By Franklin Rosemont - Industrial Worker, May 1988, from an interview Conducted March 31, 1988
One of the Earth First! movement’s most promising agitators, and a “roving editor” ofEarth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, Roger Featherstone has been an active radical environmentalist for well over a decade. Born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, in 1975-76 he helped organize the successful fight to stop the building of a nuclear complex in the Wisconsin town of Tyrone, and a couple of years later he took part in monkeywrenching actions of a group called the “bolt weevils”[1] to stop a huge powerline under construction across Minnesota. For a time he worked as a house-remodeler and music therapist before becoming a “full-time unpaid organizer” for Earth First! in 1985.
[In 1987] Featherstone traveled 60,000 miles for EF! all over the U.S. as well as to Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala. “Part of my work,” he says, “is doing direct action, part trouble-shooting for our local EF! groups, and the rest of my time is spent on tour with the EF! roadshows and in the wilderness.” As is true of so many other EF!ers, his “no-compromise” defense of Mother Earth has won him an impressive arrest record. [At the time of this interview] Featherstone [was] based in Bisbee, Arizona—a town which, as he remarked, is rich in Wobbly lore.
IWW: The EF! Journal, the Ecodefense manual, and the Li’l Green Song Book all make allusions to the IWW’s influence on radical environmentalism. Could you tell us about this influence?
Roger: A lot of people in the Earth First! movement admire the early history of the IWW.[2] We admire the IWW spirit, sense of humor, art and music; its direct action tactics; its unwillingness to buy into the political scene; its no-compromise attitude and, most-importantly, its guts. I think the spirit of the EF! movement today would make Bill Haywood and Joe Hill smile and say “right on!” some of the tactics we use are borrowed directly from the IWW: our “silent agitators,” our songbook, and even monkeywrenching itself came from the IWW.[3]
EF!’s commitment to direct action comes from a deep feeling for the wildness of Mother Earth and the diversity of her children. Our commitment, I think, is similar to the commitment of the early Wobblies. Our feeling that “we’ll give it our all and if we don’t win we’ll die with a smile” seems to me to parallel that of the IWW in its heyday.
IWW: Many of the conservative business unions, especially in the building trades, help promote the capitalist myth that environmentalism threatens jobs. How would an EF!er respond to that?
Roger: First, let me soapbox for a bit. There are as many different opinions in the EF! movement as there are flyspecks in a barn. Earth First! cuts across the political and social spectrum. There are as many folks in EF! who think of themselves as conservatives as there are those who identify with the Left. There are more working class folks in EF! than in most environmental organizations, but we also have some entrepreneurs and even a few wealthy supporters. What unites us is our fight to save wilderness and our belief that Homo-Sapiens is only one of a myriad of equally important species. We are, perhaps, a bit prouder of our Neanderthal genes than most people.[4] Anyway, I can only give you my own answer to the question, not what any-one else in the movement might say. We aren’t big on conformity.
I think the jobs issue is a red herring. It’s a bone thrown out by those in charge to get folks fighting with each other. The real issue is that if we don’t preserve wilderness and protect the environment, we won’t have any jobs. Ever since humans dropped from the trees, we have depended on wilderness for our existence. Only in recent times have humans forgotten that important fact. As a result, most people can’t see that what they are doing is destroying their future, and the future of everything thereafter for a long time.
Certainly EF!’s goal of not only saving what wilderness we have, but also restoring some that has been destroyed, will be an immense boon to working people. It will take a lot of hard work over a long time to destroy what has been mucking up our wilderness. It will also take a huge leap in consciousness for us all. It will not be “business as usual.”
We say, “subvert the dominant paradigm,” and that means those who direct the machinery, let me add, however, that we all need to be aware of what we do. The guy cutting old-growth redwood for the Maxxam corporation is just as guilty of rape as is the corporate raider who engineered Maxxam’s takeover of Pacific Lumber. Well maybe not to the same degree, but still guilty. We need to have the guts to say no to jobs and a system that destroy the environment and to fight for a society free of such devastation.[5]
IWW: How does Earth First!’s struggle to preserve and expand wilderness relate to the struggle for working-class emancipation?
Roger: I think I’ve mostly covered this in [the] answer to the last question. A blow to save wilderness is a blow against the assholes that are screwing the workers. For example, workers aren’t hurt by tree-spiking, but by mill-owners who don’t maintain their equipment to protect the safety of those working for them. Earth First! is geared toward challenging the mentality of slash-and-burn and rape-and-run. If we succeed in making people aware of the need to protect wilderness for wilderness’s sake, and not for human’s pleasure and profit, we will have made big steps towards working-class emancipation.
IWW: Do you see the animal rights movement as also linked to these struggles?
