ABSTRACT
The Chicago Anarcho-Feminists warned us back in 1971 and now it’s really true: “The world obviously cannot survive many more decades of rule by gangs of armed males calling themselves governments” (Chicago Anarcho-Feminist 1971: 4). The forcible violation of ecosystems that led to and emanates from the violent partition of the earth into nations has brought us to the dangerous days of cracking ice caps and disappearing islands. Pretty soon we’ll be living on what climate change scientist James Hansen calls “a different planet” (Revkin 2006). But hope, as Emily Dickenson wrote, is “the thing with feathers.” Birds and other outlaws routinely disregard the authorities and boundaries established by people while working cooperatively with one another to pursue their own purposes in the context of human exploitation and expropriation. This is anarchy in its purest form. People can be natural anarchists too. Working from within an ecofeminist appreciation of the intersection of oppressions and the interconnection of all life, natural anarchists understand that true liberation resides in the restoration of healthy relationships among people and between species. Recognizing that more than a rearrangement of power relations among people will be needed to rescue ourselves and our planet from man-made catastrophe, natural anarchists see plants and nonhuman animals as allies in a shared struggle for peace and freedom for everybody.
