Category: Unnecessary Developments

Resis­tance against exploita­tion is noth­ing new. His­to­ry is full of exam­ples of people—perfectly ordi­nary people—fighting back against injus­tice, exploita­tion, and the destruc­tion of their lands and com­mu­ni­ties. They move through what­ev­er chan­nels for action are open to them, but often, left with no legal or polit­i­cal pow­er, they turn to mil­i­tant means to defend them­selves.

It is hard­ly a sim­ple deci­sion, and rarely the first or pre­ferred option, but when all oth­er paths have been explored and found to lead nowhere, mil­i­tant action becomes the only real­is­tic route left. Move­ments and com­mu­ni­ties come to that truth in many dif­fer­ent ways, but almost with­out fail, they come to it borne by a col­lec­tive cul­ture of resis­tance. One inspir­ing exam­ple is the Bolt Wee­vils.

The Bolt Wee­vils were a group of farm­ers in Min­neso­ta who spent sev­er­al years in the late 1970s per­fect­ing the fine art of sab­o­tag­ing inter­state elec­tri­cal trans­mis­sion lines. Their efforts have been memo­ri­al­ized in numer­ous books and songs, and their sto­ry is a hope­ful one we would do well to remem­ber and re-tell.

The sto­ry of the Bolt Wee­vils begins in the mid-1970s, when the Coop­er­a­tive Pow­er Asso­ci­a­tion (CPA) and Unit­ed Pow­er Asso­ci­a­tion (UPA) pro­posed con­struc­tion of a new inter­state high-volt­age trans­mis­sion line. Tak­ing its name from the two coop­er­a­tives, the CU Pow­er­line would car­ry cur­rent from a gen­er­at­ing sta­tion in North Dako­ta across west-cen­tral Min­neso­ta to feed the urban cen­ters of the Twin Cities.
In deter­min­ing a route for the pow­er­line, small farm­ers land was rat­ed less impor­tant than large indus­tri­al farms, and as a result, the pro­posed route crossed the prop­er­ty of near­ly 500 landown­ers. Out­raged at being trod­den over to for the ben­e­fit of indus­try and urban­ism, resis­tance against the project began imme­di­ate­ly in earnest.

Once res­i­dents found out about the project, they refused to sign land ease­ments. Local towns passed res­o­lu­tions oppos­ing the project and reject con­struc­tion per­mits. The pow­er­line went to review before the State’s Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty Coun­cil, which went ahead and grant­ed the nec­es­sary per­mits in the face of over­whelm­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion.

When sur­vey­ors showed up out of the blue in one farmer’s fields, he smashed their equip­ment with his trac­tor and rammed their vehi­cle. The action of that one farmer helped cat­alyze pop­u­lar sen­ti­ments into action. Farm­ers began using CB radios to noti­fy one anoth­er about sur­vey­ing activ­i­ties, and would turn out in groups to stop the work. As resis­tance began to build, local radio sta­tions would broad­cast times and loca­tions of pro­tes­tor gath­er­ings. Farm­ers and oth­ers who opposed the project began meet­ing every morn­ing in the Lowry town hall, host­ing oth­ers who’d come from neigh­bor­ing coun­ties, to make plans for each day.

As sur­vey­ing and con­struc­tion con­tin­ued, the locals esca­lat­ed their efforts. They would erect signs in their fields to block the sight­lines of the sur­vey­ors, and stand next to sur­vey crews run­ning their chain­saws to dis­rupt their work. Sur­vey stakes dis­ap­peared overnight. Farm­ers used their trucks to make road­blocks and their trac­tors to pile boul­ders in the con­struc­tion sites. One group even gained per­mis­sion from the coun­ty to improve a rur­al road—they dug a ditch across it to stop all traf­fic.

They filed more law­suits, and the issue was even­tu­al­ly tak­en up by the Min­neso­ta Supreme Court, which in the spir­it of every­thing it rep­re­sents, decid­ed against the farm­ers and in favor of the pow­er­line. Many of the cit­i­zens oppos­ing the pipeline had earnest­ly believed in insti­tu­tions like the Supreme Court and the struc­tures of pow­er. After their bat­tles through the courts, many of them were dis­il­lu­sioned and had been rad­i­cal­ized.

Law enforce­ment began escort­ing con­struc­tion and sur­vey work­ers, and the sit­u­a­tion came to a head on Jan­u­ary 4th 1978, when 100 farm­ers chased pow­er­line crews from three dif­fer­ent sites, fought with police, and even tore down part of a tow­er. The next week, the Min­neso­ta Gov­er­nor ordered the largest mobi­liza­tion of the State Troop­ers in Minnesota’s his­to­ry, with 200 Troopers—fully half of the force—descended on the rur­al area to ensure con­struc­tion con­tin­ued.

Protests con­tin­ued and grew, as the issue began to draw nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media atten­tion; hun­dreds turned out for ral­lies at sur­vey sites, and some schools even let out so stu­dents and teach­ers could attend. In St. Paul, thou­sands of farm­ers ral­lied and demon­strat­ed, and in March of 1978 more than 8,000 peo­ple marched almost ten miles through freez­ing tem­per­a­tures from Lowry to Glen­wood to protest the CU pow­er­line.

