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Deep Green Resistance UK Winter 2016 Newsletter

DGR UK attended and organised a few events through Autumn 2015. We’ve moved forward with two of the areas we decided to focus on at last years strategy meeting.

DGR UK members attended the London Climate March on November 29th. We spent most of the march at the front by the “’Wretched of the Earth’ bloc, representing communities of colour on the frontlines of climate change.” Read this damning report back of how this group was treated by the liberal march organisers. I’m sure most of you won’t be surprised by what you read.

On November 19th we organised a private event with Lierre Keith (author of the DGR book) in NW London. About twenty five attended and we had an interesting discussion about radical feminism and how it relates to DGR and ending industrial civilisation. Everyone seemed to get something out of it and there was talk of organising another similar event (without Lierre) in 2016.

On October 25th, Adam and Ben visited Grow Heathrow in West London. Adam gave a DGR introductory talk and Ben followed with a workshop exploring the problems of civilisation. Thanks to Grow Heathrow for the invite.

If you would like to host a DGR UK talk/event where you are, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by emailing uk@deepgreenresistance.org

The Earth First Winter Moot 2016 is on February 19-21 in Stroud. Hope to see you there.

Love and Rage,

DGR UK Team

DGR UK Summer 2015 Newsletter

Dear friends,

DGR UK has had an exciting year so far. With numbers growing, DGR UK had a strategy meeting in May with an interesting discussion on where to focus our energy. We decided on three broad areas:

1. attending UK protests and marches to show our solidarity and support for the events

2. start brainstorming DGR UK campaigns and actions

3. contact allies and groups with a shared outlook to work together

We have started moving forward with all these areas. DGR UK members attended the London Anti-Austerity march on June 20th.

DGR UK members attended the Reclaim the Power camp in May and got involved in one of the actions.

DGR UK members attended and helped with the organisation/running of the Earth First Summer Gathering. It was a very well attended and enjoyable gathering and we look forward to next years.

Three groups in London have contacted DGR UK to request we attend their meetings to speak about Deep Green Resistance. Some of these will be public events so we will share the dates once they are confirmed.

DGR UK members will be at the COP21 London climate change march on November 29th, hope to see you there.

Love and rage,

The DGR UK Team

Reclaim the Power – fossil fuel electricity generation in the UK

The 2015 Reclaim the Power camp will be from 29 May – 2nd June near Didcot powerstation in Oxfordshire. Didcot Power Station comprises Didcot A Power Station, powered by oil and coal until its closure in 2013, and Didcot B Power Station, a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT).

Didcot power station stands as a half-demolished monument to the unfinished job of kicking out dirty fossil fuels from the UK’s energy mix. Although the coal-fired section (Didcot A) was shut down and part-demolished last year because of EU laws limiting emissions, the gas-fired section (Didcot B) is still running today. What sustainable alternatives exist for local communities living at Didcot – and how can we create a just transition away from fossil fuels?

While communities around the country have stood together against fracking, our government has been making plans to build a new round of gas-fired power stations, and wants to partly supply them with fracked shale gas. Despite the fact that we need to keep global gas reserves in the ground if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change, corporate lobbyists are now pushing hard to scrap the EU legislation designed to reduce emissions across Europe. More fossil fuels will enrich the Big Six energy companies whilst bringing more fuel poverty and climate chaos.

In 2014 about 29% of UK electricity demands were met by coal, 19% by nuclear, 30% by CCGT, and 19% by renewables. The rest came from oil, pumped storage and from other European countries via their interconnectors. Of course included in ‘renewables’ are highly unsustainable practices such as burning biomass and mixed waste. (See the DGR ‘green’ technology and renewable energy FAQs for problems with these methods.)

One third of the UK’s coal power stations will close by the end of 2015, leaving ten still in operation. There are thirty three CCGT power stations in the UK with many more on the way, which will create a demand for fracked gas. This interactive map, though a bit out of date, shows the location of UK electricity power stations.

All of the UK’s coal power stations are due to close by the early 2020’s to comply with air pollution regulations (the Large Combustion Plants Directive (LCPD) and Industrial Emissions Directive (IED)). But based on a report from Imperial College London, many of these coal power stations will still be operational in 2030. What a surprise. It doesn’t look like Europe is doing much better, although of course, the UK is contributing to this predicted failure.

At last year’s Reclaim the Power camp thirteen decentralised groups carried out actions around the country. Deep Green Resistance UK members will be at the camp this year, to support it and take part in a non-violent direct action. Visit the Reclaim the Power Facebook event page for more details. We hope to see you there!

