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B4. Radical Ecology
We’re seeing the beginnings of mass noncompliance
This article We’re seeing the beginnings of mass noncompliance was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
This article is adapted from a Choose Democracy newsletter email.
The dynamics of this administrative coup are taking shape. Trump whisperer Steve Bannon has called the approach “muzzle velocity” and “flood the zone.” It has been relentless and already there are countless losses for the American people.
The aim of flood the zone is to move at such speed that it’s impossible to organize — and that resistance efforts are constantly distracted by the latest news and in constant disarray. For the first several weeks this strategy worked and was virtually unchecked and largely unchallenged. That’s been stage one: shock.
Previous CoverageKeya Chatterjee of Free DC has trained over 2,000 people in the last week, in just D.C. alone. In one workshop she explained that we are moving into the next stages: gathering strength and cycles of interference. People are finding each other, brand new networks like 50501 are being born and many are engaged in a whole array of interference: boisterous town halls, protests, boycotts, digital sabotage, callers to right-wing talk shows and on and on. Some of these will work, some will not.
But just last week we saw the first glimmer of what mass noncooperation can look like — and it created some new cracks in the Trump-Musk administrative coup.
Over the weekend, unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his rogue crew told the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, to send an email to federal workers demanding they answer the question “What did you do last week?” in five bullet points.
On social media, Musk wrote, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Interestingly, Musk had wanted the threat of termination to appear in the email OPM sent, but it somehow got cut or never made it in.
Why wasn’t it included?
It’s not because Musk didn’t want it in there. He made the threat in his tweet very clear (and later doubled-down).
It’s not because Musk knows it’s illegal. He’s broken plenty of laws and regulations.
It’s not because Musk is having a change of heart. He’s a billionaire bully.
It’s undoubtedly a sign of internal pushback beginning to take place. And that’s only because of the lawsuits, the pressure, and your calls and protests!
#newsletter-block_b4ee116aee5021e7d43d08fec848bff5 { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_b4ee116aee5021e7d43d08fec848bff5 #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterThe media completely missed this — instead focusing on Musk’s cruelty and incompetence with headlines like, “Musk threatens workers who don’t respond.”
What happened next, though, was even more important: Within minutes of receiving Musk’s email, texts on the encrypted messaging app Signal began flying. On one channel, a worker wrote:
1. I did [classified]
2. Also [classified]
3. Also [classified]
4. Also [classified]
5. Finally [classified]
Another replied, “No! Don’t send him anything. He’s not your boss!” Across the country, thousands of courageous federal workers wrote and advised each other to refuse to reply to those emails.
Soon the federal workers’ unions followed suit and told workers to ignore the email completely. The National Treasury Employees Union sent an advisory with a huge headline: “DO NOT RESPOND TO ELON!” The ball was rolling.
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DonateBy this point, the Department of Defense joined in and told its people to ignore the memo. Finally, even some of Trump’s inner circle — sycophants like FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — told their staff to not comply.
This is how noncompliance works. It’s a chain reaction of smaller to bigger dominoes — the smaller ones knock down the bigger ones and on and on until the bigger dominoes fall.
What we just saw is the largest mass noncompliance with Elon Musk (so far). The White House press secretary claimed that around one million federal workers have replied, which means that nearly 1.5 million people engaged in noncooperation.
This is the general direction we need to go. Musk says “jump” — and we all say “nope” and return to our lives.
Previous CoverageNotably, traditional press mostly only caught the story once Patel and Rubio joined in. The resistance starting from workers and unions went largely unnoticed and unreported — meaning Americans had little chance to see and understand how people power really works.
After humiliating headlines of impotence, Trump and Musk only know how to double-down. That means we need to prepare for more flailing, drama and horrific acts to follow.
Even as the onslaught continues, though, we have to note the cracks — if only to remind ourselves and each other that the people have the power.
Since Musk’s failed email, federal workers are now suing Musk over his threat to fire them and 21 DOGE workers have quit in protest, saying “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”
This is just the beginning.
This article We’re seeing the beginnings of mass noncompliance was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Taking Down Tesla w/ Valerie from the Troublemakers
Join XRUK at Lakenheath Alliance For Peace
Join XRUK at the camp organised by Lakenheath Alliance For Peace, culminating in a blockade of the largest US airbase in Europe:
Where: Outside RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk
When: 14–26 April 2025
Militarism and climate change are catastrophically linked. Weapons-related activity causes significant emissions, and over half of the most climate-vulnerable nations are already in conflict.
RAF Lakenheath is the largest US airbase in Europe and supports operations across the globe, hosting aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons with over 20 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The base is now getting ready to receive US nuclear weapons, putting the UK in the nuclear front line.
As the effects of the climate and nature crisis continue to devastate the globe, the number of conflicts is only going to rise. Now more than ever, we need to rebel for peace!
Want to get involved? Sign up here.
- Find out more about Lakenheath Alliance For Peace, including a programme of events.
- Find out more about XRUK’s War & Peace messaging and how conflict and climate are connected.
The post Join XRUK at Lakenheath Alliance For Peace appeared first on Extinction Rebellion UK.
Los Angeles is leading the way in resisting Trump’s mass deportations
This article Los Angeles is leading the way in resisting Trump’s mass deportations was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
On Jan. 20, during President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than 2,000 people and 20-plus grassroots organizations gathered in Los Angeles to protest the administration’s immigration policies and promises of mass deportations. Waving flags of Latin American countries, chanting “Si Se Puede” and holding signs that denounce ICE and Trump, hundreds marched from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights, California, to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown where many detained by ICE are held. They joined over 60 community organizations such as Black Lives Matter LA and the Palestinian Youth Movement in protest.
Since Inauguration Day, those in Los Angeles, particularly East L.A. and Boyle Heights, have held several rallies and protests nearly every day against ICE and in support of the undocumented community.
“People want an end to the deportations,” said Gabriel Quiroz Jr., an organizer with Centro CSO who helped organize the Inauguration Day protest. “They’re seeing ICE in their neighborhoods. They’re hearing reports about ICE activity. There’s a lot of fear. But then there are a lot of people that are gonna stand up and fight back against this. They’re not gonna take this quietly.”
Quiroz said that while Central CSO and other community organizations in Boyle Heights and East LA have been leading activism efforts, there have also been a lot of spontaneous protests of people in the community showing up to gather and wave flags downtown. Quiroz has led and attended multiple protests since Trump’s inauguration, including student-led walkouts. As a community organizer, Quiroz has helped guide the youth protesting. He provided them with a megaphone and a banner that said “Lucha Contra Trump.”
Following the inauguration, there have been several walkouts of high school students from their schools in protest of the Trump administration and ICE raids, particularly in East LA and Boyle Heights, which are areas that are over 90 percent Latino.
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Carlos Montes, a member of the Centro CSO, who was also a participant in the East LA walkouts in 1968 — a student-led uprising over 50 years ago in which thousands of Latinos in the area walked out of their schools to demand equal treatment — also helped organize the inauguration protest, attended several others and guided the students in their walkouts.
Montes said he is “thrilled and exhilarated that the young generation has taken the initiative to come out and say no to deportations and the Trump attacks. I think it’s awesome that the students are continuing the traditional tactic of the walkouts that we popularized in ‘68.”
