The Ballot and the Bullet
by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER
Caracas.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

We made the mistake of flying into Caracas as Chávez was closing his campaign in the capital, up to 3 million of his red-shirted supporters clogging seven large city streets (the opposition had crowed proudly about having merely filled the Avenida Bolivar the previous week). As we sat in traffic, the minutes stretching into hours, our taxista comrade’s triumphalism took the form of sarcasm: “You see all this traffic,” she insisted, pointing at the hundreds of buses and cars full of Chávez supporters hanging out windows, honking horns, and waving flags, “this is the proof that the Presidente will be defeated.”

On the other side of this powerfully segregated metropolis, the tension was palpable but its source unclear. Upscale supermarkets were as clogged as the streets of the city center, but instead of the poor headed home after a triumphant march that for many sealed victory, now it was the well-heeled middle and upper classes stockpiling margarine, harina Pan for making arepas, and kilos of sugar. Many, their shopping complete, threw a few extra bolos at a worker to push their shopping carts up the uneven sidewalks: such is their undeniable charm.

This hysteria echoes and is stoked by the opposition press domestically and internationally, and some of the fears are comical at best, as with the self-styled exile who had a hard time finding a phone card in Caracas’ wealthiest neighborhood: surely the world must be rapidly approaching its end. While we expect such things from what is often dismissed as remnants of the “rancid oligarchy,” arguably more surprising was the coverage in the run-up to the election provided by The Guardian‘s Rory Carroll, who piled unsubstantiated claims upon nonsense to create a sense that the Chávez campaign was stumbling amid its patent inability to govern the country.

What are they afraid of, these domestic and foreign sowers of worry and discord? A combination of an irrational, racist, and classist fear of the Chavista other, and a deeper fear of themselves: the knowledge that if anything happens after the election, it will almost certainly be their doing. For Chavistas, awareness of the possibility of an opposition “Plan B” is the only damper on their expectations of victory.

Preparing for a Plan B

The night before the elections, I attend a clandestine security meeting in a barrio of southwestern Caracas, no doubt one of many such spontaneous gatherings of revolutionaries to discuss the possible security scenarios the election might bring. The participants discuss a plan for anonymously escaping from the neighborhood in the event of a coup or local clashes, but simmering under the surface is the question of what to do if Chávez loses, knowing full well that many of the most militant collectives which dot the Venezuelan political landscape have no intention of accepting defeat. “The Tupamaros aren’t going to sit around with their arms crossed,” one suggests.

This question of whether or not to recognize an opposition victory at the polls is hopelessly entangled with the certainty that no such victory is possible: as former vice president and current mayor of western Caracas put it at a press conference, Chávez will lose cuando las ranas echan pelos, when frogs grow hair. But there is also the very real and open question of whether such a massive step backward could be justified to conform to the formalities of a representative democracy that has always been viewed with suspicion by grassroots revolutionaries seeking to build a more participatory and direct form of democracy.

Another rejects the mere suggesting of leaving the barrio: “We can’t be cannon fodder, but why would we flee?” The specter of Chile and Pinochet’s coup hangs heavy, a constant reference point for hopes crushed and mistakes made, and the majority of revolutionary collectives seem to have learned the fundamental lesson of the Chilean tragedy. As one puts it, “I never have confidence in the police, in the military,” and the only trustworthy bulwark against the forces of reaction is popular self-defense

“Va a haber un peo”

At 3:15 in the morning, the trumpet calls of the toque de Diana shook the city from its tense half-slumber. Here the imperative to vote early is taken with the utmost seriousness, and before 4am many in Chávez strongholds had already taken their places outside their polling stations.

First thing in the morning, I head to the historically combative neighborhood of 23 de Enero with some comrades to take the pulse of the most extreme fringe of the Chavista movement, those armed revolutionary collectives and popular militias whose very existence is an open affront to the state’s monopoly of force. When we approach the headquarters of Radio 23 Combativa y Libertaria, lookouts spot us and a motorcycle trails slowly behind to make sure we’re not up to no good. Glen, a local revolutionary leader whose failing sight does little to dampen his revolutionary extremism, speaks to us frankly about how he sees the scenario: “creemos que va a haber un peo,” the opposition is likely to cause some sort of disturbance and refuse to accept the results of the election.

