By Abigail M

I’m sitting on what used to be a car seat, torn-out and tanned by the Arizona sun. It rests against a school bus, perhaps its past home, that is half engulfed by the earth with cob walls guarding its entrances. Around me, makeshift abodes — some on wheels, tiny homes, tents, cob houses bedazzled with bottles and other odds and ends — giant water collecting towers, attempted hydroponic greenhouses, a composting toilet, and solar panels decorate the landscape. This is what I call home, or as the owner calls it: The island of misfit toys. A collection of characters color in between the lines; everyone here comes from their own pasts, all around the world, with different beliefs and passions, yet we’ve found ourselves in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, this homestead and ecological sanctuary. 

About two months ago, I set off on my first solo cross-country trek. The mission: To mess up. What I mean by mess up isn’t terribly clear: I wanted to push the boundaries of what it means to live in the United States; I didn’t want the next cookie cutter step — graduate college, get a job, get a house, work until you can’t — and I certainly didn’t want to stay complacent, stagnant, during the burgeoning ecological crisis. So, I decided to WWOOF. WWOOFing stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms and is a worldwide initiative to connect people to organic farms, provide an educational platform for more earth-focused agricultural practices, and to build community.

More than anything, I wanted to rid myself of this ongoing sense of disempowerment, devastation, and dread. Nowadays, these are normal responses to our institutionally-dominated sphere where nature is cast aside, along with human wellness. Sustainability, beyond its denotation, its buzz-wordiness for green-washing corporation’s intentions and profit, is inherently an intersectional outlook: the well-being of the natural world is inexplicably linked to the well-being of humanity. 

WWOOFing is a radical style of life. Radical meaning root. When it comes to getting to the root of climate change, it is essential that we look at agriculture and our modern-day practices: tillage, chemical exposure from pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, water run-off, desertification, monocultures, pollution, habitat destruction, and more. Unfortunately, the USA’s agriculture field is more focused on subsidizing crops for cattle, such as corn, rather than maintaining fertile soil that can sequester carbon and continue to grow food for people. So, small-scale, organic farmers may be the underdogs, but they are the keystone to a sustainable future in farming. 

One thing I’d like to express is that WWOOFing is a personal journey — no one experience can replicate another. There are a plethora of farms, skills, people, and other factors that can change the course of events; also, goals, desires, and intentions can heavily influence what is taken from any given situation. Additionally, it is important to be cautious and aware if/when traveling alone. Although the WWOOF.org organization does a wonderful job at regulating feedback, entering into any situation, especially intimate situations where you may live in a shared space with other people, can be somewhat unsafe. That being said, make sure that you have points of contact, consider traveling with a friend, thoroughly check reviews, and be on guard. Overall, WWOOF attracts good people, but safety always comes first. 

My personal journey started in Concrete, Washington at a homestead nestled beside the Skagit river and underneath the North Cascades. This land, before westward bound colonialism, was home to numerous indigenous tribes and is still sacred land to numerous people. My host made this incredibly clear, which transformed the nature of my stay. The land where the homestead was located was not only full of thriving microbes and critters living under the earth, blooming flowers, hearty vegetables, and fruiting trees, but also held a wealth of indigenous history, traditions, and sovereignty. 

Simplistically stated, homesteading is the practice of creating a self-sufficient system. However, in a culture where most people are dependent on creature comforts such as grocery stores, heating, cooling, water, and plumbing, this act takes a significant amount of planning and upkeep. At this homestead, my host centered her homestead around permaculture principles. Permaculture is the act and art of looking towards nature’s natural systems for solutions to human systems. Now, I’d like to personally add that the separation between “nature” and “humanity” is a social construct; people live within nature and are a part of it. While this distinction may be helpful for describing ideas such as permaculture, it can be harmful to our understanding as living beings that share this world with numerous other living beings. However, when we blur the line between nature and humanity, permaculture actually makes a lot more sense — of course we should be looking at the “natural” world for solutions, we are a part of the world and they are our solutions as well. Permaculture is more of a mindset than a rigid system of rules and regulations: A permaculture mindset provides tools and is an open field of innovation where exploration takes place. 

