense of reciprocity and balance for the bio sphere, the life-system that sustains it, just as cancer grows and spreads until it destroys the life-system of the organism that sustains it. Capitalism is no more compatible with ecological health than cancer is with an organism's health. Under capitalism, not only are nished products commodified i.e., traded on the market but so are land, tools,

But without a long historical detour, sufce it to say that what makes capitalism as a system, once it has established itself, compelled to grow endlessly is the competitive struggle for prots and growth among rmsand nation-states. If rms don't grow, their competition will swallow them up. If nation-states don't assist the accumulation process in order to industrialize and militarize, other expanding nation-states will dominate them. Under capitalism, the law of life is "grow or die". Capitalism and markets are not synonomous. There were markets longbefore capitalism and they would remain for some time after capitalism is no longer the dominant economic form. What distinguishes the market under capitalism from other societies with market exchange is that prot is the motivation and driving force behind market dynamics under capitalism. There is no limit to accumulation and, increasingly, no con straints on the ability of external, internationalized markets to swallow up regional and local economies. Nor is capitalism incompatible with a high degree of stateplanning.The state plays amajorplanningrole in all capitalist countries today. Indeed, historically from the late ISth century in Europe to today, the state has played a crucial role in creating theconditions forcapitalism and spreading it throughout the world. Just consider the royally chartered trading companies of early mercantile capitalism, the state enforced enclosure of common lands that dispossessed independent peasants and artisans in northwest Europe from access to raw materials and their means to life, and the incorporation of the Third World into world capitalism though the slave trading and colo nialism achieved by the force of arms of Western states. What distinguishes the state under capitalism is the indispensable role it plays in securing the conditions for capital accumulation. The ethic and spirit of capitalism is thus mindless, aimless, endless growth, for ever and ever, amen. It is nonsense to call for a no-growth or steady-state economy under capitalism. If somehow taxes or other policies where instituted under capitalism to penalize growth, capitalists would stop investing because their whole motivation is to get more money back as prots than they invest in the rst place. If capitalists stop investing, a capitalist economy grinds to a halt.

machinery, and other means of production; so is our labor, our lives during working hours; and increasingly, so is our leisure, our lives during our "free" time.
Prior to World War II, one could speak of a market economy

from which one could repair to neighborhood and family, which were still largely outside the reach of the parasitic ethos of capitalism. But over the last 40 years it has made increasing sense to speak of a marketsocietyhccause more and more of social life is commodied and subject to the competitive dynamic of the market. Food preparation at home is increasingly replaced by manufactured fast food. Cultural activities and community
institutions are increasingly replaced by corporate entertain

ment dispensed through the media and entertainment oligopo lies, especially through television. Emotional support from families, friends, and neighborhoods is increasingly a service sold by therapists. Child rearing once performed by parents, ex-

tended families, and communities is increasingly consigned to day care and babysitting services that must be purchased. The family physician is increasingly replaced by the corporate medical complex. The neighborhood retailer is increasingly replaced by the corporate franchise and the central shopping mall. Handand machine-craft skills once commonly possessed by the aver age person and used to meet many personal and family needs are increasingly the exclusive possession of specialists as each of us works harder and harder in narrower and narrower pursuits at our own little specialty in the division of labor, in order to make more money, In order to buy what our parents or grandparents
made for themselves. In short, more and more social needs,

Members of our coalition hold a variety of views on this question. What we are agreed on is that the decaying Eastern model is not an alternative we support. Without taking sides in
the subtle theoretical debates about the nature of the East bloc

systems, for simplicity's sake we are going to call these systems

"statism* from here on.

from child rearing to entertaining ourselves to home building and maintenance, that were onced fullled autonomously by
individuals, families, and communities in our free time outside

the cash nexus must now be purchased. Thus even our leisure time is increasingly subject to the coercive dictatesof the market. The latest expansion of commodication is the private ownershipofnewlife-forms created by geneticengineering. The U.S. courts have already decided that new species created by
genetic engineering are the private property of their creators.

The logical conclusion of this precendent although it is doubtful that the biosphere and human life would survive long enough to see its fruition is a world in which all life and evolution on Earth is privately owned by corporations and geared toward ever-expanding prot and growth.

"FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS"

The Non-Alternative in the East Bloc

The socioeconomic systems that are collapsing today in the East bloc are no alternative to capitalism from an ecological point of view. Every major ecological problem we nd under Western capitalism, we also nd under the crumbling Eastern systems, often to an even greater degree. And like under Western capitalism, these problems are not simply the result of bad policies that might be changed at will, but are structured into the very nature of their socioeconomic systems. Endless growth, social and ecological irrationalities, wage labor, alienation, and popular disempowerment are as characteristic of the Eastern systems as they are Western capitalism. Radicals who call for a democratic political and economic alternative to both Western capitalism and the Eastern model do not agree on how to regard the East bloc systems. Some regard the Eastern systems as "state capitalist* because the party-state elite has merely replaced a privately owning capitalist class while produrtion for prot, exploitation of wage labor, and endless accumulation continue, all driven by international competition on the world market. Others regard them as 'state socialist", or "bureaucratic collectivist", or simply "statist", arguing that be cause the state plays such a great role in the economy that these systems have dynamics that are fundamentally diffcrent from capitalism and therefore should be regarded as new types of social systems. There are many variations of these two basic positions and each labelstate capitalist, state socialist, bureaucraticcollectivist, statist, and othershave some basic theoreti
cal differences between them as well a variations within them.

What Is Statism?
In the Soviet Union and the other statist countries, plan ning decisions over the use of available productive resources have not been made democratically, but from the top down by the party elite. In each enterprise, management rules in basically thesame manner as in traditional capitalist enterprises. Workers are effectively wage laborers. They are exploited because the party elite controls the surplus generated by their labor. The central planning agency assigns each enterprise annual plan targets covering what to produce, how much, and where to send it. They also tell each enterprise what material inputs can be used, where to get them, and what labor to employ. This system of command planning has run into two basic
problems:

First, the planners have inadequate information. In a complex modern industrial economy, it is impossible for central planners to have enough information about the local circum stances of each enterprise or the needs of consumers. Secondly, enterprise managers and workers have no moti vation to fulll plan targets. Indeed, since bonus payments are received for fullling plan targets, it is in the self-interest of enterprise management and labor to understate the amount their enterprise is capable of producing and overstate the inputs they require, so that they can more easily fulll their assigned targets. This behavior systematically distorts the information received by central planners. As a result, irrationality is institutionalized, structured into

We are not going to attempt resolve this debate here.

Continued on next page >

Plowing the Snow

In Brooklyn, the snow is plowed soon as it falls. Uninspired monitors measure every inch.
What is the name for snow,

you who so adeptly sweep aside all cold as though there's nothing to be learned? Do you know the true names of things? What is it that gushes but does not weep? In Brooklyn, the moon is clogged with drizzling soot. Beneath the boardwalk, a man stares up between the cracks.
What is the name for touch,

you who so adeptly sweep aside all warmth as though there's nothing to be learned?

What IS ? (Continued)
the very nature of the centralized command planning system. Not suprisingly, low quality, low productivity, poor motivation, chronic shortages, hoarding, and consumer dissat isfaction are endemic under the statist system of command planning. To deal with the profound irrationality of centralized command planning, many statist countries have gone through periods where the traditionally capitalist economic perform ance criteria of market pricing and enterprise prots were introduced to varying degrees. Such reforms, however, under mined the authority of the party by creating social interartion in the market outside the oversight of party bureaucrats and by creating new sources of p>ower in the hands of those able to enrich themselves during the reforms. Black markets have had the same effect. So the ruling elites have vacillated between market reforms to stimulate economic growth and efciency and more command planning to maintain their control. But whether under strict command planning or market
reforms, the statist economies have been structured around

Do you know the true names of things?

What is it that dies but is reborn?

In Brooklyn, the rush-hour milieu

crushes into the trains, transport to boredom

pay your buck-fteen.

What is the name for movement

you who so adeptly sweep aside transition as though there's nothing to be learned? Do you know the true names of things? What is it that moves, but goes nowhere? In Brooklyn, they sweep the streets of loiterers. If you are not at work you are arrested.
What is the name for freedom,

you who so adeptly sweep aside the homeless as though there's nothing to be learned? Do you know the true names of things? What is it that produces, but never owns? In Brooklyn, it snows too quick
to be removed at once. Alternate

growth. One motivation behind the growth dynamic has been the interest in bureaucratic elites in expanding their power and control, which Is dependent on the resources at their disposal. A policy of growth in order to afford introducing a pacifying culture of consumerism has been one way in which the ruling classes of statist societies have attempted to pre-empt move ments for political freedoms and democracy. During periods of market reforms, internal as well as international competition was astimulus to growth. But even during periods of the strictest adherance to centralized command planning, they were under pressure from outside. They needed to accumulate capital in order to industrialize and militarize as a means of defending themselves from complete economic colonization by the West ern capitalist powers. In this sense, even though they may have attempted to delink from capitalism, these countries have never been able to completely do so.

side of the street parking suspended today.

Mitchel Cohen

A D i f f e r e n t K i n d o f Va l u e
Susan Meeker-Lowry
A couple of years of ago 1 was on a panel at the annual
c o n f e r e n c e o f t h e N a t i o n a l A s s o c i a t i o n o f S c i e n c e a n d Te c h n o l

ogy. My particular emphasis was our need to broaden our thinking regarding economics and our denitions of words like 'value'. Although there were many people who were 'right there" with me (mostly teachers attending to nd new texts for their schools), an incident remains clearly sketched in my mind. One man, an engineer, quizzed me, "What do you mean by
"value"? I understand values in terms of dollars & cents, but that

not what your getting at, is it?* At rst I was impatient. Then 1 understood. This man was genuinely confused. 1 might as well as have been speaking Greek. He truly wanted to understand, 1 could tell. And impatience changed to (believe it or not) compassion. It wasn't
his fault he couldn't understand.

As a middle aged technocrat he had been educated in a system, as we all have been, that eventually forces us to translate everything into numbers representing economic value. It has gotten to the point that even basic human values must show up in the almighty bottom line or they are deemed irrelevant or can't be considered in spite of their relevance. This happens even among those who ideology would seem to indicate quite the opposite to be true. 1 have sat quietly listening to activists argue the necessity of determining, in dollars and cents, the value of a child's life in order to justify the cost of providing this child with a clean, safe environment. The assumption was that if wecouldn't do this we couldn't possibly expect anyone to agree this child had value worthyof such considerations. Those ofwhobelievedthatthat quality and life can't be quantied, nor should they be, were labeled impractical and unrealistic. It was the general belief that if we couldn't present our argument in the form of economics than they either won't be considered or they shouldn't be considered. These were activists! 1 was incredibly disappointed by their lack of vision and even courage.
What is the value of an intact rainforest? What is the value

that simply cannot be regarded in that context. We are not liberating ourselves by quantifying the value of a rainforest, for example, by guring out how much each mahogany tree is worth or each exotic plant turned into medicines for humans is worth. Surewecanupwith such gures. Is that really the point? Isn't the point to demonstrate the inherent value of the rainforestit's beauty, the cultures of the peoples who call it home, it'svery "beingness*? Don'twe really want others to join us in this awareness of the sensuality, the glory, the magic of these forests? So they aren't destroyed? What good does it do if we count the value of trees standing vs.. trees cut regardless of either dollar amount? What ifjust what ifthe quantified value of the living forest was calculated at less than the value of it's products? Youmightsay,"Butthatcan'thappen becauselt's not true." Whatifwe are wrong? Does that mean we should cut it? Maybe it makes more economic sense to clearcut all the Old Growth and replant so we can have the value of paper and furniture and jobs. Maybe we should put our wastes in the middle of the ocean or shoot them into space because it really is more economical to do so. Maybe we shouldn't bother im proving our schools. After all it's expensive and probably most kids will get hooked on drugs or end up in service jobs anyway.
After all, we have to take the bottom line int consideration. I

of an untouched vein ofquartzon the side of a mountain trail? What about an 8(X) year-old tree? Indigenous culture? Tranquil ity? These values that are among those most important to humans cannot be quantied. When we try, our power dissipates, because we play by the rules of a game that is obsol ete and designed to keep us powerless. What does it really mean when we hear phrases like "The economy can't afford it." ? It means that those in control have decided they don't want to pay for it. It means to pay for it, something else of value to those in control would have to be sacriced. Yet, the vast majority of Americans immediately upon hearing that oft-quoted phrase, stop dead in their tracks. There is a perceptible shift in energy and one or two things usually occurs. They begin justifying why we have to afford whatever It isthey go on the defensiveor they simply give up. Bther way the pK)wer is gone. The old rules have won. If we really want to change the very structures upon which our social, political, and economic systems are framed, we must extricate ourselves from the mindset that forces even intelligent activists to quantify everything, even (especially) those values

realize I'm being ridiculous. I'm trying to make a point here. Not only do we need a new perspective of our relationship with Earth and each other, we need a truly new perception of economics. One that isn't solely focused on dollars and cents. Those of us who are talking about holding the perpetrators of destruction accountable who insist we all aren't equally to blamc(and I personally disagree with this)must shed our out moded beliefs and thinking and dare to really challenge the systemfor it isour thinking and our beliefs which have shaped the system and play right into it. In this way we are all responsible for the Earth's destruction. We are a part of it. And it is because we are a part of it that we have the ability and power to change it. Susan Meeker-Lowry is editor of Catalyst Economics for a LivingEarth (quarterly newsletter) and author of Economics As If
the Earth Really Mattered.

What Is Wrong with Capitalism?

Howard Hawkins

Ecological Irrationality As we have seen, capitalism is structured around endless growth. This is not a policy that can be changed at will. It is a compulsion structured into the very nature of the system. Moreover, environmental damage does not gure into the settingof prices in the capitalist market. They are economic "externalities," costs that go unrecognized by the price system. There is no way to balance the endless accumula tion of a capitalist economy with the environment. It is suicidal to go on trying to live with capitalism. Social Irrationality Capitalism's profit and growth ori entation (in contrast to an orientation geared directly to needs) creates situations where basic public needs go unmet and where
poverty exists amidst wealth. These needs are market "externali

ties," the social costs of private enterprise. Collective needs for things such as public parks, public transportation, and clean air do not register in the atomized process of the market. The needs of those without the ability to pay do not registeron the market.

The failure of capitalism to meet such needs is grossly immoral.

among people under capitalism create a social world beyond our control. We create it by our labor, but we don't control it. Our individual choices in the privatized market process add up to in stitutionalized dynamics that are independent of our will, grindingon beyond rational human control like a social "megamachine." They are not only socially and ecologically irrational, but dehumanizing. What appears to us as relations between things in the market are, in fact, social relations between people. It is what makes capitalism unique as a system of hierarchical domi nation unique: the domineering relationship is not immedi ately transparent as in patriarchal, feudal, and other status-based institutions of hierarchy. We go to work and nd ourselves alienated from our selves and labor (by the coercion of wage slavery and workplace bosses), from the products of our labor (in the anonymous market), from society (which is harnessed to competitive dynamics of prot and growth rather than rational, democratic choices), and from nature as a whole (which is reduced to a mere factor of production in the competitive struggle to grow or die). This whole complex process of aliena tion is morally wrong, too it is not worthy of human beings,

not Compatible with human freedom, creativity, or community.

Compensatory ConsumerismAlienated from our work, each other, and the natural world by capitalism's commodied world, unable to nd satisfaction in creative work, in compan ionship and participation in community life, or in the beauty of nature, people turn toward substitute satisfactions: conspicuous
consumption to enhance one's sense of self worth, excess con

sumption to drown out one's feelings, passive consumption of vicarious experiences in the mass-produced cultureof thecorporate entertainment industry. CulturalNihilismAs amoral commodity relation substi
tutes for all other social relations, cultural values are also reduced

Wage Slavery One class controls the means of produc tion and employs another class that has no choice but to work

for the owning/controlling class. This too is morally wrong

it's institutionalized coercion.

Exploitation Workers create a surplus in the course of working, but the owners, not the people who work to create it, get to dispose of the surplus. This is morally wrong as well it is instutitionalized theft, organized crime.
Alicnation/Dehumanization The atomized market re

lations that have replaced more social and ethical relations

to their exchange value in the market place. Shared cultural values about what is right and wrong fall by the wayside in the dog-eat-dog, war-of each-against-all world of the market, where anything goes if it makes a buck. Racismand SexismRacism and sexism are not unique to capitalist society, but they are reinforced by it. Wage-earners throughout the world now compete with one another to sell their labor power to capitalists. This competition reinforces the sexual, racial, and other divisions that divide humanity against itself. These divisions are manipulated by capitalists who use them to divide one section of workers against another, enabling them to undermine solidarity and popular power and thus to super-exploit the most oppressed groups, often with the support of other, less oppressed sections of the working class. Militarism and Imperialism The ever expanding and competitive nature of capitalism leads naturally toward militari zation and imperial expansion. Capitalists not only benet from military intervention around the world to secure "good business climates" (i.e., repression of labor and political organ izing, tax and pollution control abatements, government subsi dies, and the like). Capitalists also benet from the stateguaranteed, cost-plus prots of military contracts. In sum, however productive and solvent capitalism may or may not be as a system of economic growth, it is ecologically suicidal and morally bankrupt.

. and Statism?
The statist system of hierarchic command planning has been able to solve none of the basic problems we nd under capitalism:
Ecological Irrationality While theoretically central planners could have gured in the environmental costs of production into their plans, the impetus of international com petition gave them reason to keep these costs external to their plans. They had to grow in order to compete In the world market and with other nation-states. Their elites wanted growth in order to maintain and enhance their power. As a result, environ
mental destruction is at least as endemic in statist societies as in

Militarism and Imperialism If only because of interna tional competition and fears of domination by the West, the party-state elite has placed a high priority on militarization and,
in the Soviet Union, on the domination of satellite countires on

its periphery as abuffer zone. But the bureaucracy and especially its military wing have vested bureaucratic interests in ftirther
militarization and territorial expansion.

traditional capitalist societies. Social Irrationality Because consumer needs register poorly with central planners and because the planning system itself is so irrational, many social needs go unmet. Wage SlaveryThe party-state elite controls the means of production and employs another class that has no choice but to work for the controlling class. Exploitation The workers create a surplus in the course of working, but the party-state elite, not the people who work to create it, get to dispose of the surplus. Alicnation/DchumanizationLackingboth political and economic democracy, the party-state appears as an independ ent, alien force that controls the average person's daily life even though it is materially sustained by the labor of its subjects. Lackingclvil liberties and the right to form independent associa tions outside the control of the party-state, society is atomized
and unable to take collective democratic action to deal with

Over the past year we have been witnessing the collapse of statist societies. The forms of capitalism more familiar to us in the West appear at this point to stepping into the vacuum. The point of this review of the problems of statist societies is to make clear why they are no aitemative to Western capitalism for radical ecologists, why when we criticize capitalism we are not advocating statism, and why we need a third way based on grassroots political and economic democracy.

social problems. Compensatory Consumerism Alienated from work, its products, and each other, the desi re for more goods to consum e
becomes a substitute for the absence of free, creative outlets and

the inability to participate in shaping social life. Cultural Nihilism Bureaucracy atomizes society and
erodes the moral, emotional, and communal life of statist

A Spe! Against Developers

by Gary Lawless
There are We curse We curse We curse We curse We curse We curse too many lines on the map. the straight line. the clean angle. the road, the clearing. the idea of property. money. progress.

society. Ethically oriented social relations based on family, community and friendship are replaced by the hierarchic com mand-obedience relationship of bureaucrat and client. Disempowered by bureaucratic rule and made cynical by its irrational ity, people begin to doubt there is any moral imperative other
than personal survival and self-interest.

Racism and Sexism As a class divided society, wageearners compete with one another for the better jobs offered by the bureaucratic party-state. This competition reinforces the sexual, racial, and other divisions that divide humanity against itself. These divisions are manipulated by the party-state elite which uses them to divide one section of workers against another, undermining workers solidarity and power and superexploiting the most oppressed groups, often with the support of other, less oppressed sections of the working class. The resur
gence of national chauvinism, both Russian and those of domi
nated nations in the Soviet Union, is evidence of the ethnic/ racial resentments that have been fostered under statism. The

We curse the second home, when there are those

without.

We curse the empty space where once there were woods, plants, animals. We curse those who live at the expense of other life.
We curse waterfront. We curse roadfront.

We curse scenic views if only humans are left to see

them.

persistent prevalence of anti-Semitism throughout the East bloc is further evidence that racism is integrated into the normal functioning of statist society.

We curse all those who put lines on the map.

The Selling of Environmentalism

Adapted from an article by Brian Tokar, Z Magazine, February 1990

In the 1990's, everyone wants to be an environmentalist.

