A friend named Tammy wrote and illustrated a children’s book about her friend Peach, a hen, and then drew this adorable picture of Peach with Bunnista:

Someone asked me this question (on Kasama, here: http://kasamaproject.org/2010/08/25/our-planet-our-people-are-not-expendable/):

“Obviously the destruction [of the planet] already occurring hasn’t been enough to bring us to the tipping point [of resistance]. What will it take for the masses to unite behind an effective solution?”

* * *

My reply:

“What will it take?” is something I wonder about all the time. How far does the murder of the planet have to go? Do we really have to be starving and gasping for breath before we break through denial? We’re almost at that point now, and denial is still rampant.

Part of the problem is that most people in this culture don’t have any idea how to live without industrial production — without water from the tap, without food from grocery stores. If the only source of basic necessities is this system, and people don’t know any other way to live, then they will continue to defend the system that provides them.

It’s like the demand for jobs. In the context of this society, most of us can’t live without jobs, though they’re the arena in which our exploitation takes place. So until we understand that the whole system must be done away with, and until we can live some other way, we end up demanding that the system provide more jobs.

I saw a TV program where someone showed common vegetables (eggplant, tomato, etc) to schoolchildren, and none of them could identify them. In the last couple generations, most of us have lost the ability to grow food (even when we can still identify it). More importantly, most people have no access to land.

A lot of people argue that we should form communes, permaculture “eco-villages,” community gardens and so on to serve as examples of how we could live sustainably. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing those things, but they’re not going to be what’s needed to defeat this system.

There were many cultures who used to live sustainably on this continent, and they’ve been systematically all but wiped out. So it’s not enough to withdraw. As soon as the system wants what you have, or demands your participation, they will violently destroy anyone who doesn’t cooperate.

What will it take? The same things it’ll take to make revolution to uproot all forms of exploitation and oppression.

In the first stages:

* Broad realization that this system is killing the planet, and that to save all life, including our own, we need to defeat and dismantle the system.

* A recognition of who the enemy is.

* The sense that it is more dangerous to let things go on as they are than it is to rise up and fight back.

* A vision of a viable future.

These ideas are spreading, and we need to spread them more, to unite as many as possible in a powerful movement to take this system on. We need to connect the struggle for saving the planet with the struggles for social justice — the enemy is the same.

This appeared on Discovery’s website Planet Green:

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/cartoonist-stephanie-mcmillan-defend-our-planet-interview.html

Cartoons vs. Ecocide: Stephanie McMillan’s One-Eyed Bunnies Teach Us How to Defend Our Planet (Interview)

It’s time to declare: Code Green

By Mickey Z. | Wed Jul 28, 2010 13:20

Action painter Mark Rothko once said: “There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.” That goes quadruple for political cartoonists. Stephanie McMillan has been plying her craft since 1992. She creates the comic strip Minimum Security five days a week for United Media’s comics.com, and self-syndicates the weekly editorial cartoon about the environmental emergency, Code Green. Stephanie’s cartoons have appeared on hundreds of websites and in print publications worldwide including the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Yes! Magazine, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

A collection of her cartoons, Attitude Presents Minimum Security was published in 2005 by NBM Publishing. She co-created, with writer Derrick Jensen, the graphic novel As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial (2007, Seven Stories). Her work is also included in various textbooks and anthologies. A children’s book, Mischief in the Forest (PM Press, with Derrick Jensen) will be published Fall 2010.

Her cartoons have been included in exhibits at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (New York), the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC), among other venues.

A graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and now based out of Florida, Stephanie was kind enough to make time for a chat. The results are below.

My Conversation With Stephanie McMillan

Planet Green: When did you start drawing and how early in that process did your radical perspective help shape and inform what and how you drew?

Stephanie McMillan: I loved drawing even as a toddler, as soon as I could hold a crayon in my fist. The first overtly political drawing I did was for my high school paper, during the Reagan era, after I’d read a book about the dangers of nuclear war (The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell). I drew it with a ballpoint pen—it showed a family being vaporized in front of a mushroom cloud. That book turned out to be the doorway through which I began to glimpse the underlying omnicidal nature of the American Empire. After this I read voraciously about history and political theory, and once I understood that capitalism is based on exploitation, I became its enemy.

PG: How did that realization impact both your life and your art?

