For the Wild. Sarah M. Pike

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

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      University of California Press

      Oakland, California

      © 2017 by Sarah M. Pike

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Pike, Sarah M., 1959– author.

      Title: For the wild : ritual and commitment in radical

      eco-activism / Sarah M. Pike.

      Description: Oakland, California : University of

      California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical

      references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017013715 (print) | LCCN 2017015386

      (ebook) | ISBN 9780520967892 (ebook) |

      ISBN 9780520294950 (cloth : alk. paper) |

      ISBN 9780520294967 (pbk : alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Animal rights—Moral and ethical

      aspects—United States. | Animal rights movement—

      United States. | Animal rights activists—United States. |

      Environmentalists—United States—Attitudes. |

      Nature—Effect of human beings on. | Environmental

      ethics—United States.

      Classification: LCC HV4708 (ebook) | LCC HV4708 .P565

      2017 (print) | DDC 179/.30973—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013715

      Manufactured in the United States of America

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       For my children, Dasa Grey Schill, Jonah Paul Schill, and Clara Bergamini, with all my love

      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction: For All the Wild Hearts

      1.Freedom and Insurrection around a Fire

      2.At the Turn of the Millennium: Youth Culture and the Roots of Contemporary Activism

      3.Childhood Landscapes of Wonder and Awe

      4.Into the Forest

      5.“Liberation’s Crusade Has Begun”: Hare Krishna Hardcore Youth and Animal Rights Activism

      6.Circles of Community, Strategies of Inclusion

      7.Rites of Grief and Mourning

       Conclusion

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

Acknowledgments

      This book has been over ten years in the writing and many people have helped it along the way.

      I owe much to the many activists who took time to speak with me or shared their stories by mail from prison. I am particularly grateful to Jeffrey Luers, Rod Coronado, Peter Young, and Chelsea Gerlach for the letters they wrote that set me along certain paths I never would have taken without their insights. Thanks to Nettle and Darryl Cherney for hanging out with me for hours and telling me about their lives. The Earth First! Journal and its many editors over the years of my research had a profound effect on this project. The artists included in EF!J and the authors of letters, articles, pleas, complaints, reportbacks, and poems shaped my understanding of activism and confirmed much of what I saw and heard during fieldwork. Many other activists generously tolerated being interviewed, taught me medic and climbing skills, accompanied me to gatherings, told me about their childhoods, shared meals with me, and welcomed me into their communities. This book would not have been possible without their hard work and passionate dedication to the lives of other species.

      Much appreciation goes to Max Lieberman for fieldwork assistance and his thoughtful perspectives on a number of thorny issues.

      Eric Schmidt at the University of California Press was positive and encouraging towards this project from the moment I first mentioned it. Thanks to Maeve Cornell-Taylor, Kate Hoffman, and others at the press who worked on the book during various phases of its production.

      California State University Chico provided me with several leaves that supported the initial phases of research for this book. The Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities at CSU, Chico, has been a warm and supportive academic home. The University of Oslo hosted me as a visiting scholar and it was during my sabbatical in Oslo that much of this book was written. The Norwegian Research Council generously funded this research as part of the multiyear, international, collaborative project based at the University of Oslo, “Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource.” I owe much to the scholars who participated in REDO, whose questions and suggestions enriched this book: Michael Houseman, Marion Grau, Morny Joy, Donna Seamone, Jens Kreinath, Graham Harvey, Paul-François Tremlett, Gitte Buch-Hansen, Lotte Danielsen, Kjetil Hafstad, Birte Nordahl, Tony Balcomb, Grzegorz Brzozowski, Cora Alexa Døving, Ida Marie Høeg, Samuel Etikpah, Sidsel Roalkvam, and to the other participants in REDO France, REDO London, and REDO Berkeley workshops. Thanks especially to project director Jone Salomonsen, a companion on various adventures over our professional years, who has made much possible for me. The time and ideas shared with all of you in special places far from California transformed this book.

      The work of religious studies scholar Bron Taylor has been invaluable to my understanding of radical environmentalism. He saw a richly lived spiritual world in radical environmentalism when others labeled these activists “terrorists” or dismissed them as “tree-huggers.” I am deeply indebted to Bron’s work. Much of the territory I explore here echoes themes and ideas he has written about in many books and articles over the past twenty-five years.

      Mentors and friends who have been important in my personal and professional life read and commented on parts of this manuscript. The care and support of three of them has been essential. David Haberman, my fellow lover of forests, has been urging me for years to finish this book and was the first person to read it all the way through. Bob Orsi has always read my work like no one else and has shaped my scholarly life in more ways than I can possibly put into words. Ron Grimes has inspired and pushed me in the right ways, both compassionate and challenging. Reading for U.C. Press, Adrian Ivakhiv and Evan Berry provided excellent critiques and questions on the entire manuscript. To the other colleagues and friends who read and commented on portions of the book—Jason Bivins, Graham Harvey, Lisa Sideris, Robert