Concern for nature is "in" these days, as reected in the rapid growth of environmental organizations, publications, and even nature-oriented gift shops. Expressions of concern for the envi ronment adorn every up-and-coming politician's stump speeches, right up there with mom, apple pie and good old American Patriotism. Corporations profess environmental responsibility, attend environmental marketing conferences and rush to offer new high-priced lines of "ecological* products. The reason for this supercial elite awakening to environmental concerns is no mystery. Every major opinion poll of recent years shows a growing popular concern with the ecologi cal crisis. Increasing numbers of people up to 70% in some surveys acknowledge a conflict between environmental pro tection and economic growth and choose in favor of the envi ronment. Radical ecologists, from the Greens to Earth First!, strike an increasingly responsive chord with statements about the roots of ecological devastation in our economic system and our way of life. The powers that be are clearly worried, and will do everj^hing they can to moderate and soften the widespread renewal of popular ecological activism before it is truly out of
control.

are a leading advocate, does not interfere in areas rich in oil, gas
and minerals, and advocates more intensive timber manage

ment in other places so that designated areas can be protected as wilderness without harming the timber industry. TheNational Wildlife Federation had a 1988 budget of $63 million, with only 22% coming directly from members (and anotherl5% from the sale of magazine subscriptions to school children). Corporate donors include Amoco, ARCO,
Coca Cola, Dow, Duke Power, DuPont, Exxon,, GE, GM, IBM,

Mobil, Monsanto, Tenneco, USX (formerly US Steel), Waste Management, Westinghouseand Weyerhaeuser. Matchinggrants came from Boeing, Chemical Bank, Citibank, Pepsico, the Rockefeller Group, United Technologies and others. Greenpeace spent $22 million, almost entirely from "contributions and donations'. Including their extensive doorto-door and telephone canvassing operations. Telephone can vassing based in Seattle was moved to Boston in 1988, shortly after workers began organizing (with the aid of the local IWW) against workplace speedup and surveillance measures.
The Natural Resources Defense Council ($11 mil

The established national environmental organizations, almost all now based in Washington, D.C., have been moving steadily toward accomodation to the system. They have become an increasingly visible and increasingly entrenched part of the Washington scene. As the appearance of success within the system grew, organizations began to restructure themselves and alter their personnel so as to enhance their ability to play the game. The environmental movement became a stepping stone in the careers of a new generation of Washington lawyers, and ofcial environmentalism increasingly accepted the role long established for other public regulatory advocates: that of help ing to assure the smooth functioning of the system. Along with this came an increasing willingness to "negotiate" with corpo rations over environmental protection, and a growing depend ence upon corporations for nancial support: The Sierra Club had a budget of $ 19 million, 64%of which came from member contributions. Their corporate matching gifts program, through which companies match employee contributions, brought in funds from ARCO, British Petroleum, Chemical Bank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Pepsi,
Transamerica, United Technologies, Wells Fargo and others.

lion total) and Friendsof the Earth (budget totals not listed) both received around 40% of their budgets from individual member ships and donations.

r
c>

The Audubon Society spent $38 million, with only $10 million coming from individual contributions. Corporate donors included the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Waste Manage ment Incorporated, General Electric, GTE, Amoco, Chevron, Dupont and Morgan Guaranty Trust, with smaller donations
(under $5000) from Dow Chemical, Ejocon, Ford, IBM and Coca
Cola.

The Wilderness Society ($9 million, 50% from members) also listed Morgan and Waste Management among its corporate supporters. Their literature seeks to assure readers that the federal system of designated wilderness areas, for which they

In 1987, local opponents of a proposed toxic waste facility in North Carolina pressured the state toenact stronger wastewa ter discharge regulations that would effectively prevent con struction of the facility. The federal EPA intervened to block the new regulations, claiming they violated the state's responsibility under the federal Superfund act to devise a plan for managing hazardous waste. Citizen lobbyists from North Carolina col lected testimony from lawmakers showing that the state was not violating any federal laws, and Reagan's last EPA Administrator, Lee Thomas, chose to back down. When William Reilly took over in early 1989, amidst widespread acclaim for bringing an

The Greening of the

Board Rooms?
In the wake of the Exxon Valdez Incident, which was in

the wake of Bhopal...Three Mile Island...Love Canal, etc., and which was followed by the Phillips Petroleum explo sion and so on, there is a growing movement within the corporate world for each board of directors to appoint a
token "environmentalist." So far, no one from theNational

Toxics Campaign or the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazard ous Wastes has been contactednor would I hope thatthey would be active if drafted. Instead, the preferred "enviromentalists", according to the LA. Times , must be people sensitive to the corporate protability objectives. Not sur prisingly, the omnipresent William Ruckleshaus was re
cruited to the board of the chemical giant Monsanto;

environmentalist perspective to the White House, he met with waste industry executives andwasconvinced to reopen hearings challenging the North Carolina law. Two senior EPA ofcials have led criminal charges against Reilly in the case, having produced evidencefora meeting and asubsequentcoverup, The meetings were initiated by none other than National Wildlife Federation president Jay Hair. The Wildlife Federation has long represented the pinnacle of Washington environmentalists' accomodation to the ways of corporate America, with its Corporate Conservation Council, made upofmanyofthe Federation's corporate donors. NWFhas been a leading advocate for the myth of "sustainable develop ment" in the Third World, and a champion of "debt-for-nature" swaps, in which ecologically important lands in debtor coun tries arc signed over to conservation groups in exchange for banks consenting to erase a portion of the country's debt, last year, the Wildlife Federation offered a seat on its board of directors to Dean Buntrock, the head of Waste Management Incorporated, the world's largest processor of toxic chemical waste and the subject of numerous bribery and anti-trust convic tions, as well as countless environmental violations. "Coopera tion" between industry and environmentalists has indeed come
full circle.

There is also increasing concern about the role of corporate sponsors in the plans for Earth Day Itself. Corporations seeking to cultivate an "environmentally responsible" image arc buying Earth Day events outright in several cities. Monsanto, the developer of PCB's, noxious herbicides like Roundup, and ge netically-engineered Growth Hormone for cows, is underwrit ing Earth Day in several cities. In Georgia, the heavily nuclear
Georgia Power company sits on the board of the state Conser

William K.Reilly, then president of the Conservation Foun dation, was brought onto the board of Northeast Utilities, and Alice Rivlin, chairman of the governing council of the Wilderness Society, makes substantial fees for serving on the board of Union Carbide, whose negligence was respon sible for thousands of deaths at Bhopal. The danger of "greening the boardroom" is that since boardsof directors are specically charged with maximizing protability of corporations and the types of "enviromentalists" chosen will fully endorse the corporate agenda, what will in fact be constructed is a new layer of corporate apolo gists attacking grassroots environmental movementsjust as former UAW president Douglas Fraser was brought onto the board of Chrysler not to restrict corporate behavior but to rubber-stamp the 57,000 permanent layoffs and 11 plant closings Lee lacocca was about to implement. So the institutional matrix is frighteningcorporate polluters derailing environmental regulations in Congress, corporate pollution managers making lucrative deals that neither restrict the polluters nor clean up the toxics, govern ment agencies setup to protect the environmentbecoming captive to the polluters and pollution managers, and the corporate boards of polluters co-opting the most malleable and greedy "envlromentalists" to clean up their own im agebut not their products. In this context, talk about "grassroots organizing" must go beyond a romantic per spective to an analytical and long term strategic perspective that challenges institutional power as a means to establish democratic policy.
Eric Mann

vancy Association. In Bloomington, Indiana, ofcials are ma neuvering to have Dan Quayle appointed as the keynote speaker for Earth Day. In Burlington, Vermont, mainstream environ mentalists and politicians balked when local peace activists became involved in Earth Day planning, and cancelled the Pcace and Justice Coalition's reservation for the city's Community Boathouse for the day. The national Earth Day 1990 organization has a Board of Directors dominated by the heads of the largest environmental organizations, politicians like Mario Cuomo and Albert Gore, and corporate owners like Laurance Rockefeller andTed Turner. Continued on nextpage>

OlS

EnvIRONMENTAIJSM, Cont'd
Theyareencouragingbroadlyappealingevents that will involve

Responsible Corporations?
I'robably the most dubious achievement of the Earth Day 1990 organization is their promotion of the so-called Valdez Principles of corporate environmental responsibil ity. The Valdez Principles are described by their staunchest supporters as the "Sullivan Principles of the environment", after the principles promoted by corporations active in South Africa to bypass demands for divestment. But while Africans and US anri-apartheid activists joined in condemn

large numbers of people and help them move to action, but they are keeping the day's focus safely on personal measures to help the environment and avoid confronting the major polluters. They would have us believe that we are all equally to blame for the ecological crisis, disguising the role of daily decisions made in the corporate boardrooms. It is another example of "blaming the victim", long a reliable trick in the divide-and-conquer
strategy of grow-or-die capitalism.

What Did Earth Day Accompush?

Organizers of Earth Day 1990 would have us believe that today's Earth Day organizing is in the proud tradition of the

ing the Sullivan Principles as a sellout. Earth Day organizers

original 1970 Earth Day, a day when thousands of people gathered to demand that the government do something about the deteriorating environment. Earth Day is widely credited with sparking the passage of landmark environmental legisla
tion, including the National Environmental Policy Act, which created the EPA and its entire regulatory framework.

are promoting the Valdez Principles as a positive new strategy for the environmental movement. The goal of these Principles is to identify corporations and waste, protect employees, market "safe" products, and disclose possible hazards, and to redirect investments of churches, pension funds and wealthy individuals toward those corporations. Participating corporations would add environmental "representatives" to their board and upper management, and regulariy evaluate their own progress in meeting the various goals. Redirecting investments is an

willing to pledge to a variety of measures to reduce pollution

A closer look at history reveals some disturbing truths, however. The original Earth Day was initiated largely by politi cians like Senator Gaylord Nelson and supported by major foundations. Coinciding with plans by antiwar activists for a major Spring Offensive against the war in Vietnam, Earth Day the day, including the mounting ecological crisis, with a prepackaged, politicallysafe event. Ramparts magazine called Earth
Day, "the rst step in a con game that will do little more than abuse the environment even further." Even Nixon's Health, Education and Welfare Department was on board.

admirable goal, but such efforts create a false sense of right

eousness on the part of institutions and individuals that

was seen by many as an attempt to gloss over the larger issues of

shift investments from "bad" corporations to "good* ones.

As a political strategy, it merely encourages corporarions to gearup their public relations departments to present a better environmental image. Continuing abuses of the environ ment are camoaged and questions of control and owner ship of the economy are again cast aside.

In a special Mayl970 ecology issue. Ramparts explored the

origins of the environmental movement and uncovered the

leading role of two major corporate foundations: Resources For the Future, underwritted by the Ford Foundation, and the Con servation Foundation (until recently headed by current EPA head William Reilly), a project of Laurance Rockefeller. These organizations, beginning in the mid-sixties, succeeded in ma

nipulating popular concerns for the environment to shape a regulatory package suited to the agendas of corporate monopo lists. Like the earlier conservationists of the 1900's, they sought to assure a more reliable future resource base for corporate exploitation and a regulatory framework that strengthened mo nopoly positions by helping squeeze smaller interests out of the
competition for resources. Smd Ramparts in 1970;

"Lack of national policy for the environment has now

>

become as expensive to the business community as to the

nation at large. In most enterprises, a social cost can, like other costs of production, be reected in prices to consum ers. But this becomes feasible only when public law and ad ministration put all comparable forms of waste-producing enterprises under the same requirements." National i^olicy on Environmental Quality con gressional background paper, 1968 "In a curious way, the strongest supporters of a forceful EPA are the industries it regulates. They want the govern ment to set reasonable standards and they want the public to know they are being enforced."
William Ruckelshaus, former EPA chief, cur

"Like the original conservation movement it is emulating, today's big business conservation is not interested in preserv ing the earth; it is rationally reorganizing for a more efcient rape of resources and the production of an ever grosser boggling: industry is combatting waste so it can afford to
waste more; it is planning to produce more (smog-controlled) private autos to crowd more highways, which means even

national product. The seeming contradictions are mind-

more advertising to create more "needs' to be met by planned obsolescence. Socially, the result is disastrous. Ecologically,
it could be the end."

In 1970, these words were prophetic. If we continue to ignore

them twenty years later, the end could arrive before we know it.

rently CEO of Browning Ferris Industries, the nation's second largest waste disposal company, 1988

Some, indeed, argue that the end has already arrived.

A B L A S T F R O M T H E PA S T
Mitchel Cohen, Red Balloon Collective
From a talk given at the plenary session of the Network of
Alternative Student Press winter gathering, December 9, 1989, at SUNY Stony Brook.

In 1986, dock workers in California refused to unload ships carrying goods from South Africa. They didn't wait for Congress to pass a law that said "No, don't unload those ships." They didn't even wait for their own union ofcials' approval. They acted directly by refusing to unload the ships. The goods from South Africa rotted in the holds and the capitalists lost their
money.

Then, when the governmentor university bureaucracies try closing the buildings at 11 p.m. due to cutbacks, we'd say, "No, we're not going to let you, we're going to keep them open so people could use them and study." The tactical advantages are obvious, and we would break out of forms of action that, though once powerful, have largely been co-opted and integrated into the system. We're going to keep them open; we're going to serve

our people. We would not be "protesting" but directly puttingpart of

our vision into effect We'd be implementing directly and for ourselves, on however tiny a scale, the type of society we would
like to see.

It happened again in late 1989, when dock workers at every major West Coast port, from San Diego to Vancouver, honored peace activists' picket lines and refused to unload coffee from El Salvador. It wasn't part of any grand strategy of any of the big anti-intervention groups, but quite a spontaneous happening.
It's too bad that the "ofcial" anti-interventionists instead see

their role as forever pushing the boulder of electoral politics up the eternal incline of "raising consciousness," refusing a direct action approach in those areas that would have the most profound effects in support of El Salvador's liberation and in bolstering the revolutionary movement in the United States. I say this not to put these groups down, but to point out a way to strengthen what is now a weak strategy. What if CISPES and the other El Salvador groups made it a priority to involve workers on the docks and airstrips in shutting down the death ships, or to do that ourselves, instead of trying to persuade millionaires in the halls of Congress not to be mass-murderers? What if students, instead of shutting down universities to protest tuition hikes and cutbacks in services, ixgan opening them pbuilding by building, libraries, gymnasiums, study areas keeping them open all night so people could use them, forcing
the university administration to shut them down and "retaining,"

During the last great wave of student protests against the budget cuts in the mid-1970's, the Red Balloon Collective at the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York organ ized a two-week-long series of actions. We started by taking over the gym and opening it up all night, which gave us the tactical advantage of winning over a lot of the jocks and giving people a way of relieving their frustrations during endless meetings (one memorable basketball game took place at four in the morning with around sixty people on a side and ve basket balls). We re-named it the "Che Guevara Memorial Gymna sium," and used it as a base, every night, for expanding into

other buildings, particularly the "Emma Goldman Reference

Room" in the Library.

Every night it took the police hours to get us out of the one ended up being arrested, and we had enormous student support. What if the demand, "Open'm up!," instead of "Shut'm down!," rocked every campus? What if students, instead of limitingthemselvesto petition ing the university, physically deposited every Coca-Cola ma chine and IBM computer on their campuses at the front door of the administration building until Coca Cola and IBM got the
hell out of South Africa?

Library. Peoplewould hide behind thecabinets, under desks. No

as Marx put it, "the moral ascendancy "?Turn it around, reframe

^the whole issue.

What if telephone workers on strike in New York and

Boston, among other places, had not only marched against cutbacks in their health benets but had occupied, en masse, the telephone exchanges in their cities, bringing AT&T to its knees? What if workers at the Schenectady General Electric plant demanded an end to G.E.'s spewing of non-biodegradable phosphoriccom pounds and other deadly chemicals into the Hudson River? What if they said "We will not put this in the Hudson," and took direct action against their company's pollution? What
a difference workers could make in the ght to save that river, let

alone our planet! What if mass-transit workers demanded that transportation be free in New York City, and "looked the other way" when people walked through the gates instead of calling the police? What if homeless people began squatting all the abandoned houses In New York City and community groups, rallying around them to hold back the police, worked with the squatters to x up their buildings, actually seizing what they needed instead of forming advocacy groups the homeless that, again.

Continued on next page >

Blast, Cont'd
limited themselves to lobbying for "constructive' legislation? All of these embody a radical vision that is fundamentally democratic (with a small "d"), requiring the direct participation of communities of people to make them happen. And yet, because they don't appeal to those in power to make the changes forus, they are not considered part of legitimate political activity
in the U.S., even by the left which gets boxed into, and boxes us

racial, economic, and cultural power-relations as valid and possible 'mall arenasofourlives, especially on-the-job, that are presently sealed off from those struggles. And so, too, with direct action. It is generally not a "lack of consciousness" but a

bombardment of emotions, feelings, and sense of futility that

keeps us locked into isolation, despondency, impotence, and fear in spite of what rational knowledge we might have of the issues. If we remember that we don't empower people, people empower themselves through direct actions around which
permanent communities of resistance and nurturance can con

into, false choices, keeping us impotent.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in 19SS, she was taking direct action. She didn't go home and write a letter to the legislature, she refused to move, to be treated as a second-class citizen, atthe point of injustice. The students who sat in at segregated lunch counters demanding to be served

didn't just ask the government to pass legislation outlawing

discrimination; they acted. They tookover those iunch-counters

geal, then our task shifts from "raising people's consciousness" in the abstract to involvingourselves in those situations through which people come to deal with and organize their own con sciousness. And that's totally different than the way most progressives conceptualize their role.

That's why we are participating in the Earth Day 1990 direct

and shut down business as usual by openingup those establish ments to all, and then they demanded that the federal govern ment support them. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee set up freedom schools; the Black Panthers estab

action toshut down Wall Street. Our efforts are as much directed

at the standard operating procedure of our own movement as

they are at capitalism; and they are as much oriented to embody

ing, in our actions and in our self-transformations, our vision of

lished health clinics, free breakfast-for-children programs, and

community patrols.

the kind of society we'd like to live in as they are of attacking the

In 1969, Stony Brook students from SDS set up a free breakfast for-children program in Riverhead, Long Island, with folks from the Black Panther Party. As a result of poor nutrition, kids were unking out of school and vastly increasing their chances of becoming permanent riders on the merry-go-round of poverty and hunger. You'd think the government would say, "You're doing a good job. We'll help you out* Nol As soon as we
began feeding the kids the government tried to shut us down, usingone ridiculous pretext after another. The nal one was that

banks, corporations and state. We must make it as American as the Trident ("the only nuclear submarine my mom lets me chew!") for all of us to bust open the prison of wage-only type demands, and to take direct responsibility for the nature of our society and the survival and well-being of our planet. Mitchel Cohen is a founding member of the Red Balloon Collective, and an editor of its periodical (which has taken many

strange forms) since its inception in 1969. He is currently

helping to organize for the Earth Day 1990 direct action to shut

we only had two sinks and we were supposed to have, by law,

three of them!

down Wall Street and the world's stock exchanges on April 23rd.

It's the same today with Food Not Bombs, which is feeding people who are starving to death, living in the streets and eating out of garbage cans. So what does the government of San Francisco do? It has them beaten and arrested for " feeding people for free without a permit] " What an outragel And our movements have no way of respond ing to that, because they keep boxing themselves into the "protest mode," lobbying to change policy where acampaign of,say,liberatingsupermarkets and distributing free food by the ton would seem to be more
appropriate, getting the message across and feeding people at

Nature
"Nature" is no such thing.
It is notaspeaacle

to consume, to drive through,

photograph en route
back to suburbia. It is not "outside"

the same time. But the Ofcial l^ft sees that sort of activity as "adventurism" of the worst kind, not "responsible alternative
politics,"

But pulsing in "the mass."

It is not to be "dominated"

and torn up, not because

it would be immoral but because there 15 no "it"

So what I'm calling for is a bit of glasnost and perestroika here , in the U.S,, for people to begin appropriating unto
ourselves the power to directly act on more and more of the

to it, no "there" there. Mind makes those distinctions.

Until it recombines them

conditions that affect our lives and to take direct responsibility for what is happening in our world. We need to nd ways of expanding and reframing what people see as "legitimate" to fight around on-the-job (the point of production), on the docks, on the campuses, in the family, wherever we arcas part of our daily struggle, and not something we might begin to do
only when we get home from work. All people, and workers especially, must come to see the

Mind cannot know itself, and when it does,

then it doesn't need to.

struggle over environmental, political, social, aesthetic, gender.

Mitchel Cohen

Social Hierarchy and the Domination of Nature

As crucial as it is to uncouple the capitalist dynamic of endless growth, the roots of the ecological crisis go deeper than capitalism. The soil in which capitalism has sunk its roots is the 10,000 year legacy of hierarchical society. Hierarchical society began with the division of the egalitar ian communalism of early human society into status based rankings of superior and inferior based on age and gender and the emergence of privileged castes of warriors and religious leaders. Over the millenia, hierarchical society elaborated insti
tutionalized forms of domination based on status from

ethnicity, race, and inherited rank to occupational afliations and the bureaucratic hierarchies of the church and state. Prop erty and economic classes based on the exploitation developed
within the social framework of hierarchical.

