Militant Mining Resistance

Min­ing is one of the most vis­cer­al­ly destruc­tive and hor­rif­ic ways in which the dom­i­nant culture—industrial civilization—enacts its vio­lence on the liv­ing world. As entire­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly destruc­tive as this soci­ety is, few oth­er indus­tri­al activ­i­ties are as hor­rif­i­cal­ly con­fronting as min­ing. Whole land­scapes are cleared of life as communities—most often indige­nous or poor—are forced from their homes. Moun­tains lev­el to piles of bar­ren rub­ble which leach count­less poi­sons, scour­ing life from whole water­sheds. Pits of unimag­in­able size are carved from the bones of the earth, leav­ing moon­scapes in their wake.

Besides the imme­di­ate dam­age to the land at the site of oper­a­tions, the destruc­tion extends through the uses its prod­ucts are put to. In this way, min­ing is cru­cial to the con­tin­ued func­tion of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion, sup­ply­ing many of the raw mate­ri­als that form the mate­r­i­al fab­ric of indus­tri­al soci­ety. Steel, alu­minum, cop­per, coal, tar sands bitu­men, cement; the mate­ri­als extract­ed through min­ing are cen­tral com­po­nents of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion in an imme­di­ate and phys­i­cal way. They are the build­ing blocks of this soci­ety.

For­tu­nate­ly, as is the way of things, where there is atroc­i­ty and bru­tal­iza­tion, there is resis­tance. There has been a lot of mil­i­tant anti-min­ing action hap­pen­ing recent­ly; in the last few months alone there have been sev­er­al inspir­ing inci­dents of peo­ple tak­ing direct mil­i­tant action against min­ing projects and infra­struc­ture.

In Feb­ru­ary, sev­er­al dozen masked mil­i­tants raid­ed the Hel­las gold mine in Halkidi­ki, Greece. They fire­bombed machin­ery, vehi­cles, and offices at the site. The attack fol­lowed sev­er­al years of legal chal­lenges and pub­lic demonstrations—none of which suc­ceed­ed in stop­ping the mine, which will destroy forests, poi­son ground­wa­ter, and release air pol­lu­tants includ­ing lead, mer­cury and arsenic.

When local res­i­dents tried to stop the mine through the courts the gov­ern­ment ruled against them, claim­ing that the mine would cre­ate jobs. As the Deputy Min­is­ter of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­ment Asi­makis Papa­geor­giou said, “We can no longer accept this [area] being left unex­ploit­ed or bare­ly exploit­ed.”

State­ments like these on the part of those in pow­er, while not nec­es­sar­i­ly sur­pris­ing, help to make clear the real­i­ty we face; the dom­i­nant cul­ture requires the rend­ing of the liv­ing world into dead com­modi­ties. It can’t be per­suad­ed to change, no mat­ter how com­pas­sion­ate and com­pelling the appeals we make. It can only be forced to change.

More recent­ly, the Powhar­nal coal mine in Scot­land was attacked at the begin­ning of April. An anony­mous com­mu­nique was released via Indy­media Scot­land:

At some point over the past week­end mul­ti­ple items of plant machin­ery at an exten­sion to the Powhar­nal open cast coal site in East Ayr­shire were put beyond work­ing use. High val­ue tar­gets includ­ing a prime mover and bull­doz­er were also tar­get­ed to cause max­i­mum dis­rup­tion to work­ings at the mine.

This action presents yet anoth­er hope­ful exam­ple of mil­i­tant action tar­get­ing extrac­tive projects. This was not a sym­bol­ic act of prop­er­ty destruc­tion, but rather one aimed at mate­ri­al­ly dis­rupt­ing and stop­ping destruc­tive activ­i­ty. More so, the actionist(s) specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed key equip­ment and infra­struc­ture at the site to max­i­mize the impact of their actions, mak­ing good use of effec­tive sys­tems dis­rup­tion.

A third exam­ple comes from Peru, where in mid-April sev­er­al hun­dred pro­tes­tors stormed the Minas Con­ga gold & cop­per mine, occu­py­ing the site for a short while and burn­ing equip­ment. Besides the imme­di­ate dam­age done by the arson, the action forced the oper­at­ing com­pa­ny, Min­era Yana­cocha, to evac­u­ate per­son­nel and equip­ment, fur­ther dis­rupt­ing their oper­a­tions.

This lat­est protest in April is the lat­est in a con­tin­u­ous and diverse tapes­try of resis­tance to the Minas Con­ga mine. Such direct and mil­i­tant protests and actions last year forced Yana­cocha to put most of the min­ing project on hold, and the strong unyield­ing oppo­si­tion has New­mont Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (which owns Yana­cocha) con­sid­er­ing pulling out of the project alto­geth­er. This is yet anoth­er exam­ple of how effec­tive mil­i­tant action can be in stop­ping min­ing and oth­er extrac­tive projects.

Of course there are plen­ty of above­ground and non­vi­o­lent efforts being made to oppose min­ing projects hap­pen­ing as well, and this isn’t meant to detract from or dis­miss their efforts. But the dom­i­nant cul­ture needs access to the raw mate­ri­als that feed the glob­al econ­o­my, and in the end it will secure those resources by force, refus­ing to hear “no!”

Again, this isn’t to say that non­vi­o­lent efforts are by any means doomed to fail­ure each and every time we employ them. It is to acknowl­edge that the entire exis­tence and oper­a­tion of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion requires con­tin­ued access to “raw mate­ri­als” (oth­er­wise known as nat­ur­al liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties), and that the courts, reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tems, and laws have all been designed to pre­serve that arrange­ment. We may win occa­sion­al vic­to­ries here and there, but like a casi­no, they—the House, the cap­i­tal­ists, the min­ers, the extrac­tors, etc.— will always come out ahead in the end.

When above­ground & legal efforts to stop min­ing and oth­er extrac­tion projects fail, as they so often and reli­ably do, those deter­mined to pro­tect the lands and com­mu­ni­ties that are their homes turn to oth­er means.  

Attack­ing and destroy­ing the min­ing infra­struc­tures themselves—the phys­i­cal machines that are the imme­di­ate and direct weapons used to tear up biomes—forces a halt to extrac­tion with an unmatched direct­ness and imme­di­a­cy. Beyond min­ing itself, the strate­gic effi­ca­cy of tar­get­ing infrastructure—as the foun­da­tion­al sup­ports of any system—has been proven time and again by mil­i­taries and resis­tance move­ments around the world.

Of course, attacks tar­get­ing mines alone will like­ly nev­er be enough to stop such harm­ful and destruc­tive process­es alto­geth­er. That can only hap­pen by dis­man­tling indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion itself. And like anti-min­ing resis­tance, bring­ing down civ­i­liza­tion will require under­ground action— the tar­get­ing of key nodes of crit­i­cal indus­tri­al sys­tems through coor­di­nat­ed sab­o­tage.

As civ­i­liza­tion con­tin­ues its inces­sant death march around the world— tear­ing apart and destroy­ing ever more of the liv­ing world, ever more human and extra-human com­mu­ni­ties— resis­tance against it must of neces­si­ty become more mil­i­tant. With so much at stake, those resisters in Greece, Scot­land, Peru and else­where using mil­i­tant attacks on indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture to defend their lands and com­mu­ni­ties deserve our undy­ing sup­port. Those of us who val­ue life and jus­tice should not con­demn them, but cel­e­brate them— for theirs is pre­cise­ly the type of action that will be required to stop the mur­der of the liv­ing world.