Anarchic update news all over the world - 24.12.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Anarchist Collective Black Flag cabn [CAB] - Errico
      Malatesta, anarchist militant and theoretician (pt) [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #289 - Dam Caussade: An
      archaic project beak in the water (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  apoyo mutuo: 21D: PUT DOWN THE REGIME, BUILD DEMOCRACY --
      MUTUAL SUPPORT ANALYSIS (ca, it) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #289 - Basque country:
      ETA, sixty years of struggle and debate (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  US, Black rose fed: DECOLONIZE THE FRONTIERS: THE
      MISSISSIPPI DELTA (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





On December 14, we remember the birth of a militant and central theoretician in the 
history of anarchism: the Italian Errico Malatesta. ---- Born in 1853, he devoted nearly 
60 years of his life to the cause of the oppressed, contributing in theory and practice to 
the development of anarchism and its spread around the globe - having served on four of 
the five continents. A prominent figure in several insurrections of a libertarian and 
anti-imperialist character, he was imprisoned for many years, constantly being persecuted 
by the prevailing powers. In the field of propaganda, he led editorial initiatives and 
contributed to the founding of several anarchist journals, writing on fundamental issues 
such as the need for organization, strategy for political action and the libertarian 
conception of socialism, using a poetic and accessible verve , seeking to reach and 
dialogue with rural and urban workers.

In this honor, we would like to highlight the importance and influence of Malatesta for 
anarchism and for the popular struggle in general in our Latin America. In 1885, after 
escaping from persecution in several countries, he exiled himself to Argentina, 
establishing himself in Buenos Aires until 1889. In the Argentine capital, along with the 
workers of the country, he developed an intense organizational and propaganda activity, 
helping to spread libertarian ideals and stimulating the creation of several unions, 
standing out his work with the Union of Bakers. It was not long before these resistance 
unions, formed by workers of diverse categories, gave body to centers like the Argentine 
Regional Workers' Federation (FORA).

In our current, the Specifism, Malatesta is an important referential. His conceptions of 
the importance of the specific anarchist organization and of acting together with the 
popular movements had a great influence on the founding of the Uruguayan Anarchist 
Federation (fAu) in 1956, with the conception and strategy of specifism continuing to 
spread throughout the Latin American continent.

On this anniversary, the best way to honor this great companion is through the struggle 
and daily organization with the oppressed classes, fighting the attacks of the upper 
classes and building the way for a socialist and libertarian society.

To know more:
Errico Malatesta- Theory and Strategy Anarchist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Tk715A8tE
The Political Thought of Errico Malatesta: https://anarkismo.net/article/2672925
Epistemology, Method of Analysis and Social Theory in Malatesta: 
https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/felipe-correa-epistemologia 
-method-of-analysis-and-social-theory-in-malatesta /

https://www.cabn.libertar.org/cab-errico-malatesta-militante-e-teorico-anarquista/

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Message: 2






The conflict between irrigator farmers and environmental protection associations, in the 
context of the water resource deficit, has just reached an end point with a judicial 
decision dated November 13, which refuses to authorize the dam project of Caussade 
(Tarn-et-Garonne). ---- The coordinating prefect of the Adour-Garonne watershed is 
alarmist: " The imbalance in the rivers is estimated today at between 200 million and 250 
million cubic meters per year. It will increase in the coming years as a result of climate 
change. It could reach between 1 billion and 1.2 billion cubic meters in 2050. " [1]" The 
level of abstractions made for different uses is no longer compatible with the objective 
of maintaining low-flow target flows adapted to functioning of aquatic ecosystems, " notes 
the same prefect ... especially when irrigating farmers consume 75% of water withdrawals 
in summer !

The Caussade dam project - a 20-hectare reservoir, intended to store 920,000 m 3 of water 
to irrigate 356 hectares - looks just like the Sivens (Tarn) project, as it presents the 
same irregularities and the same environmental damage: the destruction of dozens of 
protected species, the destruction of wetlands, the sacking of one of the last streams in 
the area that has maintained a remarkable ecological status.

Environmental releases
" It is no longer possible to build an umpteenth dam to irrigate crops that are not 
adapted to the real availability of water resources," protested France Nature Environment 
(FNE). A real reflection must take place to change the agricultural model: it is necessary 
to make the cultures compatible with the available water resources. " [2]

The prefecture of Lot-et-Garonne had given, on June 29, the green light for the 
construction of the new dam Caussade. FNE and Sepanso [3]therefore appealed to the 
Administrative Court of Bordeaux. And by a joint letter, the Ministers of Agriculture and 
Ecological Transition have asked the prefect to cancel the authorization of the work. 
[4]Thought made on October 15th.

In 100% peasants , newspaper of the Rural Coordination (right) of Lot-et-Garonne, its 
president, Patrick Franken protested: " We will not accept that, since Paris, Bordeaux, 
Toulouse, people out of soil decide to what is good or what is not good for Lot-et-Garonne 
" . But in the end, the Rural Coordination merely sued the decision to annul the 
prefectural decree.

In an order of 13 November, the Administrative Court of Bordeaux rejected this request. 
However, La Dépêche noted in its edition of 22 November that the Rural Coordination 
claimed to have started " simple works of development of the road to allow the machines to 
access the site when the new order will be made in the coming weeks. An untenable position 
for a long time, as it seems obvious, even to the layman, that the machines currently on 
site are not drawing a road but to dig a restraint[...]. So The outcome seems inevitable: 
the State or Justice will intervene to stop the activity on the site " .

Paul (AL 47)

[1] Reporterre, November 6, 2018

[2] Communiqué of France Nature Environment of September 20th, 2018

[3] Federation of Societies for the Study, Protection and Management of Nature in the 
South-West

[4] The Dispatch of October 5, 2018

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Barrage-de-Caussade-Un-projet-archaique-le-bec-dans-l-eau

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Message: 3





Bringing a council of ministers to Barcelona is the response that the PSOE gives to the 
vast majority of Catalans who defend the right to decide, that is, the right to 
self-determination of their people. An absolutely irrelevant gesture on a material level 
that contrasts with the harsh sentences (these are absolutely tangible) applied to those 
who have taken steps to question the unity of Spain. To this day some exconsellers remain 
in preventive detention while others are exiled; over all of them fall the exaggerated 
requests of the prosecution. Added to this situation is the latent threat of the 
suspension of autonomy, already applied by the previous government with the support of the 
PSOE. In this context of political repression, evident for a social majority not only in 
Catalonia,

The proposal shows once again the disconnection of the Spanish government with respect to 
the reality of the Catalans and Catalan. As expected, the CDRs have welcomed the 
convocation of the council of ministers calling for a day of struggle. The territorial 
conflict, extreme by the most centralist and reactionary elements of the regime, remains 
open. The Spanishist and authoritarian arguments of the right were bought in part even by 
people of the Spanish left, but Catalan society has demonstrated over the past few years 
to be politically conscious and organized to respond to their demands: right to decide, 
demand for stop the repression and, ultimately, a logical and legitimate aspiration to 
break with the Bourbon regime and establish, if the majority wants it, a Catalan republic.