The first rule of permaculture is to observe and then interact. Observation can last as long as it is needed and is ongoing. In order to interact with the land, it is important to observe it for at least a year to fully understand how the seasons interact with it, especially if you intend on building structures, collecting water, and growing food. I also learned the importance of zones. At this homestead, there were different zones which determined the layout of the land: The garden and kitchen were closest to living structures as they are frequently visited; in the middle of the property there are berry bushes, a composting toilet, and the shower; then the property is guarded by a guild (collection of plants that provide support for one another), a chicken coop, and larger trees. This design organically unfolded to adhere to the needs of the people living there and mitigate their energy expenditure. 

When I first arrived at the homestead, I was overwhelmed by every detail, every bit of intention, that went into the land. When WWOOFing, the general deal is: work four-five hours a day for housing and food. By only working up to five hours, which is often full of conversation, education, and friendship-building, there is a ton of time to learn, and time to create, relax, cook good food, and create community. 

During this time, I lived in a wooden hut, somewhat like a glorified bed frame with a roof above my head and wooden pillars elevating the mattress off the ground, which opened its door to Sauk Mountain. Every day, I watched the raspberry sky fade behind the mountain’s face. Admittedly, the living situation was rustic, but the lack of space pushed me outside and gave me a greater appreciation for what I did have. This hut became somewhat sacred to me: the beginning and ending of my days all coiled under one roof. 

Although each day began and ended the same way, with a reflection period, everything in-between wildly ranged from canning parties, where four pots of boiling water were going and hundreds of cans of food were preserved, to harvesting medicinal herbs and making tinctures, to visiting nearby farms and assisting in their harvest. Every day was full of diversity. Every day was full of intention. I think that may be one of my favorite parts of my WWOOFing experience: without the distractions, or the business, of everyday life, time blossoms and becomes plentiful. Instead of rushing from once place to another through a general medium of anxious thought, I was present in every task. And, at the end of the day, everyone living on the homestead would gather around a communal meal and give thanks. Despite having the least amount of material goods, I have never heard so many people sing praise to the ongoing abundance festooned around our little community. 

I continued to WWOOF down the west coast and ended up working on an organic winery where I’d wake up in the morning and squish grapes under my feet. Then, I found myself in Big Sur living on the top of a mountain in a small artists’ homestead. Now I’m in Arizona, sitting in a sun-dried chair thinking about earth ships and what kind of kingdom I’d like to build from clay, sand, and straw. Along the way, I have met characters and some of the most inspirational people I’ve ever known. 

Whenever people call and ask what I’ve learned, I feel this sense of fear: How could I ever encapsulate all of the lessons I’ve learned, all of the stories, people I’ve met? While that may be a futile effort, I do believe that one of my biggest revelations from this ongoing journey is that there is a myriad of beautiful ways to live life outside of the heteronormative, capitalistic, consumeristic society that seems to be hanging over the United States like a cold, wet blanket. Likewise, some of our greatest solutions are working in hidden corners, and although it may be hard to see, gears are turning. Lastly, the health of our soil really does correlate to the health of our nation — not to mention ourselves. 

By M.O.T.H Collective

“If you dare to struggle you dare to win. If you dare not to struggle, goddamnit you don’t deserve to win. Let me say this: all power to the people.” -Fred Hampton

When Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline crossed the Mississippi, we knew we couldn’t let them take the Willow River without a fight. On July 3, protestors in black and green bloc constructed a barricade on a road leading to a pipeline easement and flooded past security. The pipeline workers cleared out and sat in their trucks, smoking cigarettes, scrolling through twitter, expecting another—now typical—three to four hour machine lockdown. On the outside of the construction site, we built barricades out of tires, car doors, rebar, barbed wire, and wood debris at two choke-points. At a third barricade, two people locked into a painted car at the entrance blocking workers from getting in.