Capitalism is the culmination of hierarchical society, hav ing harnessed the status rivalry of pre-capitalist forms to the competitive market and the accumulation of wcaltli. Oppres sion based on ascribed status (race, gender, age, nationality, oc cupation, caste, etc.) did not disappear with capitalism, but it was integrated into the system of class exploitation. Indeed, hi
erarchical domination has been to some extent obscured behind

the rhetoric of equal opportunity in the marketplace. Institu tionalized barriers to access to resources for oppressed groups makes equal opportunity a myth, but the appearance of free and equal exchange in the market abscures the reality of persistent of oppresion based on race, sex, class, and so forth. Throughout this history of hierarchical society, cultures
have tended to see in nature a reection of their own social

structures. The egalitarian hunting-gathering tribe often had a

view of nature that was non-hierarchical and based on an

ecological notion of reciprocity and balance, to the point of ascribing totemic animal features to clans of the tribe and kinship assignations to different species of the natural world.

The feudal world, on the other hand, tended to place the natural world in a grand hierachy that reected its own, from the lowly ant to the lion, "the Idng of beasts." Nineteenth century capitalism invented social Darwinism, with its cutthroat com petitive view of nature as "the survival of the ttest." Taking this historical analysis into account, we can see that the only ecological analysis that is sufcient is a social ecological analysis, one that takes into account the internal dynamics of society as these dynamics affect society's interaction with the environment. From this point of view, we can see that the institutions and values that have justied and rationalized the misuse and abuse of human beings are the very same institutions and values that justify and rationalize the misuse and abuse of nature. The very idea that we can dominate nature has stemmed historically from the very real domination of other human beings. Capitalism has taken the idea of dominating nature to its logical extreme. Everything from the land and human labor to finished products is reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold in the pursuit of prot. So capitalism has to be replaced, but so does the soil in which it has flourished the multiple, overlapping forms of social hierarchy that have divided humanity against itself and humanity as whole against nature. This means that to reharmonize society with nature we have to reharmonize human with human. It means that all struggles against social oppression from racism, patriarchy, bureauc racy, and economic exploitation to repressive forms of child rearingandworkorganizationare inextricably bound upwlth the struggle for an ecological society. The only kind of ecological movement that can succeed is a social ecological movement that links the struggles for social liberation and ecological sanity.
Howard Hawkins

From Here to There

Building a North American Pro-Democracy
The pro-democracy movements in Eastern Europe over the lastyearhave shown howgrassroots movements of direct action can overthrow the most powerful and repressive of regimes. We
shave seen the power of similar movements in the last two and covert actions, with its overbearingbureacuracies and mas sive scale so distant from the people, the centralized nation-state is simply beyond genuinely democratic control.

decades in areas as different as Portugal, Nicaragua, Iran, the

Phillipines, Southern Africa, and Czechoslovakia. What is

taking the place of the old regimes may not be what we are seeking. Butthe fact that old entrenched powersarmed to the teeth and backed by one or the other of the superpowers can
be displaced, should give us hope.

No Democrat is raising this kind of analysis, though it's broad outline is shared by hundreds of thousands of peace, justice, and environmental activists. Nor is there any way this kind of analysis and program ever will be articulated through the
Democratic Party, though left and progressive activists have been trying for decades. For over SOyears, since the Communist Party, then the largest organization on the left, blocked the formation of an independent labor party and led the left into a Popular Front inside the Democratic Party in 1936, the domi nant strategy on the left has one fruitless attempt after another

We need a prodemocracy movement, too. U.S. corporate power and the pre-emptive powers and secretive ways of the central state in Washington are the antithesis of self-govern
ment and genuine democracy.

Electoral politics alone will not democratize our society. Nothing in the experience of electoral reformism suggests that is possible to transform capitalism by agradual and evolutionary parliamentary process into a system of participatory political and economic democracy. Purely electoral strategies, by their
very nature, substitute the legislative actions of small elites for

at "realignment politics" inside the Democratic Party, Jesse Jackson's "National Rainbow Coalition, Inc.* is only the most

recent attempt. The idea has been to build up the liberal wing

the direct action of large numbers of people. Most of the power

structure of our society lies outside of the elected ofces of the state in private corporations and unaccountable state bureauc

racies. The only thing that can counter the extra-parliamentary

powers of the establishment is is a popular majoritarian move ment that is ready and willing to take direct action to create new

forms of political and eocnomic democracy. We need to build a popular base of democratic power outside, opposed, and ultimately capable of replacing capitalism and the centralized
state.

Electoral politics can play a role in this strategy. But the electoral effort needs to be an expression of and strictly account able to grassroots movements for radical-democratic change.

Lesser Evils Are Still Evil

One thing is certain the Democrats and Republicans are not vehicles for basic change. No matter which capitalist party holds office Democrats or Republicans people who want peace, justice, and ecological balance lose out. Both parties stand on the same basic bipartisan platform of imperialism abroad, austerity at home and, now, lip service for the environ
objectives.

of the Democratic Party and push a "progressive" program of demands from within it. The goal has been to heighten the contradictionsbetween thepopularconsrituenciesof the party's
electoral base labor, people of color, the issue-oriented liberal activists of the middle class and the big business elites that

ment. Their differences are largely rhetorical, not about basic We are simply not being serious if we do not advance a program o( fundamental stwctural change in our basic economic

dominate the Democratic Party. This strategy was supposed to lead to a realignment of the party system, enablingtheleft either to take over the Democrats or to lead a walkout of the popular
constituencies and the formarion of a viable third party. This realignment strategy has been suicide for the left. In

and political institutions i.e,, the capitalist economy and the centralized nation-state. With its prot-oriented, expansionary incompatible with an ecologically sustainable economy and international peace. With its competitive, dog-eat-dog, everything-has-a-price ethic, capitalism is inherently incompatible

dynamic of growth-for-growth's-sake, capitalism is structurally

the heat of the campaigns, the left downplays its program in

order toconcentrate on getting "progressive" Democrats elected.

Public expression of their own critique of capitalism Is dropped

in order to be acceptable partners in electoral coalitions for

with a moral economy that can foster individual freedom, social

justice, and meanin^l community. With its military secrets

liberal reform. Instead of heightening the contradictions, the left ends up covering them up. The movementslabor, people of color, peace, environment, women, and the rest end up

Movement
taken for granted by the Democrats because they pose no threat
of taking their votes elsewhere.

ability to veto radical legislative initiatives by witholding invest accommodated to capitalists' private power and ended up run
wing coups.

ment and wrecking the economy, nor the power to counter

repression by the military. Where reform socialists have not ning the system they started out to oppose, but have tried to stick to their program, they have been simply overthrown by rightIt is vital that we recognize that there is a lot more to the

Independent Pouncs It is time to recognize the futility of trying to reform the Democratic Patty, time to break with it once and for all. What's
the alternative?

First, we have to turn up the "street heat." Every major reform won in the last 50 years has been imposed on the

establishment by direct action movements from below from

the labor sit-downs of the 30s to the civil rights and antiwar sit-

ins of the 60s. The only way we can advance our goals in the near
term is to build resistance movements.

power structure than the elective ofces of the state. Most of the power structure is extra-parliamentary in capital's private veto over public policy through threats of disinvestment; in the mostly unelected executive and its bureaucracy; in the execu
try, foundations, and universities.

Second, we need to begin giving these movements inde

tive's secretive military and Intelligence agencies; and in elite dominationofculturebythe press, media, entertainmentlndus-

pendent electoral expression. By entering the electoral arena,

we can raise a comprehensive program of structural change.

Direct action resistance movements tend to mobilize around

The power to counter the capitalists' private power and the

military's re power can only come from a popular majoritarian movement that is ready to take direct action to carry through its

particular grievances. Single issue protest movements tend to

mobilize around less-than-radical, lowest-common-denominator demands. In the end, they areoften simply forms of lobbying the establishment that don't really pose fundamental alterna

program when capital goes on strike to wreck the economy or the military moves to suspend democratic rights. What a radical municipalist strategy can do is pregure the directly democratic

tives. An independent political movement can be a vehicle for

linking single issue movements around a common program.

alternative society and create a participatory power base for that alternative, a local framework for grassroots participation that
builds popular power as It spreads. The road "from here to there" is to combine electoral and extra-electoral activities in a way that extends extra-parliamen Instead of more self-defeating attempts to realign the party sys

strategy of building radical municipal movements that are both city by city atthegrassroots, ratherthantryingyet again to build
a reform Democratic movement or a national third party move

Third, we should focus this Independent politics around a

electoral and extra-parliamentary. This strategy would be to build and spread insurgent independent political movements ment outof a presidential campaign. The common aim of these municipal political movements would be to take over city

tary movements into the parliamentary arena while maintain ing the participatory nature of the direct action movements. So tem from the top down by intervening at the top of the of alternative politics that goes national by going local all over. received enough support to have their programs taken seriously
Democratic Party, we can build up an independent movement Where radical municipal movements have run independent candidates in municipal races In recent years, they usually have

governments, to restructure our municipalities as directlymunicipalities in confederal networks of mutual support. And
ultimately replace the nation-state and global corporations. Vo t i n g I s N o t E n o u g h

democratic confederations of community assemblies, and to

begin democratizing the economy under municipal ownership

and control. Then we could begin linking these radicalized nally we could pose this confederal grassroots democracy as a

in public debate. Candidates of the Labor-Farm Party and Uke

Superior Greens in Wisconsin, the Iowa Socialist Party , the Ne w
Haven Green Party in Connecticut, the Cape Ann Greens in

popular counterpower to the establishment that could resist and

Gloucester , Massachusetts, the Ithaca Greens in New Y ork, and the Orange County Greens in North Carolina have already been
is not hard to imagine the proliferation of such movements

elected to municipal and county ofces in the last few years. It

This third strategic point is crucial. To change this system,

throughout the country in inner city districts getting clob

electing people to ofce, shufing a few people at the top, wil

ofces. The history of electoral reformism by socialist parties

not sufce. We need a movement that is not only independent of the Democrats, but also independent of the cooptive logic of electoral reformism which is aimed at capturing existingelectlve demonstrates that election to formal state power is insufcient

bered by the system and in university towns open to innovation, in the African-American majority counties of the South and the

Latino m ajorlty communities of the Southwest, and in more of the ordinary cities and towns like those in New England and the Upper Midwest that have seen effective independent municipal
movements in recent years.

to fundamentally change thesystem. From the American "sewer

accommodation of Mitterand In France in recent dccades, re

socialists' of the 1910s and the European socialist capitulation to World War I to the overthrow of Allende In Chile and the form socialists have not had the power to counter capitalists'

one arm in the electoral arena, we can begin to change the way
things are.
Howard Hawkins

With our feet in grassroots movements of direct action and

CORPORTE GREEDHEDS:
[the top twelve contributors to global pollution)
1. DUPONT

CEO: ES Woolard, Jr
Address: 1007 Market St

5. OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM CEO: Dr. Armand Hammer Address: 10889 Wilshire Blvd

9. INLAND STEEL INDUSTRIES

CEO: FW Luerssen Address: 30 W. Monroe St

Wilmington, DE19898 Phone: (302)774-1000 Major pollutant: chlorobenzene Total income: $33,342,000,000

Pounds released 1987:223,300,000 Net income 1988: $2,190,000,000 Consumerproducts: Remington rearms, ammunition, and apparel, "Dacron" polyster, "Orion* acrylic bers
2. ROYAL DUTCH SHELL CEO: Frank Richardson

Los Angeles, CA 90024 Phone: (213) 879-1700 Major pollutants: chlorine, solvents Pounds released 1987:114,600,000 Net Income 1988: $302,000,000

Consumer products: IBP beef and pork

6. AGRICO CHEMICAL CO.

Chicago, IL 60603 Phone: (312)346-0300 Major pollutants: metals Pounds released 1987:81,500,000 Net income 1988: $262,078,000

Activities include: steel production,

mining iron ore, quarrying limestone

(SubsidiaryofWILLlAMSCOMPANYlNC.)
CEO: Joseph H. Williams
Address: 1120 20th St NW Suite 5-700

Address: 1 Shell Plaza, PC Box 2463

Houston, TX 77001 Phone: 1-800-231-6950

Washington, DC 20006 Phone: (202) 833-8994 Major pollutants: acids Net income 1988: $98,000,000

Major pollutant: acids, petrochcmlcals Pounds released 1987:211,100,000 Consumer Products: Shell gas and oil, Dieldrin (deadly pesticide exported to 3rd
also returned to US In our food.

Pounds released 1987:100,900,000

10: MONSANTO

Consumer products: ber optic telecom

munications 7. ASARCO

CEO: RJ Mahoney
Address: 800 N. Undberh Blvd St Louis, MO 63167

World, killed 13 children in Bahia, Brazil;

Phone: (314)694-1000

CEO: R. dej. Osborne

Address: 180 Maiden Lane New York, NY 10038

Majorpollutants: metals, nitriles, dioxin,

PCBs

Pounds released 1987: 75,800,000

Net income 1988: $591,000,000 Consumer products: saccharine, Nutra

Phone:(212)510-2000

Pounds released 1987: 95,200,000 Net income 1988: $207,244,000 3. BRITISH PETROLEUM AMERICA Managing Director U^.: RB Horton

Major pollutants: heavy metals

Sweet, Lustrex polystyrene. Roundup herbicide. Bovine Growth Hormone (ge

netically engineered)
11 . E A S T M A N K O D A K CEO: CH Chandler Address: 343 State St

Consumer products: mine, smelt, and rene: silver, cooper,lead, asbestos, and
zinc

Address: Britannic House, Moor Lane London, England EC2Y9BU Major pollutant: petrochemicals, built Trans Alaska Pipeline Pounds released 1987:197,200,0000 Net income 1988: $1,210,000,000
Consumerproducts: Purina Mills animal

Phone: (716) 724-4000 Majorpollutant: chlorinated solvents

Rochester, NY 14650

Pounds released 1987: 75,800,000

Net income 1988: $1,397,000

feeds, polyethylene

Consumerproducts: photographic equip

ment, lm, paper, plates, and chemicals
8. EXXON CEO: LG Rawl

4. AMERICAN CYANAMID CEO: GJ Sella, Jr

12. VULCAN CHEMICALS

CEO: Houston Blount

Address: 1 Cyanamid Plaza,

Wayne, NJ 07470 Phone:(201)831-2000 Major pollutants: acids, solvents

Address: 1251 Ave of Americas New York, NY 10020-6900

Address: PO Box 530187

Phone: (212) 333-6900

Birmingham, Alabama 35253

Phone: 1-800-633-8280

Pounds released: 120,300,000 Net income 1988: $305,600,000

Majorpollutant: petrochemicals, oil spills

Pounds released 1989: 85,100,000
Net income 1988: $5,260,000

Major pollutants: pentachlorophenol,

phosgene gas, acids, solvents Pounds released: 73,400,000 Consumer products made with Vuh

Consumer products: Old Spice, Pierre

Cardin Night Spice, Breck Hair Care Prod
ucts, Pine-Sol, Combat Roach Control

Consumerproducts: Exxon gasoline

Also: fabrication of nuclear fuels and coal mining

Chemicals: Diet Coke, Tide, Tidy Bo\ Clorox, dry cleaning chemicals

Doin' It for the Doogh

More Chemical Culprits:
ALLIED SIGNAL (formerly Allied
Chemical)
UNION CARBIDE

PFIZER PHARMACEUTICALS
CEO: Edmund T, Pratt

Subsidiary of BENDIX Corp. CEO: E.L. Hennessey, Jr.

Address: Columbia Rd. and Park Ave.
P.O. Box 4000R

Morristown, N.J. 07962

CEO: Robert D. Kennedy Address: 39 Old Ridgebury Rd. Danbury, CT. 06817 Phone: (203) 794-2000 1988 Net Income: $8,324,000,000 Toxics Released (1987): 21,500,000 lb.,

Address: 235 E. 42nd St.

Phone: (201) 455-2000 1988 Sales: $11,909,000,000

mostly petrochemicals

Products: Chemicals and plastics, indus

New York,N.Y. 10017 Phone: (212) 573-2323 1988 Net Income: $5,385,400,000 Toxics Released (1987): 11,200,000 lb., mostly metals Products: Coty, chymosin cheese coagu

Crimes Against Nature and Humanity: Among the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of advanced technology for military, commercial, general aviation and space; uranium processing; Star Wa-s

trial gases, carbon products Crimes Against Nature and Humanity:

lant, recombinant DNA research 3M (MINNESOTAMINING AND MANU

FACTURING) CEO: A.F.Jacobson
Address: 3M Center

487 production plants, factories and labo

ratories around the world. Gas explosion

in Bhopal, India in 1984 killed tens of

thousands; families still not compensated.
Hundreds of workers in Indonesian bat

St. Paul, MN. 55114

tery plant suffer from kidney disease and

' a - r.

Phone:(612)733-1110

nercury contamination of drinking wa-

Major Pollutants: petrochemicals

ROHM & HAAS DOW CHEMICAL U.S.A

CEO: J. Lawrence Wilson

Pounds Released (1987): 53,000,000 Net Sales (1988): $10,581,000,000 Subsidiaries: Media Networks, National Advertising Company
BASF

CEO: Frank Popoff

Address: 2030 Willard H. Dow Center Midland, MI 48674

Address: Independence Mall West

Philadelphia, PA. 19105 Phone: (215) 592-3000 Toxics Released (1987): 13,000,000 lb,
chlorinated solvents

Phone: (517) 636-1000

1988 Sales: $16,682,000,000

Executive Chair: Hans Albers Address: Carl-Bosch-Strasse 38

D6700 Ludwigshafen-Rhine
West Germany

Toxics Released (1987): 23,300,000 lb.,

mostly petrochemicals

Consumer Products: Saran Wrap, Handi

Products: Resins, polymers, plastics, biocides, fungicides, dlspersants, soil repellant, genetic research, leather processing
chemicals

Major Pollutants: petrochemicals

Wrap, Spray 'n' Wash, Ziploc, Glass Pluss,

Cepacol, Nicorette Also: Manufacturer of Napalm

Pounds Released (1987): 50,000,000 Net Incomc (1988): 1,409,800,000 DM

Products: agricultural chemicals, growth regulators, plastics, polystyrene

There are so many corporations vio

lating the planet's resources for heat,

ENERGY & RELATED

WESTINGHOUSE

electricity, and fuel that we can only

begin to list the worst of the worst. All

over the world, indigenous peopie are

struggling to protect their homelands and their traditional cultures from land rapers in the form of uranium mines,

CEO: John Charles Marous, Jr. Address: Gateway Center Pittsburgh, PA. 15222 Phone: (413) 244-2000 Crimes against Nature: 12,700,000 lb. leased (1987) Sales: $8,553,600,000 (1988)

U N I T E D N U C L E A R C O R P O R AT I O N

(UNC RESOURCES)
Holmes

President: D.E.O. Colussy Chair: W.S.

Address: 175 Admiral Cochrane Drive Annapolis, MD 21401-7394 Phone: (301)266-7333

pollutants (mainly petrochemicals) re Major holdings: Radio stations In major

Crimes against Nature & Humanity: 100 Into Rio Puerco River near Gallup NM,
Navajo from Big Mountain Net income 1988: $23,850,000
TEXACO

oil drilling, pipelines, generating sta

million gallons radioactive liquid dumped

tions, etc... The rivers of the Earth are

experiencing major disruptions be cause of mega-hydro-electric plants,

including Hydro-Quebec, British Co lumbia Hydro and most of Canadian

cities throughout the U.S., Savannah River

Plant, SC (uranium processing), 7UP, HIttman Nuclear Development Corp. Products: Electrical generators, turbines,
cable television, naval torpedoes

where U.S. Government Is relocating

been at a an all-time high this year.

tions you love to hate.
GENERAL ELECrRIC

utilities in between. Oil spills have

We regret that we could not include many more of the energy corpora

CEO:J.W. Kinnear Address: 2000 Westchester Avenue White Plains, NY 10650 Phone: (914) 253-4000

CEO: John F. Welch, Jr.

Pounds of pollutants released: 18,200,000 Subsidiary: Getty Major products: Gasoline & oil products
USX (formerly US Steel)
Address: 600 Grant St.

Major Pollutants: Petrochemicals

Address: 3135 Eastern Turnpike

Phone; (203) 373-2431
Faireld, CT 06431

Crimes Against Nature: 21,000,000 lb pollutants (mainly chlorinated solvents^ released 1987, released equivalent of 54
Chernobyls' worth of radioactive waste
Hanford, WA

Pittsburgh, PA, 15219-4776 Phone:(412)433-1121

Major Holdings: Prieska Copper Mines/ Associated Manganese (South Africa), 5 oil tankers and 2 tug barges (Gulf Coast),
Coal mines In WV, PA, VA, AL, Cartler Mining Co., Quebec Total Sales 1988: $16,877,000,000

1.5 million lb. PCBs dumped, leaked or

spilled into Hudson River

Crimes against Humanity: Produce Gatlingguns used by death squads in El Salva

dor, 65 antitrust actions led against them (1911-1967), Layoffs and plantshutdowns, 4th largest Political Action Campaign
contributor (1984) to key military com mittees ($200,000), Produce primary com
ponents for MX missile. Trident subma
bomb. KEUR McGEE

CHEVRON, U.S.A

CEO: Kenneth T. Derr (also on Board of Citicorp)

Address: 225 Bush St.