Leilani Mercardo’s daughter, a sophomore at Garfield High School in East LA, participated in the student walkouts against ICE. Once Mercado heard about the walkouts, she joined her daughter and the two protested in Downtown Los Angeles together.
“I was actually very happy and proud of her,” Mercado said. “It brings me peace to know that she’s aware of her surroundings. She’s not going to abide by ignorance and ignore what’s going on around her, so it was kind of a bittersweet moment, definitely an opportunity for us to bond.”
Mercado said she has been to three of the protests, one on the inauguration and two that followed. She said it is important for her to participate because it helps her feel like she is being part of the change by being outside and outspoken.
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“It’s very close and dear to my heart,” Mercado said. “I come from a family of immigrants. I think that almost everybody in this community does. We’re all affected on some level, and ultimately this is against the human rights that our people deserve.”
Mercado said that she saw a lot of signs during these protests, but one that resonated with her the most was one that said “Don’t bite the hands that feed you.” She said her grandfather, uncle and cousins were farm workers, so that sign meant a lot to her. Another sign she said was memorable to her was one that read “Education, not deportation” because she has many close friends that are on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allows children brought to the U.S. to go to school and work without threat of deportation.
She said that immigrants and undocumented people are often misrepresented and dehumanized in the media, and she hopes the protests will change the perception of the false narratives that are against them.
“They’re good people,” Mercado said. “They’re good humans, and aside from them having a significant contribution in the community and family values and respect for the land, they also do contribute financially with their work, their labor and good morals.”
Quiroz said that the protests were filled with youth, families and community members in Los Angeles, many waving flags from Latin American countries and dancing to traditional Mexican songs like “La Chona,” and supporting street vendors selling candies and ice cream.
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At protests organized by Centro CSO, they have had community members, advocates and elected officials speak out about why it is important to fight Trump and support the undocumented community. They also had a “know your rights” workshop built into a play put on for the community, which ended in ICE agents being defeated because the community knew their rights.
Quiroz said that he has noticed an increase in police and ICE presence in the community since Trump’s inauguration. He said that he has heard reports of unmarked cars passing by residential areas and markets. Even at the protests, Quiroz said they faced a lot of police repression. At one of the protests, police showed up in riot gear, broke up the crowds with their batons and fired projectile weapons. Some people were detained at the protests, though no one was charged. As someone who is experienced with protests, Quiroz was able to help manage.
“In that situation, I think that having been organizing and being activists for a couple years now, our leadership is very needed,” Quiroz said. “So I think it was great for us to be there in that situation, because we kept people from getting arrested, getting themselves hurt, because you can’t be protesting here if you’re in jail and you’re hurt.”
Quiroz said that grassroots organizations will continue to take the lead and work alongside the community to push the protests forward. He said the protests are building on Los Angeles’ rich history of Chicano activism, which includes the East LA walkouts for equal education and the March 2006 student walkouts in support of immigrant rights.
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DonateIn mid-February, over 60 community organizations in Los Angeles formed the Community Self-Defense Coalition, which is committed to patrolling neighborhoods and spotting ICE. Quiroz said that they have been informed on how to spot ICE, verify reports of ICE activity and inform the community of their activity. He said they are also careful not to spread fear, but to spread knowledge.
Mercado said that there have been people creating platforms for others who want to participate and want to help. She said many in the community are also continuing to promote events and donating their time, money or supplies in support of the protests to ensure a safe environment.
“If people don’t actually step foot on the ground, go outside, hold a sign and get the attention of bystanders or the media, nothing gets done,” Mercado said. “Attention is attracted by holding signs and being vocal about what it is we want, and it encourages other people to do the same. Then they come to realize that we’re all affected by this. It just unifies everyone.”
This article Los Angeles is leading the way in resisting Trump’s mass deportations was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Global Civil Society: The Dire Consequences of Secretive Biotech Regulation
Trump’s Favorite President? Who Was William McKinley? Tariffs, Empire, and a new Gilded Age
Press Release: Thacker Pass Protectors File First-Ever “Biodiversity Necessity Defense” in Nevada CourtPress Release:
WINNEMUCCA, NV — In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for six people sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation for protesting the Thacker Pass mine are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’
The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.
This week’s filing states that “Defendants possessed an actual belief that their acts of protest were necessary to prevent the present, continuing harms and evils of ecocide and irreversible climate change.”
“We’re in the midst of the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth, and it’s being caused by human activities like mining,” said attorney Terry Lodge, who is representing the protesters. “Our lives are made possible by biodiversity and ecosystems. Protecting our children from pollution and biodiversity collapse isn’t criminal, it’s heroic.”
Currently Earth is experiencing one of the most rapid and widespread extinction events in the planet’s 4-billion-year history.
Biologists report that habitat destruction, like the bulldozing of nearly 6,000 acres of biodiverse sagebrush steppe for the Thacker Pass mine, is the main cause of this “6th Mass Extinction.”
Permitting documents for the Thacker Pass mine show the project will harm or kill pronghorn antelope, golden eagles, mule deer, migratory birds, burrowing owls, bobcats, roughly a dozen bat species, various rare plants, and hundreds of other species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently being sued by environmental groups in an attempt to secure protection for a rare snail species who lives in Thacker Pass and who are threatened with extinction.
“Our ancestors fought and died for the land at Peehee Mu’huh,” says Dean Barlese, an elder and spiritual leader from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe who is one of the defendants in the case. “We’ve acted for the coming generations to protect Mother Earth.”
In their court filing earlier this week, Lodge and the other attorneys working on the case made several additional legal arguments, including invoking the doctrine ‘unclean hands,’ asserting that Lithium Nevada Corporation has “engaged in serious misconduct including violating the Defendants’ human rights, Defendants’ civil rights, misleading the public about the impacts of lithium mining and how lithium mining contributes to climate change and biodiversity collapse, and conducting the inherently dangerous and ecologically-destructive practice of surface mining at the Thacker Pass mine”.
They’re also arguing the “climate necessity defense,” reasoning that by attempting to stop a major mine that will produce significant greenhouse gas emissions, the protesters were acting to reduce emissions and stop a bigger harm: climate change.
According to permitting documents, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is expected to produce more than 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, roughly equivalent to the emissions of a small city and amounting to 2.3 tons of carbon for every ton of lithium that will be produced.
This legal strategy has been used by many fossil fuel protesters around the world for roughly a decade (and has been successful in a few cases), but this is the first time the same argument has been applied to a ‘green technology’ minerals mining project.
“Lithium Nevada, a mining corporation benefiting from the violence used to conquer Native peoples, is trying to bully peaceful protestors opposing the destruction of that massacre site,” said Will Falk, an attorney and one of the defendants in the case.
“People need to understand that lithium mining companies—like coal or gold mining companies—use racist and violent tactics to intimidate opposition.”
“The Indian wars are continuing in 2023, right here,” Barlese says. “America and the corporations who control it should have finished off the ethnic genocide, because we’re still here. My great-great-grandfather fought for this land in the Snake War and we will continue to defend the sacred. Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation telling green lies.”
Bethany Sam:
“Our people couldn’t return to Thacker Pass for fear of being killed in 1865, and now in 2023 we can’t return or we’ll be arrested. Meanwhile, bulldozers are digging our ancestors graves up. This is what Indigenous peoples continue to endure. That’s why I stood in prayer with our elders leading the way.”
Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu:
“Lithium Nevada is a greedy corporation on the wrong side of history when it comes to environmental racism and desecration of sacred sites. It’s ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved.”
“It is truly outrageous that we live in a society where our Supreme Court has granted constitutional rights to resource extraction corporations, making their destructive activities fully legal and virtually immune from oversight by We the People. Even their right to sue us is a corporate personhood right,” said defendant Paul Cienfuegos, founding director of Community Rights US.
“Lithium mining for electric vehicles and batteries isn’t green, it’s greenwashing,” says Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass and author of the book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. “It’s not green, it’s greed. Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal. You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”
Earlier this month, the judge presiding over the case dismissed an “unjust enrichment” charge filed against the protesters, but allowed five other charges to move forward. The case is expected to continue for months.
About the CaseThe lawsuit against the protestors was filed in May 2023 following a month of non-violent protests on the site of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada. Thacker Pass is known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, and is a sacred site to regional Native American tribes. It’s also habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife.
Analysts say the lawsuit is similar to what is called a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” or SLAPP suit, aimed at shutting down Constitutionally-protected free speech and protest. It aims to ban the water protectors from the area and force them to pay monetary damages.
On September 12th, 1865, federal soldiers murdered at least 31 Paiute men, women, and children in Thacker Pass during “The Snake War.”
This massacre and other culturally important factors have made the Thacker Pass mine extremely controversial in the Native American community. Dozens of tribes have spoken out against the project, and four — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Winnemucca Indian Colony — battled in court to stop the Thacker Pass mine. The National Congress of American Indians has also passed several resolutions opposing the project.
But despite ongoing criticism, lawsuits, and lobbying from tribes as well as environmental groups, ranchers, the Nevada State Historic Preservation Society, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, both Lithium Nevada Corporation and the Bureau of Land Management have refused to stop construction or change any aspect of the Thacker Pass mine.
In February 2023, the Bureau of Land Management recognized Thacker Pass as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a “Traditional Cultural District,” or a landscape that’s very important to tribes. But the very day before, they issued Lithium Nevada’s final bond, allowing the Canadian multinational to begin full-scale mining operations.
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New report outlines how mining harms communities and the planet
Today, Protect Thacker Pass is announcing the release of a new comprehensive report, “How Mining Hurts Communities.”
The report focuses on the growth of mining and especially rapidly growing demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other metals for use in “green technologies.” According to the report, at least 384 new mines for minerals such as graphite, lithium, nickel, and cobalt will need to be built in the next decade to meet projected 2035 demand for batteries.
“Mining may impact your community sooner than you think,” says lead author Elisabeth Robson. “We are on the brink of the biggest expansion of mining in history.”
The report includes information about:
- Projected mining industry growth
- How mining harms ecosystems
- Eight mining and extraction case studies from around the world
- The scale of mining globally
- The relationship between indigenous communities and the mining industry
- Links between extractive industries, violence against women, and other crimes
- Analysis of mining law
- The relationship between fossil fuel industries and mining
Mining has a long history in the western U.S., and especially in Nevada, known as the “Silver State” for the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States in 1859. Silver and gold were mined to enrich prospectors; copper, lead, and iron to supply the military; and of course oil and gas to fuel the modern economy.
Today, we are seeing a new “green rush” for so-called “critical minerals” to supply industry, including uranium for nuclear power; lithium, copper, nickel, and more for electric vehicle and grid storage batteries, iron and nickel for steel to make wind turbines; silver, cadmium, lead and more to make solar panels; and copper, iron, and nickel to make high voltage grid lines.
“Most people do not understand the impact that mines and the mining industry have on communities, in part because mining usually takes place in rural areas and has the most impact on poor and rural communities,” says Protect Thacker Pass co-founder Max Wilbert, who assisted with the report. “These harms include destruction of land culturally and historically important to communities; violence, especially to women and girls; and pollution that impacts both human and non-human communities who depend on the land, clean water, and clean air.”
Robson says the goal of this report is to educate and empower people to fight the mining industry, and to challenge the idea of “green growth.”
“We’ve put together this report to inform people concerned about mining’s impacts in their communities, around the state of Nevada, and throughout the country and the world,” she said. “We show how mining companies stifle dissent, how the law sides unjustly with corporations, how mining pollutes the land, air, and water, and how mining destroys the ecosystems we all depend on for life.”
You can download the report for:
1) Reading on a computer screen
2) Printing (we recommend printing double sided and stapling along the edge)
Contact us for more information here: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/contact-us/
For ideas for a future without mining and extraction, you can read our Solutions here: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/solutions/
To donate to Protect Thacker Pass and help us educate communities, or contribute to our legal defense fund, click here: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/donations-and-funding/
About Protect Thacker PassProtect Thacker Pass is a grassroots community organization that was originally established to oppose the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada. It’s mission has since expanded to include opposing the Jindalee lithium mine proposed just north of Thacker Pass and to include advocating for nature over mining more broadly.
Press Release: Judge Tosses One Claim Against Thacker Pass Protectors
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Judge Tosses One Claim Against Thacker Pass Protectors Rejects “Unjust Enrichment” Claim, But Five Other Claims Proceed in Ongoing Lawsuit Over Spring 2023 Protests
WINNEMUCCA, NV — A judge has dismissed an “unjust enrichment” charge filed against seven people sued for protesting the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada, but allowed five other charges to move forward.
District Judge Michael R. Montero rejected Lithium Nevada Corporation’s claims that protesters had engaged in unjust enrichment by writing online messages encouraging supporters to donate, ruling that these messages are “protected speech under the First Amendment.”
“This is a very significant win for my clients and a rebuke to Lithium Nevada,” says Terry Lodge, an attorney representing six of the protesters. “But,” Lodge says, “we’ve still got a long way to go in this case.”
“It isn’t illegal or wrong to fundraise for community organizing and for our legal defense,” says Max Wilbert, one of the defendants.
While one portion of Montero’s ruling was favorable to the protesters, other portions were not. Judge Montero issued a prelimary ruling in Lithium Nevada’s favor on five other claims. But, Lodge says that at this stage, the judge was not determining whether Lithium Nevada’s claims are true or not. He was simply reviewing Lithium Nevada’s allegations, taking them as true, and determining whether those allegations were violations of Nevada law.
These five other claims will now move into the next stage in the ongoing suit. During the “discovery” stage, both Lithium Nevada and the defendants will have an opportunity to gather evidence.
Native Land Claims “Frivolous”In another part of his ruling, Judge Montero called arguments that a Paiute protester has a right to access the September 12, 1865 Thacker Pass massacre site within Lithium Nevada’s mine site to pray for massacred Paiute ancestors “frivolous”. The ruling states that recognizing traditional native land claims “would unequivocally undermine each and every property owner’s rights” and concludes that “[t]his is a Pandora’s box the Court is unwilling to open.”
The defendants are seeking monetary donations to their legal defense fund. You can donate via credit or debit card, PayPal (please include a note that your donation is for Thacker Pass legal defense), or by check.
Arlo Crutcher Removed at Fort McDermittIn other news, Fort McDermitt Tribal Chairman Arlo Crutcher has been voted off the tribal council after attacking and choking a tribal youth in mid-January.