SM: I spent many years as a revolutionary communist, organizing and agitating against imperialism, and about social justice issues like police brutality, reproductive freedom and immigrant rights. I viewed these issues as interconnected social “fault lines”—contradictions that, under the right conditions, could cause the whole system to crack apart. In 1992, while still an activist, I started drawing cartoons for a weekly paper, and in 1998, frustrated with the difficulty of building a movement during an overall ebb in radical politics, decided to focus my political energies purely on cartooning. That year I started Minimum Security as a weekly editorial cartoon. In 2005, NBM Publishing issued a collection of these comics, and I added regular characters. When United Media approached me about syndication and added it to comics.com, I ramped the pace up to five cartoons a week. This past April, I switched from the joke-a-day format into a long-form narrative. It‘s now a story about how a group of friends goes through twists and turns while figuring out how to effectively fight the system. About a year ago, I started drawing an additional cartoon called Code Green. It’s a weekly editorial cartoon that focuses on the environmental emergency.

PG: Your art and activism seem practically synonymous.

SM: The content of my cartoons is absolutely determined by my work as an activist. Without that experience, I would know much less about how the system works or how to combat it. The purpose of my work is to expose the crimes of the system in a way that’s accessible to readers, and to use ridicule to inspire contempt for those who run things. I think if we can laugh at those in power, we will fear them less, which makes us stronger about fighting back. The stories I tell in my comics, the points I make, are all intended to help inspire resistance, to help people who are on that path to make sense of things, and to cheer them on. Resistance and revolution are at the core of my life’s purpose. Art is merely a means, one way I have found that I can help further this objective. I have recently (especially after the Gulf oil spill), been increasing my work in other areas too. I will do whatever it takes, anything I am capable of and more, to help stop the planet from being killed and to eliminate this murderous system of exploitation.

PG: Your book with Derrick Jensen, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial, would be of particular interest to Planet Green readers. What would you hope a budding environmentalist might learn from reading this graphic novel?

SM: Derrick and I decided to create this book after discussing Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. We agreed that the film presented the problem of global warming in a compelling, appropriately urgent way. But when it came time to guide people to action, it was worse than inadequate—it was misleading. Gore’s list of “10 Things You Can Do” (and countless other lists like it) directs the audience’s attention away from the source of the problem, industrialization, and it attempts to convince us to blame ourselves instead. It asserts that if we modify our behavior as “consumers” (change our light bulbs, adjust our thermostats), then we can save the planet. This is a lie. What this list didn’t show was the math. We did. If every person in the United States did everything that Al Gore recommends at the end of the film, there would be a one-time reduction of CO2 emissions of 21%. Obviously that’s not going to put much of a dent in the problem. More importantly, it leaves the worst polluters, big corporations, off the hook. Exxon-Mobil alone is responsible for 5% of all global CO2 emissions. The US military consumes 395,000 barrels of oil a day. Do you think dismantling that might be more effective than obsessing about not leaving our refrigerator doors open? Yet the latter is what we are told to focus on. We are told, over and over, that the only power we have is over our own lifestyles, and specifically as “consumers”—how very conveeeeenient for those who profit from the murder of our planet and then profit again from selling us “green” products.

PG: So, we’re often manipulated into acting against our own interests and the interests of our eco-system?

SM: Most of us care about the Earth’s health, understand that our own wellbeing and lives depend upon it, and would like to live in a non-destructive way. No one but profit-oriented sociopaths can enjoy the fact that 120 species are going extinct each day, and that our environment is getting thoroughly trashed. We live under a system that functions by converting living beings into commodities, for the profit of a few. Yet we are told that the environmental crisis is our fault because we consume too much as individuals (at the same time, everything about this economy—its media, its reward systems—push us to consume more and more). We created As the World Burns to help readers see that solutions are not to be found in our individual consumer choices, but instead can only be achieved by fighting against, defeating and dismantling the industrial capitalist system.

PG: Do you feel your message is more easily accessible via the characters you’ve created?

SM: I do. This was my primary concern when I created them. Bitter medicine goes down easier with sugar, so I made the characters as cute as possible, and the jokes amusing, the colors appealing. I know my message is pretty radical and can be difficult to accept (especially for those just beginning to explore the issues), and so I’m careful not to put any additional obstacles in the way, stylistically. I want readers to feel welcomed by my cartoons as soon as they see them, and encouraged to be open to what they’re saying.

