The Earth First! Journal is celebrating its 30th anniversary of independent media with a 120+ page edition featuring contributions from a slew of radical environmentalists, surrealists, voices from indigenous resistance movements, the Greek insurrection, as well as artists and writers from CrimethInc., the IWW, the Beehive Collective, the Just Seeds cooperative and more. Included are articles on mountaintop removal in Appalachia, resistance to Shell in Nigeria, BP in the Gulf and free-states in Cascadia.
The content will highlight the history of EF, with a special focus on the last decade of the movement which has spread out through and beyond the west coast forests cross-pollinating analysis and tactics with hundreds of environmental, anarchist, social justice and anti-globalization movements internationally.
During this time of chaos and celebration, the Journal Collective is preparing for a big move from the deserts of Tucson, Arizona, to the swamps of South Florida, from the militarized borderlands with Mexico to the militarized Free Trade headquarters of Central and South America, from the hot and dry to the hot and wet. We feel moving the Journal from time to time is healthy. New locations, new collectives, can breathe new life. Giving new communities the opportunity to engage in the radical publishing process spreads the skills and knowledge of decades in journalism.
Also, the Journal is changing its publication schedule from six newspapers yearly to a quarterly, and from a tabloid to a bound publication supplemented by newsletters and an online news source that is updated daily at newswire.earthfirstjournal.org. A new speakers bureau, which includes a lineup of Green Scare survivors, climbing trainers, and campaign organizers, is ready to head out through the territories, spreading the fire of eco-resistance to small town rebels, urban insurrectionaries, and college audiences.
The Earth First! Journal started in the Southwest with the “No compromise” stance of the movement drawn from the uncompromising wild of the harsh desert. It changed bio-regions a few times, moving to Missoula, Montana, to Eugene, Oregon, and back to Tucson. One issue of the Journal was created in the North Woods of Maine. And this November it is moving to the Florida Everglades, the 30 million acres of swamp circumnavigated by million dollar condos, a slave-wage agricultural system around Immokalee, and the “greenest” of the energy empire’s tools. Think new nuke reactors, new “natural” gas pipelines, power plants and fracking. Think new biotech hubs, vivisection labs, replacing pine forests. Think off-shore drilling, tar-balls washing up on shore, coastal dead zones. Think urban land rights movements such as Take Back the Land and anti-infrastructure movements like Everglades Earth First!
Sure it’s a mosquito infested tourist colony of the empire, but there is a lot to save and a lot to destroy. The EF!J can help set the tone for a global land-based resistance movement where gators and freedom fighters have learned to thrive at the periphery, waiting like a rising ocean tide to move in when the entire economic facade busts for the final time. Coconuts, mangoes, starfruit and an entire wild and flourishing ecosystem of land and marine life wait to greet us on the other side.
Long standing print sources like the Earth First! Journal and Fifth Estate are on the front lines of independent media, which means that our publications are vital yet precarious.
In an era when publications are dying off nearly as fast as the Earth’s vast list of species, the Journal collective is happy to say we are fighting on. We look forward to our 30th anniversary, strengthened and reinvigorated through the solidarity of our radical readers.
We love you all, (send submissions!)
— The Earth First! Journal Collective
FE editors’ note: Subscribe!
www.earthfirstjournal.org