Those of us who believe in a radically democratic and confederal political model can not 
miss the opportunity to question an authoritarian and repressive regime that only serves 
the privileged minority. To overthrow the regime is to open up the possibility of ending 
repression, with centralism, with the monarchy. But it is also to promote popular 
institutions emerged from self-organization and can be fundamental to address many of the 
daily problems of the social majority: unemployment, poverty, inequality, machismo ... 
These democratic institutions can be the germ of democracy ecosocialist, feminist and 
libertarian to which we aspire.

For all these reasons, the 21D encourages all of them to deepen the gap open to the wall.

Let's put down the regime!

https://apoyomutuo.net/21d-tumbar-el-regimen-construir-democracia/

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Message: 4





On May 2, Euskadi Ta Askasuna (Basque Country and Liberty, ETA) announced its dissolution 
unilaterally after a process of disarmament. The organization born in 1959 has deeply 
marked the Basque political and social landscape. ---- Since the XIX th century, Basque 
nationalism is held in the hand by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) combining the middle 
class in a reactionary Catholic fringe. The notion of "   Basque race   " and "   chosen 
people   " is the foundation of the movement of Sabino Arrana, founder and president of 
the PNV. This movement is opposed to a large local bourgeoisie integrated into the 
industry and the Anglo-Spanish banks. In 1936, the movement allied with the Republicans 
and the CNT to repel the Francoists until the fall of Bilbao on June 19, 1937. Party 
executives exile in France  [1], in the United States and South America. Faced with the 
impotence of the party in exile totally cut off from the people who suffer from Franco's 
repression, a group of students formed the Egin ("   Faire   ") group in 1952 to promote 
Basque (Basque) and to to study the history of the Basque people. Faced with the 
wait-and-see attitude of the Christian-Democratic fringe, a radical trend of the PNV's 
youth movement, which wants to do battle with Spanish power, joins Egin. From their 
junction was born ETA on July 31, 1959.

A tumultuous journey
In 1961, the idea of "   Basque race   " was totally abandoned  [2], a book by Federico 
Krutwig, Vasconia , opens a new horizon for the organization: the combination of national 
liberation and social liberation. ETA takes a class struggle turn. On July 18, 1961, the 
first action was an attempt to derail the train carrying former Franco soldiers going to 
celebrate the fascist coup. The international situation (Vietnam war, July 26 movement in 
Cuba, victory of the FLN in Algeria, MPLA in Angola ...) makes tide in 1964 ETA towards 
Maoism and the third-world, applying to the letter The Damned of the Earthfrom Frantz 
Fanon. Third-worldism remains a paralysis for the Basque movement, placing on the same 
level the situation of colonized countries where industry does not exist with local 
bourgeoisies in the service of colonizers, and the overindustrialized Basque country with 
an integrated bourgeoisie. oppressive country, and by adopting Mao's one-sided policy 
during the liberation war in Manchuria, ie the alliance with the   basquist  bourgeoisie 
While, paradoxically, ETA breaks all relations with the PNV at the same time. At the turn 
of the 1970s, two splits will take place, the first in 1968 opposing the current worker 
and the current third world. The second current then takes over the control of the 
organization. That same year, one of ETA officials, Txabi Etxebarrieta, was shot dead by 
the Guardia Civil, becoming the first victim in the ranks of the organization.

The second split will take place in 1970. On the eve of the Burgos Trial  [3], the 
Trotskyist fringe leaves the organization to create ETA VI before joining the Spanish LCR. 
ETA then abandons the Third World and the concept of "   class people   " to turn to " 
national freedom, democracy and socialism   " seeking to organize the "   Basque working 
people   "around him, ideology imprint of avant-gardism while combining activists from 
different backgrounds, they and they are libertarians, or former PNV and PSOE. In 1973, 
Franco's putative successor exploded in his car in Madrid with a bomb claimed by ETA. 
Fascist power falters and ETA must prepare the end of the regime.

Facing the after Franco
The disagreements come back and 1974 remains an important year for the organization: the 
movement bursts. The majority founds the party Langile Abertzale Irautzaleen Alderdia (the 
Party of Revolutionary Patriotic Workers, LAIA) to intervene directly in the Basque 
political life. For its part, military ETA organizes the armed action. And finally ETA-PM 
refuses the division of the two fronts but at the same time organizes the trade union 
Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (Labor Patriotic Commissions, LAB), neighborhood committees 
and the party Euzkadiko Ezkerra (the Left of the Country Basque).

On the death of Franco, Spain remains in the hands of executives of the Franco regime and 
the workers of the Basque Country are paying the price: the massacre by the police of five 
workers on strike against the limits of wages and working conditions in Vittoria -Gasteiz 
in 1976, the assault on pro-amnesty by the police and the shooting death of one of them 
during the Pamplona festivities in 1978, the repression of the general strike for the 
amnesty of the prisoners and Basque political prisoners and the death of three people in 
Errenteria, leaving a city ransacked and pillaged by the Guardia Civil. The repression of 
the Spanish state is not extinguished with the so-called democratic transition. ETA 
continues its action, but the political landscape will change.

In 1978, the Herri Batasuna coalition of various pro-independence left-wing parties, 
including LAIA supported by the LAB trade union and pro-amnesty groups, was set up in the 
context of the new Spanish Constitution and the autonomous status of Euskadi, in the hands 
of PNV from 1980. ETA, for its part, starts fighting against the construction of the 
Lemoiz nuclear power plant, supporting a strong environmental movement. The organization 
halts the construction and the project is abandoned.

The northern Basque Country is the scene of criminal actions of the Anti-Terrorist 
Liberation Group (LAG) orchestrated by the Spanish State of Felipe Gonzales with the 
support of the French authorities. From 1983, the LAG, grouping Spanish military and 
police, mercenaries of extreme right and the middle of Marseilles, assassinates with 
impunity of the refugees of ETA, aided by the General Information (RG) of Mitterrand  [4]. 
In the meantime, ETA-pm merges with the Basque Communist Party in 1982 before joining the 
PSOE.

The military stalemate
On the political front, Herri Batasuna is gaining more and more importance in the 1980s. 
ETA is targeting police and Guardia Civil barracks in Madrid, but when in June 1987 a bomb 
explodes in a shopping center in Madrid. Barcelona killing 47 people, the organization 
apologizes. This is too much action for a large part of ETA's supporters. A ceasefire was 
declared in 1989, the first in the history of the organization, and negotiating meetings 
were held in Algiers between ETA and the Spanish state. These were broken in the face of 
Gonzales' request for repentance. ETA, weakened by multiple arrests, gets bogged down in 
the 1990s in the elimination of journalists, elected officials from all sides, thus moving 
away from its base until a new contact with the Aznar government in 1999 . This contact 
leads to a cease-fire and the Lizarra agreements where the separatist and autonomist 
forces (Herri Batasuna, PNV ...) agree on a political solution. Not surprisingly, the PNV 
does not respect the agreement in order to keep power over the Basque autonomous community 
with either the Popular Party or the PSOE. ETA takes up arms to put pressure on the PNV.