DGR UK Spring 2015 Newsletter

DGR UK members and supporters ran a day of talks, workshops and discussion on Saturday 22 November in NE London. It was well attended and we had a number of interesting discussions. There are plans to have another DGR UK event in October this year, details to follow.

There was a Resisting Together camping gathering near Frome on October 31st to November 2nd. For a report back on the gathering go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/resisting.together/permalink/361862587323496/

There will be a Resisting Together Gathering from May 15-17 near Oxford. It will be at a farm camp site near the ruins of an old manor house, close to a canal and woodlands, where we can spend some slow time close to the Earth, discuss what’s happening to our world and how to resist it.
Camping costs £9 for one night and £12 for two nights. There will be a fire pit to keep us warn in the evening. We will have a camp kitchen and plan to cater for everyone so need to know if you want to attend in advance. A farm tour is likely and we are hoping to organise a led foraging walk. There will be an extra cost for food and the foraging walk. Its easy to get to the site, a train to Oxford and then a bus will drop you 5-10 mins away. There are limited places so if you want to reserve one email Adam at resistingtogether at riseup.net (replace ‘ at ‘ with @)
Resisting Together website http://www.resistingtogether.org.uk/
Resisting Together facebook discussion group https://www.facebook.com/groups/resisting.together/

Love and rage,

DGR UK team

The Green Gathering 2014

From the 31st July to the 3rd August 2014, DGR UK had a stall at this year’s Green Gathering in Chepstowe.

As someone new to these kinds of festivals, it’s been an interesting experience for me. I arrived on Wednesday to meet our little group of people, and help with setup. The sun was shining, we chatted, put up tents and gazebos, pondered our stalls and watched the rest of the gathering being built. More traders, and public, arrived on Thursday, and bit by bit the fields were taken over by all manner of structures, tents and vehicles. We even got a quick talk about how a large marquee is set up.

But for all the material things appearing, a gathering is as much held together by the people and the causes they represent. And there were many; a physical manifestation of all that needs fixing in the world, but also of all the goodwill that is there to fix it. And there was a lot. Not only places and workshops to inform yourself and increase your skills, but also many spontaneous encounters with worthwhile, interesting and kind people, and unfortunately much too little time to explore it all.

For DGR UK this has meant a successful workshop, many people talked with at our stall, and many connections made and explored. After the gathering a website for the ‘Resisting Together’ group was launched, to supplement the existing Facebook group and provide information for people who aren’t on Facebook.

For myself, I have learned a lot about how such a gathering functions, about how to talk to people, and about a lot of the many problems civilisation causes, and the many projects that need help. I’ve also been reminded just how different life can be from the ‘normal’ civilised world most people live in. Even though it was just a very small patch of the world and just a short amount of time, and we still relied on so much of civilisation to make it happen, it’s far enough removed, and different enough, that going back home, sitting on the train, locking my door behind me at home, feels like a culture shock.

DGR UK Summer 2014 Newsletter

Its been a while since the last DGR UK newsletter in Autumn 2013.

In Decmber DGR member from across Europe met in London and formed the DGR EUMENA (EU, Middle East, North Africa) regional group.

In January, we posted an Open Letter to the UK Environmental Movement from Deep Green Resistance UK on our blog. Please share with your networks.

The Land Magazine published a piece about DGR UK in its January edition. The Ecologist Online republished this in April: Deep Green Resistance in the UK

DGR UK members and Keith Farnish organised a Resisting Together event in Edinburgh on March 29th. A Resisting Together facebook discussion group has just been set up.

Adam ran a workshop at the Power Shift UK conference at 3pm on May 3rd in London. The workshop was titled ‘Diversity of Tactics’ and looked at the need for the environmental movement to start being more strategic.

DGR UK members met up for a camping weekend in Nottinghamshire from June 13-15th. A broader anti civ wild camping week is planned for the end of September in Skye, Scotland.

Adam gave a DGR talk with Q+A on June 21st as part of Bristol Big Green Week.

There will be a DGR UK stall at the Green Gathering in Chepstow from July 31st to August 3rd. Adam will run the Diversity of Tactic workshop on Friday at the Green Gathering in the Off Grid College.

Finally, DGR UK now has a new email address – uk@deepgreenresistance.org

In solidarity,
The DGR UK team

Open Letter to the UK Environmental Movement from Deep Green Resistance UK

Deep Green Resistance UK (DGR UK) is the UK chapter of DGR International. We are an environmental and social justice organisation based on the book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. The book identifies civilisation, patriarchy, and capitalism as brutal arrangements of power which need to be dismantled if there is to be any chance of future generations enjoying a habitable planet. DGR proposes a concerted, focused, and serious resistance movement to stop the murder of the planet before it is too late.

