For the Wild. Sarah M. Pike
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in the United States today that focuses on direct action. For over three decades, Earth First!ers have regularly engaged in actions “in defense of Mother Earth” and have supported a variety of other related causes, such as animal rights and indigenous land rights. Earth First! has no central structure and is composed of a network of affiliated groups in the United States and around the world, a journal run by an editorial collective, and two annual gatherings: the Round River Rendezvous and the Organizer’s Conference, both planned by different collectives every year. Earth First! was founded by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar in 1980. It began as a wilderness protection organization, campaigning to maintain roadless areas under the motto “No Compromise for Mother Earth.” Its founders were inspired by Edward Abbey’s novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and according to journalist Susan Zakin, they made “ecotage—burning bulldozers, spiking trees, yanking up survey stakes—an attention-grabbing tactic in their no-compromise approach to saving wilderness.”3 Moreover, for Foreman and some of the other founders, direct action was part of “a sacred crusade” to protect the wild from encroachment by humans and their industries.4
In addition to Earth First!, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) were the most widespread and active radical direct action animal rights and environmental groups in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. They are also the groups most often mentioned by law enforcement and news media.5 In the 1990s ALF and ELF became known for their confrontational tactics, acts of animal liberation, and property destruction, especially arson. These networks of activists have no central leadership and few rules. Both ELF and ALF condone property destruction and have guidelines against causing harm to living beings.6
From the 1980s into the twenty-first century, Earth First!ers and other radical environmentalists have advocated a “no compromise” commitment to “the wild.” They have not only practiced monkey-wrenching (sabotaging bulldozers and other heavy equipment, etc.), but have also placed their bodies between trees or nonhuman animals and destructive forces such as logging and fur farming. Environmental actions include a range of activities, such as tree-sits and road blockades to prevent logging and resource extraction. They drop banners in public places, occupy offices of timber or oil companies, and interfere with hunting. The Earth First! Direct Action Manual, available by mail, includes detailed instructions for ground blockades across roadways, aerial blockades such as tripods and tree-sit platforms, hunt sabotage, banner drops, destroying roadways and disabling tires, among a host of other ways to protect the environment and nonhuman animals. More extreme actions may include arson, such as the 1997 arson of the Cavel West horse slaughterhouse by the ELF. Radical animal rights activists such as the ALF also use arson to destroy animal research laboratories or other buildings. They release animals from fur farms and research facilities and set free wild horses that have been corralled. They harass animal researchers, sometimes also destroying their work.7 In order to better understand the ways in which activists arrive at their “No Compromise” stance, and what exactly it means to them, I participated in some of their gatherings and protests.
As the sun was going down on a July evening in 2012, I navigated the back roads of western Pennsylvania, following directions downloaded from the Earth First! Rendezvous website. I missed the last turn and drove several miles before realizing my mistake, as the sky became darker and thick clouds gathered. With relief, I finally drove up to a “Welcome Home” banner and a couple of participants monitoring the gate, who welcomed me and gave me a program with safety warnings about ticks and dehydration, a map of the site, and an “Anti-Oppression and Consent Policy” addressing sexual harassment and other kinds of proscribed behavior. After driving down a gravel road into the forest, I reached a long line of cars parked along the side of the road, apart from the main camp that organizers wanted to keep car-free. Pennsylvania license plates were joined by those from New York, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio, among others, indicating that many activists had traveled from out of state to reach the gathering. Their cars displayed bumper stickers like “I ‘heart’ Mountains,” “Local Food,” “Collective Bargaining,” “I’m Marching to a Different Accordion,” “Eden Was Vegan,” and “Comfort the Disturbed, Disturb the Comfortable.”
As these bumper stickers suggest, the several hundred participants at the Rendezvous had diverse goals and interests. They came to the woods to learn from each other, share strategies, have fun, and participate in a culminating action at the end of the week designed to draw attention to hydro-fracking concerns in the region. Some had dropped out of high school and had been full-time activists for several years, while others were homeless young travelers who spent their time train hopping and hitchhiking around the country. These travelers sometimes participated in tree-sits or other direct actions; they also worked on farms to make money or busked in towns for change. Other participants were on summer break from elite private colleges, state universities, and community colleges. Some activists lived in permaculture communities or worked on organic farms, while others were from squatted houses in New York City. The majority lived in towns and cities, while fewer lived on farms or in rural areas. These activists came from a range of different class backgrounds, including the very poor and the wealthy, but the majority grew up in white middle-class households. I also met activists from working-class backgrounds, such as Thrush, whose family members were factory workers. He too worked in a factory, until one day he quit to join the Buffalo Field Campaign that monitors buffaloes around Yellowstone Park to keep them from getting shot by ranchers when they venture out of the park. Most activists I met were young (18–30) and most were white, with slightly more male-identified than female-identified and a handful of participants who were transgender, gender nonconforming, or people of color. Older participants do show up at these gatherings, but radical activism is overwhelmingly populated by young adults: few activists in the treetops and locked down to blockades are older than thirty.
Gatherings like the Rendezvous are approached as places apart from the world outside and at the same time as homes away from home, hence the “Welcome Home” banner. At gatherings, activists want to feel they can be at home in ways they may not be able to beyond the gathering boundaries. Even as they work and live in it, they tend to believe that industrialized civilizations, and especially American capitalism, are doomed. “I kind of think we’re toast,” climbing trainer Lakes told me.8 For this and other reasons, some activists have separated themselves from the institutions and lifestyles they blame for environmental devastation, choosing to be homeless, living in their cars, or traveling from anarchist squat to action camp. For participants with more conventional lives, the Rendezvous may be a temporary escape from jobs at the heart of a society they feel at odds with. At the Rendezvous and other gatherings I also met nurses, lawyers, teachers, counselors, farmers, and small business owners.
That summer of 2012, deep in the Allegheny forest, I set up my tent on my first night just as the rain began to fall. Because of the weather, I stayed inside until dawn. The free communal breakfast, prepared by a collective called Seeds of Peace, was my first chance to join the larger community. The Seeds of Peace kitchen offered three meals a day, which allowed everyone an opportunity not only to eat but also to network and share what they had learned in the workshops, or where they had found an edible plant or swimming hole. Free meals and a volunteer-run kitchen are important features for those who travel alone to gatherings or are new to the movement, since eating together is an easy way to make friends and feel part of the community. Much of the food for the kitchen is donated or dumpstered (dumpstering is the practice of rescuing edible but overstocked or out-of-date food found in dumpsters behind grocery stores). Like everything else at these gatherings, food preparation, cooking, and dishwashing are done by participants who volunteer each day, even though a handful of people are in charge of the kitchen and responsible for bringing stoves, pans, and other supplies to the gathering site. Communal meals are healthy, varied, and include vegan options, as well as the occasional meat dish if someone donates a dumpster find of hot dogs.
Animal rights activists have national gatherings too, but the ones I attended were more like conventions than the Earth First! Rendezvous, charging a fee for attendance and featuring a room of vegan products for sale. They draw from a spectrum of the animal rights movement, including business owners, mainstream activists involved with letter writing and lobbying, and radical