The often tense relations between the dozens of armed collectives operating in el 23 have been put aside to make military and political preparations for such an eventuality: “candela que se prenda, candela que apagamos, whatever fires they light, we will put out” (here not speaking entirely metaphorically). The opposition has used their wealth to accumulate weaponry, he tells me, but this doesn’t worry them too much, since guns come with balas not bolas, they come with bullets but not the prerequisite “balls” to pull the trigger.

Glen is more unambiguously Chavista than when I spoke with him four years ago amid heightened tension between the collectives and the police. No amount of intermittent tension with the government could justify a return to the past: “before we were persecuted, we were imprisoned, we were murdered… We are no longer clandestine thanks to Chávez.” It is precisely those who have felt the hot lead of governments past who are least likely to accept any step backward, and Glen is no exception: they do not believe that there is any chance that Chávez will lose the election, but if this were to happen they have absolutely no intention of accepting the result, despite the fact that they believe that Chávez himself would.

But he also sees this election as Chávez’s “last chance”: the popular masses support Chávez, but have a “contained rage” toward the abuses perpetrated by those who often wear the red shirts of Chavismo. The forces of the revolution will only be undermined if corrupt or out-of-touch candidates are imposed from above in the upcoming regional elections. “Every day the war, the combat intensifies, and the right, the majunches no dan tregua, they don’t rest in their effort to retake spaces of power” once controlled by revolutionaries.

The day that this Revolution becomes reformist, all will be lost: “Chávez is our spokesperson. It’s not that he’s indispensable, but he’s indispensable at this moment.” Despite his open and unmitigated support for this leader without whom a civil war would be almost inevitable, Glen nevertheless does not mince words: “either Chávez assumes the task [of deepening the process] or he can fuck off.”

Between Constituent and Constituted

In a powerful instantiation of the peculiarities of revolutionary Venezuela, where we speak to Glen is but a few minutes walk and a rickety barrio stairway away from where Chávez himself is preparing to vote. The press and supporters gather in the hot sun and wait more than two hours for the Comandante to show his face, with cheers erupting for every minister and local political leader who arrives on the scene. When Chávez himself arrives, the roar is deafening:

Uh, Ah, Chávez no se va

Chávez isn’t going anywhere

Pa’lante, Pa’lante, Pa’lante Comandante

onward, onward, onward Comandante

None of this is surprising, but less noticed is the fact that these elected officials, these representatives of the people who occupy positions in the structures of constituted power, are waving to the adoring crowds from beneath murals and banners of yet another revolutionary collective, Alexis Vive, which while supporting the government similarly maintains a fierce constituent independence from the centralized power of the state.

This peculiar interweaving of constituent power and constituted state authority which characterizes our itinerary throughout the day, is a profound and frequently misunderstood element of the political process underway in Venezuela. Much of this misunderstanding, moreover, comes from the fact that constituted power is often hesitant to publicly embrace its own revolutionary constituents. Chávez frequently condemns as “ultra-leftist” the provocative actions of the collectives, and most centrally La Piedrita, led by Valentín Santana, who on paper at least is being sought by the police and is subject to arrest. But as one militant tells me, it was at the behest of the Chávez government itself that Santana was laying low in the run-up to the election, since such provocations could only harm the president’s re-election effort. Such discomfort at the closeness of the movements is understandable for those tasked with governing, but it is also the most powerful motor that this revolutionary process has.

In the afternoon, belly full of the sort of hearty sancocho stew that isn’t to be found in wealthy parts of the city, I head to the southern barrio of El Valle, where the revolutionary organization Bravo Sur has established a sala situacional. These salas are, like the security meeting of the previous night, makeshift headquarters established to keep track of current developments and to make the decisions necessary for any eventuality. A ten-year-old stands up, displaying his right pinky finger, painted to look as though he, too, had voted, giving an improvised speech on his expectation that Chávez will win, and that if he doesn’t, estamos perdidos todos, we are all lost.

As afternoon becomes evening, however, optimism in the room gives way to clear worry, stoked by text messages flowing in from across the country, and rumors that Chávez has lost his home state of Barinas due to the mismanagement of his family (this proved untrue), that his lead has dwindled in early reporting to a mere 7 percent, and that some armed provocations from the opposition were already appearing in Petare, the largest and most dangerous of Caracas’ barrios. By 6:45 texts from Miraflores Palace speak of a 12 percent margin, others of 15 percent, but as the polls close, no one is resting comfortably.