The element of surprise delayed the cop response time. Before police were able to arrive, the Horizontal Directional Drill’s control box was ripped out and its electrical power cords sliced. For a week or so after the action, the sound of metal cutting into the earth didn’t pierce the air. For a while, they were set back.

What happened at the Willow River demonstrated how much damage was and could be done to ecocidal infrastructure by a few dozen autonomous actors. Guerrilla warfare — as a model for nonviolent civil-disobedience — never seeks to overcome the enemy by strength or numbers. With any future resistance to this pipeline and others like it, organized resistance can pick targets, concentrate a large enough number of people at a weak point, hit hard, and then disperse under the cover of their surroundings. Mao sums up the principles of asymmetrical warfare against an occupying force: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” 

—

The July action came a few hours before the Line 3 “Four Necessity Valve Turners” would appear before a judge for the very last time. Valve Turning is a direct action tactic that involves safely and forcibly turning the emergency shutdown valves of pipelines. As they carried out their action, the four Catholic workers prayed and sang. The Catholic Worker movement ranges from monastic types who are content sowing pea seeds in their rural enclaves to the type that light excavators on fire with coffee bin molotovs and chopped up the Black Snake DAPL with welding torches — as Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya did in their “rolling ploughshares.” Ploughshares actions usually involve an attempt to do maximum damage to devices of genocide and imperial domination (warheads, submarines, pipelines). The people who take these actions are almost always incarcerated, and continue to care for the downtrodden within the carceral system. Reznicek, whose arson charge of two years was supplemented with a six year terrorism enhancement, wrote from prison that she’s begun teaching creative writing classes to other folx in genpop.

—

We gathered around fires in the winter to stay warm, and in spring we gathered in the smoke to keep the bugs away. We talked and passed along rumors. Rumors of wiretapping and police drones with thermal optics. Rumors about the horizontal directional drill (HDD), the machine that utilizes pilot drones with drills attached, followed by thousands of gallons of clay and chemical sludge mixed with extracted river water, to drill a tunnel for the pipeline underneath water bodies like the Mississippi River. We wondered how many drills there’d be, where they’d be positioned first, and the possibility of disrupting the pullback process, speculating on how bad the cops would try and hurt us for non-violent civil disobedience. One rumor that floated around was that there were only three of these machines in North America, which proved to be utterly false. Rumors of pipeline workers clearing out any wildlife along the line, including wolves and bears, by shooting them from their ATVs. Some of the ecocide could be documented with water samples during frac-outs when, amidst the drilling process, an aquifer is breached, causing the drilling fluid, made mostly of clay and xanthan gum, to gush into the surface water. This geyser of industrial waste suffocates plant and animal life, from algae to wild rice to minnow. 

As we talked, the cops dislodged and arrested tree sitters, police liaisons and medics all while Border Security helicopters kicked up debris to disperse crowds. Police told arrestees in riot vans, “If you act good, I’ll turn the heat on to make sure you don’t freeze.” Sheriffs would threaten Protectors who locked-down that if they didn’t disengage (unhook themselves from pipeline construction equipment) they’d be subject to pain compliance — officers grinding knuckles on pressure points at the nose, behind the ears, and in the jaw, torturing non-violent protestors causing permanent nerve damage to some.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, the police murdered Daunte Wright, and Mayor Frey deployed the National Guard. Agape Project removed the barricades around George Floyd square. Winston Smith was assassinated by a federally deputized task force. Deonna Marie was hit and killed by a white nationalist car attack. And through all this, the sound of machines continued to pound by the rivers, in the woods up north. As Enbridge sucked water out of the rivers and lakes for drilling in the middle of a drought, entire rivers disappeared virtually overnight. 

—

The lifeline of a movement is fairly predictable, and there were points where we fundamentally failed. There was an occupation that successfully blocked the entry of an HDD drill site for a week, with people camped out on the easement leading into the river crossing. But after a week of waiting on the company’s water permits, they were all upheld, and leadership decided to do a coordinated march out of the site to take formal arrest. At the end of it, the Sheriff said to the crowd, “Come to my car if you want to be cited.” And a few days later the drills rolled in unhindered. 

