Environmentalism, Spirituality, Anarchy, oh my!

Since 1968 I have been part of demonstration and protests over wars, environmentalism and other political issues. I would hear back then I was off to a bad start socializing with those kind. “Those kind” were too stupid to know they were being used as tools by the commies. I looked like a radical kid back then with my hair long enough to touch the tops of my ears and eyebrows but not nearly as bad as those with hair down their backs with flowers. As far as the average person was concerned, those poor souls were just too far gone.

It’s been over 40 years since I held up my first sign to stop dumping industrial waste into the Patomac River. I’ve travelled the country and participated in different environmental activities and groups where ever I lived. They all had valid causes and shared the desire to win for what they saw as the right thing to do. In my early teens I had hair down to my ass and I charged headstrong to the front of the line of any demonstration and exchanged blows with police in what was never a winning situation. I did the lock downs, sit downs, knock downs only to see the opposition use us as study of how we operate so they can have laws passed against our activities or give police more power. Here we are in 2010 with history of “demonstration free zones” and at one time the mayor of Portland Oregon made it illegal to buy a gas mask in city limits. Tear gas is no fun without a gas mask.I was getting locked up a lot back then and got the option to join the military or go to prison.

At 17 I joined the Marines and went to Okinawa for a year and was standing guard at the armory because the Japanese were demonstrating missile testing. I had orders to shoot them if they hopped the fence. Now I was on the other side. It didn’t matter that I understood their cause. It didn’t matter that I agreed with them. It didn’t matter that I had nothing to do with the testing. What mattered was there was a lot of them and they were pissed and would take it out on me and every Marine with me with their knives, clubs, cleavers and other implements if they got over the wire. One girl in her teens started to climb the fence. We locked and loaded and aimed at her. Her friends pulled her down and we were happy they did. I realized I need more foresight in making decisions about where I put myself and my energy.

I got out of the Maines in 1978 and into my first recession. Some groups fed you if you held up signs and chanted for them and hustled signatures for petitions. I watched as gas went up to a dollar a gallon. (I remember when it was 33 cents. I also remember a movie in grade school that told us “Radiation is our friend” (no shit) but that’s another story.) At 20 years old I was starting to see a very shady tie with big business and government. One that has existed for a long time. I lived in Arlington Virginia then which is just across the river from D.C. Politics is in your life if you want it or not. It’s also a statistic that one in seven men are lawyers in the D.C. area and there are plenty of female attorneys too. I worked as a bartender in Georgetown, a suburb in D.C. and lawyers like to have “meeting” in bars and bring the politicians they work for with them. I overheard one conversation about a demonstration where the environmentalist were referred to as dirtbags, vermin, drifters and so on. Since I still had a Marine haircut (mandatory to work at that bar) I could walk up and talk to them and ask how they were going to teach those commie dirtbags a lesson.

This next part is about camouflage and weoponry. Camouflage isn’t trying to make a tank look like a bush, it’s just making it not look like a tank. I doubt I could ever get passed off as a college grad with a body that grew up under heavy labor but I didn’t look like one of those commie pinko fags either. I got to know who was going to vote for what and how, what construction projects were in the planning and how they were going to be proposed so not to attract negative attention from the tree huggers. I was a double agent and my homies knew what was goin’ down. Carter went out in flames and Reagan came in and de regulated Savings and Loans to jump start the economy. It worked and my trade of construction boomed to what we now call “Reaganomics” the start of our present economic condition.

Yes, life was good. A carpenter was making $10.00 an hour. (That’s right, about the same they make now.) We would build a little house here and there and then I saw a huge piece of land being cleared. It looked big enough for a village. Come to find out that 62 acres being cleared was just for the parking lot of a mall. We didn’t even know what a mall was. The I saw a huge farm having all the topsoil scraped off and transported away. The farm wouldn’t need it because the land was going to have 1200 homes built on it. Virginia taxed farms out of existence and looked towards collecting property taxes from new homes. Remember, Virginia is the “Commonwealth of Virginia”. A commonwealth is a type of state.

So here we were, construction guys that knew at an early age we would never get to college, much less pass high school, looking for work that was destroying forests and waterways. The short story is that construction workers were a large part of reporting erosion, pollution and joining demonstrations to install some of the environmental regulations on our trade. Every weekend we were at the surrounding lakes and rivers and we saw how unchecked growth damages everything downwind and downstream so in our own way as young men we did our ecospiritual activism against the trade that fed us.  We understood the value of urban camoflage. When we spoke to politicians we were clean and well groomed. We spoke clearly and politely to people in a calm voice. We were thoroughly informed which was more difficuly then since there was no cell phones, call waiting or internet. Laws had to be looked up in libraries from card catalogues. Copies of anything were made very slowly. We were professional craftsmen concerned with what was happening to the environment and people listened because we showed them how our concerns affected them. They knew we were persistant. They knew we weren’t going to destroy their property or business. We even volunteered to work for them for free if we could pass out flyers. We picked up after ourselves after demonstrations. The people liked us.