Soldiers and Revolutionaries

It’s time to zip across the city once again, back toward the capital, this time perched precariously on the back of a motorcycle. A comrade asks me, “do you want to go safe or fast?” “Both” doesn’t seem to be an available option and so I settle for the latter. As we tear across the city, slowing only slightly for red lights, strangers shout “Ganó!” from street corners: “He won!” Back in the heart of the revolution, 23 de Enero, the celebration has begun. Despite the ley seca, or dry law, rum and beer is flowing freely and many haven’t slept for 36 hours already. Amid the pounding reggaeton and the din of motorcycle engines, a red-clad woman eulogizes her “beautiful president, who has always had his feet in the dirt like us.”

As I stand speaking with her in the recently renovated Che Guevara Plaza overlooking the Coordinadora Simón Bolívar, the National Electoral Council announces that Chávez has been re-elected by a margin of 10 percentage points. The barrio explodes, and massive fireworks appear in the sky over 23 de Enero. While 10 percent would constitute a landslide anywhere else, the celebration is as much about relief as anything else: for a candidate that won by more than 20 percent in 2006, this race was too close for comfort.

At the Coordinadora, the particularities of this unprecedented revolution are on full display. Two paratroopers roll up on a motorcycle with AK-47s, dismount, and to the joy of the crowd shout “Viva Chávez!” They have clearly been here before, and stride confidently into the Coordinadora, which is housed in a former police outpost and torture station. In a powerful and touching expression of the unprecedented fusion of revolutionaries and soldiers that has emerged in recent years, one warmly embraces Juan Contreras, a longtime militant and founder of the Coordinadora who for many years was the emblem of struggles against the existing order. Watching this uniformed and armed soldier hug someone who was considered a terrorist for most of his life, I realize just how far we are from the Chilean example.

By now, hundreds of bullets from handguns and automatic rifles fly from every rooftop, and even these paratroopers cringe as a batch of fireworks misfire only 20 feet away. Someone notices that the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski is preparing to speak, and we pile into the front room of the Coordinadora, ragtag revolutionaries, foreign sympathizers and collaborators, and soldiers with automatic weapons hanging from their shoulders, to listen with a surprising level of respect as Capriles accepts defeat.

To paraphrase the great revolutionary thinker C.L.R. James, we could say that revolutions do not occur at the ballot-box, they are merely registered there, and while the dialectic is in practice more complex, there is a fundamental truth to this statement. This election, like Chávez himself, is the result of something far more profound that has been developing for decades, and which has accelerated considerably in recent years. It is only by grasping this fundamental truth that we can hope to contribute to the further deepening of the Bolivarian Revolution over the next six years.

George Ciccariello-Maher teaches political theory from below at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and is the author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution, forthcoming from Duke University Press. He can be reached at gjcm(at)drexel.edu.

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

//

ELLIOT SPERBER

…[b]ecause the overall costs they exact are far too high, those industries found to be not only unnecessary, but hostile to human and environmental health as well, should be phased out of existence entirely.”

In a nation so thoroughly misinformed and kept ignorant by a constant diet of lies and gross omissions of context and history, Americans often arrive at the right conclusions for the wrong reasons, thereby opening the road to false solutions or worse. (Click to enlarge)—Eds

Though their conclusions are specious, the proponents of economic austerity programs are in one crucial respect entirely correct: the present economic system is dysfunctional and, as such, requires a radical transfiguration. Indeed, as it ceaselessly spews toxins into the skies and seas, it is only becoming more evident that this economy is, among other things, a great source of danger to us all. Along with the growing dead zones of the oceans, and the spreading war zones accompanying the resource depletion intrinsic to our political-economy, we are also daily savaged by the far more mundane, though just as endemic, pathologies of cancer and obesity epidemics, widespread malnutrition, and countless car wrecks and occupational hazards, along with the many other institutionally-created harms that our economy reproduces – its daily tons of ground beef, bacon, paper coffee cups, and other innumerable, though far less visible, toxicities.

And though proponents of austerity measures contend otherwise, it cannot be reasonably maintained that the austerity measures being imposed on national economies throughout the world do anything at all to ameliorate these actual harms we collectively face. On the contrary, insofar as they increase economic production, waste, pollution, and widespread precarity, these austerity programs only exacerbate our actual – as opposed to our merely apparent – problems.

To be sure, because they require perpetual economic growth, it must be conceded that what their boosters propose are not in any meaningful sense even austerity programs at all. For rather than sacrificing anything, the wealthy classes are only engorging themselves further on opulent luxuries. And the laboring people, meanwhile, daily bombarded by advertisements and disinformation, are encouraged to spend ever more on poisonous, disposable garbage.