In the weeks leading up to the river crossings, thousands materialized for a mass civil disobedience that targeted one of the pipeline pumping stations. But the action was swept into the news void. 

An entire camp formed at the beginning of the fight, positioned next to the Mississippi river crossing. The coordinators expected to house thousands of campers and be for the Line 3 fight what Sacred Stone was to Standing Rock. 

However, the numbers barely materialized, and there were points where the camp was a skeleton crew. The infrastructure and openness of this camp led to a tendency towards liberal tourism, where many people congregated to learn about the struggle for a weekend, but few actions ever materialized. The week of a scheduled Indigo Girls concert put on by the camp, Enbridge ploughed beneath the Mississippi River.

—

We began to wonder if we could disrupt work well enough to escape the cycle of symbolic arrest, and to avoid seeing our friends brutalized, subjected to the dehumanization of the carceral system, and bogged down for months in lengthy and expensive court proceedings. With some success, autonomous actors were able to infiltrate worksites and evade arrest by running out through heavy brush. We wondered if this tactic (practiced by the Mississippi Stand camp and detailed succinctly in the Swarm Manifesto on antidotezines) could be proliferated, so that we’d have a way to fight back beyond machine lockdowns. 

We all knew the monster we were going up against, and we knew pipeline owner Enbridge had the cops and courts incentivized to come down on us as hard as possible. There is a whole network of Task Forces, private security, infrastructure-specific citations, suits, informants, surveillance software, grand juries, and solitary cells for anyone who challenges the system in a way it cannot tolerate. 

Letter writing campaigns, bank actions, marches, and even lockdowns are situations the corporations can adapt to and control. When their investments are hit in a way that is multi-pronged and out of nowhere, it reveals that their security apparatus is not all-powerful, but rather fragile. A paper tiger can turn to ash with a single spark.

Asking people to mobilize in a way the system can’t tolerate requires a lot of trust, and a lot of faith that you’ll have each other’s backs when the state retaliates. It even requires faith in history. The reactionary will say of any revolutionary act, from a march, to a hunger strike, to sabotage like that of Reznicek, “Well, what did that do? They lost in the end anyway.”

Our ‘victory’ may never be clear-cut but every revolutionary act inspires another. (So we have to also believe in the butterfly effect.)

—

A lot of the people out in Northern Minnesota fought because they were fighting for their home. Oil executives made the age-old decision of disregarding indigenous sovereignty again. Some people fighting Line 3 had been at Standing Rock or had watched a livestream of that camp being burned as it was cleared by black-helmeted police.

People power, when used responsibly, has a clarifying effect on all participants. Despite the cops, mace & guns, & legal legitimacy to capture and kill, there are moments when you feel your feet on the ground, the relief of rain on your face after weeks of drought, and none of the violence matters yet, because the cops aren’t there yet, and everyone’s charging one way: forward.

—

A red dress hangs and sways in the wind and in the daylight, surrounded by abundant green, the frame of a body in the fabric looks less like a ghost and more like a guardian. Outside my window, Lake Superior is indistinguishable from the night sky.

Still, tar sands are flowing under the Mississippi River. As the non-profit resistance camps close down for the winter, there is a sense of disbelief and mourning in this moment. A lot of people who risked their lives in this struggle are wondering if they could have done more. I’m sure many people are wondering if we could have gotten greater numbers or gotten the right media coverage or made a strategic shift that would have delayed this day from coming. We have to remind ourselves the fight does not end with this pipeline because the people in its path are surviving more than just this project.

I believe that one day the emergency shutdown valves will be turned. The pipe will be excavated, cleaned, and sold for scrap.