It was in the heat of August that the ket­tle boiled over. Bolts on one of the trans­mis­sion tow­ers were loos­ened, and soon after­wards, it fell over, as the Bolt Wee­vils entered the scene. Then three more fell over. Guard poles and bolts were cut and loos­ened, insu­la­tors were shot out. Over the next few years, 14 tow­ers were felled and near­ly 10,000 insu­la­tors were shot out. Soon, heli­copters patrolled the pow­er­line, and it was made a fed­er­al offense to take down inter­state trans­mis­sion lines.

There were numer­ous arrests, some 120 in all, but only two indi­vid­u­als were ever con­vict­ed on felony charges, and even then they were only sen­tenced to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. Oppo­si­tion to the pow­er­line was so com­mon that in some instances, wit­ness­es refused to tes­ti­fy against farm­ers.

In the End, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pow­er­line was built and went into oper­a­tion, despite the protests and the dis­rup­tions by the Bolt Wee­vils. While they were unsuc­cess­ful in ulti­mate­ly stop­ping the project, there’s much from their efforts that we can learn and apply to our work today against exploita­tion and civ­i­liza­tion.

As in most social strug­gles that turn to prop­er­ty destruc­tion and mil­i­tan­cy, that wasn’t the first choice of tac­tics for those on the ground. They fought for years through accept­ed legal and polit­i­cal avenues, turn­ing to mate­r­i­al attacks after all oth­er cours­es of action had proven inef­fec­tive. But more than that, the pop­u­lar agi­ta­tion and orga­niz­ing in the years lead­ing up to the emer­gence of the Bolt Wee­vils didn’t mere­ly pre­cede mil­i­tant direct action: it laid the ground­work for it.

The work of the local farmers—their protests, demon­stra­tions, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, and com­mu­ni­ty organizing—paved the way (for­give the phrase) and set the con­di­tions for the sab­o­tage that would lat­er occur. By mobi­liz­ing res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers against the project, build­ing social net­works, and agi­tat­ing and rais­ing oppo­si­tion against CU pow­er­line, a col­lec­tive cul­ture of resis­tance was cre­at­ed, plant­i­ng and water­ing the seeds from which the Bolt Wee­vils were born.

With civ­i­liza­tion churn­ing onwards towards biot­ic col­lapse and under­ground resis­tance the only real hope left, car­ing for those seeds is our pri­ma­ry duty today. The sto­ry of the Bolt Weevils—like count­less oth­er sto­ries of resistance—shows that mil­i­tant resis­tance emerges from strong and sup­port­ive cul­tures of resis­tance. The time to start build­ing such a cul­ture was yes­ter­day. For those of us who choose to orga­nize and work in an above­ground and legal way, build­ing such a cul­ture that embraces and cel­e­brates sab­o­tage and the use of any means nec­es­sary to stop the omni­cide of indus­tri­al­ism is our fore­most task.

The sto­ry of the Bolt Wee­vils isn’t empow­er­ing and inspir­ing because they “fought off the bad guys and won.” They didn’t win. The pow­er lines were built, forced down their throats in the face of their resis­tance. No, their sto­ry is inspir­ing because it so clear­ly and unde­ni­ably demon­strates how sim­ply fea­si­ble sab­o­tage and mate­r­i­al attacks tru­ly are. Often, we talk about mil­i­tant resis­tance and direct action as mys­te­ri­ous and abstract things, things that wouldn’t ever hap­pen in our lives or com­mu­ni­ties, things that no one as ordi­nary as any of us would ever do.

Whether we roman­ti­cize under­ground action or are intim­i­dat­ed by it, we gen­er­al­ly talk about it as though it is some­thing out of a movie or a nov­el. The truth is that such actions are sim­ply tactics—just like peti­tion-dri­ves or street marches—that can be used to dis­man­tle sys­tems of pow­er. The Bolt Weevils—a group of farm­ers with hunt­ing rifles and hacksaws*—serve as a stark reminder that one doesn’t require mil­i­tary train­ing and high-tech gad­gets to act in direct and mate­r­i­al ways against the infra­struc­ture of destruc­tion. We’re all capa­ble of fight­ing back, and while sab­o­tage against indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture can be daunt­ing for many valid rea­sons, tech­ni­cal­i­ty isn’t one of them.

We may have to fail work­ing through oth­er chan­nels (as if we haven’t already) before col­lec­tive­ly turn­ing to sab­o­tage and attacks on indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture as a strat­e­gy, and we will cer­tain­ly need to build a sup­port­ive and strong cul­ture of resis­tance. But if we’re seri­ous about stop­ping the destruc­tion and exploita­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, we will be left with no oth­er choice.

*This is spec­u­la­tive. I don’t actu­al­ly know how they shot out insu­la­tors or cut through guard poles, although there are plen­ty of accounts of hunt­ing rifles and hack­saws being used in this fash­ion, and it’s from those sto­ries that I haz­ard this guess.