Among the symptoms of general environmental degradation attending this economic pathology, even our most vital resource – fresh water – is throughout the planet being destroyed. Hardly an anomaly, this as an entirely foreseeable consequence of this economy’s normal functioning. And as aquifers the world over are being pumped dry, and tons of pesticides and other pollutants are daily discharged into the hydrosphere as a result of market forces, and climatic changes wreak havoc on snow packs, among other sources of water, the situation is only worsening. As the United Nations estimates, by 2025 nearly 2 billion people “will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.” Instead of confronting this crisis, which is already unfolding in much of the world, mainstream political-economic thought engages only in exercises in denial, dissimulation, and speculation in the burgeoning water market.

But these quantities of pollutants that are poisoning our water – and all of our bodies besides – are but one effect of a general design whose index of value is markedly divorced from the actual well-being of people – one that, for example, demands that most people receive inadequate levels of necessities (like sleep, and water, and food) in order to satisfy the indolence and utter inausterity of a relative few. In spite of all this, as mentioned above, the proponents of austerity do raise an important point. Standing on the precipice of ecological holocaust, we really ought to embark upon an austerity program. For it to alleviate, and not exacerbate, the serious harms we all confront, however, it must be an austerity of a radically different type than those under our current hegemon’s consideration.

Rather than privatizing such things as public schools, water supply systems, and other publicly owned enterprises – which are only ever pretexts for the aggrandizement of the wealthy – a critical austerity would instead halt altogether the far from austere economic practices proven to be polluting and otherwise destroying the planet. Indeed, because the overall costs they exact are far too high, those industries found to be not only unnecessary, but hostile to human and environmental health as well, should be phased out of existence entirely.

So, for example, since the fast food industry, along with the disposable paper and plastic container industries, produce harmful products, they should be shuttered. Many, of course, may find such a view of austerity unsavory. However, just as at one time in history people found it necessary to make sacrifices by slaughtering animals, today it is necessary to make sacrifices by not slaughtering animals. Beyond its cruelty, and its attendant environmental harms, the intensive demands on grain and water supplies required to feed these animals imposes a tremendous strain on our ability to satisfy our collective food requirements.

Moreover, if billions of people throughout history, and today as well, have found it possible to forsake the slaughter and consumption of cows and pigs, among other animals, because of the proscriptions of their faiths, our knowledge of the concrete harms attending these practices ought to lead us, though for different reasons, to comparable interdictions.

Another significant source of harms is the energy industry. Any meaningful notion of austerity should not only curtail the tremendously wasteful overuse of energy, and the damage it causes, but would impose a moratorium on the destructive extraction of resources as well. Of course, the elimination of harmful industries, such as those named above, whose purpose is the generation of profit rather than any salutary use, will no doubt contribute a great deal toward the reduction of the harms accompanying the present modes of energy production.

Perhaps the most harmful industry of all, though, is the military industry. And while the transformation of the military industry will no doubt be met with a great degree of resistance, it must nevertheless be accomplished in order to realize an austerity program worthy of the name. Rather than viewing the military as an obstacle to austerity and a reasonable economy, however, we ought to recognize that the military has the potential to contribute greatly to the implementation of just such an austerity program.

Beating its spears into pruning hooks, so to speak, the military could be employed in building public transportation systems to replace the automobile industry, salutary, publicly-controlled energy systems, and communications systems, as well as retrofitting sewage and waste treatment facilities, and other infrastructural projects like the construction of schools and community health clinics. Furthermore, the military could be directed to clean up the monumental mountains of toxic garbage littering the world and swirling about throughout the seas.

With the elimination of all of these industries, and the jobs attached to them, people will no doubt inquire as to how they will be expected to pay for food, and rent, among other things. The simplest solution to this problem is by the adoption of a basic income law. Because the entire purpose of such an austerity program is to mitigate harms, it would be absurd to propose that people incur harms to their health in effectuating such austerity. As such, a basic income must be available to all people – irrespective of whether or not they work – to pay for rent, food, transportation, communications, and other things necessary for optimal health – at least, that is, until a more democratic economic system is devised.

Concededly, many will be less than thrilled by the prospect of having restrictions imposed on their ability to consume all of the bacon that they want, and to drive around in their cars to their hearts’ content, jet about the planet at will, drill oil wells wherever they like, and extract rent from the tenants of the world. But this is, after all, an austerity plan that’s under discussion.

