If Democrats wanted to bring teaching moments to young people disheartened by powerlessness in the political process, bringing a flash mob to disrupt traffic during rush hour or to the end of a shift at an arms manufacturer or like EarthFirst! plans for megaloads destined for the ConocoPhillips refinery in Billings or at the Montana-Dakota generating plant in Rapid City, anyplace where younger voters could have their consciousness raised about how the consequences of capitalism impact the Earth, maybe we could make sure they are registered to vote. [interested party, 2011]The following month a protest at the Montana Capitol in Helena was the culmination of an Earth First! rally near the Montana/Idaho border in the Lolo National Forest. Gov. Brian Schweitzer met with some seventy protesters who occupied his office and demanded he renounce his support for a new pipeline project.
Dave Foreman put words like biodiversity and extinction on the map. The former Tucsonan launched two groundbreaking environmental movements: the radicalism, civil disobedience and “monkeywrenching” of Earth First in the 1980s, and the “rewilding” movement to protect massive blocks of nature for wildlife in the decades since then. Foreman died in his Albuquerque home after a several-months battle with a lung illness. In the late 1980s, while living in Tucson, he faced federal felony charges and a high-profile prosecution that he led a plot to destroy power lines and damage nuclear power plants — charges leading to a plea deal that ultimately left only a misdemeanor conviction on his record. First exposed to the wild as a Boy Scout, Foreman earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico as a history major. In college in 1964, he supported arch-conservative Barry Goldwater for president and formed a UNM chapter of the conservative Young Americans Freedom. He joined the Marines after graduating during the Vietnam War, but was dishonorably discharged after a couple of months for going AWOL. ['Eco-warrior,' former Tucsonan Dave Foreman dies at 75]Urban sprawl, accelerated global warming and drought are reducing productivity on the remaining grasslands of the High Plains and Mountain West so if some Republicans are angry about rewilding means it's the right thing to do.
There's no doubt that Earth First! has a reputation, deserved or not, for violence, but can the smiling, articulate man now sitting in a hotel coffee shop in Tucson really be dangerous? "A human life has no more intrinsic value than an individual grizzly bear life. If it came down to a confrontation between a grizzly and a friend, I'm not sure whose side I would be on. But I do know humans are a disease, a cancer on nature. And I also know I am far more interested in the plight of the spotted owl than I am in a logger in Oregon. I have a problem with glorifying the downtrodden worker." [Protector or Provocateur?]
New Rewilding Earth podcast is up. Remembering Dave and the lessons he taught us for the fight ahead. https://t.co/8ztzuzregE
— Rewilding Institute (@Rewilding) September 27, 2022
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