The separatist left is divided from this period, between the current that condemns 
violence and those who do not wish to comment on it. In this period, until the 2000s, the 
doctrine Garzón (named after a judge), is set up: "   Todo es ETA   " (Everything is ETA). 
The judge ordered the closure of independentist newspapers, radios, banned Herri Batasuna 
and Basque youth movements, led raids against activists and asked France (who does not 
pray) the extradition of activists. Basque. Everything becomes suspect, Judge Garzón sees 
the hand of ETA on the whole movement.

Dissolution of the organization
The years 2000 saw a period of long reflection on the political outlets of the armed 
struggle. October 17, 2011, a new era begins: an international meeting is held at the 
palace of Aiete  [5]in San Sebastián, calling for the final cessation of the armed action, 
a dialogue between the three parties (ETA and the Spanish and French States), and the 
recognition of the suffering suffered by both sides. On October 20, ETA announces the 
definitive cessation of its armed actions. ETA wants to open the dialogue with Madrid with 
the help of international organizations, an appointment is given in Oslo. After several 
months of waiting, the Spanish state refuses to go there, a sign that Madrid refuses to 
open talks. And this is the case: the Spanish authorities continue to repress and imprison 
activists. On the French side, the same silence: a letter is sent to Holland, which does 
not take the trouble to answer. On December 16, 2016, five representatives of "   civil 
society  Called the Artisans of the peace undertake to neutralize part of the arsenal that 
ETA had entrusted to them, are stopped by the force of the Raid and are sent to the 
anti-terrorist cell of Levallois-Perret before being released (the procedure is not 
finished). ETA continues its disarmament, gives the position of all its arms caches to the 
representatives, which results in its complete disarmament on April 8, 2018. ETA is now 
inactive and disarmed and the organization dissolves on May 2 after 93% of its members 
approved this decision.

Since then, a new period has opened in the Basque Country. Activists fighting for 
self-determination are now seeking a purely political outcome through the Sortu political 
party and the Euskal Herria Bildu coalition, bringing together different trends, through 
social struggles with LAB, but also association of families (Etxerat) of prisoners and 
prisoners or associations of assistance to their reintegration (Harrera). Although the 
French state has since made tentative progress in bringing prisoners closer to their 
families and loved ones, the Spanish state remains on hold while denying the exceptional 
status of political prisoners, as well as torture and the eliminations made by the 
different fonts.

Martial (AL Saint-Denis)

[1] The PNV had an office at 7 rue Quentin Bauchart in the 8 th  district of Paris where 
the party cadres gathered. The siege was requisitioned by the Gestapo and given to the 
Franco-Spanish Embassy. It is still owned by the Embassy where the Cervantes Institute is 
housed.

[2] In ETA's internal newsletter, Zutik No. 8 of 1961: "   In the present century, neither 
race, nor language, nor historical past give a people the right to be masters of it. and 
to be free[...]. The only necessary condition for constituting itself is this: the will."

[3] The trial of Burgos, where a military court tried 16 members of ETA suspected of 
having participated in the killing of three people, is held from 3 December 1970. The 
court condemns each of them to death by tourniquet. A major international campaign, which 
Gisèle Halimi and Sartre joined in France, caused Franco to yield and the sentence was 
transformed into years of imprisonment (from 12 to 70 years).

[4] In 1985, the Monbar hotel bar was fired in Petit Bayonne, where four refugees were 
killed. The action of the LAG has killed more than 34 people and the perpetrators have 
never been sentenced.

[5] Aiete's palace was Franco's summer residence.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pays-basque-ETA-soixante-ans-de-luttes-et-de-debats

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Message: 5





"Ecological Atlas to ‘Petrochemical America'" shows the cumulative effects of Louisiana's 
petrochemical corridor appropriation along the Mississippi River. Courtesy Kate Oroff
By BRRN Radical Ecology Committee ---- Coastal Louisiana is home to 41% of the United 
States coastal wetlands and is the world's seventh largest delta ecosystem. The region is 
covered with natural levees, barrier islands, forested wetlands, and marshes formed by 
Mississippi River deposits. Historically the state's wetlands provided protective barriers 
for diverse coastal communities against hurricanes and extreme storms, while also serving 
as important ecological deterrents to climate breakdown through carbon sequestration. 
Currently, Louisiana has one of the fastest rates of coastal land loss and relative 
sea-level rise on the planet, twice the global rate.[1]This sustained destruction of 
coastal Louisiana began with the colonization process- separating water from arable land- 
and it is bound up with the accumulated, appropriation of land, energy, and unpaid labor 
by fossil-fuel industries. Capitalism is exhausting the carrying capacity of this wetlands 
region due to its role as an extraction zone. Cumulative development is degrading the 
ecosystem itself and its ability to protect from accelerating climate disasters. We must 
determine an effective means to protect this region, both to regenerate the coast and 
protect the communities that call it home.

90% of the coastal Louisiana wetlands are considered to be "under threat" given the 
direction of development within the state of Louisiana. Measuring that in terms of land 
loss, 70% stems from the effects of industrial growth. Oil and gas industrial production 
leads to the construction of dikes, levees, and damming of the Mississippi river for 
extraction and shipping, Other sectors supported by these expansions include both 
industrial agriculture and logging. The extensive man-made system prevents sediment and 
silt from reaching the Delta, obstructing the land from building itself up and 
replenishing the ecosystem cycles.This deteriorating land is caused primarily by erosion, 
by submergence in which wetlands sink and the sea levels rise, and by the direct removal 
of land. Direct removal of land occurs through a combination of dredged canals for 
navigation and pipeline construction, oil drilling, deforestation, agricultural drainage, 
and hurricanes. The coastal process of subsidence, in which organic sediments are 
deposited and consolidated in the Delta forming new land, is interrupted. The rates of 
land loss are significantly higher near oil and gas production fields.[2]

Aside from losing land within these regions additional problems come from the 
disequilibrium between salt and fresh waters ecosystems. Dredging pathways through 
marshland has continued since the first coastal zone oil lease in 1921, enabling saltwater 
from the Gulf of Mexico to rush in during storms and high tides.[3]The bayou forest 
ecosystem collapses as a result, evidenced by great patches of dead zones as the land has 
become filled with saltwater as well as other toxins, such as fertilizer runoff from 
industrial agriculture. The ecological effects are compounded by imminent submergence and 
further land loss.[4]Metabolic exhaustion plays itself out as Capital, Power, and Nature 
are reconfigured throughout the region as this frontier zone of appropriation diminishes.