For those who will argue that such an economic program would require an impossibly difficult political fight, we would do well to pay attention to the words of the ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, who informs us in his Art of War that, while it is good to win a battle by fighting, it is best is to win without fighting at all. To this end, and with all due respect to Walter Benjamin’s insight concerning the engine of history, we don’t need to pull the emergency brake on this runaway train of an economy so much as we need to endeavor a more modest, practicable thing – to remove our collective foot from the gas pedal – to rest it, before its engines trash the rest of the planet, and we all choke to death in the gas chamber we’ve made of the world. And if, as countless thinkers and jurists have insisted since the time of Cicero, the health of the people really is the supreme law, then the law must recognize not only the legitimacy, but the physiological necessity, of such a type of critical austerity as well.

Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com. He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
 Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

//

How far would you go for something you believed in?

Photo Credit: Greenpeace
This article was published in collaboration with GlobalPossibilities.org.

Basil Tsimoyianis stares out from a support speedboat in the Russian Arctic waters, watching his friends get blasted with a water cannon.  In a few minutes, Basil will be riding out to switch places with them, relieving them from the cannon’s icy pounding. The cannon, normally used in case of fires on the oil rig, now shoots out in a steady bend, drowning his friends whose boat is chained to the anchor of a ship filled with workers — many of whom are frustrated that they can’t lift the ship’s anchor and get to work on the oil rig today.

I don’t want to do this.

But there’s no time to think any more than that; there’s a job to be done. Basil and the others begin preparing to take over for the activists chained to the Anna Akhmatova, a passenger vessel that carries workers to Prirazlomnaya, Gazprom’s oil rig. Gazprom is a huge oil and gas company planning to drill for oil in the Arctic. But if workers can’t get to Gazprom’s rig, the company’s preparation for oil drilling in the Arctic will temporarily be disrupted. Basil moves about, working up a little sweat, as he adjusts his three layers of insulating gear — and then they’re off.

The wind brushes Basil’s face as the speedboat dashes through the freezing, gray waters. Basil’s eyes gaze ahead at the powerful arch.

Like a river flying through the air.

It’s hard for him to notice much else, like the rainbow brightening up the cloudy sky. As the speedboat zooms closer, Basil’s eyes dart to his friends, huddled in a tiny boat, chained to the anchor of huge ship. They all hold up wooden shields that take some of the water’s beating.

His eyes close as the speedboat nears. The water from the cannon sprinkles him. And then, it’s suddenly gushing, as bodies change boats, and Basil grabs a shield.

This is far worse than the hoses.

The Setup

It’s three days earlier, on August 24, 2012 and Basil is on one of two portable ledges with tents on them on the side of Gazprom’s monstrous oil rig. An hour ago, Basil and five other Greenpeace activists from around the world had climbed up the Prirazlomnaya, in teams of three, using its mooring lines. The teams each set up a portaledge.

Basil shares a portaledge with Terry Christenson and Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director, who starts taking media calls. Kumi explains that Gazprom is planning on beginning its oil drilling operations early next year, making it the first company to start commercial oil production in the offshore Arctic. He passionately describes how, the carbon dioxide admissions from drilling will continue to cause the ice in the Arctic to melt, at a time when 75 percent of Arctic sea ice has already been lost. Yet, sea ice is what keeps the planet cool, reflecting sunlight. Plus, if oil drilling in the Arctic begins, Kumi emphasizes, an oil spill will happen, causing irreversible damages.

Basil looks up and sees workers gathering at the rig’s edge. One worker is giving him the finger. Another sneaks him a thumbs-up. Suddenly, Basil sees one of the rig’s massive cranes lowering down toward their portaledge. The crane is carrying a worker, who nears the ledge and says:

“How long will you be here?”

“We plan to be here for awhile. It’s a non-violent protest. We’re not going to harm or damage anything. We’re protesting against Gazprom’s exploration of the Arctic,” Basil answers respectfully. “We will keep this peaceful.”

After all, their goal is to interrupt Gazprom’s operations and raise awareness about the consequences of drilling in the Arctic — and they have enough supplies to last them for several days.

The Hosing

Hours later, icy water showers down on Basil from a fire hose above. Workers are standing on the rig’s edge, fire hoses in hand, aiming for both portaledges. Basil, Terry and Kumi sit wet and shivering.