Crutcher was the key figure behind the Fort McDermitt Tribe’s cooperation with Lithium Nevada Corporation.
The January attack took place as the youth — a mine opponent — attempted to film Crutcher and other tribal leaders meeting with Lithium Americas employees Tim Crowley (VP of Government and External Affairs) and Maria Anderson (Community Relations Director).
Mine opponents blame this violence on Lithium Nevada’s “divide and conquer” techniques.
About the CaseThe suit was filed in May 2023 following a month of non-violent protests on the site of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada. Thacker Pass is known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, and is a sacred site to regional Native American tribes. It’s also habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife.
Analysts say the lawsuit is similar to what is called a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” or SLAPP suit, aimed at shutting down Constitutionally-protected free speech and protest. It aims to ban the water protectors from the area and force them to pay monetary damages.
“Our ancestors fought and died for the land at Peehee Mu’huh,” says Dean Barlese, an elder and spiritual leader from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe who is one of the defendants in the case. “We’ve acted for the coming generations to protect Mother Earth.”
On September 12th, 1865, federal soldiers murdered at least 31 Paiute men, women, and children in Thacker Pass during “The Snake War.”
This massacre and other culturally important factors have made the Thacker Pass mine extremely controversial in the Native American community. Dozens of tribes have spoken out against the project, and four — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Winnemucca Indian Colony — battled in court to stop the Thacker Pass mine. The National Congress of American Indians has also passed several resolutions opposing the project.
But despite ongoing criticism, lawsuits, and lobbying from tribes as well as environmental groups, ranchers, the Nevada State Historic Preservation Society, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, both Lithium Nevada Corporation and the Bureau of Land Management have refused to stop construction or change any aspect of the Thacker Pass mine.
In February 2023, the Bureau of Land Management recognized Thacker Pass as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a “Traditional Cultural District,” or a landscape that’s very important to tribes. But the very day before, they issued Lithium Nevada’s final bond, allowing the Canadian multinational to begin full-scale mining operations.
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Earth First! Summer Gathering July 2nd – 9th
from EF! Newswire
Come one come all to the 2024 Earth First! Summer Gathering! Earth First! has been a proving ground for environmental resistance and direct action for almost half a century. As we enter new epochs of ecological breakdown, social upheaval and increasing state repression, we invite all those who would see the wild flourish to gather, connect, learn and explore what’s to be done during an escalating crisis of capital and what worlds we can build together amidst the ruins of empire. Dates: July 2-9. This summer the gathering will take place on occupied Lenape lands an hour and a half west of New York City. For more information, please visit this page.Thacker Pass, Super Bowl Commercials, and Why Taylor Swift Doesn’t Scare Me
For the past three years, I’ve been involved in a campaign to stop the Lithium Nevada Corporation from destroying a beautiful mountain pass in northern Nevada – known as Thacker Pass in English, or Peehee mu’huh in the local Numic (Paiute) language – to extract lithium from the land for electric car batteries. Thacker Pass is some of the best remaining greater sage grouse habitat left on Earth. Thacker Pass is home to pronghorn antelope, coyotes, sage brush, meadowlarks, rattlesnakes, pygmy rabbits, kangaroo rats, golden eagles, a rare snail known as the King’s River Pyrg that is threatened with extinction by the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, amongst many other creatures. Thacker Pass was also the site of two massacres of Paiute people including the September 12, 1865 massacre where federal soldiers massacred at least 31 men, women, and children in the Snake War which was fought over…wait for it…mining encroachments on Native land.
We lost the campaign. Mine construction proceeds full speed ahead and hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of Thacker Pass are being carved up right now by Lithium Nevada. Though we lost the campaign and the mine is being constructed, four Native folks and three settler allies (myself included) were sued by Lithium Nevada for “trespassing” on public land to protest the mine. We might end up owing Lithium Nevada – a corporation profiting from the destruction of threatened species’ habitat and the final resting places of massacred Paiutes – hundreds of thousands of dollars for our peaceful protest. The case against us is still in its early stages so we’ll probably be fighting that lawsuit for months, at least. All while the violation of Thacker Pass and all the creatures who live there only gets worse.
Tonight, I will watch the Super Bowl – and the inevitable deluge of electric vehicle commercials that corporations will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure are witnessed by millions if not billions of people worldwide. (Yes, I know the Super Bowl is not the biggest sporting event on Earth. Still, it is widely viewed in North America, Europe, and parts of Africa.) The electric vehicle commercials are infuriating, of course. But, truth be told, most commercials infuriate me because virtually every one of them are wickedly designed to manipulate both the conscious and unconscious parts of our mind to consume evermore stuff. And, what does consuming evermore stuff – whether it’s consuming evermore Coca-Cola, Coors Light, that new dog food brand that you refrigerate, or electric vehicles – do?
It destroys more of what’s left of the natural world. And, at a time when human population has overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity, literally anything you consume destroys the natural world in an unsustainable manner.
But, what will really infuriate me while watching the Super Bowl will be the echo of all the people who criticized those of us working to stop the Thacker Pass mine for owning automobiles (and using them to get to Thacker Pass to confront mining there), for owning computers (and using them to educate the world about what mining does), for owning cell phones (and using them to organize resistance to the mine.) I will be infuriated because these people seem to truly believe that the destruction of the planet can be stopped if the precious few of us who both 1. actually care about the destruction of the planet and 2. are willing to do more than just tell everyone how much we care about the destruction of the planet just give up our cars, computers, and phones. Meanwhile, the corporations who profit from destroying the natural world will gain access to the consciousness of billions of people with their commercials encouraging everyone that if they just spend a smooth $60,000 or $70,000 on a sleek new electric vehicle they can stop the destruction of the planet and appear very virtuous while they’re at it.
Unfortunately, manufacturing electric vehicles includes the same fossil-fuel intensive processes that manufacturing anything (including traditional vehicles) does. When you buy your groovy new Tesla, you need to see the destruction of places like Thacker Pass, the deaths of child laborers in mines in the Congo, the murder of golden eagles reflected in that polished gleam your car salesman is so good at achieving.
But you also need to understand that just like simply buying an electric vehicle isn’t going to save the planet, simply refraining from buying an electric vehicle isn’t going to save the planet, either. Why? Because the global economy is based on the destruction of the natural world. This is true whether we’re talking about destroying the natural world for electric vehicles, whether we’re talking about destroying the natural world for agriculture, or whether we’re talking about destroying the natural world with the pollution nearly 9 billion humans make just from eating, pooping, and sheltering themselves. (Yes, people in the so-called First World use many more resources than others, but per capita consumption by all humans is increasing).
Because nearly every human life today is only possible through the destruction of the natural world, we’re simply not going to convince enough people to ever make the sacrifices necessary to keep the world from ecological collapse. This is especially true when those most responsible for destroying the natural world can put their propaganda in every American living room through things like television commercials more or less constantly. And, please, if you think that a few of us “leading by example” or “being the change” by giving up tools like computers will ever be as persuasive as Super Bowl commercials, then please keep in mind that virtually every traditional culture that thrived with stone age technologies has been massacred, forcibly assimilated, or otherwise destroyed upon contact with the dominant industrial culture. Those 31 Paiutes murdered in Thacker Pass by federal soldiers for standing in the way of mines are just one of countless examples of that.
