Earth First! Blocks the Blade, USA

7th July 2010
Earth First! hon­ored the No Com­pro­mise stance towards envi­ron­men­tal­ism by exe­cut­ing a beau­ti­ful action that cut to the heart of local orga­niz­ing, bio-cen­trism and direct action in defense of the Earth. Earth First! con­clud­ed this year’s Sum­mer Ren­dezvous in Maine with a dynam­ic and intense blockad­ing an access road to the lat­est land destroy­ing devel­op­ment scheme—the clearcut­ting of Maine’s Sisk Moun­tain for TransCanada’s wind tur­bines.

Sisk 17th July 2010
Earth First! hon­ored the No Com­pro­mise stance towards envi­ron­men­tal­ism by exe­cut­ing a beau­ti­ful action that cut to the heart of local orga­niz­ing, bio-cen­trism and direct action in defense of the Earth. Earth First! con­clud­ed this year’s Sum­mer Ren­dezvous in Maine with a dynam­ic and intense blockad­ing an access road to the lat­est land destroy­ing devel­op­ment scheme—the clearcut­ting of Maine’s Sisk Moun­tain for TransCanada’s wind tur­bines.

Begin­ning in the ear­ly morn­ing, more than five EF!ers elud­ed police tails and entered Plum Creek land on Sisk Moun­tain, the site of TransCanada’s prospec­tive wind farm, with the inten­tion of blockad­ing the access road. Although police assist­ing the cor­po­ra­tions found the activists quick­ly, the access road was block­ad­ed for the entire morn­ing by a cav­al­cade of police and, inter­est­ing­ly enough, bor­der patrol. They did our job for us, and nobody was arrest­ed; only warn­ings were issued to the brave activists who sparked the block­ade.

At around noon, police issued an order to dis­perse, and many EF!ers returned to the Rondy site pleased at the fact that, for that morn­ing, the blades of wind tur­bines did not pass through the pow­er of the peo­ple. At the access road, how­ev­er, things were just get­ting start­ed.

Earth First!ers remained to con­tin­ue protest­ing, most mov­ing to the oppo­site side of the high­way to get sup­port from pass­ing auto­mo­biles. One per­son, Tur­tle, was arrest­ed for refus­ing to move from the access road. Soon, a mas­sive truck emerged from the bend, haul­ing behind it the blade itself, the awe­some length of which resem­bled a small air­plane. As the truck entered the access road, EF!ers made their move, rush­ing to stop it from enter­ing the site. Mean­while, Wil­low, locked her­self to the under­car­riage of the truck. The truck­er haul­ing the blade began revving the engine, reveal­ing the inten­tion to dri­ve on with an activist locked to his rig. Hero­ical­ly, Anna jumped on top of the truck and thrust a sign over the wind­shield, obstruct­ing the truck­ers’ view. Final­ly, the police, real­iz­ing they had been defeat­ed for the moment, told the truck­er to stop his engines.

When all was said and done, the truck had been blocked for hours and three peo­ple had been arrest­ed. Their bail was set for $500, and they were released that night. Through the inten­si­ty of the day, the gath­er­ing stood strong, suc­cess­ful action in tow. Earth First! is show­ing that the atten­tion to oil and off­shore drilling is only the tip of the ice­berg. We protest­ed off-shore drilling in San­ta Bar­bara in Feb­ru­ary, months before the Deep Hori­zon spill. We need to look for­ward to a future of resis­tance to the false solu­tions of wind pow­er in wild areas, “clean coal” and bio­mass.

This years’ Rondy action has been called the Green Tea Par­ty, and that might not be far off. With the irrev­o­ca­ble eco­log­i­cal dam­age done to this plan­et, a new era must come about. The most recent glob­al protests in favor of envi­ron­men­tal­ism indi­cate that more and more peo­ple are tak­ing up the slo­gan, “We won’t stop until they do. Earth First!”