In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Eugene gained a reputation as the center of a radical, active, and sometimes destructive environmental movement. This extreme breed of environmental activist defied establishment authority and challenged business development in a series of direct actions: from tree-sits in town and in regional forests to a 1999 riot during “rush-hour” traffic and eventually a string of arsons.
Now many of those activists are in prison, some as convicted “terrorists,” the FBI has reestablished its authority, and Eugene’s activists are finding it necessary, even beneficial, to take a different approach in a radically changed social environment.
It is now totally cool, and increasingly profitable, for the same governments and businesses who stirred up such ire a decade ago with their policies of expansion and development to tag their operations with leafy green logos and buzzwords like “organic,” “sustainable” and “eco-friendly.” This is a sure sign the message of the ’90s has at least been partially assimilated, but Eugene’s new breed of environmentally conscious activists dare not leave the matter at that. Instead, they are following this eco-image on its descent straight into the deepest political and industrial reaches.
Near the core of this effort at the University is the ASUO Survival Center. The name may conjure visions of grizzled men and women snaring bunnies with their fists and trekking through the wilderness, but the center was actually formed in the 1970s and has a mission that is “geared towards the education of the campus community around issues of social justice and environmentalism.”
The place exudes an energy that will likely raise your hackles the first time you step through the door, as though the fury of ’99 or ’01 still breathes from the walls. Some of the posters plastering the wall date back a decade and the racks upon racks of ‘zines’ and radical newspapers form a density of independent thought and determination likely unparalleled in Eugene. Even some organizers who see the Survival Center as a second home admit a first visit can be over-stimulating, or even intimidating. But that impression is not lasting.
Tara Burke and Jesse Hough are each involved in two relatively new movements whose University activities are based out of the Survival Center: the Cascade Climate Network and the Sustainability Coalition. The CCN was created in October by 20 student representatives from 10 schools in Oregon and Washington, when the representatives met and drafted a four-page Cascade Climate Declaration. The Declaration identifies the “window of opportunity” that is available to affect the outcome of a climate crisis and outlines several principles we must follow to reach a “sustainable, just, and prosperous future.” Those students are currently soliciting signatories to the Declaration and will present it to their states’ governors concurrent with the Focus the Nation global awareness day on Jan. 31.
While the CCN is a regional movement to help focus on climate change, Burke and Hough also recognize the need to reduce redundant efforts and create synergy among the dozen or so campus organizations involved in social and environmental justice movements. The next Sustainability Coalition meeting (this Friday at 4 p.m. in the EMU’s Rogue River Room) will bring together groups with seemingly disparate philosophies – some leaning towards radicalism and direct action while others advocate much more mainstream approaches.
In their own activism, Burke and Hough epitomize this new ideal of conjoined extremes, with Burke acknowledging her radical inclinations and Hough showing a more administrative bent. But rather than an anomaly, this dynamic is now the norm, and a beneficial one at that. Each extreme learns from the other and we are all learning that everyone, in a real sense, is a direct activist. We all have to make conscious choices about our lifestyles because our lifestyles already have direct repercussions on our environment and the future of human existence. Your action is already direct action – direct toward precipitating climate crisis, or direct toward averting it.
Where the argument used to be concerned with saving “nature,” we now understand the challenge is in fact one of saving ourselves. So turn off your computer at night, reuse your water bottles and become an instant activist because, as Burke and Hough agree, “the revolution is here.”
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