Why are they doing this?

Basil closes his eyes, but then opens them to assess Terry and Kumi.

“Can you feel your hands and feet?

Terry and Kumi nod.

They talk about the importance of staying hydrated, and they take a sip of water. Basil grabs a banana nut bar — the first and last thing he’ll have to eat throughout the action. And then they talk. And they talk throughout their time — what will amount to 15 hours — on the portaledge. The three talk about family, friends, past actions they’ve done, and why they are here, right now, on the portaledge.

Although Basil didn’t get a chance to share all this with Kumi and Terry, his story goes a little something like this:

Basil grew up near the beach in Connecticut. His father often took him on nature walks. His mother forced him to volunteer at an aquarium when he was 12. And he ended up loving it. One summer, his father threw a Beekeeping For Dummies book at him and said, “Do something with yourself.” So he learned how to beekeep. He thought the environment was beautiful and permanent. And so when his environmental science high school teacher showed the class photos of deforestation in the Amazon, his heart sank.

Basil went to the University of Vermont and studied environmental science. He wrote a paper on Greenpeace, which led him to interview someone at the environmental organization. He asked about volunteering at Greenpeace, and decided to drop out of school. His parents, though, convinced him to take a leave of absence. And so he took one semester off and did a Greenpeace Semester. He came back to college and founded a student group called Forest Crimes Unit, which demanded the college rid itself of the unsustainable Kimberley-Clark toilet paper and purchase recycled toilet paper. Forest Crimes Unit was Basil’s main priority. He held the group’s first meeting in his apartment and borrowed his friend’s projector. After a yearlong campaign, Forest Crimes Unit was victorious.

Basil graduated and went on to do volunteer and contract work for Greenpeace, including climbing Mount Rushmore and dropping a banner that read “America Honors Leaders Not Politicians, Stop Global Warming.” He was arrested that day.

Last May, Basil was hired onto Greenpeace’s Actions Team. When Basil was asked to participate in this action in the Arctic, he sat on it for a few weeks. As a climber for nine years and a Greenpeace advocate for six, he not only felt prepared, but also responsible. After all he has all the skills they needed. He was, though, overwhelmed with fear of the Russian legal system and ending up in a Russian prison. But once he had stopped worrying, he had to face his most difficult challenge: telling his loved ones what he was doing.

The Escape

Now, Basil sits silent, as the stream of water continues to fall on his head. And then on Kumi’s head. And then Terry’s. They lost all communication with Greenpeace, and so they sit on this tiny portaledge on this massive rig in the cold Arctic — both alone and together in many ways.

Take out your video camera.

And he remembers what a photographer, who he admires and once met, told him: “The best image you’ll ever get in your life is when you least want to take out the camera.”

He grabs for it and then focuses it on Terry, who is trying to block the water from hitting the back of his neck.

The Perseverance

Another worker eventually takes over the hosing, relieving the other of his shift.

How long is this going to go on? Why are they doing this?

Basil, Kumi and Terry talk about how it’s likely that these workers, who were steadfast in hosing them, were taking orders from someone higher up.

Kumi’s phone starts to ring.

Basil watches Kumi answer his device and begin an interview. It’s with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! :

“We simply want to make the point that drilling in the Arctic is completely reckless and will accelerate catastrophic climate change. But we are terribly anxious now because they are spraying us heavily with water hoses.” Kumi shouts into the phone. “Gazprom is the oil company that is probably going to be, if we don’t stop them, the first company to start drilling oil in the Arctic … Gazprom doesn’t actually have a license to drill at the moment. It expired 12 days ago. They do not have an oil spill response plan. In fact, what they have is even worse than Shell, and that’s saying a lot. And in the next couple of days, the Arctic Sea minimum ice figures will be released, and that will show that protecting the Arctic North is seriously important. And that is why we are campaigning to declare the Upper Arctic a global sanctuary as a global commons. ”

Basil rubs his cold hands together, as Kumi continues to Goodman:

“We’ve been holding on for the last three hours … We’re going to try and stick around as long as possible, but at this rate, I can’t say whether it will be an hour or more.”

A shiver runs down Basil’s spine.

The End of the Beginning

Several hours later, the bars of the portaledge Basil, Kumi and Terry sit on are starting to bend. Although this portaledge is designed to last several months in the mountains, it has been destroyed in nearly 15 hours.

Basil later makes the connection between the portaledge and the oil rig.

