The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘ The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part of Will’s journey.

Diving For Truths Submerged by the Kinzua Dam

By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks

The Kinzua Dam forms the Allegheny Reservoir, a few miles east of Warren, PA. Two days before the Fourth of July, I studied the dam and reservoir from a parking lot built on the southern edge of the dam. I was angry. Below me, motorboats and jet skis ripped across the water. Classic rock and pop country playlists clashed as parties raged on pontoon boats. Behind me, motorcycles carrying humans on holiday rides tore down the highway. The noise foreshadowed the fireworks that would soon light up the nation. Hearing the exploding fuel in combustion engines racing around me, and imagining the fireworks’ gunpowder that would soon be exploding across the sky, I wondered why my fellow Americans blow so much shit up when they celebrate.

By Max Wilbert

In medicine, shock refers to an extremely serious condition of inadequate blood perfusion. Shock is most often caused by heart problems, severe infections, allergic reaction, massive blood loss, overdose, or spinal cord injury.

Of the 1.2 million people who show up to U.S. emergency rooms with signs and symptoms of shock each year, between 20% and 50% of them die.

Shock can be understood to progress through two broad phases: compensatory (phase 1) and de-compensatory (phase 2). In compensatory shock, the body can “compensate” for the emergency by adjusting blood pressure, diverting resources from the extremities, and using other internal mechanisms.

In this episode of Resistance Radio Derrick Jensen interviews Michelle Connolly, who is an activist living in Prince George, BC, the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh Nation. She has spent much of her life exploring and experiencing natural forests, and has an educational background in forest ecology, although she is not a researcher and does not do science for a living. Michelle is part of Conservation North.

Conservation North is a 100% volunteer-run community group based in Prince George, British Columbia (BC), traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh. We support and advocate for the protection of wild plants, animals and their habitats in northern BC.

Communications are essential for effective action. The ability to coordinate a team of people depends on the ability to communicate instructions and intelligence quickly and accurately. Radios can be an excellent tools for protest, event, and location security (i.e., a defensive context) and for direct action (i.e., an offensive context).

Modern communications over distance depend heavily on radios. Radios provide a reliable and instant means of communication. This piece is an introduction to basic tips and tricks for using two-way radios for communication in an organizing context.

Chris Straquez describes plans for a 1500 km railway project in southern Mexico, the potential for environmental destruction, and how developers justify their genocide against indigenous people.

The Mayan Train Project: Destruction of Indigenous Land

By Chris Straquez The history of modern train industry started with the appearance of first steam engines, which enabled humanity to transport goods and people in a faster, reliable and cheaper way into a new age in the life of industrial revolution, human expansion and global economy. This, in turn, caused a great expansion of railways, machine improvements and enabling goods and people to be transported safer and faster. Today diesel engines, electrical trains and maglev high-speed bullet train network the entire earth. All these trains were developed from the steam engine.

This article was originally a talk given in 2004 in North Carolina by historian Gerda Lerner, who was 84 years old at the time. Gerda describes the creation (social construction) of patriarchy based on hierarchy and enslavement. She describes how this system is antiquated and dangerous to men and women.

HISTORY MATTERS: A ‘Brief’ History of Patriarchy

By Dr. Gerda Lerner

I’m doing something very difficult today and that is I’m going to talk about 2,500 years of history in 50 minutes. So, you will have to accept on faith that the facts I’m citing are amply proven by examples, but I can’t give you the examples. They are in the book, but I think in the discussion next week we will have a chance to go into more concrete examples. And what I was, what I’m trying to tell you also, is that studying the ancient near East, which is the area around in which all the trouble is going on now – the current day Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia between the Euphrates and the Tigris – which is where Western civilization started - it’s very interesting for a historian because the sources are very much more plentiful than our sources are for say 13th century Europe. And the reason is that the people there wrote on clay tablets and clay tablets don’t destruct as paper does – and as papyrus does – so we have tens of thousands of pieces of evidence for everything that I’m going to say.

Chapter 8: Organizational Structure

An excerpt from the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.

There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.

— Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights leader

Resistance organizations can be divided into aboveground (AG) and underground (UG) groups. These groups have strongly divergent organizational and operational needs, even when they have the same goals. Broadly speaking, aboveground groups do not carry out risky illegal actions, and are organized in ways that maximize their ability to use public institutions and communication structures. Underground groups exist primarily to carry out illegal or repressed activities and are organized in ways that maximize their own security and effectiveness.

Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé and Lenape) was the author of Columbus and Other Cannibals , one of the most important books ever written. In this excerpt, edited slightly for publication, Forbes warns how the “cannibal sickness,” or wetiko disease, the spiritual illness that he describes as driving the exploitation, domination, and “consumption” of others, can sometimes “infect” those who are part of resistance movements.

By Jack D. Forbes

This earth of ours is not ugly.  Nor this sky, nor this sun, nor this moon.  Nor are the animals and the plants ugly.  We live in a mysterious, marvelous universe and it offers us a chance to be cured by its loving embrace.

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘ The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, and fourth part of Will’s journey.

By Will Falk / The Ohio River Speaks

Sometimes I ask the Ohio River questions. And, sometimes she asks me. West of Salamanca, New York, a few miles before the Kinzua Dam traps the Ohio River in the Allegheny Reservoir, I sat in a kayak listening. She was speaking, but I did not understand.

This story is dated from 2014, but still provides a critical insight into the operations of federal intelligence agencies to discredit and disrupt social movements. We recommend activists and revolutionaries carefully study this information.

By Glenn Greenwald / The Intercept

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.