The Louisiana Gulf region, like other resource zones of un-commodified work and energy, 
has over time transposed its slave-based plantations of cotton and sugar into an 
increasingly toxic geography of extraction. Both its Black and Indigenous populations have 
been disproportionately dispossessed of land and resources through the continual expansion 
of petrochemical production. This region has become a primary "energy sacrifice zone" for 
capitalist investment and accumulation. Other economic sectors that could otherwise thrive 
in the region are sacrificed to support a bioregional transformation of cheapening for the 
benefit of the energy industry. The Mississippi, like many other global deltas, has become 
a "tap" for petroleum companies: they exist as extraction provinces. Echoing the words of 
the oil industry::

Deltas serve as point sources ... The delta form(s) a geomorphic bulge which projects 
seaward and allows land and shallow offshore drilling rigs to reach deep targets which 
could only be reached by more expensive rigs in deeper water areas adjacent to the delta. 
Significant hydrocarbons have been discovered in at least eighteen deltaic provinces 
worldwide.[In other words, deltas provide easy access to energy sources, where waste can 
be easily discharged, cheaper to drill and extract, as well as being very lucrative-BRRN 
REC].[5]

As the petrochemical corridor of the Louisiana Gulf taps more wealth from the region as an 
‘energy sacrifice zone,' the unpaid costs of waste production and land loss outstrip both 
the abundance of "resources" available as well as the value that can be extracted. The 
cumulative appropriation of new streams of unpaid work/energy leads to a disproportionate 
volume of waste over time. Spills and emissions seep into the land, water, and air from 
the refineries, chemical industries, and hazardous waste sites along the Mississippi 
river. The deltas become clogged and overflowing ‘sinks' for industrial waste. These 
ecological ‘sinks' are increasingly vulnerable to extreme storms, land submergence, and 
rising sea levels. Value and waste are internally bound, so that over time Capital loses 
the ability to extract surplus value from the region.[6]

Racialized ‘Energy Sacrifice Zone'
This bioregional crisis in the Louisiana Gulf has been a cumulative process built on 
racialized and colonial capitalism. Genocide, dispossession, and displacement of 
indigenous communities; and a denial of their legitimate right to exist continues to mark 
the landscape. In the 1800s, many Indigenous communities fled colonization into previously 
uninhabited southern ends of Louisiana's coastal bayous.[7]These communities still live 
along these coasts in barrier islands and tidal estuaries, subsisting on fishing, 
shrimping, and small gardening. Since the early 20th century, they have co-inhabited 
extraction zones with offshore oil-drilling operations, pipeline infrastructures, and 
other petrochemical facilities. The loss of landmass- including many barrier islands to 
the south of these tribal communities- has decreased their natural protection from the 
Gulf waters, exposing them to intensified hurricanes and tropical storms.[8]This is a 
perpetual "shock zone" of disasters, facing cycles of climate-induced displacement with 
each new storm. Much of the biodiversity of these bayous faces destruction, killing 
medicinal and edible plants, trees, and driving out many of the animals that these 
communities depend on for refuge and food.[9]

 From the forced relocation of tribal ancestors, through the land grabbing by real estate 
developers and petroleum corporations, to the state's flood-protection plans that discount 
and pollute tribal lands, this colonial legacy of Capital appropriation continues to 
devastate and traumatize. These accruing disasters are a part of a "legacy of atrocities" 
that these tribal communities experience as a continuation of policies favoring interests 
of capitalism and the state.[10]For instance, the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster 
reverberates through the region's shrimp and fish industries, areas in which most 
indigenous tribes have placed a large portion of their livelihoods. Immediately following 
the Deepwater Horizon explosion, British Petroleum applied 1.84 million gallons of 
dispersants, mainly Corexit chemicals, that allowed the spilled oil to mix with the 
water.[11]The region's fish have been documented with serious lesions and shrimp have 
become deformed due to their exposure to high levels of compounds- such as 
benzene-released from dispersed crude oil.[12]This is not an isolated incident, however. 
Major deep offshore oil disasters- such as the continuing Taylor Energy oil platform 
spill- also seriously affect the landscape. Since 2004 the broken Taylor platform has 
leaked 10,500 to 29,000 gallons of oil per day, making it one of the largest and 
longest-running spills in North America.[13]

Courtesy Jake Rames. Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill-Cumulative Oil Slick Footprint, April 
25-July 16 2010
Louisiana's African-descendent communities share a related history of appropriation and 
exploitation. The "River Region" between New Orleans and Baton Rouge was once the heart of 
the South's slave economy, with nearly 300 sugar and cotton plantations along the lower 
Mississippi.[14]Its colonized geography of agricultural enclosures and unpaid labor 
created what Frantz Fanon called "a world divided into compartments" or "a world cut in 
two."[15]Both African and Indigenous communities experienced forced displacement and 
enslavement during colonialism. Due to the shared experiences, Black runaways frequently 
joined indigenous tribes to escape plantations leading to African-Indigenous alliances 
during slave revolts and insurrections against white rule.[16]The dominant paradigm of the 
time established white supremacy as the base logic of the entire regional economy. As with 
other colonial ventures, unpaid human labor and unpaid energy of ecosystems are harnessed 
for Capital accumulation in the region.

The logic of "cheap nature" degrades the work and lives of the colonized not only along 
racial lines but also by devaluing their labor and deteriorating the conditions in which 
they live. Through these systems, the capitalist world-ecology profits from "cheapening," 
reproducing forms of domination, appropriation, and exploitation throughout the social 
order. The Capitalocene organizes relations between humans and the rest of nature through 
binary "world cut in two" logic. What is most valued in "commodified profit" and "tapped 
resources" is also what is deemed white and male. What is not valued, the uncommodified 
work/energy of "women, nature, and colonies" is left from the paid ledgers of 
Capital.[17]These "free gifts of nature" are to be used and disposed of in the production 
process as "externalities" and waste, respectively. The surplus of what is unpaid is 
violently maintained through the expansion of frontiers as demonstrated through 
settler-colonial power.[18]Violent appropriation is maintained through the incestuous 
relationship between Capital and the State, which allows for the continued exploitation of 
labor in producing petro-commodities for global markets. Frontier conquest of extraction 
zones ensures both the continual appropriation of unpaid labor/energy and the exploitation 
of paid labor in commodity production. Together, they co-produce greater capital 
accumulation of value.