President: Jere W. McKenny

Chairman: Roberts. Kerr, Jr.
Address: Kerr McGee Center
CA 94120

San Francisco, Phone: (415) 894-6746

rine & Minuteman missile. Sole producer of neutron "trigger" for every US nuclear
Revenues: $S0bIlIlon,1988 Major subsidiaries: RCA, NBC

Oklahoma City, OK 73125 Phone: (405) 270-1313 Major Pollutants: Metals

lb.

Total Revenues 1988: $28,857,000,000 Majorpollutant: petrochemicals Pounds released 1987: 7,900,000

Major shareholders: Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers HanoverTrust, DuPonts, Rothschilds, Mellons, Rockefell
e r s

Pollutants wjleased (1987):15,000,000

Net incomcl988: $110 million

Crimes against Nature: Considered by

many as the # 1 polluter on the West Coast, Pushing to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration

Crimes against Nature: Recently sold

uranium processing facilities (of Karen

Consumer products: l^rge household & industrial appliances, llghtbulbs, televi sions, radios, clocks, plastics.

Subsidiaries: GULF OIL, Huntington

Silkwood fame), but plans to pursue min

ing of non-renewable fossil fuels, 21 nu clear waste dumping violations, Left ra

Beach Company, Caltex Petroleum Corp.

dioactive tailings behind at Shiprock when mine was abandoned. Contaminated hay
sent to Indians at Big Mountain.

Majorproduct:Titanium dioxide pigment

(used in white paint)

RESOURCES
A M O C O

Food Companies
RJRNABISCO
CEO: Louis V. Gerstner CASTLE & COOKE CEO: D.H. Murdock

CEO: Richard M. Morrow

Address: 200 E. Randolph Drive Chicago, IL 60601

Phone: (312) 856-6111 Total revenues 1988: $23,919,000,000

Address: 300 Galleria Parkway Atlanta, GA 30339

Address:10900 Wilshire Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90024

Phone: (404) 852-3000

Majorpollutants: petrochemicals
ATLANTIC RICHFIELD (ARCO)
CEO: Lodwrick M. Cook Address: 515 South Flower St.

Pounds released 1987: 27,100,000

Crimes Against Humanity: Major labor relations problems (ofcial boycott by

AFL-CIO since 1955 against RJRTobacco);

Crime Against Nature and Humanity: Expose workers and food to dangerous pesticides. Californiagrapesofciallyboy cotted i?y United Farm Workers.
Net income 1987: $97,430,000

own plants in Central America & South

Africa; produce cancer causing products including cigarettes and pesticides; pro
mote sexual stereotypes with advertise
m e n t s

Products: Dole, Standard Fruit, Oceanic Properties H.J. HEINZCO. CEO: Anthony O'Reilly
Address: US Steel Building
600 Grant Street

Los Angeles, CA
90071

Phone: 213) 486-3511 Subsidiaries: Anaconda Copper

Net sales 1988: $16,956,000,000 Products: Camel, Doral, Salem, Vantage,

Crimes Against Nature & Humanity: Own and operate the largest open pit uranium mine, located on Indian Lands,

Winston, Century, More, Now; Davis

Baking Powder, Planters products. Life Savers, Grey Poupon Mustard, Oreo, Ritz,

Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Sales 1988: $5,244,230,000

Produce polystyrene and other plastics,

Part owner of Alaska Pipeline

just about every supermarket cracker

brand, Del Monte, Royal Gelatine, Hawai

Crime Against Nature: Dolphins caught,

suffocated and/or crushed to death while shing for yellown tuna. Products: Starkist, 9 Lives, Amore, Kozy Kitten, Ore-Ida, JerkyTreats Meaty Bones, Weight Watchers.
RALSTON PURINA C E O : W. P. S t i r i t z

ian Punch, Ortega, Chun King, Heublein, Smirnoff, Popov, Jose Cuervo, Don Q, Inglenook, Harvey's Sherry, BlackVelvet,
Ve r m o n t M a i d , e t c . NESTLE

Chairman: Paul R. Jolles

Address; lOOManhattanville Road Purchase, NY 10577

Address: Checkerboard Square

St. Louis, MO 63164

Phone: (914) 251-3000

Phone: (314) 982-2161

1988 Net sales: $5,875,900,000

Squash The State"

HONORABLE MENTION:
The following big oil companies are or
have been involved in uranium mining

1988 Net Sales: 2,038,000,000 Swiss

Francs

Crime Against Nature: Dolphins caught,

suffocated , drowned and/or crushed to death by tuna shing boats. Products: Chicken of the Sea, Tender Vittles, Meow Mix, Lucky Dog, Hearty

Crime Against Humanity: Sell infant

formulabanned in U.S. to people inThird
World countries

and/or milling on Indian land, displacing

people and destroying land, plus their stan dard evil practices necessitating US involve
ment in the Middle East, Central & South America(wc want to be fair):
S H E L L O I L C O M PA N Y

Products: Stoiiffers, Lean Cuisine, Libby's, Beech-Nut, Crosse & Blackwell, Conta-

dina, Gloria Vanderbilt, Polo & Ralph Lauren perfumes,Carnation, L'Oreal, Lancome, Guy LaRoche, Buitoni, Nescafe,
Tasters' Choice, Nestea, Friskies, Fancy
Feast...

Chow, Chex, Nerds, Ghostbusters, Twink les, Yodels, Ring Ding Jr., Devil Dogs,
Eveready & Energizer batteries

PEABODY COAL (Big Mountain reloca

tion)
MOBIL OIL

m
WE SHALL 5FUL01L ONOUREEACHE5

GRACE OIL C O N T I N E N TA L O I L HUMBLE OIL PHELPS-DODGE P H IL IP S P E TR OL E U M R A N C H E R S E X P L O R AT I O N H O M E S TA K E M I N I N G HYDRO NUCLEAR

BRASC\N

m s m m c K m (mEcurcrTmsKy

m i m p j m :
( m m P 5

WEHiaS

EXXON (see Top Twelve Global Polluters

above)

BECHTEL (built many Nuclear Plants

responsible for Three Mile Island Cleanup,

I * ' ams UNCLE!

Paper, Lumber and Construction Materials

The list of polluting, dearcuttingand
land-raping paper companies is un fortunately much too long to 1 ist here.
S C O T T PA P E R

We would nice to emphasize that none

CEO: Philip E. Lippincott President:]. Richard Leaman, Jr.

Address: IScott Plaza

WEYERHAUSER

CEO: George H. Weyerhauser President: John A. Creighton, Jr.

Address: Tacoma, WA 98477

of them are particularly ethical when

it comes to preserving clean air and water, or respeaing ecological diver
sity. Dioxins and other chemicals

Phone: (800) 835-7268

Philadelphia, PA 19113

Phone: (206) 924-2345

used in processing wood ber and

bleaching are a source of highly toxic pollution. Clearcutting is on the inCTease, and paper companies are
pumping out reams of disinformation

Toxics Released: 4,100,0CK) lb. Total Sales 1988: $4,726,000,000 tional Sefcty & Health violations

Major Pollutants: Solvents, Formaldehyde

Crimes Against Humanity: 650 Occupa Crimes Against Nature; Clcarcutting,

Spraying of insecticides and herbicides. Replanting of clearcut areas with monoc woodchip project in Indonesia that was

Crimes Against Nature: Clearcutting, Herbicides, Insecticides; imported 28,9 million lbs. of tropical wood in 1.25 years; major development project planned at
Snoqualmie Ridge, WA would increase size
of town 700%

ogically sound forest management ulture. Planned a $650 million pulp and
prartice. Native people the world over are having their traditions and homes satiable hunger for news, i nformation, and toilet paper.
INTERNATIONAL PAPER

to convince people that it is an ecol

Brazil, Philippines Total Sales 1988: $10,004,000,000

Tropical Forests: Indonesia, Malaysia, Product: Biggest producer of disposable diapers; Newsprint, chlorine, phywood, laminates, veneer, ber & molded prod

cancelled due to international pressure. group for irresponsible forestry.

destroyed to supply our seemingly in

Ofcial Boycott: Called by a Nova Scotia Products: Viva PaperTowels, Scotties, CutRite Wax Paper, Cashmere Bathroom Tis

ucts, packaging, turpentine. Ofcial Boycott: Rainforest Action Net

w o r k

CEO: John A. Georges

Address: 2 Manhattanville Rd. Purchase, NY 10S77

sue, Condets Sanitary Napkins & Maxi Pads, CottonelleTissue, Fresh Wipes, Duvet
Bathroom Tissue, ScotTowels, ScotTowels
Plus, Waldorf.
C H A M P I O N I N T E R N AT I O N A L

G R E AT N O R T H E R N N E K O O S A

CEO: William R. Ladig

Address: 401 Merritt P.O. Box 5120

Phone: (914) 397-1500 Toxics Released (1987): 9,000,000 lb. Major Pollutant: Chloroform Total Sales: $9,557,000,000 Tropical Forests: Venezuela, Peru
JAMES RIVER PAPER COMPANY

CEO: Andrew C. Sigler Address: 1 Champion Plaza

Stamford, CY 06921

Norwalk, CT 06856 Phone: (203) 845-9000

Tropical Forests: Panama, Costa Rica TotalSales 1988: $3,588,000,000

GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORPORATION

Phone: (203) 358-7000 Toxics Released: 12,300,000 lb. 1987

Major Pollutant: Chloroform

CEO: T. Marshall Hahn, Jr.

Address:133 Peachtree St. NE P.O. Box 105605

CEO: B.S. Halsey

Address: P.O. Box 2218

TotalSales 1988: $5,129,000,000

Tredegar Street Phone: (804) 644-5411 Toxics Released: 3,000,000 lb. Major Pollutant: Petrochemicals Total Sales 1987-88: $5,097,978,000
Richmond, VA 23217

Atlanta, GA 30303 Phone: (404) 521-4000

Tropical Forests: Indonesia, Philippines

(5% of original rainforest left)
Major Pollutants: Chlorinated solvents

Products: Towels & toilet paper, cartons, exible packaging, synthetic and non-

Toxics Released 1987: 4,7000,0001b. TotalSales 1988: $9,509,000,000

Products: Cornet tissue. Angel Soft,

Sparkle, Delta, Big'n'Soft Ofcial Boycott by Rainforest Action
Network B O I S E - C A S C A D E C O R P O R AT I O N

woven fabrics, coated lm, market pulp,

food & beverage service items
K I M B E R L E Y- C L A R K CEO: Darwin E. Smith

Address: Texas Commerce Tower

CEO: John H. Miller

545 E.John Carpenter Fwy

Irving, TX 75062

Address: 1 Jefferson Square

P.O. Box 50

Major Pollutant: Disposable diapers Tropical Forests: Panama, El Salvador,

Venezuela, Colombia

Phone: (208) 384-6161

Boise, ID83728

Tropical Forests: Philippines

Major Pollutants: Solvents

Toxics Released: 8,000,000 Total Sales 1988: $4,099,000,000

:> DRUGS AND COSMETICS

Net Sales 1988: $2,753,510,000 SCHERING-PLOUGH

:>

In the course of this research, it has come

toourattentionthatmanyofthe pharma

ceutical companies produce pesticides and growth agents for agribusiness that make

Major Products: Urethane foam, Unicap Vitamins, Cortaid, Kaopectate, Provera (a

female sex hormone replacement) ster

CEO: R.P. Luciano Address: One Giralda Farms

Madison, NJ 07940

people sick. Then they are guaranteed a

oids, Mycitracin, Bovine Growth Hormone

& other feed additives. Broiler chickens,

Phone: (201) 822-7000

strong market for the drugs and hospital equipment that will supposedly make them better again. Brilliant business strategy,
eh?

Crimes Against Nature: Cosmetictesting

on animals

Drygard, Central nervous system agents

GlLLETrK

Net sales: $2,696,400,000

Products: Maybelline, Scholl, Coppertone,

Aquaex soft lenses
BURROUGHS WELLCOME

This list only covers some of the major offenders. Other equally despicable corpo
rations abound. A.H. ROBINS CEO: E.C.Robins

CEO: Colman M. Mockler, Jr.

Address: Prudential Tower Building

Boston, MA 02199

Phone: (617) 421-7000

Net sales 1988: $3,581,200,000

Crime Against Humanity: Sells AZT pre scriptions forthousandsof dollars per year,

Address: 1407 Cummlngs Drive

P.O. Box 26609

Crimes Against Nature: Cruel and unnec essary treatment of animals in testing

capitalizing heavily on the desperation of

AIDS victims.

product safety, and lying about such abuse.

hatred in the form of paranoia at>out natu ral bodily functions. Products: Gillette foamy Shaving Cream,

Richmond, VA 232611

Crime Against Humanity: Promotingself

PROCTER & GAMBLE

Phone: (804) 257-2000

CEO:J.G.Smale
Address:! Procter & Gamble Plaza Cincinnati, OH 452020

Crime Against Humanity; Creating & marketing the Dalkon Shield lUD, which caused 66,000 miscarriages, hundreds of birth defects including blindness, cerebral palsy, retardation, perforated uterus, sep blaming these miseries on "fre quent intercourse with multiple partners." The company has set up a 2.3 billion dollar trust fund
for victims.

Aaprl,jafra,Atra, Face Saver, Daisy, Tracll,

Phone: (513) 983-1100

Swivel, Flairpens,Toni Home Perms, White Rain hairspray. The Dry Look, Dry Idea,

Crimes Against Nature:. Product testing

on animals

tic abortions and infections. They defended themselves by adding Insult to injury,

Right Guard, Soft & Dry, Mink Difference,

Tame, Liquid Paper.

Products: Attends, Bounty, Cascade, Bounce, Charmin, Cheer, Chloraseptlc, Citrus Hill, Comet, Crest, Downy,

Folgers, Dawn, Duncan Hlnes,

Crisco, Head & Shoulders, Ivory

Net sales 1988: $933,766,000

Soap, Jif, Luvs, Mr. Clean, Pringles, Scope, Secret, Splc & Span, Tide, Zest, Pepto Bismol, Sure, Olay,
Vlcks, Dramamine, VldalSassoon, Pantene, Clearasil, Metamucil, etc.
BRISTOL MYERS

Major Products: ChapStik, Robitussin, Sergeants Flea Collar

E L I L I L LY C E O : R . D . Wo o d

Address: Lilly Corporate Center Indianapolis, IN 46285 Major Pollutants: Solvents Net sales 1988: $4,069,700,000

CEO: Richard L. Gelb Address: 345 Park Avenue New York,

NY 10154

Pounds Released in 1987: 30,000,000

Phone: (212) 546-4000

Crime Against Humanity: Sell

infant formula in 3rd World that

Major Products: Bovine Growth Spike herbicide, Ceclor, Darvon,

cardiac care systems, medical in
struments.

has been banned in US because of

its side effects

Hormone (genetically engi neered), Cattle feed additives.

Crime Against Nature: Animal

testing

Net sales: $5,972,500,000

Products:Windex, Vanish, Miss

UPJOHN CEO: Theodore Cooper

Clairol, Loving Care, Nice'n'Easy, Renuzit, Bufferln, Excedrln, Fi nale, Final Net,Nuprin, Keri,
W e s t w o o d

Address: 7000 Portage Road

Kalamazoo, Ml 49001

Phone:(616)323-4000

Pharmaceuticals,BuSpar (antl anxiety drug), Desyrel (antidepres

Major Pollutants: Chlorinated

solvents

sant), AIDS drugs ddA, ddl, Platl-

nol (cancer therapy),Megace

Pounds Released 1987: 21,600,000

(breast cancer treatment), Questran (cholesterol therapy),

hip & knee implants...

Problems ^ind ^LTERNfmvES

Wall Street and the Central American Crisis
Bill Hall

and commodity prices, once registered on ticker tape and now stored as magnetic impulses on sillicon, are the language of an
economic society that is global in scope. The decisions made at

W all Street is a world-wide phenomenon. Stock, bond,

In Guatemala today the wealthiest 2.1% of the population

controls 80% of the farmland. In Honduras, 44% of the rural

the heights of Wall Street's steel and glass towers reverberate throughout the world to shape life in the forests of Brazil, the
sugar cane elds of the Philippines, or the mud and straw homes
of Zaire.

In Central America, the price of Wall Street's business as

usual is ecological and social disaster. A few facts:

More than 70% of the region's original forests are

gone, including valuable tropical rainforeststhe mostbiologicaily diverse of terrestrial ecosystems and a key to the evolution
of all life;

Three of four children is malnourished; Polluted water is one of the main causes of death;

Coal reefs and mangroves are so extensively dam aged by silt and pollution that sh and shrimp harvests arc
declining region-wide

rainforests. Because their plots are so small and unproductive, they are forced to supplement their income with work for meager wages on the huge export estates. In the cities, corpora tions like Texas Instruments, Hasbro and Levis jeans also take advantage of the abundant supply of cheap labor. The US provides the money, weaponsand often troops to counter any threats to its access to cheap resources and labor. More than $5 billion is US economic and military aid has owed Into the region, propping up unpopular military governments and keeping local trade unions and protest movements under control. US Major General Smedley Butler's 1935 observation
holds true today: member of our country's most agile military forcethe Marine
"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a

colonize the vast agricultural frontiers of the eastern tropical

poor own no land at all. This land inequality Is the basis for the region's cheap labor system. Farmers lucky enough to have any land at all typically farm on steep, erosion-prone hillsides or

The majority of cultivated land is seriously eroded,

threatening agriculture, disrupting rivers and lakes, and causing

periodic ooding and drought; Pesticide contamination is widespread; in Guate higher than that allowed by US standards.
mala, average levels of DDT found in cows' milk are 90 times In each instance, poverty and destruction of the environ

to a Major General. And during lhat period I spent most of my time beinga high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism...Thus I

Corps. 1 served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant

helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I

ment are Intimately related. Whether It is declining harvests due

to drought, toxics-induced illness and death, or economic damage

caused by ooding and mud slides, the region's environmental

helped make Haiti a Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank [now Qticorpl boys to collect revenues in...I helped purify NicaraIT'S SIMPLE STEVE. WHyDONTVOJ
ANDMDUR JUST GET THE

problems are deepening social misery and fueling political conict. The ecological fabric of Central America Is unravelling, undermining the natural resource base of these agricultural
societies.

to Wall Street and the economic and military power it repre

The chain of cause and effect behind this disaster leads back

FUCK OUT OF a S M VA D O H f

sents. Spanish conquerers turned a thriving, self-sufcient

indigenous civilization into a slave economy geared towards

shipping agricultural wealth abroad. Today a modern version of
that colonial system remains Intact, with the best farmland rais ing beef, coffee, sugar, bananas, cotton, owers and other

Nabisco while Central Americans go hungry. Ecological destruction Is inherent in this corporate-led de

products for Wall Street corporations such as Safeway and

velopment. Monocropping requires intensive chemical appllcaltons (Including pesticides banned for use in the US) and leads

to soil erosion. Abundant genetic diversity in staples like corn

and beans gives way to scientically formulated seed strains far

more vulnerable over the long run. The need to control land for

export crops leads to constant expansion of agriculture at the

expense of the last remaining wilderness.

gua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12.1 brought light to the Dominican Republic for American

sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for

to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested...

Housing the Homeless?

Homelessness has hit every major urban area in the United Statesnot only in the Rust Belt but also In the Sun

American fruit companies in 1903, In China, in 1927,1 helped see "During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. 1 was rewarded with honors, medals, pro motion. Looking back on it, I fell I might have given A1 Capone a
few hints. Th ebest he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We...operated on three continents."

Belt, not only In New York City and Washington D.C., but
also Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.

At least 250,000 people have been killed in Central America as the US and its client governments unleashed torture, death

squads, bombing and assassination against local movements for social change. This region-wide warfare currently engulng
Central America is also taking a devastating toll on the environ ment. The region's more than 2 million war refugees place extraordinary burdens on natural ecosystems. In Honduras, extensive US-built military roads have opened wilderness areas

Almost denltlonally, the spreading problem of home lessness results mainly from the growing difculty of nd ing affordable housing. The sources: The real cost of owning a home, controlling for Ina tion, soared in the 1970's and early 1980's, rising (in 1986 $) from roughly 6,000 a year in 1973 to nearly 10,000 a year in 1982. Though costs have declined somewhat since the

early 1980'sasaresultoffallinginterestrates, theywerestlll nearly 2S percent higher in 1987 than they were In 1973. For young families, the cost of buying a home for the
rst time have risen especially rapidly. The total costburden to rst-time home buyers, measured as a percent of the income of young renters, rose from 14.3 percent in 1973 to 26.2 percent in 1987(aftcr peaking at 37.4 percent
In 1982).

up to destructive colonization. In both Guatemala and El Salva

dor, US-trained militaries are following the same "scorched earth" strategy pursued by the US in Vietnam: "draining the sea where the guerilla sh swim." In Guatemala, the air force dropped US-supplied defoliants on guerilla rainforest sanctuar ies on the pretext of eradicating drug cultivation, contaminating

water supplies and fatally poisoning at least 14 people. Bombing

has reduced thousands of acres of Salvadoran forest to charred Southeast Asia, have also reappeared in Central America.