If we think of Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring” as the birth of the modern environmental movement, then we have had ‘environmentalism’ in existence for approximately 50 years and yet every biotic indicator shows that the planet is not improving, not even stable, but in decline. Countless species went extinct today. The planet is being destroyed, and no amount of recycling or renewable energy is going to stop that destruction. As Derrick Jensen illustrates in his essay Forget Shorter Showers, the majority of water and energy is used by industry, agriculture and the military, not individuals. Personal lifestyle choices, whilst commendable, will not make any significant difference. If we continue to focus on marginal personal contributions instead of working together against the larger machine as a whole, there is little chance of success. It is going to take organised political resistance to stop the trajectory we are on.

DGR proposes taking a new approach. The key difference between DGR and other environmental and social justice groups is that we have a long term strategy, named Decisive Ecological Warfare (DEW). DEW has two main goals.

The first is to disrupt systems of power and to dismantle those systems. In other words, we wish to remove the ability of the rich and powerful to exploit the marginalised and destroy the planet. See here for examples of what DGR is advocating for in the UK.

The second goal is to defend and to rebuild, just, sustainable, autonomous human communities, and to assist in the recovery of the land.

You can read the Decisive Ecological Warfare strategy.

Our culture currently rewards behaviour that benefits the individual at the expense of the group. Acquisitive and insane behaviour such as denuding the landbase of living systems makes powerful individuals rich, and this is the behaviour we see from those in power. This will continue while there is still money to be made, in other words the destruction will continue until there are no more living systems left to exploit. A number of respected scientists are coming to similar conclusions.

Solutions which make no attempt to destroy this culture, or which postpone action until the distant future, are worryingly misguided. The current system is one of arrogance, sadism, stupidity and denial. It will not change of its own accord. The British government’s stance on fracking, despite massive public opposition, is a testament to this and an example of this culture’s insatiable appetite.

Many in the environmental movement advocate transitioning to a sustainable society with clean energy. Kim explains in this article why this is unrealistic. We do not have the time. See this recent report by James Hansen, who has been right about global warming for three decades. Any political party who seriously proposes what is actually needed (near zero emissions by 2020) will never be elected. Neal Lawson describes how the UK Green Party’s election success is going backwards and we think most people reading this would agree that their policies are nowhere near radical enough. The simple truth is that most people do not want to give up their industrialised ‘first world’ privileges such as driving cars, watching TV and going on holiday.

DGR UK is reaching out to the UK environmental movement to state that we want to begin an honest dialogue about how bad things are and what needs to be done about the situation we find ourselves in. Not simply what we are comfortable with doing, but what needs to be done. We would welcome all those who wish an end to the destruction to start thinking like a resistance movement for life, rather than an environmental movement hoping for the best. If we are to create a real resistance movement, we need this culture of resistance to germinate.

DGR UK, and the whole DGR organisation is very young. We believe we have a valid perspective, analysis and strategy. DGR members know that we do not have all the answers, and that we will need support from our allies to help DGR mature. DGR has a strategy, but this is only part of the solution. We understand that there are many different ways to work towards protecting our planet, and that these are all important in creating a larger political struggle.

As Derrick Jensen says:

‘We need it all. We need people to take out dams and we need people to knock out electrical infrastructures. We need people to protest and to chain themselves to trees. We also need people working to ensure that as many people as possible are equipped to deal with the fallout when the collapse comes. We need people working to teach others what wild plants to eat, what plants are natural antibiotics. We need people teaching others how to purify water, how to build shelters. All of this can look like supporting traditional, local knowledge, it can look like starting rooftop gardens, it can look like planting local varieties of medicinal herbs, and it can look like teaching people how to sing.’

What we propose is that people in the UK environmental movement begin to consider whether their activism- be it community, political or radical- is effective and commensurate with the scale of the problems we face. Community gardens and anti-fracking protests are all part of this resistance movement, but unless they are linked to a larger political struggle, those efforts will fail. Regardless of what our differences might be, we need to start working in tandem.

Horizontal hostility, a term coined by Florynce Kennedy in 1970 to describe the damage caused when oppressed groups fight amongst themselves instead of fighting back against the powerful, is among the worst enemies of successful systemic change. Even if you do not agree with everything DGR proposes, we ask that you not dismiss us entirely, simply because we advocate for a more radical response to safeguarding our planet. After all, we all share the same goal: a healthy, just world for future generations of all living beings.