This cycle of appropriation is evident in the construction of the Mississippi levee 
system. Separating the land from water through flood control measures allowed for greater 
privatization by white landowners and business owners. While the jetties, dams, and other 
navigation structures opened New Orleans to greater markets for its cotton and other 
commodities; the levee system helped reinforce racial segregation. Many former African 
slaves- who lived on the edges of the plantations in woods and wetlands- faced 
displacement by the levees. The constructed levees destroyed these edges, enlarging the 
cotton plantations and forcing black folks back into plantation labor.[19]Legislation 
maintained that the levees were to be built "by hired labor or otherwise," resulting in 
local authorities and landowners using prison labor, homeless vagrants, and coerced 
plantation laborers. Most of these laborers were Black men, while White men owned most of 
the acreage protected by the levees. Once the levee system was proven to be a boon for 
Capital in the Mississippi Valley, the same model was used to "improve" rivers and 
appropriate indigenous land in the West. This continued colonization allowed for 
production of cheap grain which would find their way to the Port of New Orleans, to be 
sold on global markets.[20]

With the advent of fossil fuels, former plantations were sold to emergent oil companies, 
eager to obtain cheap Mississippi riverside territory, rich in untapped "resources." The 
labor pool was inexpensive and expendable and proximity to a major seaport ensured a 
global market for the extracted value. As this petrochemical corridor expanded its 
frontier along the Louisiana Coast and offshore, the pollution and environmental 
degradation affected those closest to its factories and refineries: disproportionately the 
descendents of African slaves and Indigenous communities. For many African-descendent 
communities, the transfer from Plantation to Chemical Plant was effectively "exchanging 
one plantation master for another."[21]

Sugar and Cotton Plantations along the Mississippi River 1858 (Courtesy Benjamin Moore Norman)
The primarily African-American community of St. Gabriel, Louisiana witnessed a striking 
example of this environmental racism. In 1987, 15 cancer victims identified to live within 
a 2 block radius, setting off a tidal wave of diagnoses along what would become known as 
"Cancer Alley." This eighty-five mile of the Mississippi coast stretches between Baton 
Rouge and New Orleans and it is packed with approximately 150 petroleum refining or 
chemical factories. The amount of toxic and hazardous wastes regularly released overwhelms 
the landscape. Cancer Alley comprises the parishes (counties) of St. James, Ascension, 
East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Iberville, St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, 
Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, and Assumption. A disproportionately number of Black 
communities live in close proximity to the petrochemical facilities.[22]As of 2018, 
Louisiana has the fifth-highest cancer death rate in the U.S. and numerous studies show 
the rates are inordinately higher among the state's non-white population.[23]Most of the 
11 parishes of Cancer Alley do not meet EPA standards for safe levels of ozone and these 
same parishes account for 63.5% of the state's on- and off-site release and disposal of 
toxic and/or hazardous compounds. In the mostly low-income, working-class Black small 
towns of Cancer Alley, industrial accidents and accidental releases are prevalent and 
consistently observed over time.[24]

As extraction frontiers begin to diminish in the Gulf region, the technologies used to 
appropriate this unpaid wealth become more complex and hazardous. Contrast a 1930's 
cricket oil pump to the massive offshore drilling platforms that currently line the 
Louisiana coast.[25]As Capital costs increase with the use of advanced extraction 
technologies, the financialization of these ventures is bringing less accumulation of 
surplus value. This negative value is evidenced industry-wide in cost-intensive and 
volatile processes such as hydraulic fracking and bitumen conversion of tar sands. The 
cumulative toxicity from natural gas extraction and and the petrochemical industries cause 
a host of public health issues as these intensive methods expand: developmental, 
respiratory, digestive, neurological, renal, and dermatological conditions are all 
documented. Long-term monitoring of air quality and charting of spills and gas releases 
show a substantial increase throughout the region. Each offshore oil platform generates 
over 214,000 pounds of air pollutants each year. The oil industry is discharging not only 
hazardous organic compounds, but radioactive as well. Drilling wastewater is released into 
the Mississippi or on the Gulf coast with high Radium-226 concentrations. This effluent is 
known to have appreciable concentrations of this and other radioactive isotopes 
substantially higher than safe drinking levels.[26]Yet the petrochemical companies are not 
content with the current decay: as wetlands sink into the Gulf waters, this submerged land 
is privatized to allow additional offshore drilling platforms and pipeline infrastructure

The toxicity of this petrochemical extraction zone strains frontline coastal communities 
in their attempt to maintain necessary levels of social reproduction. Their racialized 
status limits employment to low-paying service, small agriculture, and fishing jobs; 
adjacent to petrochemical complexes. Subsistence gardening and fishing remain a 
substantial part of livelihoods and community resilience in the face of climate breakdown. 
The oil, gas, and supporting industries, do hire some Black, Indigenous, and migrant 
workers, but typically in lower-paying oil rig, tugboat, or welding jobs.This work is 
often precarious and seasonal with poor job-safety oversight.[27]Capital's success depends 
on these under-reproduction strategies, reinforced through racial and ecological 
appropriation. The socially necessary levels of reproduction these communities need go 
unpaid. Most industry jobs go to white communities around the plants or to white commuters 
who live substantially farther from the facilities.[28]Racial segregation is reinforced by 
continued dispossession from vanishing or appropriated coastal land. Displacement, 
fragmentation, and relocations are common as these communities fight to survive ecological 
collapse. Climate migration increases as a flight away from the extraction zone. Regional 
ecological and economic exhaustion continue to produce cumulative reproductive crises, as 
well as crises of rising wastes and diminishing profits.

L'Eau Est La Vie ("Water is Life")
As coastal frontline communities attempt to survive and adapt in an "energy sacrifice 
zone," a culture of resistance, nurtured in the histories of abolitionist and decolonial 
struggles, is emerging. This is a direct challenge to the petrochemical frontier strategy 
of Capital and the State. The growing movement draws inspiration from the indigenous 
water-protectors at Standing Rock and previous environmental justice struggles of Cancer 
Alley towns such as Diamond, Wallace, and Convent. This resistance is formed by a diverse 
convergence of environmental organizers from various Indigenous, Black, and other 
working-class communities; building a counterpower movement across Louisiana to prevent 
the proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline. The 162 mile pipeline is designed to bring fracked 
crude oil from the North Dakota shale fields across coastal Louisiana. The route passes 
through the eastern Atchafalaya Basin forested wetlands destroying more than 940 acres, 
the largest continuous wetlands in the U.S. It would continue across coastal Louisiana, 
impacting more than 450 additional acres during construction.[29]

The Atchafalaya Basin is a particularly important ecosystem in the US, its 885,000 acres 
make it the largest river swamp and continuous bottomland hardwood forest in North 
America. (Etymologically, Atchafalaya is derived from the Choctaw words for "long river," 
hachcha and falaya). It contains the most productive wetlands on earth. The proposed Bayou 
Bridge Pipeline will extend damage beyond previous oil and gas projects. Observed damages 
from those ventures include spoil banks, altered water flow, and disrupted sedimentation 
patterns in their routes. Making such changes to the landscape impairs water quality, 
destroys wildlife habitats, and disrupts fishing communities. The imminent threat of 
spills, leaks, and malfunctions endanger the Bayou Lafourche which is the drinking water 
source for some 300,000 people including the United Houma Nation and the residents of 
Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, and Lafourche Parishes. Ecologists predict that 
compromising the integrity of Bayou Lafourche will cause further erosion and subsidence, 
leading to freshwater and land loss throughout the region. Plans are to make the Bayou 
Bridge Pipeline (BBP) terminate in the predominantly African-American riverport town of 
St. James. The town is already a network of petrochemical storage tanks and facilities 
vulnerable to public health disasters. Unfortunately, there is no emergency exit plan for 
its mostly elderly residents in case of a catastrophic failure of these systems.[30]