As a result of these rising costs, fewer young households can now afford to buy a home. In 1980, for example, the rate of home ownership among 29 year-olds was 43.3%.
That rate fell to 35.9% In 1987. Overall, the rate of home

ruins. White phosphorousa poisonous flaming chemical weaponand napalm, both used frequently by US forces in In Nicaragua, the popular government Implemented far reaching reforms in control of land, labor practices, health poli important steps toward greater ecological and social stability.
Yet these efforts are being crippled by Washington's con

ownership is now at it's lowest level In 15 years.

Rising Costs of Renting

Costs of rental housing have also climbed substantially.

cies, agriculture, and wilderness conservation that represent

Controlling for ination, average gross rents In 1987, were twelve percent higher in 1987 than in 1973. Coupled with stagnant or falling incomes, many households have felt the
pinch severely.

tinuing war against Nicaragua, as the US-backed contras have

killed environmental workers and destroyed conservation proj
ruins.

In 1974, the gross rent burden(defined as the median rent to income) for heads of household aged 25 to 34 was 18.7%
In 1987, It was 25.4%.

ects, and the US economic embargo has left the economy in

For single parent families with children, the gross rent

burden was 34.9% in 1974. In 1987, it was 58.4%.

The rst step toward challenging the deadly cycle of pov erty, inequality, and environmental destruction in Central

One source of rising rent burdens has been the declin

America Is struggling to end US intervention. Increasingly, en vironmentalists are making connections with the peace move ment and working in coalition around efforts to reverse US foreign policy. The Environmental Project on Central America

ing stock of low-cost rental housing units. Between 1974

and 1983 the number of apartments on the rental market

renting for less than 300/month, controlling for ination, fell by just under one million units, an 8.5% drop.
Housing cost burden have increased in part because real incomes have stagnated. Overall, median family in come in 1986 was almost exactly the same in 1986 as It was In 1973. Since income inequity also Increased during this

has sparked such collaboration across the country, including an

Environmentalists Call to End the War In El Salvador.

But ultimately the solution lies in prying loose Wall Street's hold over the globe, and removing the economic system that motivates militarism and exploitation In the Third World. That is the task of Green politics, when Green politics stands with the students, workers, farmers, clergy, and other people In Central America demanding human rights, self-determination and a

time period, this meant that real Incomes actually declined

for less afuent families.

This shows up in data comparing incomes of owners

and renters. Home owners, the much more afuent of the

Just distribution of the world's resources. Only through such an

of realizing a Green future for life on earth.

two groups, enjoyed a 13.4% increase in real median in

alliance, an alliance based In international solidarity and a

comes In between 1974 and 1987 (controlling for Ination).

struggle against common enemies, can have we have any hope

Bill Hall is In the editorial group of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology and is an Associate of the Environmental Project on Central America. For more information about the Central American en vironmental crisis and organizing to resolve it, contact the Environmental

Renters, comprising slightly more than one third of all

households, suffered a 14.3% drop in real median incomes over the same period. These trends have two key consequences:

market and creating pressure on the stagnant supply of

^

trapping more and more families in the rental housing

Continued on next pageJ

Project on Central America, 300 Broadway ^28, San Francisco, CA 94133.

\^iTH Enough Tooth Brushes(From live whd or die, v

the ocean just outside of Gray's Harbor on the Washington coast. The incident occurred during a heavy storm (20' swells) after a tug-to -barge tow cable snapped. In the process of regaining control of the barge (the "Nestucca"), the tug-boat operated by Sause Bros. Ocean T owing rammed the barge, ripping a 7" gash in it's side. Ostensibly to protect the fragile Gray's Harbor
ecosystem, the leaking barge was towed out to sea and later the

On DECEMBER24,233,000 gallons of oil was spiled into

There Is a volunteer meeting in Bellingham tonight. I'll go. ...I began to have doubts. Wouldn't it be better to spend my time
Interfering with the industry's buslness-as-usual? 1 know now

that 1 won't be cleaning birds at Ocean Shores.

The Solution to Polluhon is Illusion

It can be fairly easily argued that anytime we put" bandaids

spill was nally brought under control.

on the cancer"that is, whenever we concentrate on the symp

toms Instead of the underlying problemthat we hinder a real solution since our effort is directed elsewhere and not towards

on shore as a massive propaganda campaign was launched to

Almost immediately, oil-soaked seabirds began washing up

rouse-up volunteers to help clean the birds. Initially, the spill was "ofcially determined* to be 70,000 gallons and, according to Coast Guard ofcials, was expected to dissipate harmlessly at
sea. 200 birds were dead and tens of miles of beach had been

that solution. Additionally, In this T.V, society, the bandaids usually make better "copy", rarely threaten the status quo, and

weeks. In the early media account, Sause Bros, was consistently quoted as accepting full responsibility for the incident. Typi cally, this wasnever definedbut ifltsoundsgoodlnthemedla,
why bother?

fouled within a couple of days and bird rescuers estimated that clean-up operations might have to continue for another few

therefore tend to receive all the attention, further directing activity away from effective solutions. Or, to put It another way, doing something for the sake of "doing something* Is usually ineffective and often sabatoges and undermines the possibility for a real solution. The bird clean-up Is a perfect example. ...Not often looked at is the system of oil-based society. To
extract, transport, and rene oil requires a requires a massied

social organization where humans are necessarily only cogs In the machine. It Is not possible to have a "bloregional"
."communlty-based*, "decentralized", "human scale"

or''approprlate technology* oil Industry. This social order requires a massive bureaucratic state apparatus in order to manage It and a military police force to keep it In line. After all, who would voluntarily slave In an oil renery if they didn't have to do it out of economic necessity?

Notice that I've not gone Into issues of corporate-government collusion, violations of environmental laws, price xing and all the rest of the supercial details of the Industry. It Is all
too easy to reduce what should be complex critique to Issues of

The oil slick, pushed by ocean currents and winds has now

Almost a week later: Gee, looks like someone goofed. The actual size of the spill is now known to be much bigger than 70,000 gallons and dead birds number In the high hundreds.

whether or not some new clause should be written Into some

arcane, never-enforced-anyway regulation. The Democrats and

Mother Jones have made quite a career out of using these distrac tions to prevent a critique that, if ever realized, could put them
both out of business.

fouled pristine wilderness beaches the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Olympic National Park. Against usual procedure, helicopters and motorized vehicles are being used in

these areas to aid clean-up efforts. Volunteers are being actively

liquid to clean the birds.

sought as are donations of toothbrushes, rags, and dishwashing

'^Homeless, cont'd. ^
rental housing.

as rental cost grow, incomes shrink, and pressure grows on the homeless, shunted into Martinique Hotels, sleeping on
park benches.

The Solution to Pollution is

The only real possibility for escape Is the total "de-constructlon"

the supply of rental housing, growing numbers nd it Im possible to nd or afford any housing at all. These become

Revolutionary With oil comes oil spills and a host of other catastrophes. for lack of a better word, of the system, a breaking-free from it's

Although the federal government estimates that only 250-350 thousand Americans are homeless, organizations
working directly with the homeless have settled on the

range of two to three million as their working estimate of

homeless In the U.S.

at least the freedom to create new possibilitieswould anyone go back to the factories and their horrendous slave jobs that are
reality of our dreams.

constraints In our to create life on our terms instead of those of economy and power. If we had a choice, a real alternativeor

from Progressive Agenda , August 1989

necessary to keep the whole thing running? Somehow 1 don't

think so. We can make our dreams reality only if we trust in the

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The Great Transportation Conspiracy

Jonathan Kwitny (Harper's, February 1981)
Whafs good for General Motors is good for thecountry"Charles Wilsort,1953
When Charlie Wilson was toiling in the General Motors executive suite, earning his future cabinet appointment as

of the biggest companies In the country. As spelled out in the

court record, many conspirators did their work in many cities.

They schemed from the mid-1930's through the 1940's. Electrl-

ed-rall-mass transit systems, which carried millions of riders, mantled, and valuable off-street rights of way were sold.

Secretary of Defense, GM, along with some oil companies, was steering the country towards it's current energy predicament. Few remember it, but before the automobile companies became

were bought and junked. Tracks literally were torn up out of the ground, sometimes overnight. Overhead power lines were dis After reading the testimony and court lings, 1 interviewed
dozens of transit ofcials all over the country to nd out If the

predominant, the country relied on centrally generated electric ity for city transportation. It was relatively clean and energyefcient.

old electried system could have served us today with both

convenience and savings in energy.

There were streetcars and off-street railways. There were also

Transit ofcials who remember the rails, power lines, and

trackless trolleyselectric buses powered by overhead wires and

able to maneuver through trafc.

generating stations that were once In place say these facilities, if

left intact, could have formed the nucleus for a modern Ameri cheaper to run than diesel buses.

Without realizing, much less debating, the consequences,

the country turned it's transportation policy over to GM and it's

automotive allies. What followed was the destruction of mass-

can transit system. Electried trains and trackless trolleys are notonlycheaperto run than automobiles, they are substantially
attractive, some big companies promoting the engine evidently
considered that attraction insufcient for the product to suc

transit; the country became almost totally reliant on private automobile, with it's necessary consumption of foreign oil. Of

Although the internal-combustion engine was no doubt

course, most people would consider it unfair to blame the

demise of mass transit on several big corporations. They just manufactured the car and the busto the delight of millions.

ceed legitimately. The conspirators in this case included not only General Motors, but also Standard Oil of California, Phillips
Petroleum, Mack Manufacturing, and Firestone Tlre&Rubber,
marred the success of the venture.

But it wasn't that simple. When GM and a few other big

companies created a transportation oligopy for the internal-

combustion engineso convenient until thecheapgasoline ran

among others. Though all were convicted of antitrust violations for what they did, the token punishments they received scarcely Perhaps the most striking example of what happened is in Los Angeles, which has become a frightening mutation of human life produced by the automotive gene. Though hard to believe now, Los Angeles once had a heavily used urban rail system extending from Newport Beach and Long Beach, through

out-they did not just rely on the obvious sale pitch. They conspired. They broke the law. This was all proved at a littleremembered trial in a federal court in Chicago, 1949. After more

than a month of sworn testimony, a jury convicted the

corporations and several executives of criminal antitrust viola

vinctions were upheld on appeal.

tions for the their part in the demise of mass transit. The conNo doubt that the mass availability of the automobile inevitably would have changed travel to a great degree, but it will never be known to what extent electried transport would have died on it's own. The big conspirator companies were unwilling to
entrust their fates to the market. Instead, they methodically re

downtown, on to Pasadena and into the San Fernando valley

Inmanyplaces,masstransit didn't just die-it was murdered.

perhaps thebestsystem in the country. Theconspiratorsbought and dismantled it in stages in the 1940's. Meanwhile, the GM transit juggernaut rolled on. Butte, Montana; Fresno, Oakland,
Stockton and San Jose, California; Portsmouth and Canton,
Ohlo;Terre Haute, Indiana

moved the competition. In knowing violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, they used their economic power to take over a

Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Portland, Tampa, Mobile, Balti more, El Paso, and Spokane were taken over. The takeover of Los

Angeles had been carefully plotted for a few years. In 1941, the
Glendale and Pasadena were bought and transformed into all-

small bus company and, through it, acquired and dismantled

one electried mass-transit system after another, replacing them

with buses. The buses, besides being built and supplied by GM

bus operations according to an engineering plan drawn up by

General Motors. The Long Beach system was bought and
scrapped. Those Indicted and convicted of violating the Sherman

and the oil companies, never had the same appeal for riders that the electried mass transit systems did, and merely added to the allure of the private car. Then the big companies that orches trated the demise of the trolly tried to cover their own tracks as

Anti-Trust Act were National City Lines, Pacic City Lines,

Firestone Tire&Rubber, General Motors, Phillips Petroleum,

surely as they covered the tracks of many a rail line. The GM conspiracy case is a ne example of what can happen when
occurring right now in the realm of energy.

Mack Manufacturing, Standard Oil, and Federal Engineering.

important matters of public policy are abandoned by govern ment to the self-interest of the corporationssomething that Is The transcript and other evidence from the GM trial are in two battered packing cartons in a federal warehouse near Chi cago. That material makes this point beyond a reasonable doubt:there was for many years a criminal conspiracy behind our national transportation policy, and It was directed by some

Recalling the old rail network In Los Angeles, Gerald Haugh,currently general manager of the bussystem In the Long
It could have been modernized. It would have been a hell a lot
those tracks;*

Beach section, says, "It would be great if we had it all back again.

of cheaper than to do It today. Itwasdamnshametheytookup

What those conspirators did was to destroy mass transitthat

today could benet millions of citizens...and they did for no

greater cause than their own prot.

Unity S tatement of the W omen's

United States, and were the largestall-women protests in twelveyears. In November 1980 and 1981, women surrounded the Pentagon for two days of nonviolent direct action against all military violence and against the sexual and economic violence in the everyday lives of all women. A Statement of Unity adopted by the original organizers of the action expresses the diverse concerns and politics of the ecofeminist movement

and Life on Earth Conference which took place in Amherst, March 1980. They were organized by an ad-hoc group of feminist activists from many social movements and organizations in the northeastern

The Women's Pentagon Actions were initiated by the Women

of life itself.

We are in the hands of men whose power and wealth have

separated them from the reality of daily life and from imagina
tion. We are right to be afraid.

the devastation of war. Hospitals are closed . our schools

At the same timeourclties are in ruins, bankrupt; they suffer

deprived ofbooks and teachers. Our Black and Latino youth are

without decentwork. They willbe forced, drafted tobecomethe cannon fodder for the very power that oppresses them. What-\
ever help the poor receive is cut or withdrawn to feed the

we fear for our lives. We fear for the life of this planet, our Earth,
and the life of our children who are our human future.

We are gathering at the Pentagon on November 16 because

ous health. It extracted $157 billion dollars last year from our
own tax money; $ 1,800 from a family of four. in government and corporate laboratories that rene the

Pentagon which needs about $500,000,000a day for if s murderWith this wealth our scientists are corrupted; over 40% work

United States. We are city women who know the wreckage and fear of our city
streets, we are country women who
grieve the loss of the small farm and

We are mostly women from the north-eastern region of our

methods for destroying or deforming life. The lands of the Native American people has been
turned to radioactive rubble in order

have lived on the poisoned earth. We kinds of households: in groups, fami lies, alone, some are single parents. Weworkatavarietyofjobs. Weare students, teachers, factory workers, of ce workers, lawyers, farmers, doctors, builders, waitresses, weavers, poets,
engineers, homeworkers, electricians, are young and older, we are married, single, lesbian. We live in different

to enlarge the nuclear warehouse. The uranium of South Africa, nec

essary to the nuclear enterprise, enriches the white minority and

encourages the vicious system of
racist oppression and war.

artists, blacksmiths. We are all daugh

ters and sisters.

The President has just decided to build the neutron bomb, which kills people but leaves property (build ings like this one) intact. There is fear among the people, and that fear, created by the industrial mili
tarists Is used as an excuse to accel

We have come here to mourn and

erate the arms race. "We will pro

tect you..* they say, but we have never been so endangered, so close
to the end of human time.

rage and defy the Pentagon because it is the workplace of the imperial power
which threatens

us all. Every day while we work,study, love, the colonels and

generals who are planning our annihilation walk calmly in and outofdoorsot'svesidcs. Theyhave accumulated over 30,000 bombs at the rate of three to six bombs every day.
They are determined to produce the billion-dollar MX missile. They are creating a technology called Stealth- the invisible, unperceivable arsenal. Theyhave revised thecruel old killer, nerve gas. They have proclaimed Directive 59 which asks for "small nuclear wars, prolonged but limited." The Soviet Union works hard to keep up with United States initiatives. We can destroy each other's cities, towns, schools, and children

life on this precipice is intolerable. We want to know what anger in these men, what fear, which can only be satised by destruc tion, what coldness of heart and ambition drives their days. We
so exploitative and murderous in international relations, and so
dangerous to women and children at homewe do not want

We woman are gathering because

want to know because we do not want that dominance which is

that sickness transferred by the violent society through the

fathers to the sons.

What is it that we women need for our ordinary lives, that we

want for ourselves and also for our sisters in new nations and

many times over. The United States has sent 'advisors", money and arms to El Salvador and Guatemala to enable those junta to
massacre their own people.

offer trillions of dollars to the Pentagon have brutally cut day

care, children's lunches, battered women's shelters. These same men have concocted the family protection act which will mandate the strictly patriarchal family and thrust federal

The very same men, the same legislative committees that

old colonies who suffer the white man's exploitation and too often the oppression of their own countrymen? We want enough good food, decent housing, communities with clean air and water, good care for our children while we

authorityintoourhomelife. They are preventing the passage of

ERA'S simple statement and supporting the human life amend

work. We want work that is useful to a sensible society. There is a modest technology to minimize drudgery and restore joy to labor. We are determined to use skills and knowledge from which we have been excludedlike plumbing or engineering or physics or composing. We intend to form women's groups or
unions that will demand safe workplaces, free of sexual harass ment, equal pay for work of comparable value. We respect the work women have done in caring for the young, their own and

ment which will deprive all women of choice and many women

Pentagon Action
others, In maintaining a physical and spiritual center against the greedy and militaristic society. In our old age we expect our bodies. Physically challenged sisters must have access to gather ings, actions, happy events, work. For this, ram ps must be added
them?

be cherished, to be fed as well as harvested.

We want to be free from violence in our streets and in houses.

skills, our experience, to be honored and used. We want health care which respects and understands our

One in every three of us will be raped in her lifetime. The

pervasive social power of the masculine ideal and the greed of

to stairs and we must become readers, signers, supporting arms.

So close, so many, why have we allowed ourselves not to know

We want an education for children which tells the true story

the pornographer have come together to steal our freedom, so that the whole neighborhoods and the life of the evening and night have been taken from us. For too many women the dark country road and the city alley have concealed the rapist. We want the night returned: the light of the moon, special in the cycle of our female lives, the stars and the gaiety of city streets.
Continued on next page >

of our women's lives, which describes the earth as our home to

Embracing Diversity: Building Multi-Cultural Alliances

Those of us who identify as environmentalists know that

torlcal legacy and present conditions of those who are differ

ent from ourselves. Just what is it, that a straight person can

diversity is vital to nature's well-being. Yet we nd ourselves reflecting only a narrow segment of society the white
middle class. We need to ask ourselves why. This is particu

larly perplexing when it is the least power^l among us who

are most directly affected by the environmental crisis. Native
American land is desecrated for uranium and coal mining;

take for granted that a lesbian or gay cannot, that a wealthy person can take for granted that a poor person cannot, that an able-bodied person can take for granted that a disabled person cannot, that a Christian can take for granted that a Jewish person cannot...? How is it that they maintain their humanity

farm workers are p>oisoned as they care for our food; neighbor
hoods in our inner cities are used for toxic dumps and giant in cinerators; children are born into violence and poverty, inher

despite adversity? Learning about the ways oppressed groups

have maintained integrity is indispensable not only for build ing trusting relationships, but for broadening perspectives to
organize effectively. The common solution is "outreach". This usually means

iting a world devoid of meaning or social purpose. A legacy of struggle is being replaced with a drug culture and the crime
that comes with it. Human and spiritual devastation are made

invisible by a view of nature devoid of people. We block out

the pain of Industrial society, and with it the inspiration we

getting people different from ourselves to work with us. We are oblivious to the fact that the political agendas we dene would be altered If other perspectives were included from the

could get from creating dignied ways of living in the face of

destruction. The environmental movement has come to

beginning. We minimize differences, and say "we're all

mean those who "protect nature," not those struggling to

make a home within her.

people," but this backres. People justly feel their own experiences are invisible. They cease to believe that these or ganizing efforts will change the painful and dehumanizing

We need to ask ourselves why the defense of Big Moun tain, the boycott of table grapes, neighborhoods organizing

aspects of their own life and the 11 ves of those with whom they
identify. Differences that would otherwise make us stronger
are stied. The cumulative effect of these patterns softens our

against toxins and efforts of mothers to stop gang violence and killings of children are not considered ecological struggles. Why don't those carrying out these struggles identify as environmentalists? Why don't "environmentalists* consider these struggles worth their concentrated efforts?
What is it going to take for environmental activism to en

minds, sharpens our hearts and depresses our spirits. Instead of our diversity making us strong and securing the future we

have only created one more arena in which we are alienated.

compass the diversity of our countrya diversity made invis ible within the political and social atmosphere we create?
Until we become multi-cultural, environmentalists will re

Those of us with privilege cannot assume that our view is the only one operating. We have the responsibility of naming the price others have had to pay for the privileges we enjoy. For example, when we state as a simple fact that we are living
on stolen land. Native American struggles are no longer

main marginal, lacking the passion, creative energy and

vision that is unleashed when people are struggling out of the immediate circumstances of daily life. from different circumstances invisible is the key to creating multi-cultural alliances. This entails coming to know the

Breaking out of the patterns that make the lives of those

invisible. The power of naming expands the parameters of the situation, and when done by those with privilege, it avoids the common dynamics of blame and guilt. Naming the realities with which we all have to grapple creates an atmosphere that welcomes other cultural approaches. The death-courting
monoculture breaks down and the life-sustaining customs

multitude of approaches we bring. Native Americans, African Americans, gays and lesbians, ethnic communities struggling to preserve language and traditions, people of conscience working to expand our understanding of our relationships

from all our diverse groups weave the fabric of a resilient culture capable of protecting the sanctity of life,
Margo Adair & Sharon Howell

with one another and the earth, all offer rich wisdom. We need to commit ourselves to learning about the his-

(Excerpted from Call to Action: A Handbook for Ecology Peace and Justice , edited by Brad Erickson, Sierra Club Books, Spring
1990)

< 0 1

Dd The Distribution of Wealth <(11

24,020 accounted for just 15% percent of the national in
c o m e .