Roger: I feel that animal rights is a side-issue to the wilderness question. Here again there’s a wide a wide range of opinion within EF!, but we can work together on certain things with a lot of groups without having to see eye to eye with them on everything. I’m as much against fur-trapping as anyone, and I’m proud to work with animal rights folks (and have) on saving wild species and keeping cattle off public lands.
I see Earth First! as a union and a voice for all the species that don’t have even as much freedom as we do. I’m kind of a union organizer for grizzly bears. This I think we have in common with most animal rights folks.
IWW: Most working people have little direct experience of wilderness, and many EF! efforts—defending wolves, grizzlies, redwood forests—are remote from their everyday preoccupations. And most EF!ers are not actively involved in workers’ struggles, as such. How can these two currents for radical change be brought closer together?
Roger: Well, all it takes to get wilderness experience is two feet, an old pack, work-clothes, boots, a tarp and some food. Go out and do it! Take the weekend off, head to your nearest National Forest, find a trail and head off down it. If you get lost, so much the better. When you get far enough away from the trappings of civilization as you can stand, sit down and stay there for a while. Let your mind wander, and don’t think of anything having to do with concrete. Think about what it’s like to be a black bear, a deer, a bog-lemming or a three toothed land-snail. That’s the best way to learn about wilderness.[6] And what makes wilderness a working person’s dream is that it really doesn’t take the fancy-yuppie high-tech gear that you see at Summit Hut.[7]
Earth First!ers and Wobblies need to educate each other. And there are issues that we need each other to work on. There are uranium mines in the Grand Canyon watershed. 100 acres of tropical rainforest are being destroyed every minute. Right now ships are being unloaded with hardwoods from the rainforest. Old-growth redwoods 1,000 years old are being cut down to make picnic tables. Oil-wells are being drilled in proposed wilderness areas. Roads are being built in our National Forest at the rate of 10,000 miles per year. The people of the world are having too many babies. These are all things Wobblies and Earth Firsters can work on together.
Remember the IWW when you see an EF! silent agitator on a wall or window. When you hear of EFers sitting down and chaining themselves to a forest supervisor’s desk, think of the IWW. And when you go out into the forest with a hammer and nails, think of the IWW.
We do have a common heritage, and it’s possible to reach the same goal following different trails. If we don’t hang together, most assuredly we will all hang separately.
Epilogue: The “dialog” begun in the May 1988 issue of the Industrial Worker did yield some practical results almost immediately. Two IWW organizing drives began at the environmental canvass operations of Greenpeace in Seattle and SANE in Oregon, but both drives soon petered out (see “Seattle Greenpeace Phoners Organize to Resist Management Clamp-Down”, Industrial Worker, August 1988; “Greenpeace Closes Seattle Phone Bank In Response to IWW Organizing Drive”, Industrial Worker, September 1988, and “Portland, Oregon Sane Fundraisers Organize IWW Shop”, Industrial Worker, October 1988).
The IWW would organize several recycling shops, including the Berkeley Ecology Center’s Curbside recycling program (in 1989) and the Berkeley Community Conservation Centers Buyback recycling Yard (in 2000), both programs having been started by environmentalists, including some of whom were Earth First! organizers (including Chris Clarke, Karen Pickett, Mike Roselle, among others). Both shops are still under IWW contract at the time of this writing.
Footnotes
[1] For more details, see “The Lesson of the Bolt Weevils”, by Noel Perrin, Anderson Valley Advertiser, June 7, 1989.
[2] For example, it is rumored that Edward Abbey’s father was an IWW member. Also, Earth First! co-founder, Dave Foreman, himself admits that the IWW was one of the many organizations that gave inspiration to the creation and culture of Earth First!; source: Levine, David ed., Defending the Earth! A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, South End Press, 1991, 50-1.
[3] This is not quite accurate. “Monkeywrenching” is an individual and individualistic act performed by individuals who may or may not be workers at the point of production (and is an act that is as old as time). The IWW practiced “sabotage” which—despite its now widely perceived destructive connotations—generally meant the collective, organized withdrawal of efficiency by workers at the point of production. For more details see Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, Sabotage, 1916, Chicago, the IWW (available on the IWW website at iww.org).
[4] Although Featherstone is speaking figuratively here, anthropologists have determined that humans did not evolve from Neanderthals.
[5] This is in contrast with various positions taken in, Bari, Judi, Timber Wars. Monroe, ME., Common Courage Press, 1994, and Foster, John Bellamy, The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class, Lessons from the Ancient Forest Struggle of the Pacific Northwest, New York, NY., Monthly Review Press, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism., 1993
[6] Featherstone is essentially paraphrasing from Deep Ecology by Bill Devall and George Sessions, 1985, Gibbs M. Smith.
[7] Summit Hut is an Arizona based retail chain specializing in outdoor gear