What is DGR?

Deep Green Resistance UK is the UK chapter of the Deep Green Resistance (DGR) organisation. DGR is an environmental and social justice organization based on the book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, which we thoroughly recommend you read. The book identifies civilization, patriarchy, and capitalism as the brutal arrangements of power that need to be dismantled if this is any chance of a liveable planet in the future. DGR argues for a concerted, focused, and serious resistance movement that can stop the murder of the planet before it‘s too late. DGR is based on Derrick Jensen’s analysis from his Endgame books volume one and two. In the first volume he outlines why Civilisation, currently industrial civilisation is the reason why we have war, oppression, patriarchy and environmental destruction. You can read the twenty premises here http://www.derrickjensen.org/work/endgame/, which he explores in the book.

In volume two of Endgame he starts to discuss how we can resist. Following this Derrick got together with two other authors Lierre Keith and Aric McBay; and they wrote the DGR book (Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet). This was released in 2011 and started the DGR organisation in the US. This uses the same analysis and outlines in some detail how a resistance movement could be organised. Those in DGR believe that the problems we face are systemic and reformist solutions will not work while industrial civilisation/capitalism still exists.

Deep Green Resistance is an analysis, a strategy, and a movement being born.

• As an analysis, it sees the last 10,000 years of human history–the rise and dominance of civilization–as the culture of death that is now threatening every living being on Earth.
• As a strategy, it critiques ineffective lifestyle actions and explains their inevitable failure to stop the destruction of people, species, and the planet. In contrast, DGR offers a concrete plan for how to stop that destruction.
• As a movement, Deep Green Resistance is based on this analysis and implementing this strategy. And we’re recruiting.

Deep Green Resistance UK is an above-ground group – this means that we will not have any involvement in violent direct action, or promotion of specific criminal actions, but we will engage in non-violent direct action, as well as advocating for an active underground.

For our and your own safety, please do not contact us about, or inform us of, your involvement with any violent or illegal activities or any real or imagined ‘underground.’ We will not respond. In order for us to carry out our work, it is essential that this is understood by our members. Please see the security page on the DGR website for more information http://www.deepgreenresistance.org/get-involved/security and on the DGR UK Security page http://deepgreenresistanceuk.wordpress.com/security/

The environmental movement has been around for 50 years and every biotic indicator shows that the destruction is increasing. DGR members believe that we’re out of time and we need a new approach. The key difference that DGR has to other environmental and social justice groups in a broad long term strategy. This is called Decisive Ecological Warfare and has two main goals. The first is to disrupt and dismantle industrial civilization; to thereby remove the ability of the powerful to exploit the marginalized and destroy the planet. The second is to defend and rebuild just, sustainable, and autonomous human communities, and, as part of that, to assist in the recovery of the land. You can read the DEW strategy here http://www.deepgreenresistance.org/who-we-are/our-approach

DGR is the aboveground that aims to raise awareness of the problems of industrial civilisation and promote a culture of resistance. DGR’s tactics include the full range of nonviolent direct action techniques, including blockades, protests, and demonstrations. We are also committed to education and cultural work. That work is crucial as the future will demand strong local communities that embrace direct democracy, economies of support, universal human rights, and the rights of nature. As oppressive social and economic systems come down, we will have to build new cultures based on justice and a connection to the land.

We recognize, however, that the life of our planet is in crisis: another two hundred species went extinct today (UNEP). The dedicated work of aboveground organisers will not be enough, not in time. Our planet needs a separate but parallel underground organisation, dedicated to resisting in ways that fall outside the bounds of legal challenges and civil disobedience.

As aboveground organisers, we don‘t have any connection with an underground and we don‘t want one. For the safety of all involved, a firewall must be maintained between above and belowground activists. Support can only be given in the realm of public opinion, but DGR believes in giving that support by arguing for the necessity of a serious, strategic, and coordinated underground.

So to be clear DGR is not advocating for violence towards any living being, its primary motivation is the survival of as many living being on our planet in the long term. Instead DGR wants the infrastructure of industrial civilisation that is causing the oppression and destruction of our beautiful home to be dismantled. DGR views this as an act of self defence against the extreme violence of the nation state governments and corporations towards our world and all the humans and other living beings on it. We do not believe it is violent to want to damage or incapacitate infrastructure that is directly or indirectly causing the destruction of our world and harming living beings. For the sort of underground actions that DGR UK is advocating for see this blog post http://deepgreenresistance.uk/2013/10/11/underground-actions-in-the-uk/

 

What are the aims of DGR-UK?

DGR-UK shares goals with a number of other activist groups and networks – we welcome their input and aim to foster good relations, whilst not ignoring the differences in our approach and philosophies. Part of our work is to help foster the growth of a culture of resistance to industrial civilisation in the UK and to work with other groups with similar objectives.

Our aims are encapsulated in the following statement of principles:

1. The soil, the air, the water, the climate, and the food we eat are created by complex communities of living creatures. The needs of those living communities are primary; individual and social morality must emerge from a humble relationship with the web of life.
2. Civilization, especially industrial civilization, is fundamentally destructive to life on earth. Our task is to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary. Organized political resistance is the only hope for our planet.
3. Deep Green Resistance works to end abuse at the personal, organizational, and cultural levels. We also strive to eradicate domination and subordination from our private lives and sexual practices. Deep Green Resistance aligns itself with feminists and others who seek to eradicate all social domination and to promote solidarity between oppressed peoples.
4. When civilization ends, the living world will rejoice. We must be biophilic people in order to survive. Those of us who have forgotten how must learn again to live with the land and air and water and creatures around us in communities built on respect and thanksgiving. We welcome this future.
5. Deep Green Resistance is a radical feminist organization. Men as a class are waging a war against women. Rape, battering, incest, prostitution, pornography, poverty, and gynocide are both the main weapons in this war and the conditions that create the sex-class women. Gender is not natural, not a choice, and not a feeling: it is the structure of women’s oppression. Attempts to create more “choices” within the sex-caste system only serve to reinforce the brutal realities of male power. As radicals, we intend to dismantle gender and the entire system of patriarchy which it embodies. The freedom of women as a class cannot be separated from the resistance to the dominant culture as a whole.

Some of our aims are:

• promote anti-civilisation thought (see DGR book and Endgame by Derrick Jenson)
• engage in actions against activities that harm the biosphere
• provide education and resources regarding risk-assessment and security for activists
• be advocates for free speech
• build, foster and maintain resilient networks
• be a sane voice in a political maelstrom
• clarify DGR philosophy and practice
• support activists in related fields
• maintain communications across international borders
• add our voice to the ongoing debates about civilisation, wildness, pacifism, violence, etc.

We promote the need for an underground movement in the UK to take on the brave work of destabilising industrial civilisations’ infrastructure. As a group, we cannot be involved in such an underground – our work is in the above ground sphere but we will do everything we can to normalise the idea of an underground being necessary.