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“Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains." ―Subcomandante Marcos ...

Our planet is under serious threat from industrial civilization. Yet environmentalists have not considered strategies that might actually prevent the looming biotic collapse the Earth is facing. Until, Earth at Risk. EARTH AT RISK was a conference convened by acclaimed author Derrick Jensen, featuring seven thinkers and activists who are willing to ask the hardest questions about the seriousness of our situation. Each of the speakers presents an impassioned critique of the dominant culture. Together they build an unassailable case that we need to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor, and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. They offer their ideas on what can be done to build a real resistance movement - one that can actually match the scale of the problem. ...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZo1sXsC-68&w=640&h=360] Words by A. Person; Music, edits and talking by Jordan B. The way you felt about Game of Thrones, when that whole family was slaughtered - oh, no! - that’s how I feel most days. That’s how anyone feels when they turn away from the screen with such regularity (and long enough) to witness the most intricate, mass-scale human drama in the history of the Earth. We stand at the end of an epoch, at the end of a civilization, at the end of an empire - at the start of something else. Nobody knows what will happen in the next season but people have got some inklings. ...

A story about perspective on childhood: A friend I’ve known for over a decade, whose indigenous to the lands I now call home, saw this high school kid fall off his bicycle. The kid fell backwards, and his helmet slipped towards his nose. My friend, whose recent birthday inched him towards forty, said he watched the EMT’s lift this teenager into an ambulance and hoped he was ok. Later we learned the kid died, and this big brown man’s voice quivered, “Oh no,” He tipped against the wall and started sobbing. He wept at this complete strangers death. I watched unsure of how to react and just told him I was there for him. A few hours later he walked up and hugged me, said, “I’m sorry. Where I’m from, so many young people die.” I recently visited the Pine Ridge Reservation to witness and stand on the side of the Lakota people who’d invited us. They invited us as allies and take part in an ongoing struggle against Whiteclay, NE. Before getting into the flesh of that struggle, there are things I need to share, things think we must be look at, and try to understand before reaching the actions. See, there are facts, little factoids you learn about place when you’re there. Sometimes about death and addiction. Statistics, and they mean nothing. It’s hard to grasp a % of a thing, when you’re not in the thing. You’re not the one living it. Pine Ridge Reservation statistics: Lakota people have the lowest life expectancy in America. Life expectancy for men 48, 52 for women. Lowest reported 45 years of length life. USA= 77.5 years of average lifespan. Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S. average for teens. The infant mortality rate is the highest on this continent. 300% higher than the U.S. national average Alcoholism affects 8 out of 10 families. The death rate from alcohol-related problems on the Reservation is 300% higher than the remaining US population. We heard these numbers as we crossed onto the Pine Ridge reservation. These death and alcohol statistics became more comprehendible as we listened to uncountable stories of known and recently dead: Cousins and siblings– relative upon relative, from car accidents, and acts of drunk random violence. Liver cirrhosis. Died from alcohol. I listened while on Pine Ridge, and everyone had stories, and lists of their known dead. The pizza hut worker who hated Whiteclay, whose brother died of cirrhosis, of alcoholism. A 35 year old women, who lived the streets of Whiteclay, who’d slur at me that she knew it was bad. That Whiteclay had to go, that her father died there. But we ran into her after she’d made the 2 mile trek to Whiteclay, NE from the Pine Ridge Reservation. My trip to the reservation wasn’t only to learn about the history of Whiteclay, NE, but also to listen to stories from the people who struggle against Whiteclay, and called the Pine Ridge reservation home. We arrived to the Lakota’s homelands by crossing an imaginary border out of Nebraska, into what I’d learn wasn’t the Pine Ridge Reservation to the Lakota who invited us, but was really POW camp 344. This name referencing the tribal identification number assigned them by the federal government. We were told that each reservation, and thus tribe was assigned a numeric sequence to attach them to the lands their people were now isolated too. While the story of POW camp 344 is far too large for this small article, let it be known that I heard stories of warriors that once fought the United States government, and won victories. The Lakota warriors even decimated one of United States armies in the field. Warriors vs Soldiers.

By Kristin Bricker / CIP Americas Program The first night of my homestay during the Zapatista Little School, my guardian and her husband asked if their students had any questions. My classmate and I both had experience working with the Zapatistas, so we politely limited ourselves to the safe questions that are generally acceptable when visiting rebel territory: questions about livestock, crops, local swimming holes, and anything else that doesn’t touch on sensitive information about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). ...