Am I saying “give up?” Hell, no. I’m saying that we have to think much bigger than personal responsibility, lifestyle changes, or consumption choices. We can’t pat ourselves on our backs for arguing with people who disagree with us online, for buying a “green” product, for writing passionate essays.
Which brings me to Taylor Swift. I played college football. And for the first 22 years of my life, playing the game of football was my favorite thing to do on Earth. So, yes, I have been watching the NFL this year and have followed the Travis Kelce – Taylor Swift story. I’ve watched as some conservatives – believing that God has mandated that they try to put in her place an uppity, successful woman who points out some forms of misogyny – lose their minds about Taylor Swift. I’ve watched as some environmentalists – believing Mother Earth has mandated that they put an individual woman who boards planes which burn fossil fuels – lose their minds about Taylor Swift. I’ve watched as some feminists – believing the Goddess has ordered them to protect a single billionaire because she’s a successful woman that some men have criticized – lose their minds about Taylor Swift. (Full Disclosure: I do not know Taylor Swift, but I have a partner who cheers my activism on like Taylor Swift cheers Travis Kelce on. And that means something to me.)
But, here’s the thing: I see far fewer of anyone losing their minds about the current mass extinction event we’re living through, far fewer of anyone losing their minds about the fact that we’ve lost over 70% of vertebrate species on Earth since 1970, far fewer of anyone losing their minds about the fact that we can’t convince anyone to do hardly anything to actually stop any of this.
We’re not going to convince most people to make the sacrifices necessary to make sure there’s a livable planet to watch the Super Bowl on, to complain about Taylor Swift on, to complain about those who complain about Taylor Swift on, to – you know – live on. The good news is we don’t need to convince most people. We just need to deprive most people of the tools they need to continue to destroy the Earth, our only home. Worried about misogyny and porn culture? You don’t have to convince internet servers to stop serving pornography if you smash them. Worried about climate change? You don’t have to convince oil refineries to stop refining if you break them. Worried about how mass media affects us? You don’t have to convince televisions to stop brainwashing people if you pull enough power lines down.
I know that’s scary to think about. I know it would be scary to do. But, isn’t the collapse of life on Earth scarier? Scarier, at least, than team mascots, football games, or Taylor Swift?
Germany: Two Teslas and Two Tesla Charging Stations Set on Fire in Berlin
from Abolition Media
Two Teslas were set on fire in Rummelsburg on February 7 and two Tesla charging stations on Vulkanstraße on February 8.
We think that Tesla is an ideal target for our attacks.
Because:
> Several armies use Tesla’s Starlink satellite system in their wars. Including Israel in Gaza. Also Ukraine. Tesla’s Starlink infrastructure is an important military player and attacks on Tesla can be a sign everywhere: against every war!
> Tesla is a symbol of “green capitalism”. But it is anything but green: the lithium batteries come from toxic mines in Chile and devour other rare metals, which means misery and destruction for the mining areas. “Green capitalism” stands for colonialism and land theft!
> Tesla wants to further expand its Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin. We want to defend ourselves against this! We don’t want any more Teslas on the roads! The Gigafactory became known for its extreme exploitation conditions. In addition, the factory contaminates the groundwater and consumes huge amounts of this already scarce resource for its products.
> Tesla is militarizing our roads. Their cars are equipped with high-resolution cameras. In “guard mode”, they film everything and everyone. Make sure to make yourself unrecognizable during actions.
> Elon Musk is an arsehole!
Therefore:
Let the air out of the tyres of expensive cars? great.
Even better: let Teslas burst into flames everywhere!
A few barbecue lighters and spring can begin!
original source: https://de.indymedia.org/node/339237
Atlanta Police, ATF, and FBI Raid Three Homes in Southeast Atlanta, One Arrested and Others Detained
by Aja Arnold / Mainline Zine
ATLANTA—On February 8, between 6 and 7 a.m., the Atlanta Police Department, FBI, and ATF conducted a joint multi-agency raid, with Georgia State Patrol also present, at three homes in southeast Atlanta. Two residences are in the Lakewood area, and the other in Starlight Heights. Police have arrested at least one person, and have charged them with first-degree arson, which police say is related to Stop Cop City protests.
At least one other individual was held in police custody until around 5 p.m., when they were released. the person arrested is currently being held in Fulton County Jail.
Their bond hearing took place on Feb., Fri. 9, and was initially closed to media and the public due to a cyberattack, which has closed courts in Atlanta down for nearly two weeks. Media were eventually permitted to attend the trial.
A judge denied them bond the next day, on the grounds that they perceived them to be a threat to the community and a flight risk. They will remain in Fulton County Jail until their trial.
According to one search warrant from the raids obtained by Mainline, police seized a number of items, including laptops, iPhones, “Defend the Atlanta Forest” stickers, posters, and flyers, video cameras and tapes, among other things.
Search warrant documents obtained by Mainline from the Atlanta police raids on Feb. 8, 2024. Personal information has been redacted.
A resident at one of the homes who was raided this morning and was present for the arrest, told Mainline that when they asked police to see arrest warrants, police refused. Our source says they asked three times and were told that the police would leave the arrest warrant behind them after the search was completed. Our source confirmed that an arrest warrant was not left behind.
The same resident also said that that police dug up a nude photograph of them that was hidden privately under their bed, and then propped it up on display for others to see during the raid. Residents also said that police left a trail of destruction in their homes behind them, and the person arrested was removed from their home in full-body chains. Witnesses also told Mainline police pointed assault rifles in residents’ faces during the raid.
“These raids are an escalation at the federal level and an attack on the movement to disappear dissenters against Cop City,” said Stop Cop City activists in a joint statement released to the media. “We demand the immediate release of all detained and arrested activists. We will not be intimidated and the community will continue to apply a variety of strategies to oppose the construction of this dangerous facility.”
Today’s raid is the latest development in a widespread crackdown from the State of Georgia in response to the movement to Stop Cop City. On Jan. 18, 2023, Georgia state police violently shot and killed 26-year-old queer climate activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. In August, the Georgia Attorney General announced a sweeping RICO indictment against 61 activists. On Mon., Feb. 5, Atlanta City Council passed what critics call voter suppression legislation to make Cop City referendum requirements more restrictive.
On the heels of these past city and state escalations against the movement, more potential state repression appears on the horizon. The Georgia state legislature recently passed widely criticized Senate Bill 63, which requires cash bail for more than 30 new offenses and makes it illegal for nonprofits and charitable groups to bail out more than three people per year. Critics say that the bill targets activist bail funds and social justice movements, and will also exasperate Georgia’s already detrimental prison and jail crisis, in which facilities are already extremely overcrowded. (Georgia prisons are currently under a Department of Justice probes that are investigating multiple human rights violations.) The bill has been condemned by the Southern Center for Human Rights and will face a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia if signed by Gov. Brian Kemp into law.