Hundreds of young people came out and acquired essential skills for fighting white supremacy & extractive industry, supported by radical, resilient communities forged in the fire of this fight. Now, Enbridge seeks to vertically integrate production and distribution, buying several ports in Texas for the international sale of crude. What if, on a given day, railroads were blocked in Calgary and Clearbrook with a simultaneous blockade of the ports in Texas? What if someone in another country could turn the valves with malware and lock the companies out of their own system (as the Colonial Pipeline hackers successfully did, kept it shutdown for months, and apolitically ransomed it for a few million.)

—

A lot of people will throw around their political affiliations in action spaces. Anarchist, communist, socialist – or some vague fusion of the three. All that politics, especially away from the frontlines, is just talk. Now that the pipe’s done and the cameras are gone, the longterm work begins. Community care-based programs like free lunch, people’s clinics and childcare, wilderness survival and self-defense courses, patrols for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives and eviction defense teams will be set up to do what the state will never do: care for the people trapped in its borders. We will be on standby ready to take back the land from fascist and corporatist forces when the time comes.

As we move beyond the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, Minnesota’s position as a climate refuge will invite conflict in the region, rather than de-escalate it. As people arrive, displaced by our resource wars and trade policies, and displaced within the nation by poverty and ecological disaster, there may be a virulent tide of eco-fascism, unless we can lay the groundwork to stop it. It is already deeply entrenched in the logic of white nationalism. “This is our land” and “You’re trespassing” is uttered by the typical Line 3 sellout as they swerve their trucks or four-wheelers at us. “They [migrants] are a strain on our resources” is a rhetorical point that echoes through the Fox News broadcasts they all watch, a point that was also braided into the manifesto of the El Paso shooter who committed a genocidal terror attack against Chicano people shopping at Walmart. Out of a need to play soldier, lone wolf attackers like Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha or organized groups like the Proud Boys in the Pacific Northwest kill and physically dominate anyone they perceive as a threat to the American empire and private property.

—

There were moments in the winter when there were a few hundred people marching down a country road, flanked by snowdrifts. The man camps, essentially Enbridge-built trailer parks that operated with the same opacity as fraternities or precincts, were hotbeds of Covid-19 transmission and, more pressingly, sexual assault & trafficking. As the march concluded with prayer and song, I wondered what would have happened if we’d stormed the man camp. The workers, despite the fact that they too are exploited under capitalism and completely disposable to their employers, deserved to be driven out.

Misogyny, Covid-19 denialism, anti-Semitism, Christian Creationism, neo-confederacy, and utter contempt for Indigenous people is endemic to the culture in their line of work. What if we’d banged down the doors and occupied their ‘homes’, made them, for a portion of time, displaced? But of course, it would’ve led to mass arrest and riot charges for the leadership of the march…

As the imperial core continues to collapse, the next wave of fascists will continue to collaborate with law enforcement and increasingly fringe local government, trying to create sovereign ethno-states, to exert control over farmland, freshwater, and hunting grounds as the climate crisis becomes a game for resource-ownership. 

In the resistance fight, the communal fires, dinners, and conversations of about ‘what could be’ were all little parts of a bigger picture. The crisis of the Line 3 pipeline created, in the woods around border townsfe wells of grassroots democracy akin to international revolutionary projects like the Zapatista resistance that gained autonomy over Chiapas or the eco-socialist Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava. Expanding autonomous regions may become a more common sight within the next decade as the people begin to take their power back.

All in all, what we’re asking is for us to think a little outside the box, considering the batshit sci-fi movie that already is our reality. We should imagine cyberpunk outlaws to hack Amazon’s self-driving semis. Imagine non-lethal drone swarms to delay commercial air traffic. Imagine flotillas of buccaneers overtaking oil tankers in the middle of the ocean. All of this so we can have drinkable water and breathable air, so that our daughters and nieces may grow strong and storm the jails and camps, decades from now, as liberators. 

In the meantime, though, we can only know that at some points in the fight, we landed a blow that made them bleed. From Fairy Creek to Thacker Pass, from the forests of Humboldt County to South Atlanta, we’re fighting a war for the dawn, and we have a duty to win.