"The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now

greater than at any time since Imperial Plutocratic Rome.'

Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

The income share of the bottom 60% percent of the

population was 32%, the lowest level ever recorded.

Net worth is the total worth of everything you own: The top 2% of the population has 28% of the total net
worth.

The proportional difference between the income gained by the richest and poorestfamilies In 1986 was the greatest since the federal government began keeping statistics In
1947.

The top 10% has 57% of the total net worth.

The richest 1 % has greater wealth than the bottom 90%

The bottom 50% has 4.5% of the total net worth.

The income distribution percentage-wise in the U.S.

today is about the same as that of India.

The 10 billion plus Rockefeller family fortune Is more than the the worth of all minority and poor white families
combined.

Distribution of Capital
Capital income is much more unequally distributed
than labor income:

Distribution of Income
fn 1986 the gap between the poor and the rich attained
record breaking proportions:

If you leave aside homes and real estate, the top 2% of all families owns 54% of all net nancial assets (stocks, bonds, pension funds.etc.).
The top 10% owns 86% of all net nancial assets.

The richest 20%, those earning more than 50,370 annu

ally, got 48% percent of the national income in 1986, Meanwhile, the 40% of families who income is less than

The bottom 55% has zero or negative nancial hold ings. The top 1% have over half (56.5%) of all stock
holdings.

Pentagon Action , Continued from previous page

We want the right to have or not have childrenwe do not want gangs of politicians and medical men to say we we must be

common struggle against the builders of jails and bombs. We want the uranium left in the earth and the earth given

sterilized for the country's good. We know that this technique is the racist's method for controlling populations. Nor do we
want to prevented from having an alwrtion when we need one.

back to the people who tilled it. We want a system of energy

which is renewable, which does not take resources out of the

We think this freedom should be available to pKx>r women as it

always has been to rich. We want to be free to love whomever or sexual preference must not dominate another.
we choose. We will live with women or with with men or we will

earth without returning them. We want those systems to belong to the people and their communities, not to the giant corpora
tions which invariably turn knowledge into weaponry. We want the sham of Atoms for Peace ended, all nuclear plants decommis

livealone. Wewillnotallowtheoppressionoesbians. Onesex We do not want to be drafted into the army. We do not want our young brothers drafted. We want them equal with us.
We want to see the pathology of racism ended in our time. It

sioned and the construction of new plants stopped. That is

another war against the people and the child to be born in fty
years.

We want an end to the arms race. No more bombs. No more

amazing inventions for death.

We understand all is connectedness. We know the life and

has been the imperial arrogance of white male power that has Aftica, South America and in our own country. Many North American women look down on the minority nearest them: the
separated us from the wisdom and suffering of our sisters in Asia,

work of animals and plants in seeding, reseeding and in fact simply inhabiting this planet. Then exploitation and the
organized destmction of never to be seen again species threatens
and sorrows us. The earth nourishes us as we with our bodies will

Black, the Hispanic, the Jew, theNative American, the Asian, the immigrant. Racism hasoffered them privilege and convenience;

they often fail to see that they themselves have been bent to the unnatural authority and violence of men in government, at work, at home. Privilege does not increase knowledge or spirit or understanding. There can be no peace when one race dominates another, one people, one nation, one sex, despises
another.

eventually feed it. Through us our mothers connected the human past to the human future. With that sense, the ecological right, we oppose the nancial connections between the Pentagon and the banks and multina tional corporations that the Pentagon serves. Those connection are made of gold and oil. We are made of blood and bone, we
are made of the sweet and nite resource, water. We will not

We must not forget the tens of thousands of American

allow these violent games to continue. If we are here in our

women who live much of their lives in cages, away from family, loves, all the growingup years of their children Most of them were born at the intersection of oppressions: people of color, female, poor. Women on the outside have been to taught to fear those sisters. We need each other's knowledge and anger in our

stubborn thousands today, we will certainly return in the

hundreds of thousands in the months and years to come.

We know that there is a healthy and sensible loving way to live

and we intend to live that way in our neighborhoods and farms in these United States, and among our sisters and brothers in all
the countries of the world

To w a r d A n E c o l o g i c a l F o r e s t r y
Timber cutting in the U^. swept from East to West. When the last virtually free lumber disappeared from West Coast for est in the building boom after World War II, the industry changed. Wood prices had risen. Like corn and cotton, trees could be grown and sold for prot. Extractive forestry begat cash crop forestry, with practices, ecological and social impacts nearly identical to extensive cash crop agriculture. Cash crop forestry pays best on large tracts free of human settlement managed to permit highly mechanized industrial production. While cutting existing second growth is protable and now represents the bulk of the harvest, optimum yields require replanting a monoculture of same age trees, hybridized for fastest growth, to simultaneously mature. Like high yield corn, genetically uniform trees require crop management-stan dardized soil preparation; assembly line planting and protec tion of seedlings; fertilization, heavy herbicide use, and elimina tion of vegetation eating animal life. Snce monocultures are very vulnerable to insects and disease, they also require pesticide treatment. For maximum yield they're thinned, treated, then clear cut so the land is open for the next planting. Labor control problems and costs are reduced through mechanization, which requires extensive heavy duty roads for the heavy equipment. And where tree growth is slow because of elevation, cold, wind, dryness, or poor soil, the land is clear cut and allowed to erode. As in industrial agriculture, the ecological impact often involves soil loss and degradation, pesticide build up, loss of plant and animal diversity, sometimes extinction, and pollution and ruination of watershed and rivers. The complex ecology of trees, plants and animals that once covered the continent aeated rich soils, balanced ecosystems, and food and products tend to determine timber and land prices. As the industry giants expanded, they created an army of lawyers, lobbyist, research ers, regulatory specialists, and industry associations that gave them access to and considerable power over the government managers of the 30% of U.S. forest under government control. As the cheapest and largest producers they create the economic environment for the private but non-industrial users of the remaining 50% percent of U.S. forest land. The little guys of the industryindependent loggers, small mills, small timber own
erssurvive in the shadow of the U.S. Forest Service/Forest

Industry interlock, aligning with the Industry as suppliers, contractors, or niche player, with considerable pressure to adopt similar practices. This increased exploitation of forests has human as well as environmental costs. Like cash crop agriculture, land is cleared of human, small scale producers and human scale settlement are bought out, driven off, and leave for loss of livelihood. For the men who run the industry, the forests, the mills, and workers become commodities for speculation and paper shufing. The industry's working class lls increasingly specialized and alien ated roles: the typical complement of word processors, clerks, janitors, machine transporters, and tenders, etc. Those few who work in the woods have become stoop labor (the planters) and heavy equipment operators (the harvesters) encased in the airconditioned cabs of great computerized logging machines. The industry has come a long way . In 200 years a bunch
of woodsmen and farmers with axes have evolved into a thor

oughly up-to-date U.S. industry. Cash crop forestry destroys

natural and human balance. It converts nature and human

for the people who lived there. They arc now becoming silent , chemically managed forest factories, whose land like all abused
land, is sooner or later destined for infertility. The great forests contributed to global environmental stability; their loss and degradation threatens global climate and planetary life. owns less than 20% of U.S. forest land (higher in the East and

labor into factors of production. It makes trees into hybridized mutants unable to survive without chemical management. It's

degrading land and water across the U.S., and becoming multi

Though the woods products industry (lumber and paper)

national, undermining the basis of biological existence. Rationalization and globalization also has severe human costs. Human settlement is driven from the woods. Jobs and pay are reduced; remaining workers get more and more specialized, alienated, and dangerous work. Fmally, in a globally statled

South, lower in the West) their power, organization, wealth, and access to capital means they shape forestry and production practice. They control research, marketing, sales, and milling.
They set the standards and control harvesting. Equipment manafacuters design for their needs. Their marketing decisions

market, the wood products industry has to control the regula tory, political and ideological environment; so it also poisons human thought by saturating the media with misleading
claims. And the whole process keeps accelerating as the execuContinued on next page >

Why Monkeywrench?

Forestry, Continued
tives look nervously over their shoulders for takeover by even bigger players who might squeeze out even higher prots. It's not a situation that can long endure. Rationalized, globalized cash crop forestry threatens land, forests, oceans, climate and ultimately biological life. Human survival requires a new model of forestry, with the following goals: It must renew destroyed and threatened forests; and must preserve diversity and natural balance in all forests, thus main taining soils, habitat, and watershed integrity. It must provide wood and paper products necessary for a comfortable human life, manufactured consistent with ecologi
cal values.

It must enrich human life, providing decent human settle

ment, productive work (characterized by democracy, creativity, variety, and thoughtful decision making) and recreational, aesthetic, and cultural opportunities. This new model is best characterized as holistic forestry performed by democratic self-governing groups. Holistic for estry, practiced by some independent woodspeople in the U.S.,

and more generally in parts of Europe, involves selective cutting and replanting, natural pest control, and sensitivity to soils, watershed, and wildlife. The foresters are educated in ecological
forest practice and intimate with their own local environment.

In the new industry mills and production facilities would be

operated by self-governing groups.

We should plan according to the following principles: To convert the big private tracts and similarly run public forests into ecologically coherent areas managed democratically by
foresters/producers.
tats.

To preserve remaining old growth and expand wilderness

areas, providing open corridors for the renewal of wildlife habi

To reforest vulnerable low growth areas previously clear cut

and now abandoned.

Ti m b e r Wa r s
Into the battleground of Northwestern loggers vs. enviromentaiists, our local Earth First! group has tried to bring some class consciousness of the variety prescribed by the Industrial Workersofthe World. The rst step is to blaming
the loggers and millworkers for the destruction of the

To ban monoculture creation, clear-cutting, and pesticide use. To reduce acid rain and eliminate toxic paper mill effluent.

T o reduce the use and waste of wood products, and to recycle

both wood and paper, saving new growth. To support workers and unions seeking decent safe Jobs at
living rates of pay. To support worker and union demands for information on the

planet. The timber companies treat them same way they

treat the forestas objects to exploit for maximum profit. We can't form an alliance by saying "Hey worker, come save

chemical processes they carry out. To insist on the protection of worker's jobs and income in ail forest preservation and wood product campaigns. To support worker groups and seek their involvement in campaigns on forestry and wood products issues.

the trees." We have to come recognize that their working conditions are not separate from or subordinate to the rape of the forest. They are part and parcel of the same thing.
With this mind, it has been suprisingly easy to make contact with timber workers who don't buy the companies"
line. The fact that Earth First!

The environmental movement is seen by many to be

indifferent andsometimescontributing to the impoverishment

of working people.

is number one on the companies hit list doesn't seem to

whose jobs incomes, and lives are insecure, can the environ
goals.

Only by making common cause with the majority of people, mental movement grow sufciently strong to achieve its larger
Bill Resnick, Portland (Oregon) Greens and Solidarity

phase anyone, and we have manged to meet good, intelli gent, and politically astute people working for all three of the big corporations in our area. They have leaked inside Information which has helped us pull off tree-sits, block
ades, etc., without getting caught. But far more important,we have found that conditions among the workers in the woods and mills could means the opening of a whole new front in the timber wars.
Judi Bari

The Forests Fight

Back
Fed up with deforestation ,blocides, atmospheric pollution extinctions and extirpations, the forest of the Northern Appala chians are ghting back. They have joined forces with growing numbers of refugees of industrial society to demand an end to
the destruction of the environment. Here are the sordid facts:

again, all life will rejoin the disrupted dance of evolution. Join the green rebellion. Use all tools to stop the slaughter. No Compromise in the Defense of Evolution! Tell Great North

ern, Champion, and International Raper to Go Clearcut in Hell

From The Glacial Erratic, Journal of New England Earth First!

There is no Old Growth forest remaining in the region; Forests in Maine are being cut down in 31 year rotation cycles; Spruce and Fir are being cut down at a rate three times greater than regrowth Chemical biocides are being sprayed over forests, ponds,
lakes, rivers, the homes of the forest dwellers; salmon have been driven from their homes;

Investing in Poison
Gary Cohen, National Toxics Campaign Fund
Recent events in Eastern Europe are an inspiring reminder of the vitality of democracy in actionthe power of people to regain control of their lives. Yet, while much of the world views the United States as a cradle of democracy, our own traditions of

civic participation falter. The public is disenchanted with

negative campaigning and scandals . Even at the most local level, we often feel that we have little power in our lives. Grassroots toxics activists are the shining exception to this

Wolves, Wolverines, Cougars, Lnyx, Caribou, and Alantic Wild rivers have been damned, severing the lifeline

between the forest and the ocean; Air, land, and water have been befouled;

decline in political participation. Yet in our work we are often

ghting a system that is remarkably undemocratic. Not only does industry want to continue to poison, but the government wants to continue to give them license to do so. Our environmental laws give companies "permits' to

Soils are dying. Soil microbes, mycorrhizal fungi and

nutrients are vanishing;
Clearcuts of thousands of acres have eviscerated the for ests;

disperse dangerous chemicals into our air, water, food, and pounds of toxics chemicals into the environment. 90% of these
chemicals have never been tested for their relation to birth

Roads have scarred the forest's beauty.

communities. In 1987, industry reported emitting 22 billions

WHO PROFITS?
Not the forests; Not the dwellers of the wild;

defects, cancer and long term health problems. A massive

chemical experiment is being conducted on the American people

, against their will. Citizens nationwide will not submit to this "experiment" anymore. Grassroots activists are now ghting to stop incinera tors and toxic dumpsites, force polluting companies to switch to

Not the chronically impoverished human communities of the region. The prots leave the region for the wallets of rich, overprivileged humans who fear and hate the healthy, wild expres sions of four billion years of evolution. T H E F O R E S T S H AV E B E G U N T O F I G H T BACK: They no longer purify the air; They no longer retain water; Evolution has been disrupted. REVOLUTION IS IN THE AIR The forests celebrate the political cataclysms in Central and Eastern Europe. The downfall of tyrants is cause for joy through
out the world.

safer chemicals, get military contractors and bases to allow

public oversight and get supermarkets to stop selling food with cancer-causing pesticides.Investors on Wall Street should be beware! Despite the latest advice from the trade press, invest ments in in polluting industries and waste "management" rms
is a bad investment. Citizens will win a nationwide ban on

incineration over the next few years. Citizens will force the chemical industry to ban some chemicals and phase out danger ous product lines that poison their own workers and the environment. Waste Management, Inc. Browning Ferris Indus tries, Wheelabrator, Rollins, Ogden Martin are companies that
contribute to the continued destruction of communities na

tionwide. Du Font, Dow, Grace Chemical, Union Carbide, BASF

Now is the time to overthrow the ecological tyrants of the forests. The forests have served eviction notice to out-of-region mulitnatlonal corporate land rapers. Go away Great Northern! Back to Virginia, James River! No more corporate cannibalism, Georgia Pacic.
The forest hail the call for the creation of Evolutionary

and Monsanto produce chemicals that contribute to massive amounts of pollution. Du Font alone was responsible for emitting 233 million pounds of deadly chemicals into oi;
communities and the environment in 1987.

Preserves as a short-term transition strategy until we reach maturity in another millennium or so. There was no need for preserves before the forest destroyers arrived. Soon, when the destroyers go extinct, the preserves will not be needed. Once

As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, we need investors on Wall Street to invest "as if the Earth really mat tered". We need to disinvest in companies that are poisoning people and making the Earth an endangered planet. It is time that average citizens unite with the nancial community to steer
us towards a safer world, one that honors the environment and

our communities as much as getting a prot on next quarter's

r e t u r n s .

Green Alternatives: Structures and

Policies
The anti-capitalist, anti-statist, and anti-hierarchical analy sis presented in this handbook yields the following conclusion: Restoring ecological balance requires replacing thecompetitive system
Social Reconstruction to Meet Basic Human Needs

of centralized corporate and state power with a cooperative system of

grassroots political and economic democracy. Genuine, participatory

democracy requires a nonhierarchical and well as classless society in

progressive tax reform, democratization of the investment proc ess, and the redirection public resources from military to socially useful production and distribution. This includes free health care and child care under community control, reduced work time with no loss in pay, and expanded provision of housing,
education, and environmental restoration.

which all forms of hierarchical domination have been eliminated.

The continued functioning of the capitalist economic system

and the international state system is ecologically incompatible

with human survival. The competitive struggle of corporations

and states for profits, growth, and accumulation and for the capacity for militarization and centralized power that comes

with accumulated wealth is destroying the ecology of the

planet.

Therefore, in place of the competitive struggle for prots,

growth, and centralized power, we call for a new cooperative

system of grassroots political and economic democracy so that

people have the democratic power to meet their needs in

harmony with nature. We call for a new, third way modeled after neither the Eastern statism nor Western capitalism. "Green" has become a metaphor throughout the world for
a new ecological society that is neither statist nor capitalist. We

are calling the alternative we seek Green, although we don't pre

sume to speak for all organizations and individuals who call

themselves Green. We are speaking for the coalition of organi

zations in the Earth Day Wall Street Action. We offer the

following ideas for an alternative to the present-day systems ecological insanity in the spirit of provoking reection and discussion in our movement rather than that of presenting a
nished, nal program.
In outline, the alternative we seek involves Green structural

alternatives in order to empower people to carry through Green

policy alternatives.
The Green Structural Alternatives are:

Peace Conversion
With the Cold War winding down, will there be a peace dividend or will the Pentagon nd new excuses for milita rism? If there is a peace dividend, how big will it be? As an initial demand, we should call for cuts in military on the order of 90-95%. A study by the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy by Howard Morland showed that of the $300 billion annual military budget, 96.5% was devoted to mis sions involving foreign intervention and nuclear blackmail. Only 3.5% was for missions devoted to defending U.S. territory. It is therefore very conservative to suggest that 510% of the present military budget, or $15-30 billion a year, is more than enough for a non-nuclear, nonprovocative, home-based defense of U.S. territory from all reasonable
threats.

Grassroots Democracy new political institutions of selfgovernment based on confederations of community assemblies

that cooperate and coordinate with each other through man dated and recallable representation to every level of confedera
tion;

Economic Democracyan economy under the overall di

rection of the grassroots political democracy.

Under a system of participatory political and economic de mocracy, people will have the power to institute Green Policy
Alternatives:

Peace Conversioncuts in m i litary spending on the order

of 90-95%, replacing nuclear and foreign-based military with a

non-provocative, home-based, non-nuclear conventional de

fense, supplemented by nonviolent social defense. Industrial Conversion and Eco-Technologicsreplacl ng

technologies based on toxic nuclear processes and synthetic petrochemicals with technologies based on non-toxic, recy clable, and biodegradable materials, including solar-based re newable energy sources, a non-toxic materials industry, full re
cycling, organic agriculture, and ecological housing and com munity design.

Calling for military cuts on the order of 90-95% should be seen as a rst unilateral step by the U.S. on the road to general and complete global disarmament. We should build and maintain ties with independent peace move ments the world over to advance the goal of disarmament.
Nonviolent forms of social defense should also be devel-

COUTION STATEMENTS
Member groups of the Earth Day Wall Street Action coalition are united by some commonly held principles, as detailed in the ^'Political Agreements ''at the beginn ing of the handbook. Beyond those common agreements, members of the Coalition have many ideason reasons for the action, future strategies, and so forth. In order to learn from each other's ideas we present several group
statements in this section.

Poison for

P r o t ( We Don't Matter)
Theresa Freeman, Vermon-

ters Organized for Cleanup Cathy Hinds, National Tox ics Campaign
Homeowners Association

some own medicinal drug companies while manufacturing pesticides. Today many polluters are impossible to track and identify because they are shielded with interlocking boards of directors, and front companies. Leveraged buyouts haveconsolidated industry into a few hands. A few large cor porations are controlling our industry,
our work and our food. Like stock ex

agement and regulation of chemical

manufacture, their use, and their dis

Joann Hale, Love Canal Catherine Garula, Relocation

changes around the world. Wall Street is the symbol of complicity of banks, insur ance companies, manufacturers and all governments in the destruction of our
communities and our earth.

posal, has been grossly inadequate. 2. Lawsuits that compensate vic tims for damage do NOT restore our earth nor do they stop ongoing pollu
tion.