“The resistance to Atlanta’s militarized police state is strong and continues to grow,” says Kamau Franklin, director of Black liberation group Community Movement Builders, in an official press statement. “The police and jails must be stopped. They continue to murder people like Johnny Hollman and Lashawn Thompson without any accountability. The community stands in solidarity with all affected by the police repression against the movement to Stop Cop City.” Organizers have announced a 5 p.m. press conference and rally today at the headquarters of the Atlanta Police Foundation at 191 Peachtree St. to provide further details on the raids.Let’s fight back together
Yesterday, I attended a Tribal Leaders Summit at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) with the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (RSIC). The event was hosted by UNR’s Office of Indigenous Relations, University Center of Economic Development, and the Nevada Indian Commission. The second half of the event was devoted to UNR faculty trying to sell the Tribes on Joe Biden’s designation of UNR as a “TechHub” with support for Nevada’s new lithium economy. Faculty proudly presented about all the jobs lithium mining and electric car battery manufacturing would bring to the region. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo made an obligatory appearance and filled a full 10 minutes of the 30 minutes he was scheduled to speak for before peeling out to attend to more important matters.
As UNR faculty presented, I found myself getting angrier and angrier. My friend and colleague RSIC Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Michon Eben was too. I was afraid we were the only ones until Te-Moak Chairman Joseph Holley asked Dr. Mridul Guatam, UNR’s Vice President of Research and Innovation, about just how “clean” or “green” lithium mining really was. Dr. Guatam pretended not to know. And, then several of the Western Shoshone representatives proceeded to inform the UNR faculty about how mining has devastated Western Shoshone homelands. One Western Shoshone leader called her homelands a “hellscape.”
Because Dr. Guatam danced around the question about just how “clean” lithium mining is, I was allowed the microphone to explain how the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, by Lithium Nevada’s own numbers, will produce over 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually, will burn over 12,000 gallons of diesel on-site daily, and requires sulfuric acid obtained from oil refineries. Noticing that UNR faculty were advocating for lithium mining while standing next to a prayer staff with eagle feathers, I explained that Lithium Nevada has been granted permits to kill golden eagles for the Thacker Pass mine. I also explained how racist it is that UNR faculty were so proud of the jobs created by lithium mining when the First Nations who have lived in the region from time immemorial, and who were ethnically cleansed from the land lithium mines are now destroying, have no right of consent over these mines, even when those mines destroy the most sacred places in the world to Native communities.
I have no idea whether the UNR faculty who presented yesterday actually believe the ideas they were spewing. I suspect they do. I suspect they’ve convinced themselves that more mining, more steel manufacturing, more plastic production, more pollution for electric vehicles is the only way to stop climate change. I suspect that they’ve further convinced themselves that Native peoples are backwards and selfish for not being willing to sacrifice what’s left of their homelands for another mining boom. I suspect that they resent organizations like Protect Thacker Pass that insist that its wrong to sacrifice greater sage grouse, sage brush steppe, Lahontan cutthroat trout, and golden eagles for products like electric vehicles that simply are not necessary for anyone’s survival.
Regardless, even if UNR faculty are just doing their job or presenting what their bosses tell them they must, this is no excuse for participating in ecocide and the destruction of Native culture. In effect, what UNR communicated to the tribes was: The lithium industry is going to mine. You can’t stop them. You have no right to say no. So, you might as well take a few jobs. You might as well take a little money from the corporations destroying your land and culture.
I want to make this personal: If this is you, if this is your job, if you’re making money helping the lithium industry destroy the Great Basin and destroy Native culture, you should quit. Right now.
I don’t know about y’all, but when someone comes to my home to destroy it, I don’t cooperate with them; I fight back. Let’s fight back together.
The Racism of Lithium Americas Corporation
When worldviews collide, planet and people pay the price for ethnocentric arrogance
Note: today is the 3-year anniversary of Protect Thacker Pass.
The term “racism” brings to mind bigots, slurs, and the Ku Klux Klan, or the systematic disenfranchisement of certain communities through discriminatory policies around housing, banking, and policing.
When we think of environmental racism we often think of what is happening in Flint, Michigan, where a majority-Black community has faced a toxic water mismanagement crisis leading to lead poisoning.
Or, we think of “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River in Louisiana along which, according to the United Nations, an “ever-widening corridor of [150] petrochemical plants has not only polluted the surrounding water and air, but also subjected the mostly African American residents in St. James Parish to cancer, respiratory diseases and other health problems.”
But today I want to write about a different type of environmental racism; one that is more subtle, and perhaps more far-reaching.
***
Three years ago today, my good friend Will Falk and I traveled to Thacker Pass, Nevada, and set up camp high on the side of a mountain, on the GPS coordinates of a planned open pit lithium mine.
Help protect the "Thacker Pass 7"We were there to protect the land, and within months, we began developing relationships with traditional indigenous people from the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes. Soon, community members from Fort McDermitt, Reno-Sparks, Summit Lake, Duck Valley, Yerington, and other Native American reservations were regularly traveling to the protest camp, bringing supplies, and standing on the front lines.
A profound kinship began to develop. We’d sit on the mountainside with elders, discuss strategy, share food, and watch the land. Golden eagles wheeled overhead and jackrabbits ran through the sage.
One particular elder, Josephine Dick from the Fort McDermitt Tribe, has a twinkle in her eye that reminds me of my grandmother. She would tell stories about tanning hides, about making cradleboards for babies, about the history of Peehee Mu’huh (the Paiute name for Thacker Pass). She speaks about how, one day, we’re not going to have cars, or electricity, or phones, or any modern technologies. “One day,” she says, “that’s all going to be gone. And people will have to know the old ways.”
While at Thacker Pass, I spent time reading documents detailing the government’s attempts at consultation with native tribes. One of them is the transcript of a meeting with government officials in nearby Winnemucca attended by Josephine, among other tribal members.
“We have blood, a heart, organs, keeping us alive,” Josephine tells the Bureau of Land Management officials. “Mother Earth has water, soils, rocks, keeping her alive. To me, the more Mother Earth is mined, it is slowly killing her, and creating problems in the world. She needs her parts the way we do.”
***
There are different ways to live in the world. One is Josephine’s way: a way that sees land as sacred, sees animals as relatives who are our elder siblings, and sees water and the basis of all life. This is traditional in Paiute society, and it’s also traditional among my own ancestors, before they assimilated or were conquered by empires.
In fact, this worldview is shared amongst almost all tribal and land-based societies around the globe.
Nemonte Nenqiumo, a Waorani leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, lives 4,000 miles from Paiute territory, but in her brilliant 2020 essay My Message to the Western World: Your Civilization is Killing Life on Earth, she shares a similar perspective: “This forest has taught us how to walk lightly, and because we have listened, learned and defended her, she has given us everything: water, clean air, nourishment, shelter, medicines, happiness, meaning.”
She continues: “You forced your civilization upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty.”
Ati Quigia, an indigenous leader from Columbia, said it even more clearly: “We are fighting not to have roads or electricity — this vision of self-destruction that’s called development is what we’re trying to avoid.”
From a scientific perspective, you could say this worldview is common because sustainability is an adaptive trait, and an “animist” perspective promotes sustainability. Or, you could say that this worldview is a more accurate way of perceiving the world than a purely mechanistic, western perspective.
Both of these interpretations are true. My direct experience at Thacker Pass is that the land itself is alive, sentient, with feelings and perceptions far different from our own. But if we listen, the land speaks.
Compare the worldview of Josephine and Nemonte Nenquimo to our opponent.
Set against us at Thacker Pass is Lithium Americas, a transnational corporation based in Canada and operating through a fully-owned U.S. subsidiary, Lithium Nevada. They are traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange, and have attracted major investors from around the world. The company is worth billions, and is collaborating with General Motors Corporation to develop the Thacker Pass lithium mine.