I was surprised at how uninformed and unorganized some activists are these days until I realized that it was a by product of their “activism”. While they don’t want to make an impact or be part of the industrial footprint, they are not utilizing valuable assets to their cause. When an alleged facilitator doesn’t have a cell phone or any means of immediate contact he/she does their activity an injustice by not allowing it or the people involved to go as far as possible. When people are getting paid to help your cause they shouldn’t need to chase down their money. When people laugh at that process it shows a collective approval at that process. When you walk up to someone on the street to tell them about your cause you shouldn’t look at the ground and mumble as you dig your dirty finger in your ear. You might want to look like you bathed in the last 12 hours and understand basic hygeine and grooming. Changing into clean clothes before the event helps too.

Anarchy: A state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government) Anarchist dig this idea until someone takes or destroys their stuff. Some avoid that buy not having anything and just using other people’s posessions and resources. For some reason environmentalists today like to tag themselves with this label and wonder why they get immediate negativity thrown on them. Lacking the virtue of complete thought they feel that businesses and property within their reach is duely subject to their anger and other people should tolerate their vandalism. I’d like to offer a little complete thought. Let’s say thet an owner of a business is enlightened by the leaflet you passed on and realizes that their franchise is contributing to slave labor, inhumane treatment of workers, poisons waterways and other bad deeds and wants to change what they are doing. Hard to fathom that they won’t just shut their doors, stop business and earning income and start feeding their families from dumpsters. Most intelligent people will formulate a complete plan before acting. (The beauty of that process is you look like a responsible person that people might want to listen to as you change your lifestyle and not a total nutjob. That way you may pass on your new knowledge and possibly bring people with you.) If anarchist start throwing bricks through the windows of businesses and burning things said business owners are now focused on damage repair and may never want to hear anything anyone with an anarchist tag will ever say and bless the police with even more power to do as they feel right. Let me put in a way you middle class white kids with guilt issues might get it. If mommy and daddy’s business gets destroyed by the anarchists, you lose your “safety net”. You may want to add real hunger to your life experience list but I don’t need any more practice at it.

Govern: Bring into conformity with rules or principles or usage; impose regulations. This can also apply to a person governing themselves through personal bearing or general conduct and conditions of a group and its operation. The people who the environmentalist oppose are disciplined, intelligent, punctual, reachable and have good relations between their personal bearing and goals. They know how they need to be to get the desired attention and result of the people they approach. This is why they are winning and laws get passed in their favor.  What is so fucking hard to understand here? Their meeting places won’t have some of the things I’ve seen in eco groups places like people passed out on nasty furniture, dogs in the trash cans, food crusted on the phone, naked toddler pissing on the floor or unbathed people. The enviros think that minimalist lifestyle will help their cause as their opposition work harder at out gunning them by using capitalism to get the tools they need. They know what is going on around them and work to influence people towards their cause by showing how it will improve their lives. Unfortunately the only real way to get the American culture on your side is to show them how it benefits them directly. This is a success driven culture that likes to listen to successful looking people. That’s it. Sooner before later the greenies will need to incorporate camouflage into their system and ditch the anarchist tag.

I believe the average person does care about the environment. I believe they want to preserve their rights and are not in favor of bigger government. The problem is they don’t have a reliable source of information on how to make a reasonable transition in lifestyles. The first thing they need is basic information presented in non ranting, non radical form and presented by people who look like they care about themselves and want to be taken seriously. (Remember camouflage? You not trying to look like a corporate lackey, you’re just trying to not look like refugee from hell.) Twenty years ago I was a part of a big push for homeopathy. Little white pills that had no chemicals or drugs, just energy signatures. No chance of getting bad side effects because if you used the wrong remedy nothing happened. People were hesitant until professional couples and single moms said it was great stuff and they were no longer losing work time and paying thousands of dollars at the doctors for their kids. I showed lots of people how easy it was to have a home garden and they saw for themselves how much money they saved and how their families felt better. I got a lot of kids off of prescription drugs with martial arts and other physical activity. The average person needs proof that the presented change is a wise one. People adjust to small changes easier and quicker.

The everyday person who has the capability to donate to, vote for and morally support an environmental cause usually has a family and a career and wants nothing to do with people who may possibly lean towards supporting groups that condone the destruction of private property and business. Why should they? I had a wood shop that specialized in making nice furniture from recycled and reclaimed wood from construction sites. If I had some moron damage my shop in a demonstration I would be passing out coffee and doughnuts to the cops at the next one to keep that dumb shit from happening again. I would support and protect a group that protected my interests. The average person operates the same way so figure out what energy you want focused on you and act accordingly.