Resistance is fertile and one of the best ways to continue to grow our movement is to maintain effective communication between our members and allies. In a city such as New York City, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, the everyday grind of maintaining our professional, familial, and comradely relationships. It’s also far too easy to be drowned out amongst the mass media infiltrations exposed to us at our every step, not to mention the (sometimes) endless email chains that even the most organized of us find hard to filter through and stay up-to-date. ...

A longtime DGR Colorado member, Jennifer, lives in Lyons, CO. This also happens to be the site of one of the hardest hit communities in this weeks flooding events along the Front Range. Jennifer, her family and animals are physically safe and okay, but the homestead that she and 3 generations of women in her family have lived on for years has been badly damaged and flooded. This house has been a site of intense healing for me and many others. Her mother runs her permaculture therapy farm for children off of this land. They have opened their homestead up to many women who need safe spaces and activists in need in the past. When I have needed shelter, this group of women was there to provide with no questions asked. When I have needed food, they were there to provide with no questions asked. She regularly sends me care packages of raw wildflower honey from the mountains and notes of love and kind thoughts. I know she does the same for other DGR members as well. ...

I wish this was just a nightmare. My friend is gone and I want her back. She was killed several weeks ago—violently, sadistically, suddenly—and for several weeks I’ve been crying. My head keeps shaking. I whisper to myself: “No. No. No.” Over and over. More than anything else right now, I want this to not be real. But it is the victim herself who would have been the first to remind me: men’s violence against women, the cruelty of this culture, is all too real. The pain of the world has come home. What words could do it justice? I dredged some up to speak at her funeral, but even then this tragedy felt like a bad dream. It still does. Just one night before her death, we were making dinner plans for the coming week. Just a few days before that, we were on the phone expressing how much we’ve missed one another. “I’m listening to Regina Spektor and thinking of you,” I said. “Aw, thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “I’d love to see you soon.” After one unfathomable instance, after one piece of the most horrible of news, our plans are shattered, our relationship gone, my heart broken. Jessie and I met because we both wanted to change the world; because we both believed that, in the words of a feminist writer we mutually admired, “there are certain kinds of pain that people should not have to endure.” With her easy smile, a lot of laughter, and a propensity to start so many deeply profound conversations in one sitting, Jessie was a gust of wonder, passion, and beauty. She asked the big questions and, as best she could, tried to live out the answers every day. Her wish was only for others to try, too. The personal and political were inseparable for Jessie. She was at once a musician, an activist, a daughter, and a friend. She was so much more than any one title could describe. And every aspect of who she was depended on the other; their coming together is what made her life as rich as it was, what made her as dynamic a person as she was, what moved her to change her corner of the world, as she did.

By Arij Riahi and Tim McSorley / The Dominion FORT MCMURRAY, AB—In the heart of Canada’s oil country, the booming town of Fort McMurray—casually dubbed Fort McMoney—is slowly becoming one of Alberta’s largest cities. From 2006 to 2012, the city grew by 53 per cent, going from a population of 47,705 to 72,994—far exceeding the growth of Alberta as a whole. This doesn’t count the “non-permanent residents” who are simply in town to work; including them, the population balloons to 112,215. ...

By Deena Shanker / Salon In case you hadn’t heard, cities these days are all the rage. While once upon a time the rich fled urban centers and their accompanying crowding, pollution and grime, according to Leigh Gallagher’s upcoming account in “ The End of the Suburbs,” “cities are experiencing a renaissance.” According to Henry Grabar, a city is a “harbor of tolerance and assimilation, a hub of scientific innovation and economy growth, a tourist attraction, a center for the arts, a ticket to upward mobility, a key to saving the environment.” With urban agriculture on the rise, we can even grow our own food. Thanks to technology, city dwellers can give away their leftovers or get laid with nothing more than a digital photo and a swipe of a finger. But there’s one little problem that the powers that be conveniently ignore when talking up the benefits of a metropolitan life. Cities are going to be the worst place to ride out the end of the world. Whatever the underlying cause of our doom, urban centers, with their dense populations, high crime and corruption rates, lack of natural resources, and proximity to water, are going to fall first. As any good prepper – or conspiracy theorist – knows, there are a number of potential triggers to the end of the world as we know it. Considering human history, not to mention the current state of the world, the possibility of a World War III doesn’t sound so outlandish. Climate change models are getting increasingly pessimistic – and panicked – trying ever harder to warn us that the end is nigh. But my money is on contagious disease, though I don’t rule out zombies, an alien attack or some good old-fashioned Bible-style fire and brimstone. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter what causes the apocalypse. What matters is whether you survive it. And if you’re in a city, chances are, you won’t.