Just like the portaledge, the rig can be designed to withstand anything, but there will be an oil spill.

The hosing is still heavy and hypothermia is becoming more and more of a concern. Kumi connects with those aboard the Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace’s ship. Together, they all decide its time to go back. After all, they have disrupted the whole workday on the Prirazlomnaya, and their safety is cause for concern. Greenpeace sends out a support speedboat.

Kumi is the first one on the boat. Basil and Terry drop all of their bags and gear in the water for pick-up by the support vessel. The hosing, which had briefly stopped as Kumi descended, continues in full force. Basil can barely see as he and Terry descend, working their way down the enormous rig to Greenpeace’s speedboat. When Basil and Terry make it down, the group goes to assist the other three activists, who were on the other portaledge. They are also being hosed profusely as they attempt to descend.

With everyone safely in the boat, Basil feels a bit of relief. As the activists board the Arctic Sunrise, they are greeted with hugs, some food and open ears. The activists ask about media reports, to know what the world is saying, to see if anybody is listening. But the Internet is down. So they chat about their feats among themselves. After talking about their day, the activists begin making new plans.

They are going to go out there again.

The Water Cannon

This is far worse than the hoses.

Basil holds up the shield as the water from the cannon pounds down on him. With the wind hitting his body, too, it all feels like a hurricane.

Him and another activist on the boat, Georgia Hirsty, occasionally shout to each other, but much of it is inaudible amidst the hammering stream.

Basil closes his eyes. He then remembers his video camera and picks it up to capture the madness.

An hour later, Basil is still in the boat, holding up his shield against the relentless water. He’s soaked, and freezing, and tired.

Greenpeace has been working for Arctic protection for decades so that it wouldn’t have to come to this. All the petitions they sent, to all the various government departments in various countries. All of the 2 million signatures they gathered. All to save the Arctic. All receiving no response.

No one is actually hearing all that.

Basil buckles down, prepared to fight back against the icy blast.

About two hours later, the water pressure suddenly gets higher, and then, whoever is handling the water cannon shifts it to directly hit their boat. The boat begins filling up with water. And before long Basil and Georgia find themselves ejected from the boat.

After the support vessel quickly picks up the activists and hooks up their boat to tow, Basil learns that all the workers on the Anna Akhmatova, the huge passenger vessel he was chained to, were not able to get to work on the Prirazlomnaya that day. By the time Basil’s boat swamped, there was only one hour left to their workday. And so, with that, and with Greenpeace’s continued presence in the water, the workers didn’t bother going.

We stopped business as usual.

The Future

Both Gazprom and Shell recently announced that they will halt their oil drilling plans in the Arctic for this year — a huge victory for Greenpeace, the activists and more importantly, the environment. There’s still much more work to be done to protect the Arctic. The Arctic Sunrise is still in the Arctic Ocean, with independent scientists on board who are studying and documenting sea ice as it declines and reaches its lowest levels in history. Greenpeace also continues its Save the Arctic campaign, pushing for a ban to oil drilling, industrial fishing and military buildup in the Arctic by declaring it a global sanctuary.

Basil believes that his actions brought awareness to possible drilling in the Arctic. He thinks that when it comes to the environment and the way we live life, more and more people will begin to talk about the state of society, and then ultimately take action, perhaps even putting their own bodies on the line as activists around the world are doing.

It appears that as our economic, political and social structures grow ever more powerful, true change seems harder and harder to create via the traditional fashion of organizing or protesting. And so, from locking themselves to equipment to prevent the Keystone XL pipeline construction to getting arrested in waves while demanding an end to corporate money in politics, people are risking their livelihoods and their lives to fight for a better world. For it seems, the only thing they have to lose is… well, everything.

And it looks as if people will rise up to do the right thing — whether or not they think the fight is winnable, whether or not they even still have hope.

“I don’t have time to hope anymore, ya know? It’s like, I just have time to move toward the right direction,” Basil said. “So for me, it’s not about hope it’s about earning my place in the larger ecological system … it’s about earning a position where I can walk on this planet with my head held high.”

He continued, “When I was hoping, I was still sitting and talking about things a lot. And the second I kind of stopped doing that, that’s when I started to put myself out there in a different way than I’d ever thought I’d do.”

Alyssa Figueroa is an editorial fellow at AlterNet. She is a recent Ithaca College graduate who double-majored in journalism and politics. Follow her on Twitter @alyssa_fig.

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

//