Assistance and Information Net work

3. Industry considers "clean up* in

terms of the cost-effectiveness to their

We declare that our world no longer

The grassroots toxic waste victims of this county, who have suffered per sonal health loss, property loss, and ,
who, have dedicated to themselves to

needs synthetic chemicals and we declare that the companies that make these
chemical to be criminals in our midst.
We also declare that the banks and share

company , rather than clean up in

terms of the earth.

4. Pollution is made "acceptable"

with risk assessment to human life, and

the preservation of our planet are tak ing direct action to expose the Ameri can economy as being one that consid ers prots before human life and the
earth.

holders of these companies are guilty of murder by supplying funds to corpora

tions that kill our children, our workforce,
and that befoul our sacred earth.

though some people die from chemical exposure, this is acceptable for the "cost of doing business."
5. The industries' answer to their

We denounce the current pratice of "prots before people."

W e w i l l c o n v e n e i n N e w Yo r k o n

problems is to lobby for "acceptable"

levels of their chemicals in our envi

We intend to point out that specu lation with paper money has ruined
thousands of human lives because our

economy depends on leveraged buy outs, bailouts, phoney stock prices, and
other unreal economic indicators. This

April 22. We will distribute educational literature naming targets, showing prot rates, and point ngers to real life stories
of devastation; both personal and the en

ronment. This prevents them taking re sponsibility for their product and plays out the concept "Dilution is the solu tion to pollution"
6. Cost of any clean up is deduct

phoney "business" has resulted in an economy that is drivenby prot, growth, exploitation,and destruction of our
natural world.

vironment. On Monday, April 23, we will march, sing, have banners and placards,

ible as a business expense, thereby low ering any taxes paid to the government,
and in fact are a bonus to the cost of pro ducing nuclear waste.
HELP BRINGTHEDAWN

do street theatre, and some will block the

Wall Street houses the money changers (banks), insurance companies, stock brokers, and corporate headquar ters, Companies buy and sell stocks
that are unrelated to theirbusinessmak-

entrance to the New YorkStock Exchange. Those doingsoarecommitted to standing upfor the principle of "Human Life Before
Prots"

OFANEW

D AY. H E L P P O I N T O U T W H AT H A S
H A P P E N E D T O T H E E A R T H A N D W H Y. H E L P M A K E A D AY T H AT B E G I N S TO

We will educate on the following

ing it difcult to identify a toxic pol luter or dumper. Companies own toxic waste dumps as well as food stores.

axioms proven to be true through our direct experience: 1. It is cheaper for the industry to pay nes and to continue to pollute than to comply with environmental laws. Man

RESPECT ALL LIFE, AND OUR EARTH, A S W E N E V E R H AV E B E F O R E . D E r CURE A NEW BEGINNING ON APRIL 23, 1990.

Practicing Nonviolence
from the War Reslsters League
Handbook for Nonviolent Action Power itself is not derived through violence, though in governmental form it usually is violent in nature. Governmental power is often maintained through oppres sion and the tacit compliance of the major ity of the governed. Any signicant with drawal of that compliance will restrict or dissolve governmental control. Apathy in the face of injustice Is a form of violence. Struggle and conict are often necessary to
correct Injustice.

oppressive roles.

for guidance. Most of us have been

Practice is a keyword in understand ing nonviolence. A nonviolent approach assumes that people take active roles,
making choices and commitments and building on their experience, it also

presents a constant challenge;to weave together the diversity of individual expe riences into an ever changing vision.
There Is no xed, static "denition" of
nonviolence.

taught that expressing anger espe cially provokes disapproval, invalida tion and physical attack, or else will hurt others and make us suffer guilt. This conditioning serves to bothmake us repress our own anger and also re spond repressively to each other's
a n g e r.

Nonviolence is active.. Although to some the word nonviolence implies pas sivity, nonviolence is actually a form of resistance. It analyzes the sources of
Institutional violence and Intervenes on

To make room for a healthy ex pression of and response to this an ger, it helps to create a general atti tude of respect and support. Verbal violence Is the antithesis of respect
and communication. When this is

Our struggle is not easy, and wc must not think of nonviolence as a "safe" way to ght oppression. The strength of nonvi olence comes from our willingness to take personal risk without threatening other
people.

aphllosophical and political level through direct and persistent actions Getting rid of the patterns of vio lence that societal conditioning has placed In us Is not always a polite process; It involves releasing despair, anger, and
other emotions that haven't been allowed

happening, one should pause and consider their feelings and objectives. Clearing the air is especially impor tant when people are feeling threat ened or defensive; developing a sense of safety and acceptance of our anger with each other helps us concentrate all our emotional energies towards
constructive, effective action. T h e Wa r R e s i s t e r s L e a g u e

It is essential that we separate the indi vidual from the role she/he plays. The "enemy" Is the system that casts people in

to surface before. The myth that emotlons are destructive and unreliable pre vents us from trusting our own experi ence and forces us to rely on rigid formu las and people we perceive as authorities

llandbookfcovertng the history, philoso phy and practice of nonviolence, is avail' able from the coalition for $2. See order form on inside back cover.

To w a r d A n Ecological Solutiqn
Principles of the New England Green Alliance Social Ecology The Greens seek to uproot the the so cial roots of social and ecological destruc
tion. The misuse and abuse of nature stems

participatory democracy based on popu lar control of policy-making at all levels.

We call for a confederal structure of coor

compromised by the, military-Indus trial compiex and self-serving politi

cians that dominate both the Demo

dination from below based on town meet

cratic and Republican parties. The

Greens are an alternative that is con

ings and neighborhood assemblies, with mandated and recallable representatives to legislative and administrative bodies at every level of confederation.
Cooperative Economy
The Greens want to create a new

trolled by the grassroots membership and committed to a new politics that combines public education, electoral campaigns, and nonviolent direct
action.

directly from the misuse and abuseofpeople.

We therefore seek to end all forms of hier-

archal dominationracism, sexism class

exploitation, bureaucratic manipulation, repressive forms of child rearing, and so forth. We want to reharmonlze society with nature through a new harmonization
of human with humana nonhierarchal

economic system, a third way that Is neither Western capitalism nor Eastern statism. The Green call for a cooperative, ecological, and democratic economy
based on a mix of individual/household

International Solidarity

In ghting for the protection of life and the freedom of humanity, the
Greens' efforts are directed toward

self-employment, cooperatives, and de centralized public ownership of basic In dustries and servicesa moral economy
that meets the economic and social needs

society of self-governing communities that are humanly scaled, ecologically sustain able, and cooperatively confederated. Grassroots Democracy
The Greens want to restructure and

of all people in harmony with nature. Independent Politics The peace, justice, and environ mental movements need their own po
litical vehicle, an alternative that is not

the well-belngof every individual and every society in the world. We sup port movements for human rights, democracy,, social justice, ecological balance, self-determination, and peace
In every countryEast bloc. West

Bloc, Third Worldwithout regard

for national boundaries and in com

decentralize our political system into a

N .

plete independence from the politi cal-military alliances of the cold war.

fundamental areas of their lives. The

not only of our socialism, but also of our

s t r a t e g y.

SoCIAUSM As Radical Democracy

Excerpts from the principles of the Socialist Party, USA
The Socialist Party strives to estab lish a radical democracy that places people's lives under their control a
classless, non-racist, feminist, socialist

capitalist system forces workers to sell

their abilities and skills to the few who

own the workplaces, prot from these

workers' labor, and use the government to

maintain their privileged position. Under Communist states, decisions are made by Communist Party ofcials, the bureauc racy and the military. The inevitable product of each system is a class society with gross inequality of privileges, a drain ing of the productive wealth and goods of the society into military purposes, envi ronmental pollution, and war in which workers are compelled to ght other
workers.

society in which people cooperate at work, at home, and in the community. Socialism is not mere government ownership, a welfare state, or a repres sive bureaucracy. Socialism is a new
social and economic order in which

People across the world need to cast off the systems which oppress them, and build a new world t for all humanity.
Democratic revolutions are needed to dis

workers and consumers control pro duction and community residents con trol their neigiiborhoods, homes and schools. The production of society is used for the benet of all humanity, not for the private prot of a few. Socialism produces a constantly renewed future by not plundering the resources of the
earth.

Under capitalist and "Communist" states, people have little control over

solve the power now exercised by the few to control great wealth and government. By revolution we mean a radical and fun damental change in the structure and quality of economic political change in the structure and quality of economic, political, and personal relations. The build ing of socialism requires widespread understanding and participation, and will not be achieved by the elite working "on behalf of the people. Radical democracy is the cornerstone

No oppressed group has ever been liberated except by it's own organized ef forts to overthrow it's oppressors. A society based on radical democracy, with power exercised through people organi zations, requires a social revolution from below. People's organizations cannot be created by legislation, nor can they spring into being only on the eve of a revolu tion. They can only grow in the course of popular struggles, especially those of women, labor, and minority groups. The Socialist Party works to create these or ganizations democratically. The process of struggle profoundly shapes the ends achieved. Our tactics in the struggle for radical democratic change reect our ultimate goal of a society founded on principles of egalitarian, nonexploitative and non-violent relations between all peoples. To be free we must create new patterns for our lives and live in new ways in the midst of a society that does not under
stand and is often hostile to new, better,
modes of life. Our aim is the creation of

a new social order, a society in which the commanding the value is the innite preciousness of every man, woman, and
child.

T h e Ve r m o n t All Species Project

The notion that humans can ex

our lifestyles to ensure the continuance of the life processes we depend upon. It builds hope and new perspective for chil dren and theircommunities, where many
have a fatalistic view of the future. With

ploit the Earth and its creatures at the expense of entire ecosystems and spe cies is clearly outdated. As each day brings us more information about the
rate of destruction, it is essential that we

nd ways to deal with information that can otherwise leave one feeling disempowered and apathetic. There is a great need to make the time and space within
our lives, and In the schools where the seeds of our future are nurtured, to

out realistic hope we will see more selfdestructive behavior and short-sighted planning. As we stand up for our rights regard less of gender, sexual preference, race or culture, so too must we stand up for the inherent rightsof all species: lynx, moun tain goat, tree, y. All have an equal right to live on the Earth in their ways, in their
homes. It is time we humans included

build new ways of thinking and acting. We must challenge and Inspire our
selves and our children to nd answers

to the question, "How can we move our society toward harmony with Nature and the planet Earth, our home?" The All Species Project was created

to approach serious issues in creative ways, usingmulti-disiplinaryapproaches in edu cational settings to explore the essential values of respect for the Earth. Linking mask making, pageantry, fascination with other species, and environmental educa tion, the All Species Project weaves to gether a community celebration empdweringus to make the neccesary changes in

the voices and needs of other species in our decision-making processes. To represent other living species and speak in their behalf is a powerful means ofchangingourown patterns of domina tion. Doing so in the halls of govern
ment, in our own celebrations, and in

the streets, we help create the seeds of a new world of peace, justice, and unity with the spirit of all of creation.

SOME GREEN PERSPECTIVES

The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology
by Ynestra King All human beings arc natural beings. That may seem like an obvi ous fact, yet we live in a culture that is founded on the repudiation and
domination of nature. This has a

other, through the oppressions of class, privilege, sexuality and race. The increasing militarization
of the world has intensied this

only those technologies based on ecological principals, as theonly prac

tical solution for the continuation of life on earth.

special signicance for women be cause in patriarchal thought, women

are believed to be closer to nature

than men. This gives women a par ticular stake in ending the domina tion of naturein healing the aliena
tion between human and non-hu-

man nature. This is also the ultimate

goal of the ecology movement, but the ecology movement is not neces sarily feminist. For the most part, ecologists,
with their concern for non-human

struggle. Women and children make up 80% of the war refugees. Land they are left with is often burned and scarred in such a way as to prevent cultivation for many years after battle, so that starvation and hardship fol low long after the ghting has stopped. And here, too, women often mothers and farmersrespond to necessity. Theybecometheguardi
ans of the earth in an effort to eke out

a small living on the land to feed

themselves and their families.

The special message of ecofeminism is that when women suffer

nature, have yet to understand that they have a particular stake in ending the domination of women. They do
not understand that a central reasons

through both social domination and

the domination of nature, most of

Vision and politics are joined as an eco-feminist politic and culture begin to emerge. Eco-feminists are taking direct action to effect changes that are immediate and personal as well as long-term and structural. Direct actions include learning holis tic health and alternate ecological technologies, living in communities that explore old and new forms of spirituality which celebrate all life as diverse expressions of nature, consid ering the ecological consequences of our lifestyles and habits, and partici pating in creative public forms of resistance, including non-violentcivil
disobedience.

for woman's oppression is her asso ciation with the despised nature they
are so concerned about. The hatred of women and the hatred of nature are

the life on this planet suffers and is threatened as well. It is signicant that feminism and ecology as social movements have emerged now, as
nature's revolt against domination

intimately connected and mutually reinforcing. Ecology requires a femi nist perspective. Withoutathorough feminist analysis of social domina
tion that reveals the interconnected

plays itself out in human history and

in non-human nature at the same

Both feminism and ecology embody the revolt of nature against human domination. They demand that we rethink the relationship be tween humanity and the rest of na ture, including our natural, embod
ied selves. In eco-feminism, nature is

time. As we face slow environmental

roots of misogyny and hatred of na ture, ecology remains an abstraction: it is incomplete. If male ecological scientists and social ecologists fail to deal with misogyny, the deepest mani festation of nature hating in their own lives, they are not living the eco logical lives or creating the ecological society they claim. Few peoples of the earth have
not had their lives touched and

poisoning and the resulting environ mental simplication, or the possible unleashing of our nuclear arsenals, we can hope that that the prospect of extinction of life on this planet will provide a universal Impetus to social change. Eco-feminism supports Uto pian visions of harmonious, diverse, decentralized communities, using

the center category of analysis. An analysis of the interrelated domina tions of naturepysche and sexual ity, human oppression, and nonhuman nature and the historic

position in relation to those forms of domination is the starting point of eco-feminist theory. We share with cultural feminism the necessity of a politics with heart and a beloved
community, recognizingourconnect i o n w i t h e a c h o t h e r, a n d n o n - h u man nature. Socialist feminism has

given us a powerful critical perspec

tive with which to understand and

changed to some degree by the tech nology of industrialization. Eco-feminism as a social movement resists this

social simplication through support ing the rich diversity of women the world over, and seeking a oneness in that diversity. Politically, eco-feminism opposes the ways that differ ences can separate women from each

transform history. Separately, they perpetuate the dualism of "mind" and "nature*. Together they make pos sible a new ecological relationship be
tween nature and culture, in which

mind and nature, heart and reason, join forces to transform the systems
of domination, internal and external,
that threaten the existence of life on earth.

The

Power

to

Destroy ! T he Power Create !

by Murray Bookchin The foilowingexcerpts from "The Power to Create! The Power to Destroy!" were written by Murray Bookchin for Ecology Action East in 1969. The fol lowing ideas and arguments, presented in a revised version of the original piece, were presented here for the rst time and
have become central to the radical ecol

to

tion goes back when men began to dominate and exploit in the patriar chal family. From that point onward, human beings were increasingly re garded as mere means of production and labor, as objects to be used in stead of subjects to be respected. Nature too became increasingly re garded as a mere resource, an object, a raw material to be exploited as ruth lessly as slaves on a plantation and
women in the home.

aid. The changes we seek must en compass not only political institu
tions and economic relations, but con

sciousness, life style, and our inter pretation of the meaning of life.

What is in balance, here, is the

age-old spirit and systems of domina tion and repression that have not only pitted human against human, but humanity against nature. The conict between humanity and na
ture is an extension of the conict between human and human. Unless

ogy movement in the decades since then. The power of this society to de stroy has reached a scale unprece

We need change far-reach ing enough that all traditional con ceptions of freedom must be ex panded beyond all earlier horizons. No longer is it enough to speak of new techniques for conserving and fostering the natural environment.
We must deal with earth commun

the ecology movement encompasses the problem of domination in all it's aspects, it will contirbute nothing towards eliminating the root causes of the ecological crisis of our time. If the ecology movement stops with merely reforms in pollution and con
servation control"With mere envirom-

dented in the history of humanity

and this power is being used, almost systematically, to produce havocupon

the entire world of life.

If this past generation has wit nessed a despoliation of the planet that exceeds all the damage inicted by earlier generations, we have rea son to believe that a time may soon
arrive when the destruction of the

environment becomes irreversible,

possibly beyond the repair of human ingenuity and technology. For this
reason, we must look at the roots of

the ecological crisis with ruthless honesty. Time isrunningout and the remaining decades of the twentieth century may well be a period of
monumental decision which will determine whether we can still re

ally, as a human collectivity, without the tramels of self-interest, prot, competition, and property that have distorted humanity vision of life and nature since the breakup of tribal society. Wemusteliminatenotonly the hierarchy produced by our mar ket-oriented society, but hierarchy as such; not only the the patriarchal family, but all modes of gender and parental domination; not only the classes produced by our corporate society., but all social classes and elites. Humanity must come into possession of itself, individually and collectively, so that all human beings can attain control of their everyday
lives. Our cities must be decentral ized into communities, or ecocom-

entalism-without dealing fundamen tally with the need for an expanded conceptof social change, itwill merely serve as a safety valve for the existing system of natural and human domi
nation.

W h y, a s a

SociausTjI'm

Joining the Green

P a r t y
by Rudolph Bahro The struggle for a just distribu
tion within the rich countries needs

munities, scaled to human dimen

store the balance between humanity

and nature. If we are to nd the roots of

the present ecological crisis, we must turn not to technology, demograph ics, growth, and a diseased myth of
"afuence* alone; we must turn to

sions and tailored to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem in which they are located. Our technologies must be readapted and advanced into technologies that artfully make use of local energy sources and materials, with no pollution of the environ
ment. We must recover a new sense

not be abandoned, but it must be

given a new context. This does not mean giving ourselves a green camouge simply because the pros pects for anything else arenotgood-it means being green. I am radically ecological in my views. Each percent in production is too much, since each

the underlying institutional, moral, and spiritual changes in human socicty that produced hierarchy and dominationnot only modern in
dustrial, feudal, and ancient socie

of our needs needs that foster a

percent additional consumption of

nite and irreplaceable natural re sources is an injury to the rest of humanity, as well as to our own chil dren and grandchildren. And you can nolongersay'Fatherforgivethem, for they not what they do." All those who call the Greens a single issue affects everything. To take only the
following points.

healthful life and express our indi vidual proclivities, not "needs" dic tated to us by the mass media. We
must restore the human scale in our environment and our social rela

ties, nor in class societies generally, but at the very dawn of civilization when notionsof hierarchy and domi nation began to emerge. The basic conception that hu manity must dominate and exploit
nature stems from the domination of

tions, replacing "representative" by direct personal relationsindeed,

conventional statecraft by participa

movement fail to see the wood for the

trees. What the Greens are proposing

man by man. Indeed, this concep

tory politicsin the management of society. Finally, all modes of domi nationpersonal or socialmust be replaced by cooperation and mutual

^The ecology crisis is insoluble without overcoming the confronta-

tion between the Eastern and West

ern blocs, which drive on the arms

The Green Alternative

Carl Boggs
ity must be brought into play if we are to go beyond the present economic order. I'he ecology crisis will force the end of capitalism. But we must
contribute more to this than abstract

race and economic growth on both sides, and is thus doubly suicidal. The ecology crisis is insoluble
without a new world economic order on the North-South axis. We can see

how in our response to our exploita

tive and culture-destroying encroach
ments a second bloc confrontation is

labor power, technology, and natural resources with little regard for human consequences , social planning or
cultural values.

The arms race, homelessness,

arising and threatens to be at least as murderous as the rst, if In other

forms.

The ecology crisis is insoluble without social justice in the Industri ally developed countries. And this cannot mean anything but an adjust
ment in favorof those who have abad

ideas of expropriation. Cities today are a microcosm of the global ecological crisis. In Los Angeles:A IlistoryoftheFuture, his pow erful critique of the sprawling urban

belt that Is home to 11 million people,

Paul Glover wrote that" our region today is dependent, so uninhabitable
yet so inhabited that it must trans
form or die. Sooner or later it must

deal In what is still acapitalist society.

After all, it isn't the workers who drive

civic violence, the spread of chronic illnesses, transportation gridlocks, pollution, the decay of inner cities-all of this reects the systemic and global nature of our predicament. Ecologi cal destruction does not exist apart from the general crisis. We can't understand, let alone solve, any so cial problem withoutcomingtogrips with a militarized economy that
devours enormous human and natu

the motor of this economic lunacy.