Courtesy NOLA.com
Since early 2017 this pipeline resistance movement has centered its activity in Rayne, 
Louisiana, out of L'Eau Est La Vie ("Water is Life") Camp. The camp is not a stationary 
location: it floats through the waterways and swamps allowing its residents to surveil, 
organize, and employ collective direct action along the proposed pipeline route. The Bayou 
Bridge resistance can be considered- and is seen as such by many camp organizers- as a 
direct continuation of the Indigenous struggle at Standing Rock, as the Bayou Bridge 
Pipeline connects to the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Both of these decolonial 
struggles are at the nexus of ecology, indigenous, feminist, and Black liberation 
resistance to Capital extraction. They struggle against the racist and patriarchal systems 
to protect the stolen Chata Houma Chittimacha Atakapaw Indigenous territory. L'Eau Est La 
Vie water-protectors seek to disrupt and stop construction in the Atchafalaya Basin. The 
water-protectors have engaged in collective direct actions including tree-sits, blockading 
construction sites (with kayaks), and locking down to construction equipment. Like 
Standing Rock- which brought together diverse First Nations communities and non-Indigenous 
participants- the water-protectors at L'Eau Est La Vie Camp are equally diverse with 
Choctaw-Houma, Chumash, Apache-Cheyenne, Lakota, Creole, African, and Cajun participants.[31]

A number of the core organizers within the L'Eau Est La Vie camp are indigenous women and 
women of color. They play key roles in the L'Eau Est La Vie Camp, not only in the direct 
actions, but also through providing education, healthcare,and food. This collective 
organizing may be seen as an integrative expansion of necessary social-reproductive labor. 
In this context, social reproduction becomes transformed as a primary site of struggle: a 
site of violent capitalist accumulation pitted against persistent decolonizing 
resistance.[32]Social-reproductive labor also expands towards community and kin networks 
into relations of care for the land, the water, and other non-human natures. These 
water-protectors are transforming their social reproductive labor within a site of 
creative resistance to both white settler patriarchy and Capital. Their brilliance is 
demonstrated in strategic divestment campaigns, legal defense, and extensive 
solidarity-based organizing throughout the coastal communities. All of this to stop the 
BBP from going into operation.

These water-protectors are also challenging eminent domain. The state and/or corporate 
entities reserve the right to seize lands and resources, based on purported "public 
benefit." The settler-colonial state works with petrochemical companies to apply his legal 
precedent, confiscating ‘cleared' land for private development, and appropriating 
Indigenous land and resources. One example is the Flood Control Act of 1928, Under this 
legislation the federal government assumes the authority to take possession of any lands 
needed for easements, right of way, etc.; to protect "private property and national 
interests."[33]The decolonial challenge to eminent domain contests this unjust industry 
appropriation while seeking justice for past colonial land theft. In December 2017, water 
protectors bought land in the name of Louisiana Rise, a group organizing a just, renewable 
energy transition in South Louisiana. The organization then publicly granted and returned 
the land to the Atakapa-Ishak Nation. L'Eau Est La Vie now uses this land as a center of 
resistance in the path of the proposed pipeline.[34]

The purveyors of the pipeline- Energy Transfer Partners (ETP)- recently escalated its 
tactics to intimidate those at L'Eau Est La Vie Camp. The corporation persecutes water 
protectors through "felony trespass" arrests, made possible through Louisiana's new 
"critical infrastructure" law. This state legislation basically turns the existing law on 
trespassing into a felony when it occurs near "critical infrastructure" or construction 
sites for critical infrastructure, which includes oil and gas pipelines. It also involves 
"conspiracy" charges to enter or damage these sites with penalties both in prison times 
and fines. This partnership between ETP and Louisiana effectively criminalizes oil and gas 
pipeline protests to maintain dominance in the region. Despite this repression the water 
protectors continue to expand their resistance.[35]In July-August 2018 the 
water-protectors set up a second campsite with permission of affected landowners. A dozen 
organizers were arrested under "felony trespass" charges. The struggle is currently in a 
legal standoff with BBP representatives who filed to expropriate the land in the "public 
interest." The landowners' countersuit alleges the pipeline offers no public benefit and 
in fact goes against public interests.[36]The countersuit cites ETP'- and its affiliates'- 
extensive spill and leak record, including 527 incidents from 2002 to the end of 2017. 
These industrial accidents collectively resulted in the release of 3.6 million gallons of 
hazardous liquids into the environment.[37]

A countersuit offered by the water protectors- in partnership with local landowners- 
maintains that pipelines have significantly contribute to Louisiana's rapid coastal 
erosion crisis and reliance on fossil fuels, exacerbating climate breakdown.[38]On 
December 6, 2018, the Louisiana judge presiding over the case ruled that ETP does, in 
fact, have the right to seize the property following Louisiana state legal precedent. His 
ruling acknowledged the illegal behavior of ETP, yet still ruled in its favor, reinforcing 
Louisiana's consistent history of collusion with the petroleum industry. The state's 
actions allow the private interests of oil companies to trump those of its population. The 
state uses its power of expropriation-i.e., eminent domain,a "right" usually reserved for 
governments to construct highways or other public works- to support capital accumulation. 
Nearly 86% of the BBP has been constructed, and Capital in Louisiana hopes that the last 
14% are completed with full support of the state. A countersuit intends to appeal the 
ruling to stop the pipeline from going into commission and forcing ETP to dig up the 
existing buried pipe.[39]

Regardless of the final outcome of BBP, the decolonial struggle against Capital 
appropriation has built counterpower alliances between community residents and ecological 
organizers. Indigenous, Creole, Black, and other non-Indigenous communities are uniting 
across Louisiana for a shared future. From the Cajun Atchafalaya crawfishers and the 
United Houma Nation to the black community in St. James, the struggle against the Bayou 
Bridge Pipeline has mobilized grassroots, sustainable networks for counterpower. The 
resistance occurs at the intersections of anti-racism, Indigenous autonomy, decolonial 
feminisms, and climate justice. Given the 20 plus pipelines that are proposed to cross 
Indigenous territories and communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, the building and 
sustaining of decolonial movements is paramount. As Capital's frontiers are diminishing, 
the lessons learned through these struggles-both the losses and the gains-become imperative.

Bioregeneration against Climate Breakdown

Land change in the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne basins, 1932-2016. The Red-orange areas, 
mostly of the Terrebonne Basin, signify net land loss. The Green, mostly of the 
Atchafalaya Basin, signify net land gain. (Courtesy Couvillon et al. 2011)
There are increasing systemic contradictions within Capital that present opportunities for 
broader class struggle. As the appropriation frontiers of fossil Capital decline, they 
become more vulnerable to collective resistance, especially self-determined approaches. 
Diminishing returns on financial investment due to rising technical and production costs, 
the over-accumulation of capital, and the ongoing and impending biological shifts from 
climate breakdown suggest that substantial cracks are forming in the Capitalocene "cheap" 
natures strategy.[40]What needs to be addressed in our strategy is how to use these faults 
to begin building alternatives to Capital's model and effectively resist.

