ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a history of how environmental blockading was in part diffused from Australia to activists in the United States and how these developed their own tactics and organisational approaches within a series of campaigns that made old-growth logging a national issue. It describes the changing political context of resource extraction in the United States during the 1980s and how this gave rise to a new radical environmentalist network, Earth First! The culture and politics of the network and its centrality to blockading in the United States are discussed along with formative campaigns it was involved in Oregon, New Mexico, Wyoming, and California. Compared with Australia, settlement patterns and a greater risk of assault and repression from workers and authorities meant that these early blockades had fewer resources and were less able to draw on support from local communities. As a result action was more intermittent, and blockaders were initially unable to launch blockades that lasted more than a few days. Despite this, new tactics related to tree-sitting, barricading, and locking body parts to equipment were introduced along with enduring forms of protest organisation and approaches to normative protester behaviour.
