Rogue tree-huggers, board room suits join forces

Rogue tree-huggers, board room suits join forces

In my opinion | Duceré Useré Cycleré

By: Josh Grenzsund

Posted: 1/16/08

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 trendsetters 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.

For one, 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 that the message of the 90s has at least been at least partially assimilated, but Eugene’s new breed of environmentally conscious activists dare not leave it at that. Instead, they are following this eco-image on its descent straight into the deepest bureaucratic and industrial reaches.

Near the core of this effort on the UO campus is the ASUO organization known as the 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.”

Housed in Suite One of the Erb Memorial Union, the Survival Center shares a tightly-packed space with The Student Insurgent, a self-proclaimed “radical newspaper,” and the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group. 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. It does.

Some of the posters plastering the wall date back at least a decade and the racks upon racks of zines and radical newspapers form a density of independent thought and determination that is unequalled on campus, and likely unparalleled anywhere in Eugene. Even some organizers who see the Survival Center as a second home admit that a first visit can be over-stimulating, or even intimidating. But that impression is not lasting.

If you can make it past the gauntlet of literature and pamphlets, the next thing you are sure to find is a smiling face, and for good reason. Suite One is an authentic safe space, with comfortable couches, computers to use, and an all-inclusive, open-access policy centered around the ideals of social and environmental justice. But the individuals and groups who operate out of this room are far from satisfied in keeping these ideals confined to four walls and a low-slung ceiling.

Last week I met with two of these smiling faces, two individuals who are, dare I say, hell bent on marking every mind they meet with mental graffiti that spells out a simple message – think about your actions, and the reactions of those actions.

Tara Burke and Jesse Hough are both involved in two relatively new movements whose UO activities are based out of the Survival Center – the Cascade Climate Network and the Sustainability Coalition. The CCN was created this past October by 20 student representatives from 10 colleges in Oregon and Washington when they 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 which we need to follow to reach a “sustainable, just, and prosperous future.” Those 20 students are currently soliciting signatories to the Declaration and will present it to their states’ governors concurrent with Focus the Nation on January 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 PM in 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 his administrative bent with his button-up shirt and clean-shaven face. But rather than being 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 already is direct action – direct towards precipitating climate crisis, or direct towards averting it.

Where the argument used to be one concerned with saving “nature,” we now understand that 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, “peak oil” is inevitable and “the revolution is here.”

jgrenzsund@dailyemerald.com

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