Sidebar to “Control through Contamination” by S’ra Desantis
For ISE Biotechnology Project and ACERCA
June 2003
A recent delegation to the rainforest of southeastern Mexico discovered that issues of biopiracy and GMOs are very much on the minds of campesinos, activists and traditional healers in the highlands of Chiapas and beyond. The delegation investigated the environmental and human rights situation in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which was established in 1978, granting U.N. protection to the rainforest that covers much of the eastern half of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The …

The Media: Mirror or Manufacturer/Reflection or Propaganda
In the context of the 21st century media environment, there is little debate among media critics, of the need for change. Some have begun to lobby capital hill for stronger restraints on corporate media consolidation. Some have drafted recommended codes of conduct for corporate advertisers. Some have taken to the airwaves or the Internet, choosing to speak for themselves instead of relying on commercial TV or newspaper companies for coverage. Some have launched sophisticated public relations projects, aimed at adding their voices to those …

Whether the twenty-first century will be the most radical of times or the most reactionary—or will simply lapse into a gray era of dismal mediocrity—will depend overwhelmingly upon the kind of social movement and program that social radicals create out of the theoretical, organizational, and political wealth that has accumulated during the past two centuries of the revolutionary era. The direction we select, from among several …

Social ecologists have played an important catalytic role in many of the pivotal social and ecological movements of the past four decades. The discussion that follows will focus on events that staff, students and volunteers around the ISE in Plainfield have been most directly involved with. We hope that subsequent issues of Harbinger will include …

This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, September 2002.

Virtually all of the new, technology-based industries of the past century have been products of wartime. World War I ushered in the widespread use of mechanization and the beginnings of aviation. World War II brought us nuclear power, modern rocketry and cybernetics. The corporate …

remarkable feature of social ecology is that Murray Bookchin’s vision of an ecological society goes beyond the development of eco-technologies and organic agriculture, but expands into the philosophical realm through dialectical naturalism. Murray recognizes the importance of healing the seemingly disparate relationship between nature and culture (first and second nature) by reminding us of the developmental relationship between them (dialectical naturalism). Through his discourses on dialectical naturalism, …

merging from the proletarian socialist movements of the Old Left, infusing a distinctly libertarian ecological outlook in the rise of the New Left, social theorist and activist Murray Bookchin started to lay the foundations of a remarkable revolutionary body of work which he soon called social ecology. His pioneering book, …

etween August 23nd to August 25th, 2002, thirty anti-authoritarian organizers from around the U.S. converged on a farm in upstate New York to found a new political confederation: the Alliance for Freedom and Direct Democracy.
Our Mission
AFADD is a confederation of anti-authoritarians working toward the realization of a free society. We believe that there can be no justice without freedom, and …

n the midst of our struggles for a better world, social ecologists have frequently engaged in critical dialogue with other strands of radical thought about just what kind of world we’re struggling for. Such dialogues often address the question of how people in a liberated future will organize their material relationships with one another and with the natural world. What would economics look like in an …

f the past few years, Norway and surrounding Scandinavian countries have proven to be a hotbed of activism inspired by the works of social ecology. Study groups, publishing projects, protests, conferences and seminars, anti-racist and ecological activism, and political organizational building are all common activities of the 4-year-old group Democratic Alternative (DA). Democratic Alternative, an emerging Scandinavian-wide organization committed to the political vision advanced by social …