PG: Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

SM: I love them all, and each one is a mix of different parts of myself and people I know. The one I probably enjoy writing for the most is Bunnista, the rabbit, because he is the most unfettered by rules. He doesn’t worry about what others think of him, or if anyone agrees with him, or if his actions are the most practical or effective, or if his way is the best way to build a resistance movement. He just loves, more than anything else, to make industrial infrastructure explode into a million flaming pieces. It’s very cathartic for me when he does that. An adorable cartoon bunny can get away with doing things that I can only fantasize about.

PG: Tell us more about your upcoming children’s book.

SM: It’s called Mischief in the Forest. Derrick wrote the story some years ago and asked me to illustrate it. It’s about a grandmother who likes to knit sweaters and mittens for her grandchildren. She believes she lives alone in the forest, until she discovers that someone has taken her yarn. Through this incident, she gets to know her forest neighbors, creatures of many species. It’s about connecting with and appreciating the natural world.

PG: How can folks find your work and connect with you?

SM: Links to the websites for both my Code Green and Minimum Security comics and blogs, plus information about my books and other projects are at StephanieMcmillan.org. My email address is steph@minimumsecurity.net.

My Code Green cartoon (animated by the ultra-talented David Essman) is hard to find on the Sun Sentinel website, so here’s a direct link:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-code-green-comic-07232010,0,2408768.htmlstory

Please spread the word!
Thank you.

Here are some cartoons I’ve drawn in the last several months for the VJMovement (http://www.vjmovement.com/), an international cartoon agency based in Amsterdam.

Cartoonists and video journalists pitch stories to them, and then anyone is welcome to vote (pitches are displayed in the “newsroom” section) on which ones they would like to see made. Those are the ones that then receive funding. Media democracy in action!

This is a draft leaflet I wrote and am proposing for a group of South Florida activists. Even though it’s not final, I’ll share it here.
* * *
OUR PLANET, OUR PEOPLE ARE NOT EXPENDABLE!
WE REFUSE TO SACRIFICE LIFE FOR CORPORATE PROFITS!

The Gulf of Mexico has been destroyed. Immeasurable, irreparable damage has been done to wildlife, the health of the ocean, and people’s livelihoods. We have been cursed for years to come. It can not, as BP promises, be “made right.” In fact, even after this utter catastrophe, crimes against the planet and its inhabitants continue without pause.

We are told that the government is supposed to guarantee the rights of the people. But when a big corporation decides our rights are not in their interests, then POOF! They vanish into thin air. In a clear violation of our rights to free speech and a free press, government agencies have assisted BP’s lies and cover-up by restricting media access, threatening journalists with felony charges and $40,000 fines. Uniformed police officers in Louisiana have harassed photographers at public beaches. BP has threatened workers with firing if they talk to anyone about anything.

We are also told that the government’s purpose is to protect the country and us. But instead the government helps big corporations plunder the country and trash our lives. The Minerals Management Service allowed BP to cut corners and violate safety regulations, leading finally to the fatal decision to save a few hundred thousand dollars by not installing a backup valve.

When BP ignored an order by the Environmental Protection Agency to stop using the dispersant Corexit 9500 (a poisonous compound banned in Europe), the EPA did absolutely nothing. Millions of gallons are still being dumped into the Gulf, even as it has been shown to evaporate and fall as toxic rain, and is damaging plants far inland.

BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates during the past 20 years, with the biggest portion going to Obama. It also spent $15.9 million on lobbying last year alone, for the purpose of controlling energy policy.

What does all this tell us?

The government repeatedly sells us out to corporate interests. It sells out our rights, our health, our safety, our livelihoods, our lives, and the natural world. The government is merely a tool to facilitate the conversion of life into profit.

The BP spill is not an accident. It is an inevitable consequence of a global economic system that values profit over life. The BP spill is not unique. Oil companies have ruined large areas of the Niger Delta, Ecuador and other parts of the world, and they will continue to do so until they are stopped.

The ruthless pursuit of profit has caused 98% of old growth forests to be cut down. 99% of the prairies are gone. 80% of rivers worldwide no longer support life. 94% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. 120 species per day becomes extinct. Now the Gulf of Mexico has been ruined. Clearly, a global economic system based on perpetual growth is unsustainable. Yet those who run this system do not stop, will not stop.

At what point will we stop accepting this?