Ecological restoration and climate change mitigation entail a qualitatively different 
approach than what is offered by states and capitalist industries. In Louisiana, building 
new land banks, rerouting levees, or constructing other "walled" barriers to prevent land 
loss or protect communities from climate storms and hurricanes from the Gulf will not 
resolve these exacerbating conditions from climate breakdown. BP's feeble attempts to 
"clean up" the Deepwater Horizon Spill through "tech-friendly" approaches like spraying 
toxic Corexit dispersants were as successful as the unsubstantial monetary payouts to 
those affected, if found "eligible" for damage compensations.

The Louisiana Coastal Preservation and Restoration Authority's (CPRA) Coastal Master Plan 
proposes dredging and river diversions to build up coastal edges in open water areas to 
reduce flood risk and slow land loss. The suggested solutions do not begin to address the 
ecological factors causing rapid land loss or flooding. Solutions being absent from the 
plan should come at no real surprise, however. The major planning for CRPA development 
came from the oil and gas, commercial seafood, and navigation industries (although CPRA 
initiated and "consulted" community and small landowning focus groups for involvement in 
the continued evolution of the Plan).[41]Given the class and racial composition of these 
groups- expectedly skewed toward the dominant social classes-, the cards are stacked 
against the racialized coastal communities and the powers that be will determine the Plan 
in the end. The domination is codified in the plan as it stands. The 50-Year Master Plan 
for a Sustainable Coast has a red line indicating where hurricane protection systems will 
be placed. Land north of the red line will be protected from flooding and land loss by 
state-sponsored restoration and protection, while that south of the line will not. The 
southern boundary excludes many of the Indigenous tribes and black communities.[42]This 
refusal to protect mirrors racial "redlining" in real estate zoning, with the implicit 
goal of allowing petrochemical companies to acquire coastal property after catastrophe. 
The state has legal authority to designate the outlying land as Locally Unwanted Land Use 
(LULU) zones on behalf of the petrochemical industry, leading to eventual appropriation. 
The State and Capital are unable to "fix" or effectively mitigate Louisiana's bioregional 
crisis of land loss, ecological toxicity, and climate breakdown; so they instead intend to 
capitalize to the very limits of the region.

More grassroots, community-based solutions for coastal restoration are necessary. These 
approaches require a qualitative ‘shift' away from a capitalist world-ecology towards a 
reparations ecology. The move towards a reparations ecology involves a fundamental 
transformation in social relations. Movements must acknowledge and remember the violence 
and inequality which capitalism applies to organize life between humans as well as humans 
and rest of nature.[43]Reparations ecology recognizes the debt owed is "wealth extracted 
from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing 
discrimination, and racialized capitalism."[44]It also strengthens emancipation through 
building and uniting decolonial, ecological, and abolitionist struggles. We begin to 
repair and recreate relations that nourish justice and sustainability in reciprocal and 
care-oriented ways, recognizing that nature can no longer be an expendable resource, used 
to benefit the very few at the expense of degrading the rest of life. This care-oriented 
ethos does not make these demands on redistribution grounds, but questions the very basis 
of capitalism. Reparations ecology advances more substantial demands that seek to 
de-commodify life. This self-organizing process involves communities restructuring and 
restoring food, land, housing, healthcare, education, etc., along communal, 
social-reproductive lines.[45]

The seeds of reparations ecology are seen in climate-disaster communities already just 
like those in Louisiana. People continue to demonstrate through self-managed direct 
action, mutual aid, and solidarity, that communities affected by climate catastrophes can 
rebuild. By "making do with what is at hand" they can efficiently meet human needs even 
under the most adverse conditions. Disaster communities can organize through mutual aid 
towards the commoning of resources based on specific collective needs. It is essential to 
emphasize within these struggles that situations are reconfigurable and that solutions can 
be found through self-organization. In this way the goal becomes how to best 
"pull[capitalism]apart and repurpose its components to new ends: an ecological 
satisfaction of human needs and not the endless valorisation of capital."[46]Through 
building and integrating sustainable "infrastructures of resistance"into a comprehensive 
approach, communities can respond more effectively to climate disasters and begin to 
restructure communities towards more long-term solutions.

Bioregeneration is an integral component in this reparational shift. As these coastal 
wetlands have become degraded and their drainage systems destroyed, significant amounts of 
carbon are released into the atmosphere in the form of methane and other greenhouse gases, 
reducing their ability to sequester additional carbon. Unlike Carbon Dioxide Removal and 
other "tech-oriented" approaches to climate breakdown, bioregeneration creates a 
sustainable biodiversity gain for both human and non-human communities. Especially in 
relation to carbon sequestration systems, bioregeneration of wetlands will allow storage 
of excess carbon, via photosynthesis, to help mitigate accelerating climate breakdown. 
Carbon is stored in wetland vegetation such as mangroves, salt marsh grasses, and 
seagrasses. These terrestrial wetland soils function as carbon sinks through organic 
sedimentation of eroded soil, leaves, and tree debris that is deposited into low-lying 
wetland areas through decomposition, creating new land and protecting these communities 
and habitats from Gulf disasters and submergence.[47]

The struggles to stop the BBP and mitigate Louisiana's bioregional crisis involve 
significant changes to the landscape through bioregeneration. The coastal region needs 
largely unrestricted water flow and sedimentation processes to continue in the Atchafalaya 
and Mississippi Rivers for effective restoration to occur. An example of this process is 
seen in the Atchafalaya Basin. In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged a channel from 
the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico, splitting the flow of water and sediment 
between the Atchafalaya River and this newly created Wax Lake Outlet. Over time, sediment 
filled Wax Lake, creating both the Wax Lake Delta as well as a secondary delta built by 
the Atchafalaya River. Between 1932 and 2016, while every other basin was losing land, 
Atchafalaya gained six square miles (4,000 acres) of wetlands. The Atchafalaya River 
receives 30 percent of the combined flow of the Mississippi and Red River along with a 
constant stream of sediment that then deposits. The Atchafalaya Basin continues to 
experience net land gain through re-sedimentation, the new land pushing out into the Gulf. 
The Atchafalaya ecosystems are regenerating, despite the challenges affecting other areas 
of the Louisiana coast.[48]

The Terrebonne Basin is located on the eastern coast of Louisiana. In contrast to 
Atchafalaya, the Terrebonne has lost 550 square miles (30,000 acres) of wetlands since the 
1930's. The Basin is marked by widespread infrastructure intrusions like dams, channels, 
and dredging. Due to these, the Terrebonne Basin receives limited amounts of freshwater 
from the Atchafalaya River, keeping it sediment and freshwater poor. While the exhausted 
Terrebonne wetlands continue to disintegrate, coastal communities become increasingly 
vulnerable to displacement and disaster.[49]It is possible to reverse this tide, to make 
the Basin come back to life as observed in the Atchafalaya but that goal will only be 
achieved through direct struggle with capitalist infrastructure like the BPP.

