Connections Quarterly Spring 2016 - Environment | Page 18

Becoming Activists In a
Multi-Species World
Sarah M. Pike, California State University, Chico

D

uring high school, a young environmental activist named Maia
had become troubled by what she
saw happening in her southern California
desert community: more and more tract
homes were being built in the open spaces
she had loved as a child, places where she
had called wild animals her friends. One summer night she and her boyfriend climbed the
fence of a construction site for a new housing development on desert tortoise habitat.
The teenage saboteurs put Karo syrup and
tampons into the gas tanks of bulldozers on
the site and pulled up survey stakes. Maia
marked that night as a “tipping point” after
which she was committed to radical environmentalism. Looking back a few years
later, when she no longer believed in committing illegal actions, she saw this period of
her life as one of spiritual seeking through
action. She blended the moral values of her
upbringing among Jehovah’s Witnesses with
contemporary Pagan and environmentalist
views of the natural world as sacred.

Page 16 Spring 2016

I am currently finishing a book about teenagers who become environmental and animal
rights activists. The focus is on the relationships
young activists formed with the natural world
during childhood and how these relationships shaped later commitments to activism.
Teenagers and young adults make up the
majority of activists committing sabotage
and civil disobedience, such as tree-sits, and
road blockades to prevent logging, mining
and fracking. For many of them, acts of sabotage and civil disobedience serve as a kind of
rite of passage into radical activism, yet most
of them move on to legal activities after a
few years. My interest is in how they become
so committed to forests and animals as sacred that they are willing to engage in risky
and illegal actions.
For many Americans, Maia’s actions constitute amoral and anti-social “eco-terrorism,”
while for others she is a poster child for
youthful resistance to suburban sprawl. Instead of lacking values, Maia, like other teen-

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