The mine, which is now under construction, will consist of an open pit nearly two miles long and half a mile wide, as deep as the height of a 35-story building, carved into the side of the mountain. New mountains have begun to rise, made up of the toxic acidic byproducts of the mining process. A sulfuric acid plant is under construction, which will use sulfur from the oil industry — possibly the Alberta Tar Sands — to burn lithium from the soil.
All this is only possible by first destroying the land with huge bulldozers, blowing up the mountain with explosives, and killing or driving away every single plant and animal. The scale of pollution, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions for a project like this is staggering.
Corporate power is a major driver of our environmental crisis. Global warming, species extinction, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, toxic pollution, plastic and chemical contamination, oceanic dead zones, overconsumption, urban sprawl, deforestation, desertification, sea level rise, ocean acidification, aquifer drawdown, overfishing — all of these problems are linked to corporate overreach. They are also all linked to abuse of human rights, declining human health, and threats to the future of our children.
***
Ethnocentrism refers to evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of one’s own culture. It’s also perfectly descriptive of Lithium Americas: a foreign corporation (foreign to both the Paiute nation and to the United States) imposing its vision of “development” on a population that opposes it, through the use of force.
That force is often filtered through intermediaries. For example, in Argentina, indigenous and non-native communities fighting lithium mines face kidnapping, torture, and sexual assault at the hands of Argentine police forces. This includes the lithium extraction project developed by Lithium Argentina (a corporation which was until recently part of Lithium Americas, until they split to allow greater access to government subsidies).
Similar violent, repressive techniques are being applied in Nevada, on Paiute-Shoshone land at Thacker Pass. This week, the chairman of the Fort McDermitt Tribe (which took money from the mining company against community wishes) physically attacked and choked a member of his tribe — an 18-year-old boy — who attempted to film his meeting with Lithium Americas employees Tim Crowley (VP of Government and External Affairs) and Maria Anderson (Community Relations Director).
I believe this is the second time this Chairman has physically attacked a mine opponent. The other incident was captured by the New York Times (the photo is inaccurately labeled as Tildon Smart).
Mining companies use divide-and-conquer strategies to split communities apart and weaponize them against each other. Another way companies shut down dissenters is lawsuits. Four indigenous activists and three allies (including me) are being sued by Lithium Americas for our work to #ProtectThackerPass, a sacred and biodiverse place now being bulldozed for mining. We face the possibility of massive financial penalties.
The ethnocentric racism of Lithium Americas corporation and others like them claims that their vision of economic and technological development is the solution to the world’s problems. These companies believe that wildlife habitat, water, and the sacred places of traditional indigenous communities are less important than profits and the development of electric cars. And their vision of “progress” leads to mad hypocrisies; “Mining is inherently unsustainable,” says Thomas Benson, Vice President of Global Exploration at Lithium Americas — before he goes back to his well-paid job in mining.
Ethnocentric racism leads to Lithium Americas stock boosters saying things like this: “No natives equals few water issues. Natives can be a royal pain to deal with. Lithium Americas has had its fair share of native issues for its South American mine (and the same can be said for Thacker Pass in Nevada) but these are to be expected. Still, not having any natives is a welcome bonus.”
This is the language of colonization and genocide.
Ethnocentric racism leads Thacker Pass supporters to disparage Native American resistance to the destruction of Peehee Mu’huh, a ceremonial site where Paiute ancestors were massacred, as “horses” in response to a ceremonial prayer horse ride, as shown here on social media:
There is a circular relationship between economics and oppression.
In his book Capitalism and Slavery, Trinidadian historian Dr. Eric Williams writes that “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.” Williams argues (as have others) that racism developed as an ideology to justify subjugation that was already in progress for economic reasons. In other words, exploitation for economic growth or power came first, and racism developed later, as a moral system to justify the exploitation.
The economic drivers behind Thacker Pass are titanic. According to the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook report in 2021, “If the world gets on track for net zero emissions by 2050, then the cumulative market opportunity for manufacturers of wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells amounts to USD 27 trillion. These five elements alone in 2050 would be larger than today’s oil industry and its associated revenues.” (emphases added).
As Stan Cox has written:
Globally, mining and processing of metallic ores has doubled just since 2000 and is responsible for a whopping 10 percent of total world energy consumption. Now, if plans to “electrify everything” are carried out worldwide, the tonnage of metal extracted and processed in the next 15 years alone will exceed the tonnage that humans have produced during the 5,000 years since the start of the Bronze Age.
The Washington Post, citing International Energy Agency figures, predicts that by 2040, global demand for metals that go into batteries will balloon 20-fold for nickel and cobalt and 40-fold for lithium; demand for manganese, critical for wind turbines, will increase ninefold in just the next decade. Demand for aluminum, which is already produced in vastly larger quantities than any of those metals, will increase by yet another 40 percent, largely to produce lighter-weight electric cars and support solar arrays.
Forbes estimates that almost 400 new mines will be opened worldwide by 2035 just to keep battery factories supplied with cobalt, lithium, and nickel. This will create many more of what have come to be known as “green sacrifice zones”: localities across the world, from Congo to Guinea to China to Bolivia to the Pacific Ocean, that are bearing or will bear the human, environmental, and socioeconomic costs of the transition to non-fossil energy. And the deployment of wind and solar power plants across the world’s windier and sunnier regions will mean converting vast stretches of the Earth’s land surface and even seabeds into industrial energy farms.
Derrick Jensen builds on the insights of Dr. Williams. He writes: “hatred felt long enough and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred. It feels like economics, or religion, or tradition, or simply the way things are.” The hatred required to build 400 new mines and call it “progress” is enormous.
The result of this hatred is the profoundly dispassionate, scientific racism that animates corporations like Lithium Americas. It doesn’t look like the racism of the Klu Klux Klan, or the environmental injustice of Flint, Michigan. But it’s far more mainstream; sequential Republican and Democratic administrations have backed Lithium Americas, defending the project in Federal Court against tribes and environmental groups.
And they are not only defending a mine; they are defending the process of assimilation. They are defending the conquest of an Earth-centered worldview by a profit-centered one.
This is the continuation of an ongoing process. In the spring and summer of 1865, as the Snake War raged throughout Nevada between United States government and the Paiute and Shoshone, the highest military officer in the State wrote that Indians had “prevented the settlers along the Humboldt from putting in their crops, retarded the settlement of the rich agricultural lands of that section, [and] prevented the development of the rich mineral resources of the whole northern portion of our state…”
Mining vs. indigenous people and the land has been a recurring theme in Nevada for more than 158 years, from the Snake War to the Dann Sisters and Mount Tenabo to Thacker Pass.
***
Today, three years after I first set up camp at Thacker Pass, I remember Grandmother Sagebrush, an ancient shrub under whose branches I first dreamed about protecting Thacker Pass from an open pit lithium mine.
In my mind, I walk north from the protest camp we established on January 15th, 2021, towards the fenceline where Grandmother Sagebrush grows. The clouds fade from red to orange to purple, then green and a dark blue. Coyotes howl from the far mountain, echoing in the still air.
In my mind, I approach Grandmother Sagebrush, and something cracks inside me. I stumble onto my hands and knees and burst into tears. The grief pours out, my blessing to the land. Like many grandmothers, she has power over tears.