What do we do when our planet is under attack? STAND UP, FIGHT BACK

Further readings:

For America to Live Europe Must Die- Russel Means (pdf on Indigenous Action)

Accomplices Not Allies (Warrior Zine)

Defend the Territory (Warrior Publications)

Anarkata (the anarchist library)

The struggle is not for martyrdom but for life: on the revolution in Rojava (Crimethinc)

Swarm Manifesto (antidote zines)

ELF Black Cat sabotage manual (downloadable on the earth first website)

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

The Occupy movement introduced the “human microphone” — when a speaker has their words repeated and thereby amplified by a crowd without the need for a PA. This is a slow way of communicating, but the advantages can be pretty inspired. The speaker has this explosive sensation of a large crowd not only hearing what they’re saying, but have their own words given back to them with emotion and energy. This is a useful metaphor of the condition we are in. There are entrenched systems and people holding back things from changing. Climate chaos, racism, stolen lives at the service of capitalism is seemingly never going to recede. Using force and violence to intervene has its limitations. The older, slower way of working is to inform and inspire more people to go in the directions that are needed. 

A newspaper is in this tradition – relaying the speeches, ideas and urgency of those on the front line. Microphone. This paper is made by regular people who are not professional journalists or activists or even hardcore revolutionaries. This issue and recent issues testify to how Slingshot puts out a call for submissions and is often met with something worse than silence. Many of the articles we consider are lacking. We do our best considering what’s given to us. As with those dramatic days of Occupy sometimes we are amplifying something that is awkward or we don’t entirely agree with.  We appreciate the authors who worked hard on what you hold in your hands.

To get this issue out, we extended the article deadline twice for two months to finally get enough material for a paper. Even though we made an issue, it was just a skeleton crew making the decisions and attending meetings. Like so much else in the world, it doesn’t feel sustainable to work like this. The pandemic cut the collective off from its typical process of gradually incorporating new members who drift in. The Long Haul was closed and the lockdown caused the whole society to turn inward — sticking with a tiny pod of people you already knew. Worse yet was only seeing people on a computer screen. The pandemic isn’t exactly over — it is unknown how we can heal this damage and reinvigorate our grassroots communities. But we gotta try — write it in your organizer. 

While we were making the issue up in the loft, the meeting room downstairs filled to capacity with an 8 hour long anarchist conference — the biggest public gathering at Long Haul in two years. While the endless lectures made it hard to concentrate, it was so nourishing to be amidst the rabble. 

Slingshot’s normal practice is to publish an article deadline a few months out and then wait and hope. We’re doing so again — but with reservations and some anxiety. Another attractive option is to take a break and try different things for a while.  Perhaps exciting articles and folks wanting to join the collective will accumulate over time — and perhaps patience is the best way forward? If you don’t see another issue of Slingshot for a while, that may be why. And if we end up taking a longer break than usual and you miss Slingshot,feel free to start your own zine. When the time is right, Slingshot hopes to sprout like the mushrooms after a heavy rain. 

One collective member asked her middle school students what they want to learn and discuss in school? We would like to invite more responses from students beyond the Bay Area and may publish some responses in the future. Another collective member suggested we start a People’s Park vision quest so we can publish ideas for parks and commons in a future issue. On the back cover, Slingshot for years published a calendar of upcoming events. But with the pandemic there’s hardly any events. So we’re experimenting and hope to get the calendar BACK soon.

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers and distributors.  Even if you feel you are not an essayist, illustrator, or whistleblower, you may know someone who is.  If you send an article, please be open to editing. We’re a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Alex, Andrei, Daisy, Darby, eggplant, elke, Emily, Fern, Gina, Heval, Jacob, Jack, Jesse, Jax, Josette, Juan-Carlos, Luis, rachelle, Robin,Salmon, Seandunn, Sylvia, Will & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on February 6, 2022 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 135 by March 4, 2022 at 11 pm. 

Volume 1, Number 134, Circulation 22,000

Printed November 19, 2021

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

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Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul and Bound Together books, SF.

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We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $4 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. slingshotcollective.org