Fight for a planet

For the past week, I’ve been fortunate enough to engage environmental activists along the East Coast, from New York City to Washington, D.C.

Their enthusiasm and dedication toward a habitable planet are creating mass solidarity between what are normally competing social justice groups, giving me hope that Bloomington can bring together its own sectors of radicals to create effective activists networks.

To start, let me just reiterate the message of my past columns: Global warming is causing millions of deaths every year, and unless we drastically reduce our carbon emissions immediately, the effects of industrialization will soon hit home in even more unpleasant ways than the chronic droughts, superstorms and desertification we’ve already seen in our country.

So, back to where I began (on the East Coast). What have I found?

First, socialist and communist groups realize this crisis affects workers and underprivileged populations the hardest. And since this is a worldwide crisis grossly supported by corporate capitalist culture, they’re willing to accept this moment as the fundamental contradiction that leads to the overthrow of the profit motive in our society.

Feminists see this as the ultimate expression of the destructive masculine psychology that forms the foundation of civilization — we are literally waging war against every creature and ecosystem on this planet in order to gain more power and more resources over the subservient classes, the largest of which are women.

Anti-racists see the end of industrialism as a chance to end colonial oppression as we are forced to return to more local, nature-based social structures.

Anarchists see the opportunity to end nationalism and promote a free, natural society that has no infrastructure to allow any form of exploitation and subjugation.

And last but not least, the capitalists know the powerless won’t remain unorganized for long once the planet becomes our biggest threat. They too want a solution, albeit one that creates wealth and pacifies the majority of the exploited.

If this sounds dreamy, I would have agreed with you before this week.

But seeing all these groups stand in solidarity (except the capitalists, who will have to go if we’re to take sustainability seriously) makes you think differently, that this problem is now obvious to even the most insulated among us.

So take all the angles you’ve got, Bloomington, and use your skills to organize and make your city a hotbed of diverse tactics focused on global warming. It’s obvious to those out here that it’s the problem those fighting for a better future have been waiting for, the problem that brings us all together as equals and forces us to work together for our own survival.

­— tydthomp@indiana.edu