Article:

Roadblock Earthfirst Tour Comes to the Cbus

Thursday March 8, 2007 at 7pm the Roadblock Earthfirst Tour did a presentation about the ongoing struggle against the construction of highway I-69 at the Free Press Office. The event began with a skit; a badger, a squirrel, a gopher mill peacefully in the forest until...
Until an evil corporate bulldozer invades the forest, tearing down trees and sawing animals in half with chainsaws.

Highway I-69 and Plan Puebla Panama have got to be stopped.

First some background information; the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas plan to build a superhighway running from Canada, through the United States and Mexico and into Central America. The goal is a massive commerce-efficient vessel that can expand global capitalism and commerce.

The United States component of the highway is slated to run from Port Huron, Michigan to Laredo, Texas and between them through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The project will cost billions of dollars, uproot communities, bring on further destruction of our ecosystem and give more power over our lives to global capital and investment.

The struggle against the highway has reached a point of confrontation in Indiana during the summer of 2005. Dubbed the Roadless Summer, anarchists and community members worked together to stop construction of the super highway. In Indiana alone 5,000 acres of farmland, 1,500 acres of forest and 300 acres of wetland have been slated to fall under the asphalt of Highway I-69. Beyond the international anti-globaization movement, the project is not popular amongst Indiana residents, who stand to be uprooted and disrupted by the highway. Not to mention the increased air, land and water pollution that come from increased traffic and the visual and mental pollution that come from the chain-line of fast food restaurants that line themselves up at every highway exit.

With this in mind the Roadless Summer of 2005 began. Most of the campaign consisted of office and home demonstrations against Bernadin, Lochmueller, and Associates Inc. and DLZ, the two major firms funding and engineering the highway. Throughout May, June, July and August of '05 the offices of both firms were subject to demonstrations, invasions and disruptions by people against the construction of the highway. One demonstration at BL Associates ended in a stand-off between company officials and demonstrators.

The struggle was not limited to corporations, the Indiana Department of Transportation and numerous State officials were engaged as well. Department of Transportation meetings were host to large turnouts by people against the highway and also banner drops, confrontations, and disruptions. A march on the streets in June ended at the Indiana Statehouse where spray painting and vandalism lead to $3,000 in damage. The struggle against the highway was not limited simply to protest tactics either, legally-mandated public meetings provided a forum for community anger against the highway. The Department of Transportation was forced to admit that plans for the highway were not going very well, at the time it was $2 billion dollars short in paying for the project. For a time the project was nearly canceled and delayed, but it was eventually sold to a corporation to make up the difference, Cintra-Macquarie. Construction in Indiana is set to begin in 2008 and to be finished by 2018.

Anti-road struggles are not a newly developed form of struggle. In the UK for example, large scale struggles against roads have united communities against the institutions that control their lives. As capitalism has taken on a post-agricultural and post-industrial form, humans and their consent are no longer necessary to maintain corporate power. What is necessary to maintian corporate power is technology, infrastructure, highways, dams, vehicles and private property. This shift in production has made actions like strikes and boycotts less effective.

But...

As long as corporate infrastructure exists in our towns, on our planet, multinational corporations are subject and vulnerable to our will, our desires and our actions.