Hasta La Creative!

A Three Part Series on Creative Resistance: Part 2, ECO.

How can we resist the nightmare of global capitalism and the lifestyle it demands? How can we jam the dominant logic of consumerism, imperial war, an abused Third World, and an ember planet? While no doubt daunting, we offer a guide in three parts. Each third targets a different site where capital rears its Achilles heel, where creative forms of resistance take shape and reveal new ways to live.

Under the headings, CORPO, ECO, PSYCHO, this list proceeds apace in the twilight of postindustrial capital. We don’t have time as a luxury anymore; in fact, we’re living the end times. So as you use, combine, or complement the following guidelines to counter the system, act now, act fast.

Part II: ECO: We’ve left a planet of slag to posterity—it’s time to reconsider

Street Farms

Community gardeners may be the future; their projects exist in major urban centers, such as the Sole Food collective in Vancouver (with four farms) to Growing Power in Milwaukee, WI, to others from LA to Barcelona. Sole Food’s raison d’etre no doubt applies to most of these outfits, namely that they turn “vacant urban land into street farms that grow artisan quality fruits and vegetables.” With their help we can begin to uproot agribusiness its destructive tendencies.

Recognize the scope

Maybe it’s easy to forget the massive affect of industry/development/consumption on the planet. But consider that traces of fuel exist in all drinking water. Penguins in the remotest reaches carry carcinogens. Sliced open sea life contains consumed bits of plastic. Mountains of shirked computer parts languish in the Third World.

Derrick Jensen’s Endgame, Ed Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes, and Chris Smith’s Collapse all track the environmental decline. It’s a sobering wake up call to immerse yourself in these media as well as other books/features in the same vein.

Live off the grid

Grove. Cabin. Conifers. Air un-tempered by the exhaust of cities… ah, how lovely the reclusive life. But wait, don’t racist militiamen want this too?

Unfortunately yes, but it so happens that capitalism begets strange bedfellows. Sometimes the far right and far left circle back on each other, differing only where they see the blame falling.

In any event, living off the grid ensures that we free ourselves from the consumerist grind. Obviously easier said than done, but imagine how liberating, how audacious, how alive it would feel to play Henry David Thoreau in our own sequestered spot.

Dugan Nichols and Wendee Lang

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