We can not stand by while big corporations like BP, with the assistance of the US government, destroy our lives and our planet. We should have stopped them a long time ago. Now we must stop them before they do even more damage, before they kill everything. We depend upon the natural world — we must now urgently come to its defense.

If you go to San Diego Comic-Con next weekend, please come and see me at the NBM Publications table!
Here’s my schedule:
Thursday 2:30-4 p.m.
Friday 4-5:30 p.m.
Saturday 2:30-4 p.m.
Sunday 10:30 a.m.-noon

1) I did an interview with Susan Marie on ThinkTwice radio. We had a great, hour-long conversation about ecocide, resistance and cartoons: http://www.thinktwiceradio.com/sue-marie/sue-marie.html

2) I’m participating in an eBay auction of webcomics originals to benefit Gulf cleanup efforts. Get a “Code Green” original and print. At this point it’s pretty cheap! Here’s the whole auction:
http://shop.ebay.com/whirringblender/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Calling all people in South Florida, if you’re angry about the Gulf oil spill and all its associated crimes, please come to an organizing meeting for a new coalition to fight back against these atrocities and those responsible. I’ll be there — hope you will too!
Stephanie

***
Here’s the Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=135485193148140&ref=mf

Mass Organizing Meeting to Stop the Gulf Ecological Disaster
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010
Time: 10:30am – 12:30pm
Location: St. Maurice Catholic Church (Hospitality Room), 2851 Stirling Road, Dania Beach, Florida

Description

Building on the heels of June 26th’s huge Hands Across the Sand protest and numerous local initiatives protesting BP and offshore drilling, a number of activists and people new to activism are starting to combine forces to begin building a powerful MOVEMENT demanding action against the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, full immediate compensation for all those affected, an end to offshore drilling and support for clean, renewable energy sources.

We’re just starting out and we’re having our first MASS PUBLIC MEETING. We’re looking at building support for a variety of creative tactics to channel our outrage, our sadness, our commitment, and our determination to win. THIS IS A LONG-TERM FIGHT! It will need to be a huge mass movement if it’s going to go anywhere. It’s taken the ongoing ecocide in the Gulf to take this organizing to a whole new level. But we also realize the problem is much larger than just BP or any single company.

You have an historic opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this newly emerging movement. We’ve yet to decide on how we want to organize ourselves, what we want to do next, even what we call ourselves. Because we’re in South Florida, what we say and do can have a national and international impact. We’re making connections with folks organizing in the Gulf Coast and beyond. But we need YOU if we’re going to make this into a large and powerful force that can actually win.

Our mission is nothing less than saving Planet Earth. Help make history on Saturday, July 10th. It’s up to you.

************************************************************
St. Maurice Church is located at 2851 Stirling Road in Dania Beach (Broward County), FL. From I-95 Stirling Road exit, go west about a mile to the traffic light at Lakeshore Dr. Turn on Lakeshore and the parking lot is immediately there on your right. The Hospitality Room is on the first floor of the only two-story building on the campus, right next to the Chapel (not the Church).

On Monday, a small group went inside the BP command center in New Orleans to confront those responsible for the spill.

http://mobilebroadcastnews.com/MBN/blog/Gulf-Oil-Spill-Unified-Command-Center-Protest?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MobileBroadcastNews+(Mobile+Broadcast+News)

This protest was symbolic; a small number of people couldn’t really disrupt the activities of BP.

Imagine, though, if they had a few hundred angry and determined people. Then they could have shut that place down.

Small numbers + confrontation = symbolic (with potential for effectiveness)

* * *

Hundreds or thousands of people will hold hands on beaches worldwide this weekend, protesting the catastrophe in the Gulf and demanding an end to offshore drilling.

http://www.handsacrossthesand.com/

This might be personally cathartic for some, but how will this stop the atrocities? Will the oil companies and governments of the world care about what people want, and respond accordingly? They have demonstrated time and again that they do not, and will not.

Large numbers – confrontation = symbolic (without potential for effectiveness)

* * *

On Sunday in Oakland, CA, hundreds of people blockaded an Israeli ship to protest Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The union workers at the docks refused to cross the picket line, and commerce was disrupted.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/protestors-block-unloading-of-israeli-cargo-ship-in-oakland.html

Large numbers + confrontation = effective action!

This is why it’s important to confront the actual centers of power. Location, location, location.

* * *

How will the people overthrow those in power, and put a stop to exploitation and ecocide?

Large numbers + organization + a plan + confrontation = revolution