I do not know if she is alive or dead at this moment. If I visit the land, I can be charged with a felony.
I spend my days researching what is being done to the planet —the mining, the fracking, the clearcuts, the species disappearing one after another. A hundred today. A hundred yesterday. A hundred the day before. And, I try to throw myself on the gears of the machine, to slow it down, grind it to a halt, tear it apart.
Every day this work tears my soul apart and stitches it back together again. But the alternative is dissociation — a normal state of being inside our dysfunctional culture, and a state which is fundamental to “othering” and committing violence against other people, and against the land.
***
I recall another walk on the mountainside at Thacker Pass. On that day, I am not alone; a writer joins me. She asks questions, but not the normal ones. She is more interested in me than in lithium.
She asks, “Why don’t you give up? Why don’t you go home and sit on your couch and complain, like most people do? Why are you here?”
“Because I’m in love,” I told her. “I am in love with the land. And you don’t give up when you’re in love.”
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as we consider the perils of greenwashing and Bright Green Lies, I want to share this quote. Originally meant as a commentary on capitalism, militarism, and the moral decline of the United States, it is just as cautionary when we consider the project of eco-modernism.
“We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Reno-Sparks Indian Colony to Host Press Conference on Thacker Pass Mine Controversy
Contact:
- Bethany Sam, RSIC Media Relations
- Will Falk, Attorney for RSIC and SLPT
- Max Wilbert, Protect Thacker Pass
RENO, NV — On Tuesday, December 5th, from 1 pm to 2:30 pm, following a federal judge’s dismissal of their latest lawsuit, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (RSIC) will hold a press conference on their court cases against the Thacker Pass lithium mine.
Members of the media are invited to attend the press conference, which will be held at RSIC’s Multipurpose Room, 34 Reservation Road, Building A, Reno, NV. The press conference will also be available by zoom and will be live streaming on the RSIC Facebook page.
Speakers will include Chairman Arlan Melendez, who has led the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony for 32 years and is poised to retire at the end of this year; Michon Eben, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for RSIC; and Will Falk, one of the attorneys who has represented the tribe in the Thacker Pass court cases.
“We invite you to join us, as we continue our efforts to protect our sacred and culturally important site; considering it’s being destroyed right now,” said Chairman Melendez. Melendez is a nationally-respected Tribal leader and Vietnam war veteran who guided the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony through previous mining controversies, advocated for Tribal land protection and consultation rights, and helped coordinate the Tribe’s Thacker Pass strategy.
For two and a half years, Native American Tribes including the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony have been speaking out about the cultural importance of Thacker Pass, a remote mountainside in northern Nevada which Lithium Nevada Corporation plans to turn into a massive open-pit lithium mine to supply batteries for General Motors’ electric vehicles.
Thacker Pass is known as “Peehee Mu’huh” in the Paiute language, and is home to sacred sites, harvesting and hunting grounds, ceremonial areas, and the locations of two massacres of Paiute children, women and men.
On November 9th, Northern District of Nevada Chief Judge Miranda Du dismissed a second lawsuit filed in February of this year by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for allowing the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine to destroy sacred sites in Thacker Pass without concluding tribal consultation. The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony was joined by the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe , and Burns Paiute Tribe in the suit.
“We are very disappointed that the court is allowing Lithium Nevada to destroy the site of an 1865 massacre of Paiute peoples and a whole Traditional Cultural District before the Bureau of Land Management finished consulting with tribes about ways to avoid or mitigate harm to these sites,” says Will Falk. “While climate change is a very real, existential threat, if government agencies are allowed to rush through permitting processes to fast-track destructing mining projects like the one at Thacker Pass, more of the natural world and more Native American culture will be destroyed. Despite this project being billed as ‘green,’ it perpetrates the same harm to Native peoples that mines always have.”
Thacker Pass is located in northern Nevada near the Oregon border, where Lithium Nevada Corporation is in the first phase of building a $2 billion open-pit lithium mine which would be the largest of its kind in North America. The lithium is mainly destined for General Motors Corporation’s electric car batteries, which the corporation claims is “green.” Mine opponents call this greenwashing and have stated that “it’s not green to blow up a mountain.”
Lithium Nevada claims that its lithium mine will be essential to producing batteries for combating global warming. The Biden administration has previously indicated some support for Thacker Pass as part of the president’s climate policy.
Opponents of the project have called this “greenwashing,” arguing that the project would harm important wildlife habitat and create significant pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. They say that electric cars are harmful to the planet and a different approach is needed to address the climate crisis.
The lithium produced at Thacker Pass would end up in electric vehicles produced by General Motors including the electric version of the Hummer, a $110,000, >9,000 pound behemoth that produces more carbon dioxide pollution than an average gasoline-fueled sedan.
“Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal,” says Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass and author of the book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. “You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”
To request the zoom link or to learn more about the RSIC community, culture, departments, economic developments, business opportunities and services, contact Bethany Sam, Public Relations Officer.
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Image by Max Wilbert of the landscape at Thacker Pass before mining construction began.
There is no “better” place to mine lithium
At Protect Thacker Pass, we’ve heard from people who think that companies should mine lithium in Imperial Valley (“Lithium Valley”) at the Salton Sea because it would be “better” than mining lithium at Thacker Pass.
To be clear up front: Protect Thacker Pass opposes all lithium mining, no matter where it is happening. All lithium extraction is harmful for the environment and unsustainable in the long term (lithium is a nonrenewable material). There is no “better” place to mine lithium.
Earthworks has published a new report that shows the devastating impacts from mining lithium from brine using direct lithium extraction with geothermal power plants. As the report states, there are currently three companies developing this technology.
Their report shows that direct lithium extraction in the Imperial Valley at the Salton Sea will have devastating impacts on the environment, beyond those already created by geothermal energy extraction. These include air pollution, consuming vast quantities of freshwater, degrading the already imperiled Salton Sea ecosystem, hazardous waste, and the potential for earthquakes to cause industrial disasters in the area.
We’ve included the two pages from the summary report as images in this post. The full Earthworks Report is worth reading if you’re interested in learning more about how geothermal power plants work and how direct lithium extraction works in conjunction with geothermal. However, we disagree with some of the conclusions in their report.
Like most large environmental groups, Earthworks believes that mining lithium is important to address the climate crisis, and their conclusions reflect this. They state that the mining should proceed as long as full, prior informed consent of regional tribes is obtained; if hazardous wastes and air pollution are dealt with properly; if companies and local communities “carefully consider” trade-offs with freshwater use; and if the mining companies design power plants with “high standards for seismic safety.”
What they seem not to recognize is that there is no safe way to extract non-renewable materials like lithium from the environment without significant impacts to ecosystems. Ensuring that this extraction is safer doesn’t mean it’s safe. The report also ignores the many other impacts of building technologies like batteries that rely on lithium, or the harms these technologies themselves do to the environment. Lithium extraction is just the first step in a long list of harms on the way to a final product.
Again: we oppose all lithium mining, and indeed, all extraction, for luxury goods that humans can live without. Our priority is the health of the natural world, without which no human or any other living being on Earth can survive.
All images are from the Earthworks report Environmental Justice in California’s Lithium Valley. You can download the full report and summary sheet from https://earthworks.org/resources/lithium-valley/.
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