By Darryl Cherney – Country Activist, October 1986
Country Activist Editor’s Note: This is a guest editorial by Darryl Cherney, who has recently been busy organizing Earth First! demonstrations. Earth First!, as he explains, “is a movement, not an organization”
This is a time when there seem to be so many issues, that it appears impossible to be able to do anything that is meaningful. While we are gathered here today to voice our dismay over the World Bank’s destructive rainforest policies, Peabody Coal is overseeing the relocation of 12,000 Navajo at Big Mountain, Arizona. While I tell you that Bank of America has over $200,000,000 invested in Brazilian hydroelectric companies who are damming up the rivers of the rainforests, our own U.S. government is financing terrorists who are attempting to overthrow a legitimate government in Nicaragua. And while I tell you that as we reach the halfway mark in the destruction of the rainforests and that much closer to deteriorating our oxygen supply and altering our weather patterns, Pacific Lumber (Maxxam) is cutting down some of the last original stands of old growth redwood in the world, at a pace that has recently been doubled.
Sometimes we might feel like the Dutch boy who put his finger in the leaking dyke, only to find two new holes have appeared. For example, it appears that we have saved the Sinkyone and the Sally Bell Grove from the chainsaws of Georgia-Pacific. But as we may be patting ourselves on the back, State Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene will be reintroducing his thrice defeated forest practices bill, which would allow logging companies to place all of their land into one grand timber harvest plan which would allow them to cut forever and be exempt from future environmental laws. And even if our local timber companies are stopped, which will most likely be because they have cut down everything there is to cut, they will then simply move on to the rainforests of Brazil, Indonesia or somewhere else, where they will continue their operations, leaving us here in Northern California without jobs and without the forests.
Anyone who thinks of this planet Earth as a beautiful place that we can live in harmony with, finds her or himself against what seems like insurmountable odds. “What can we do,” they ask, “that will make a difference?”
Firstly, I answer you in this way. Understand that these issues are not separate. Whether you are an environmentalist or a logger, a South African or an American, your most basic concern is the same: survival. And the fact of the matter is that we are under attack and have been for quite some time. We are under attack by the money hungry bastard corporations, by the corruption ridden governments of so many nations, and sometimes we are under attack by our own thirst for grabbing what little we can while we are here.
But it is not only people that are under attack, it is all living things. To separate ourselves from other life forms, animals, plants, and human beings who live in other places, is to separate ourselves from the very planet on which we live. To deny that a rainforest has a right to be, to deny the monkeys, the cougars, the macaws and the humans who live there the right to live as they desire, is to deny your own right to freedom. How can it be any other way? To deny that your dollars sitting in Bank of America are killing millions of people, animals and plants in other countries, is to relinquish responsibilities for your own actions. And to relinquish your responsibility is the first step in inviting an oppressive government into our midst. If we appear apathetic and stupid, believing everything our government tells us, or not believing it and then sticking our heads in the sand, then what reason on earth would the truly evil people have to think that they could not secure even the Americans in their vice grip of oppression and slavery?
So I say to you all, my sisters and brothers, the first step away from oppression is to take responsibility for your actions. Ask your bank what they do with your money. See the far, far reaching ramifications of everything you do and bear that upon your shoulders. Then, when you feel the weight of the millions of your dead brothers and sisters that your own money helped to kill, and you see the wastelands that were once beautiful forests, and you feel your Mother Earth begin to tremble and burst at the seams; then perhaps in your panic you will rise to the call for action, and know that there must never again be a compromise in the preservation of your home planet. And as you are suffocating slowly from the lack of oxygen and are roasting nicely from the lack of an ozone layer that your money and apathy helped to destroy, then you will say to yourselves, if only I had done something, if only I had done something. Well, do something. DO SOMETHING!!!