Only if we are clear about this do we

generate it's own food, fuel, water,

wood, and ores. It must use these at

have have a prospect of opposing the

restraint policies pursued by the monopolies and the power apparatus with a restraint policy of our own, a

the same rate it provides them." The many articles in The Earth Day Wall
Street Action Handbook echo the awful truth of Glover's claim; our air is un-

ral resources daily. In the LA. area, for example, about forty percent of the population owes it's living to the war machine. The reality is that little can be accomplished without a broad
strategy of economic conversion

policy in the interest of the great ma

jority, as is so greatly needed.
Because of this, moreover, the

ecology crisis is insoluble without the

advance of human emancipation ,

without rising here and now above

the compensatory needs forconsumption, prestige, and power, so that

breathable, our water undrinkable, our soil and food poisoned, our workplaces hazardous, our streets and freeways congested beyond tolerance. We are living in an environmental nightmare that, if unchecked, will render the next decade and beyond a time of even greater everyday ordeal,
ill health, emotional stress, chaos and
even death.

uniting diverse local groups that pre

fer social investment to military

spending. $274 million is spent on a single airplane (the Stealth bomber) but emergency health-care services have been gutted. We spend billions on freeways and more billions yet to
subsidize an unworkable automobile

despite the conditions still prevailing

we need to seek a new, alternative

What can be done? Can this

way of life for all. In conclusion the ecology cri

sis is insolubleand this follows from

already advanced cyclc of stagnation and decay be reversed? Can a megapolis be ecologically transformed
into a sane habitat for millions of

of conversion that brings together the most diverse alternarive attempts

in thinking and living, a moment that attains a degree of cohesion and
agreement such as was reached in the

everything abovewithout a moment

people? Are political strategies and methods available for the urgent task
at hand?

economy, yet we have no public trans portation system worthy of the name. The governing elites cry for expanded law enforcement and prisons but do precious little to secure jobs for the unemployed. "Growth* in this sense is nothing but an illusion, what Ivan
lllich calls the "modernization of

We need to recognize, rstly,

that the tasklike the crisis itselfis

poverty." A power structure that expresses so little respect for human needs can hardly be sensitive to the
natural habitateven as the crisis veers out of control. When the bio

past only through the claims of reli gion. Today, however, more rational

^ global one,. All the environmental

problems are deeply intertwined, the product of an irrational social systemiwe can't separate pollution from blight, toxic wastes from high
cancer rates, poverty from urban violence, militarism from the decline

sphere Is sick, the political order must

also be sick.

A global crisis dictates the need for comprehensive solutionsin other words, an ecological politics

of social services. Indeed, the eco logical crisis reects a larger crisis that is at once economic, political, inter
n a t i o n a l , a n d e v e n c u l t u r a l . We a r e

that is holistic in strategy and spirit.

If our problems are multiple and interrelated, then change must touch all areas of our life: work, consump tion, health care, politics, culture, and yes, foreign policy. We must go be yond piecemeal reforms (recycling, tree-planting, pollution controls), necessary as these reforms must be.

mired in a pattern of development that values prots over social needs, "growth" and expansion over a
humane and livable environment.

The result is a system that mobilizes

An ecological politics makes obsolete

the mainstream fascination with tech

nological xes, cosmetic designs, and inuence-peddling within the Demo cratic and Republican parties. The need today is for renewed political vision grounded in a merger of the
Jeffersonlan democratic tradition and

cal sanity but also dramatic changes inconsciousness, lifestyles, work, and consumptionthat is, a new language and strategy of change which sur passes the conventional
modelsrliberal reformism, social-

principles the Left was pretty much agreed. The Rightwas made upof those
who either w!re satisfied with the

status quo (conservatives) or those

who wanted it to become even more

democracy, communism. Ecological crisis has given has given rise to a

crisis that subverts old-fashioned for
mulas. Since the West German Greens

populist traditions, economic struggles, and a modern ecological

radicalism. The dominant institu tions must be re-examined and trans formed if we are to survive.

inegalitarian (reactionaries). In the name of Authority, the Right resisted change, and inthenameofTradition, it also logically enough, opposed what
had become the cultural motor of

madetheir dramatic breakthrough in

1983, Green movements and parties
have mushroomed In Western Eu

change: that willingness, common

alike to Bentham and Marx, Jefferson

Grassroots democracy signi

es a collective revitalization of citi

zenship. A huge urban behemoth like L.A., which alienates us not only
from nature but from the seats of

power, will eventually be broken

d o w n i n t o s m a l l e r, m o r e c o h e s i v e

units where people can actively shape

their lives and restore a more direct

relationship with the environment. Power will have to be dispersed to the

local communities in the form of as

rope, the Third World, and even East ern Europe. The Greens have entered national legislatures In 12 countries. In the U.S. Green politics began later but has grown rapidly in the past year alone: there are now nearly 250 local chapters around the country. A Green-style response to the global crisis seems Inevitable, given the severity of the crisis and the ab
sence of solutions within the two-

arid Kropotkin, to follow scientic inquiry wherever it led and to reshape institutions accordingly. Those of the Right thought in terms of an "organic* society, in which society is
the end and the citizen the means.

They justied inequalities of income and privilege by alleging intrinsic inequalities of individuals, both as to
abilities and human worth.

This great dividing line has be come Increasingly nebulous with the
rise of Nazism and Stalinism, both of

semblies in the neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and hospitals where real popular input is feasible. Democracy of this sort is the sine qua non of ecological (and social) bal
ance.

party system. What cannot be fore seen, however, is both the pace and breadth of this responsewhich in
the end will determine whether we

will have a livable planet.

(from the LA. Weekly)

which combine Left and Right ele ments in a bewildering way. Or, put, differently, both the old Right and
the old Left have almost ceased to

exist as historical realities, and their

elements have been recombined in

Local empowerment suggests an entirely new vocabulary of poli

tics, a shift in discourse where the

elite no longer have a stranglehold over debate. If the global crisis de

mands holistic solutions, then we
must be able to confront the issues

For

New

Left

the dominant modern tendency: an inegalitarian and organic society in

which the citizen is the means, not an

B a s e d O n Va l u e s
By Dwight MacDonald, from
The Root is Man, 19S3

end, and whose rulers are antitradi-

head-on, with a sense of urgency, so that homes can be provided for the
homeless, health care for the sick, education forthedisenfranchised, and

a livable, pleasant environment for everyone. We need free andopen dis

cussion around whether and how to

Let me try to dene the 17891928 "Left" and "Right." The Left comprised those who favored a change in social institu
tions which would make the distribu

tional and scientically minded. Change is accepted in principle indeed, the unpleasant aspects of the present are justied precisely as the price that must be paid to insure a
desirable future....The whole idea of

replace tooutmodedprioritiesof con tinuous material expansion, prots and military weaponry with new human-centered prioritiesecologi cal balance, social equality, full em ployment, popular initiate.
Does this seem far-fetched,

tion of income more equal (or com pletely equal) and would reduce class privileges (or do away with classes al together). The central concept was the validity of the scientic method;
the central moral concept was the

historical process, which a century ago was the badge of the Left, has become the most persuasive appeal of the apologist for the status quo. In this Left-Right hybrid, the notion of progress is central. A more accurate term inology might therefore be to reserve the term 'Right* for such
old-fashioned conservatives as Her
bert Hoover and Winston Churchill

Utopian? Perhaps so, in the milieu of the conservative 1980s. Yet precisely such a shift in discourse has begun to
dent the armor of inherited ideolo

dignity of Man and the individual's right to liberty and a full personal de

velopment. S^ietywas therefore con

ceived as means to an end: the happi

ness of the individual. There were

and to drop the term "Left* entirely, replacing it with two words:*Progressive'' and "RadlcaL* By "Progressive* would be un
derstood those who see the Present as

gies, with the gradual spread of new social movements and Green politics over the past decade. "Green* sym bolizes not only a recovery of ecologi

important differences in method (

such as reform v. revolution, liberal

an episode on the road to a better

Future; those who think more in terras

ism v. class struggle) but on the above

of historical process than moral val-

ues; those who believe that the main trouble in the world

is partly a lack of scientic knowledge and partly the fail ure to apply to human affairs such knowledge as we do have; those who, above all, regard the increase of man's mastery over nature as good in itself and sees it's use for bad ends, such as atomic bombs, as a perversion. This

Suggested
I. The Greens

Bahio, Rudolf. Building the Green Movement. Philadelphia:

New Society Publishers, 1986. Boggs, Carl, Social Movements and Political Power. Philadel

denition, I think, covers fairly well the great bulkof what

is still called the Left, from the Communists ("Stalinists") through reformist groups like our own New Dealers, the British Laborites, and the European Socialists to small revolutionary groups like the Trotskyists. "Radical" would apply to the as yet few individu

phia: Temple University Press, 1986. Bookchin, Murray. Remaking Society: Pathways To A Green
Future. Boston; South End Press, 1990. Hawkins, Howard, 'The Potential of the Green Movement,"

New Politics No. 2 (Summer 1988), pp. 85-105. Hiilsberg, Werner. The German Greens. New York: Verso, 1988.
Tokar, Brian. The Green Alternative. San Pedro, California: R & E Miles, 1987.

alsmostly anarchists, conscientiousobjectors, and rene gade Marxists Hke myselfwho reject the concept of
Progress, who judge things by their present meaning and effect, who think the ability of science to guide us in
human affairs has been overrated and who therefore

'Towards A New Politics: A Statement Of Principles of the Vermont And New Hampsiilre Greens," Our Generation Vol.
20, No.l.

redress the balance by emphasizing the cthical aspect of politics. They, or rather we, think it is an open question whether the increase of man mastery over nature is good
or bad in it's actual effect on human life to date, and favor

n. Ecology and Socicty Benton, Ted. "Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological Critique and Reconstruction," New I^ft Review, #178 (No
vember/December), 1989.

adjusting technology to man, even If It meansas maybe the casea technological regression, rather than adjust
ing man to technology...we feel that the rmest ground from which to struggle for that human liberation which

Berg, Peter, ed. Relnhabitinga Separate Country. San Francisco:

Planet Drum Books, 1978

Bookciiin, Murray. "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" In

Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986 (1st Edition, 1971).

was the goal of the old Left is the ground not of history but
of those non-historical values (truth, justice, love, etc.)

Bookchin, Murray. "Tliinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Ap

proach/' Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1987. Bookchin, Murray. Toward An Ecological Sodetv. MontrealBuffalo: Black Rose Books, 1980, Press, 1989.

which Marx has made unfashionable among socialists.

The Progressive makes history the center of his ide

ology. The Radical puts Man there....The Progressive thinks in collective terms (the interests of Society or the
Working Class); the Radical stresses the individual con science and sensibility. The Progressive starts from what is actually happening; the Radical starts off from what he

Bradford, George. How Deep Is Deep Frologv? Times Change

Cronon, William, Chani^es in the I.and. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1983

Davis, Donald Edward, F>co-Philosophy: A Field Guide To The

Literature. San Pedro: R&E Miles, 1989. Foreman, Dave. Fxo-Defense: A Field GuldeToMonkev Wrench ing. Tucson: Earth First! Books, 1985. (Summer) 1988.

wants to happen....he is quite stubborn about following

what "ought to be' rather than "what is."

Luke, Timothy. "The Dreams of Deep Ecology," Telos, No 76

Luke, Timothy and White, Stephen K. "Critical Theory, The Informational Revolution, and An Ecological Path To Moder

f BREAKinCi OolWM
THE

Vop povjfeR, / y

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Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press,

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Ryle, Martin. Fxrologv and Socialism. London: Radius, 1988.

Singh, Narindar. Economics and The Crisis of Ecology. Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1976. Tokar, Brian, "Marketing the EnyiroTiment,"Z Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 2 and 4, February-April 1990

Weston, Jack, "For An Ecological Politics Of Hope," Monthly Review, Vol. 41, No. 9 (February, 1990), pp. 1-11.
Worster, Donald. Nature's Economy. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977
III. Feminism

Benjamin, lessica. Bonds of I^ove. New York: Pantheon, 1988 Biehl, Janet, "On Feminism and The Retreat From Reason," New Politics, Vol H, No 4 (Winter 1990), pp. 180-190.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Knopf, 1953. Grifn, Susan. Women And Nature. San Francisco: Harper &
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Logic To Eco-Logic/' Remaking The Earth: The Promise Of

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hooks, bell. From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press,

Jordanova, L.J. "Natural Facts: A Historical Perspective on Science and Sexuality" in C. MacCormack and M. Stralhern,

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V I . Yo u t h a n d S t u d e n t s

Bookchin, Murray. "The May-June Events in France/' PostScarcity Anarchism. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986.

eds.. Nature. Culture and Gender. Cambridge University

Press, 1980

King, Ynestra and Adricnne Harris, eds. Rocking The Ship Of

State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics. Westview Press. 1989.

Katsiacas, George. "May Day in West Berlin" and "Central Europe's Autonomen," Z Magazine, October and November,
1988.

Lorde, Audre. "Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic As Pov^er," inSister Outsider. Trumansburg, New York: Crossing Press, 1984 Merchant, Carolyn. The Death OfNature;Womon. Ecologvand the Scientic Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. Morgan, Robin. Sisterhood is Powerful. New York: Random House, 1970. Starhawk. Truth or Dare. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987
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Katsiacas, George, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global

Analysis of 1968. Boston; South End Press, 1987. Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets; from Port Huron to
t h e S i e g e o f C h i c a g o . N e w Yo r k ; S i m o n a n d S c h u s t e r, 1 9 8 7 .

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Acuna, Roberto. Occupied America; A History of Chicanos. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Allen, Robert L. Black Awakening in Capitalist Ameri^. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Allen, Pamela and Robert L Reluctant Reformers; Racism and Social Reform Movementsin theU.S. Wash., D.C.: Howard U. Press, 1983. Barrera, Mario, Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality. Nortrc Dame: Nortre Dame Press, 1979.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. New York: Random House, 1973. Schnapp, Alain, and Werre Vidal-Naquet. The French Student Uprising. November 1968-lune 1968: an Analytical Record.
Maria Jolas, trans. Boston; Beacon Press, 1971. New York: Putnam, 1968.
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Seale, Patrick. Red Flag/Black Flag: French Revolution. 1968.

Detroit: Black and Red, 1983.
VII. Anarchism.

Blauner, Robert. Racial Oppression in America. New York:

Harper &Row, 1972. Boggs. lames. Racism and thcQassStrug^ie. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970. Brown, Dee Alexander. Burv Mv Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1971.

Bookchin, Murray. The Spanish Anarchists; The Heroic Years 1868- 1936. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Clark, John. The Anarchist Moment. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1984.

Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret War

Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Boston: South End Press, 1988. Greenberg, Stanley B.Raceand Stateand Capitalist Development. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Perry, Bruce, ed., Malcolm X: The l^st Speeches. New York: Pathnder, 1989. James, C.L.R. The Black lacobins. New York: Vintage Books,
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treal: Black Rose Books, 1974. Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other F.ssavs. F^savs. New York: Free Life Editions, 1977.

Dolgoff, Sam, ed. The Anarchist Collectives; Workers SelfManagement In the Spanish Revolution 1936 - 1939. Mon

Goodman, Paul. ""Ihe Black Flag of Anarchy." The Political Joll, James. The Anarchists. Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard UrUversity Press, 1980.

Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid, Montreal; Black Rose Books,

1989.

Miller, David. Anarchism. London; Melbourne; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1984.

Johanscn, Bruce and Maestres, Roberto. Wasi-Chu: The Con

Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History of Ubertarian Ideas

and Movements. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1962. VIII. Political Economy

tinuing Indian Wars. New York; Monthly Review Press, 1979.

Reich, Michael. Racial Inequality; A Political Economic Analy sis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Wellman, David T. Portraits of White Racism. New York; Cambridge University Press, 1977.

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West, Cornell. Prophesy Deliverance! Philadelphia: Westmin

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Capitalist System: A Radical Analysis of American Society. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prlncetine-Hall, 1986 (3rd Edition).
Heilbroner, Robert L. The Nature and Ixagic of Capitalism. New York: Norton, 1985.

Adamic, Louis. Dvnamlte: The Story of Class Violence in America. New York: Viking Press, 1934.

Martlnez-Alier, Juan. Ecological Economics. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell, 1987 Sherman, HowardJ. Foundationsof Radical Political Fronomv. Armonk: M.E, Sharpe, 1987,

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Domhoff, William. The Powers That Re: Process of Ruling Class Domination in Amcrlca. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Domhoff, William. Who Rules America Now: A View From the 80s. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Isserman, Maurice. If 1 Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old I.eft and the Birth of the New Left. New York; Basic Books, 1987. Montgomery, David. Workers' Control in America: Studies in

Wallerstcin, Immanud. Historical Capitalism. New York:

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Wolff, Stephen and Resnick, Stephen. Fxronomics: Marxian vs. Neo-Classlcal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1987.
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Jobs And Dollars, (chapters 8,9,10 on "Regional Socialism").

Boston: South End Press, 1972.

Van der Ryn, Sim, and Peter Calthrope. Sustainable Communi

ties; A New Design Synthesis for Cities. Towns, and Suburbs.

Kirshner, Edward M. and Moriey, James I. Community Owner ship in New Towns and Old Cities.Cambridge: Center for Community Economic Development, 1975. Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. London: TJephant Editions, 1985, (1st Edition,1913) Kropotkin, Peter. Fields. Factories and Workshops Tomorrow.

San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1986, XII. Newsletters and Journals

Alternatives: Perspectives on Scicnce, Technology and Envi ronment, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.

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1446, Columbia MO 65205-1446.

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Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 1803 Mission Street, Santa

Cruz, CA 95060,

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Press, 1987.

Schwelckart, David. Capitalism or Worker Control?: An lUhical and Economic Appraisal. New York: l>raeger, 1980.
IX. Social Theory and Power Structure Analysis

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Earth Day Wall St. Action Contacts

New York City
a r e a :

NatlonalToxics Campaign
RRl Box 2020

Pioneer Valley Greens

12 Grant St.

Huron Valley Greens Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104

1411 Henry St.

Earth Day Wall St. Action

P.O. Box 1128, Old Chelsea
Station

Litcheld, ME 04350 (207) 268-4071

Ciamshell Alliance
Box 734

Northampton, MA. 01040

Winchendon Greens

New York, N.Y. 10011 212)925-7976

201)846-5934 War Resisters League

339 Lafayette St. (212) 533-4335
Red Balloon

Concord, N.H. 03301 (603) 224-4163

C e n t r a l Ve r m o n t G r e e n s
P. O . B o x 9 3

RFD Box 683, River St. Winchendon, MA.

Big River Earth First!

P. O . B o x 1 8 9

Pacic, MO. 63069

N e w Yo r k S t a t e :
Love Canal Homeowners
Assn.

Western States:
Boulder Green Alliance
3305 4th St.

New York, N.Y.10012

Plaineld, VT. 05667 (802) 454-8073

3331 Wallace Dr.

2652 Cropsey Ave.

(718)449-0037

Brooklyn, N.V. 11214

Vermonters Organized for Cleanup

Box 485

Grande Isle, N.Y. 14072 (716)773-7935

Boulder, CO. 80304 (303) 443-7654

EPOCA

New York Left Greens 19 S. Elliott PI.

Barre, VT. 05641 (802)476-7757

Pennsylvania:
107 April Dr. Camp Hill, PA. 17011
Relocation Assistance and Information Network

c/o Earth Island Institute

300 Broadway^ Suite 28

Brooklyn, W 11217 Boston area: Earth Day Wall St. Action

82 Dexter Ave. #3

Burlington Ecofeminlst 23 Hayward St. Burlington, VT. 05401

(802) 862-2291
Food Not Bombs 18 Ocean #141
Network

San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 788-3666 Bay Area Peace Test

1998 25th St.

(717f737-4324

San Francisco, CA 94107

Southern
Greens

Southern States:
Bottom of the Pond

Willamette

Watertown, MA. 02172 (617) 923-1756

2826 Baker Blvd.

Portland, ME 04106

34 Georgetown Ct.
Durham, N.C. 27705 (919)383-9757

Eugene, Ore. Canada:

A m i s / e s d e l a Te r r e 524A Uchelieu

Tufts University EGO

4 Hill St.

Southern New

Somerville, MA. 02144

England:
University of Connecticut
Greens

Orange County Greens

133 Windsor Circle

Northern New

Chapel Hill, NC 27516 Midwest: Greens Clearinghouse

Box 30208

Quebec City, P.Q, G1R1K3

(418) 522-7153
Action

England:
New England Green Alli
a n c e

128 Moulton Rd.

Storrs, CT. 06268 (203) 429-8716 Radical Student Union/

PSRU Box 99

Alliance for Nonviolent 3-218 Montreal St.

P.O. Box 703

White River let., Vt. 05001 (802) 295-1544

Kansas City, MO, 64112

Kingston, Ontario K7K3G7

(613) 549-6094

Amherst, MA. 01003

Yes! I and my organization want to be involved in the Earth Day Wall Street Action.
Please send:

copies of the Action yer (10c per copy, $7 per hundred) copies of the Action Handbook ($1.50 per copy, 50c each over 10)
over SO)

copies of the War Resisters League Handbook for Nonviolent Aalon ($2 per copy, $1 each

I/we would like to help with: Outreach (local/national) Afnity Group Preparation Media

Ofce

Work

Fundralsing

Other

My organization can commit the following resources to the action: Here is my donation of: $ 10, $25, $50, $100, $500,

My parents'/boss' stock portfolio, All of the above, Other

Name: Address: Phone:

Organization:

"Not other rulers, but none," East German opposition slogan.

Earth Day Wall Street Action
Box 1128, Old Chelsea Station New York, N.Y. 10011