Conclusions
As more deltaic wetlands are exhausted globally, more threatening and frequent storms 
break through with catastrophic effects. Capitalism's continued exhaustion of ‘cheap labor 
and energy' pushes both humans and ecosystems towards collapse. As biodiversity loss and 
toxification continue to intensify in deltas, ecosystem collapse has the potential to 
‘spike' similar to how bee colonies collapse from accumulated neonicotoid pesticides and 
insecticides. As planetary boundaries shift through climate breakdown, negative value 
produces forms of work and energy that are hostile to capital accumulation both in human 
and non-human natures. These creation and destruction cycles are a response to their own 
exhaustion.[50]As shown by superweeds not responding to industrial herbicides, movements 
must inoculate themselves against Capital's interests. There is little time with 
accelerated global warming to act, so resistance must be swift in its response to protect 
ecosystems like deltas, arctic regions, and rainforest. As biodiversity loss increases, 
the ability for non-human natures to continue to reproduce in ecological cohesive ways 
that support human life wanes. This crisis must be prevented from unfolding.

As negative value continues to destabilize capital accumulation, a new emancipatory 
politics is emerging to address transformation in which land, food, water, labor, and all 
of life is given alternative valuation.[51]In contrast to the capitalist technologies that 
exhaust their raw materials' supply and produce over-pollution by their tendency to fill 
up waste frontiers before locating new ones, class struggles like decolonial anti-pipeline 
movements create "choke points" in Capital commodity chains on the territorial level. 
These "choke points" can become important contested sites to build broader class struggle 
movements. As syndicalist labor struggles build counterpower to restructure production on 
more working-class terms, decolonial struggles can stop Capital appropriation in 
extraction zones and develop a reparations ecology. Without expanding frontiers of 
appropriation, the exploitation zone of labor cannot be maintained for Capital 
accumulation. From a strategic standpoint, decolonial struggles disrupt Capital by 
confronting it at its points of extraction and disposal. Resistance makes production less 
cheap until not only a negative value of profits occurs, but Capital is forced to concede 
more territory, denying it its commodity frontiers. Diminishing frontiers become 
vigorously contested through direct resistance, opening up emergent collective 
possibilities for a Just Transition. As petroleum industries seek to build more fossil 
fuel infrastructures in Indigenous, Black, and migrant communities, these decolonial 
movements are building counterpower to reconfigure production and reproduction toward 
collective liberation.

If you enjoyed this piece we recommend the following related articles: Organizing at the 
Frontiers: Appalachian Resistance to Pipelines and The State Against Climate Change: 
Response to Christian Parenti.

Footnotes

Maldonado, Julie K. 2019. Seeking Justice in an Energy Sacrifice Zone: Standing on 
Vanishing Land in Coastal Louisiana. New York: Routledge, 2, 37.
Maldonado, 37.
Maldonado, 69.
Maldonado, 37.
Wescott, W.A. 1992. Deltas as Petroleum Provinces: Past, Present, and Future. Offshore 
Technology Conference. (posted on onepetro.org)
Moore, Jason W. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of 
Capital. Brooklyn: Verso, 279.
Maldonado, 2.
Maldonado, 39
Maldonado, 43.
Maldonado, 52.
Maldonado, 85.
Maldonado, 91.
Baurick, Tristan. 20 November 2018. Coast Guard Orders Taylor Energy to Stop 14-Year Oil 
Leak. The Times-Picayune. (posted on nola.com)
Davies, Thom. 7 November 2017. Toxic Geographies: Chemical Plants, Plantations, and Plants 
That Will Not Grow. (posted on toxicnews.org)
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press: 37-38.
The Establishment. 28 September 2015. Know Your Black History: Slave revolts part 1 - 
Blacks and Native Americans: The Powerful Alliance You'll Never Learn About in School. 
(posted on www.afropunk.com)
Mies, Maria. 1986. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the 
International Division of Labor. London: Zed Books, 77.
Moore 2015, 222.
Morris, Christopher. 2012. The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and 
Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina. New York: Oxford University Press, 
161.
Morris, 161, 163.
Davies.
Taylor, Dorceta E. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, 
and Residential Mobility. New York and London: New York University Press, 20.
Becker, Sam. 19 June 2018. Cancer in the U.S.: 15 States with the Highest Rates of 
Diagnosis. (posted on cheatsheet.com)
Taylor, 22-24.
Moore 2015, 279.
Maldonado, 92.
Maldonado, 71.
Yeo, Sophie. 9 November 2018. For Communities of Color, Nearby Industry Leads to Pollution 
but Not Employment. Pacific Standard. (posted on psmag.com)
Stop the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. (posted on nobbp.org)
The Bayou Bridge Pipeline. (posted on nobayoubridge.global)
Moore, Sheehan. 16 July 2018. Indigenous and Environmental Water Protectors Fight to Block 
Louisiana Pipeline. (posted on wagingnonviolence.org)
Hall, Rebecca. 2016. Caring Labours as Decolonizing Resistance. Studies in Social Justice, 
Vol. 10, No. 2 (December), 220-237.
Morris, 167.
GJEP Staff. 18 December 2017. With Tribal Blessing, Louisiana Activist Buys Land in Path 
of Proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline. (posted on globaljusticeecology.org)
Kelly, Sharon. 22 August 2018. First Felony Arrests Near Bayou Bridge Construction Made 
Under New Louisiana Law Penalizing Pipeline Trespass. (posted on desmogblog.com)
Dermansky, Julie. 11 October 2018. Despite Lingering Land Dispute, Louisiana's Bayou 
Pipeline is Nearly Complete. (posted on desmogblog.com)
Reid, Lauren. 17 April 2018. Oil and Water: ETP and Sunoco's History of Pipeline Spills. 
(posted on greenpeace.org/usa)
Dermansky.
Baurick, Tristan. 6 December 2018. The Times-Picayune. Louisiana Judge Rules in Favor of 
Bayou Bridge Pipeline's Seizure of Private Land. (post on nola.com)
Moore 2015, 278.
Maldonado, 105.
Maldonado, 104.
Velednitsky, Stepha. 31 October 2017. The Case for Ecological Reparations: A Conversation 
with Jason W. Moore. (posted on edgeeffects.net)
Patel, Raj and Jason W. Moore. 2017. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. 
Oakland: University of California Press, 207.
Velednitsky.
Out of the Woods. 22 May 2014. Disaster Communism Part 3 - Logistics, Repurposing, 
Bricolage. (posted on libcom.org)
Association of States Wetlands Managers. Carbon Sequestration. (posted on aswm.org)
Renfro, Alisha. 7 May 2018. A Tale of Two Basins: Why One is Thriving While the Other is 
Dying. (posted on mississippidelta.org)
Renfro.
Moore 2015, 283-286.
Moore 2015, 290.

http://blackrosefed.org/decolonize-frontiers-mississippi-delta/


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