We need to talk about surveillance.
Last week, an environmental advocacy group known as Extinction Rebellion said it was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). On February 4, Climate Defiance — another climate advocacy organization — shared a post on Instagram saying that it was under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
And last Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives announced that they are investigating Earthjustice and five other organizations for their work trying to stop the Willow Project, an oil and natural gas project in Alaska that Joe Biden greenlit in 2023.
There’s a lot to unpack here. But I want to start with Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI.
Patel was recently caught on video chugging a beer before screaming in the United States’ Olympic hockey team’s locker room, seemingly drunk. But that’s not the kicker. The kicker is how Patel got to the Olympic games in Italy — on a federal private jet, paid for by taxpayers like you and I.
I wish I could say this incident doesn’t perfectly exemplify how the U.S. government contributes to the very institutions that harm people and the planet, but I can’t.
It’s kind of ironic: the FBI Director, who leads an agency that is investigating environmental activists fighting for a better climate, flew a private jet — aircrafts that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions each year — to party with hockey players during the winter Olympics. It’s even more ironic when you consider that climate change puts future winter Olympics at risk.
Let’s talk about the surveillance part. Here’s the thing about the surveillance state: once it exists, it can be used against any movement under any administration, no matter their political party.
Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, activists, free speech advocates, and civil liberties experts have (rightfully) sounded the alarm about his administration’s authoritarian use of federal agencies to surveil and repress people’s movements. Trump is an authoritarian, yes. But he does not hold a monopoly over authoritarian surveillance.
Authoritarian surveillance is at least as old as the U.S. government’s law enforcement agencies tasked with carrying it out. COINTELPRO involved the FBI infiltrating Black Power organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. FBI informants targeted Indigenous organizers opposing the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines during the protests at Standing Rock. Early on in Trump’s second term, immigration agents went after international student activists who advocated for Palestinian liberation, including Rümeysa Öztürk, who was abducted off the street in broad daylight.
The environmental justice movement is not immune from surveillance. And with perhaps one of the most (if not the most) anti-climate, pro-billionaire presidential administrations in office, it’s clear this administration and its political allies will target anyone who threatens their alignment with fossil fuels and corporate power.
But throughout the decades of consistent repression, ordinary people like you and I have continuously stepped up to demand change, organize, and reveal how corporations are polluting their communities. And that can result in real wins.
A data center project was cancelled in New Jersey last week after community members consistently pressured local officials. More than 10,000 acres of land was returned to the Washoe Tribe in California. And Black residents in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where Miss Sharon Lavigne and others have fought back against polluters for years, won a key ruling that allows their case against toxic industrial plants to move forward.
At the heart of each of these wins is the belief that change is possible. As Lavigne told Shilpi Chhotray in our latest issue of Peace & Riot: “I hope to leave my community with clean air and clean water and I hope these industries shut down and pack up and leave…so we can live again, so we can live off the land again, we can have palm trees again.”
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