Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky

Wendell Berry on Civil Disobedience (The Progressive)

I have always been suspicious of people who seem to devote their entire lives to forms of protest. We all ought to have better things to do. Ken Kesey once said that the reason not to resist evil is that such resistance is dependent on evil; it makes you dependent on evil. He was right. And Edward Abbey said that saving the world is a good hobby—though he worked hard to save at least parts of it. As for me, the older I get, the less happy I am to leave home. All the places I go seem to be getting farther away. Frankfort, Kentucky, now appears as far off as the planet Saturn, and I wish it more remote.

via www.progressive.org

Wendell Berry contrasted to Occupy Dartmouth

I mention Berry because Berry is a man who has ruthlessly lived out his values. He became convinced that living normally in the modern economy is morally illicit and so he has decided to live in a radically different way. I wish I could say the same about the Occupiers.  

The panel, conducted a few days ago, was full of the usual Occupy silliness. It was incoherent from the start. It was meant to be a panel on the intersection of spirituality and the Occupy Movement, but hardly any mention of religion was made at all. At the beginning, all the students who were involved in the Occupy movement were asked to stand up to be applauded. They were praised for engaging the community in "meaningful dialogue" (what dialogue?) The fact that literally nothing has changed because they wanted to hang out in tents for a few weeks was passed over. 

via dartreview.com

from "About Civil Disobedience by Wendell Berry"

Civil disobedience is also plenty scary. At least to me it is. I have never felt one bit brave even in thinking about it. It involves a strange and risky paradox: You and your friends will be exploiting your obvious powerlessness to recover to your cause, and to your own citizenship, a just measure of power. But your acknowledged condition is powerlessness. Your commitment to nonviolence makes you vulnerable to violence. You can get hurt, or worse. It is fearful also to make yourself available to be treated with contempt. And you are, in effect, volunteering to go to jail.

via beyondrevolution.wordpress.com

Of interest: "I am an Environmentalist"

I am an environmentalist and a protester; I am a dissenter and a demander who will not be discouraged.

A small part of me stands in solidarity with the other protesters who have rightly been named Time’s Person of the Year.

I am a convenient target for reactionary politicians and know-it-all newspaper columnists who specialize in promoting business as usual.

I won’t be receiving a Christmas card from Prime Minister Stephen Harper – who thinks I’m un-Canadian and an “extremist” – or Joe Oliver, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, who thinks I’m an “unlawful” person. I’m not sure what my Alberta in-laws think of me.

Because I disapprove of the Keystone XL and Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines, I am accused of being an anti-job-creation rebel who is trying to destroy the capitalist system.

Since I object to the mining of tar sands to extract oil, I am labelled a fossilized malcontent who has an obsolete understanding of how a modern resource economy works.

via thenelsondaily.com

Relating Wendell Berry to the Occupy Movement

The Occupy Movement is a symbolic expression of this alienation. To occupy is a demonstration of the need to make oneself an affective part of something. At the same time, the Movement has no agreed upon agenda. It proclaims its alienation from the world of power politics and economics by stating they are "the 99%” and “this is what democracy looks like,” but it is powerless to even suggest a solution or a way forward.

It occurs to me these circumstances are symptomatic of the point poet Wendell Berry is offering us. We cannot bring peace to the conflictual condition in our world, nor can we heal our spiritual alienation, unless we begin to recognize the sacred nature of the world in which we live. “There are no unsacred places … [only] desecrated places.”

via www.bettendorf.com

Wendell Berry & Family take another step with The Berry Center

The Berry Center is a foundation that has been established for the purpose of bringing focus, knowledge and cohesiveness to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agriculture system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.

The Berry Center will accomplish its mission by studying where we have been, establishing where we are now and envisioning where we want to go in the rural landscape. When we consider these objectives, the remarkable accomplishments of three Kentuckians stand out. The works of author Wendell Berry, his father, lawyer and farmer John M. Berry, Sr., and his brother, state senator and lawyer, John M. Berry, Jr. reflect a single vision: a state and a nation of prosperous well-tended farms serving and supporting healthy local communities.

via www.berrycenter.org

Please visit this new venture's website by clicking on the "via" link.

Wendell Berry on the EPA

Participating on a panel that responded to her talk, Kentucky author Wendell Berry told McCarthy he was grateful for the EPA.

“I have a lot of sympathy, actually, for you and your colleagues, because you are standing in a very difficult place, that is between the bandits and the loot,” he said.

via www.courier-journal.com

Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Wendell Berry Call for Civil Disobedience on Tar Sands | The Nation

The Tar Sands, also known as the oil sands, are one of the largest remaining deposits of oil in the world, and efforts to extract the resource from a mix of clay and other materials underneath Canada’s Boreal forest have created the biggest, and by the accounts of numerous scientists and environmental groups,  the most environmentally devastating, energy project on earth.

TransCanada, one of the largest companies involved in tar sands exploration, has proposed a 1,661 mile, 36-inch extension of the newly built Keystone Pipeline from Alberta, Canada to oil refineries of the United States. This would expand the capacity for refining oil produced from Alberta tar sands by approximately one million barrels per day.

Time for the fight-back.

A group of leading environmental activists, many associated with the grassroots group 350.org, and many of them Nation writers, have issued a call and invitation for concerned citizens to take part in a campaign of non-violent direct action this summer in Washington, DC, in all likelihood, organizers say, during the last two weeks of August.

via www.thenation.com

SEE ALSO "The People v. The Pipeline"

Orion hosts Berry, DeChristopher and Blanton on Principled Activism

For a complete recording of the conversation among Wendell Berry, Tim DeChristopher, and Teri Blanton, go HERE.

With much gratitude to Orion Magazine and Orion Grassroots Network.

Of interest: Biggers interviews Blanton

Hailed as a cross between Erin Brockovich and the legendary Aunt Molly Jackson, Harlan County native Teri Blanton has been one of the most inspiring and fearless activists on the eastern Kentucky coalfield frontlines. While national media attention on mountaintop removal mining has been focused on West Virginia, Blanton often reminds audiences that more than 290 mountains and 574,000 acres of hardwood forests–58 percent of the devastation in central Appalachia–have been blown to bits by reckless mining operations in eastern Kentucky. A long-time fellow and strategist with the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth on clean water, clean energy and coal issues, Blanton most recently took part in the 4-day Kentucky Rising sit-in at the governor’s office in Frankfort, Kentucky, calling for an immediate end to mountaintop removal.

via www.alternet.org