It is for this reason that DGR also firmly aligns itself with radical feminism. We believe patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled, along with its cult of toxic masculinity which seeks endlessly to dominate women in the same way that it seeks to dominate the natural world and its resources. Our feminist stance has caused a great deal of controversy in the US. DGR members have been attacked by groups and by individuals for wishing to abolish gender and to preserve safe spaces for women. We make no apologies for this. We do not think of DGR as a panacea. We believe there are many groups doing great work out there and that it will take many more working together to bring down the system we currently live in.

We in DGR understand that the DGR strategy will not be for everyone. We believe that every option should be on the table and that each person is entitled to decide which they support, without necessarily rejecting the usefulness of those they do not wish to become involved with. To be clear – DGR does not condone or support violence against any human or non-human living being. What we wish to stress is that if something drastic is not done, our world is not just going to be a little hotter, but will become uninhabitable. Please read up about us and our strategy, discuss it with friends and make up your own mind. The DGR strategy is very broad and there are a lot of details to fill in so we welcome all feedback from our allies and supporters.

As Ben Barker rightly states in his open letter to liberals: “Every movement for social change has understood that when a system of law is corrupt, we must turn instead to the laws of the universe: human rights, the living land, justice. These movements are always deemed radical—and that’s because they are. Hope and prayers do not alone work to change the world. We’re going to have to fight for it.”

Deep Green Resistance EUMENA Statement

On December 14th and 15th 2013, eight DGR members from across Europe met for the first DGR EUMENA (Europe, Middle East, North Africa) gathering. This group agreed to form the DGR EUMENA regional group.

DGR members were present from DGR Slovenia, DGR Canary Islands and DGR UK. DGR EUMENA will now start work on growing DGR in the EUMENA region and facilitate the creation of national chapters in other EUMENA countries.

If you would like more information please contact: eumena (at) deepgreenresistance.org

Deep Green Resistance website (translated into several languages)

Deep Green Resistance Slovenia website

Deep Green Resistance UK website

DGR UK Autumn 2013 Newsletter

DGR UK members had a busy August. We ran a DGR UK stall at the Green Gathering and ran a workshop on Derrick Jensen’s Endgame Premises. Adam was involved in organising the Earth First! Summer Gathering and ran a session on DGR during the gathering. This was a very useful and rewarding discussion. Lucy was part of the group that set up Reclaim the Power camp on farmland near the Balcombe Community Protection Camp that ran from August 16th-21st. Lucy also took part in the action at Cuadrilla’s headquarters in Liltchfield, north of Birmingham. Adam also attended the Dark Mountain Project’s last Uncivilisation festival and ran a DGR session there.

Lucy joined with other anti-nuclear campaigners in an over night “swoop” to help establish the Action AWE camp at the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Burghfield just south of Reading, in Berkshire. This ran for two weeks from 26 August. This is part of a three year campaign in resistance to the 100 billion the government is spending by 2016 on renewing Trident – Britain’s nuclear missile system. The big day of action was on 2nd September. People from all over Europe attended and there were over 20 arrests.

DGR UK members were recently at the Balcombe Community Protection Camp.

DGR UK will be running a stall at the London Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday 19th October and at the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday 23rd November. So if you can make it down to one of those then please come and say hello.

DGR UK members in Bristol are running an Anti Civilisation Reading Group (http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/766886) and Anti Civilisation Film Series (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bristol-Anti-Civilisation-Film-Series/656376291048501).

A recent blog post on shows that underground work has been taking place in the UK for years.

There are two new pages on the DGR UK website. DGR UK has been asked a number of similar question by interested parties and other activists so we have decided to respond to these with a DGR UK FAQs page.
There is now also a Resources page which lists recommended reading and viewing related to DGR.
The Security page on the DGR UK website has been updated.

Please get in touch if you have any comments or questions.

In friendship and solidarity,

The DGR UK Team

DGR UK Summer 2013 Newsletter

DGR UK is a very new chapter of the Deep Green Resistance movement which started in the US in 2011 following the release of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen. In that short space of time DGR chapters have been initiated all over the world. DGR UK is part of that network, starting at the beginning of 2013.

The year started steadily and well with DGR UK members in attendance at at the Earth First! Winter Moot in February in Lancashire. We then had a very successful day, selling over £150 worth of DGR books at the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair in April and, the same month, attended the Extreme Energy Gathering in Manchester. Some of our members have been taking direct action against the building of Hinkley C Nuclear Power Station, in Somerset.

We will be at the Earth First Summer Gathering in August and will be leading a workshop on anti civ ideas within the environmental movement.

DGR and accusations of Transphobia
See our post DGR Developments related to Radical Feminism.

The Deep Green Resistance UK blog is regularly updated with articles, relevant events and actions.

Learn more about how to get involved in DGR UK and its organisation structure.

In friendship and solidarity,

The DGR UK Team