Listen/Read Chapter 1: Why We Fight

We fight because we’re all in this together. Those in power function by divide and rule, by pitting environmentalists against the working class, Indigenous people against farmers, poor people against immigrant refugees. This strategy has been terribly effective.

But power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of people ruling through a system of patriarchy, racism, ecocide, and violence. Single-issue struggles no longer exist in any meaningful way—no movement can be isolated from others and still have any hope of victory. Only an intersectional approach that combines an understanding of sexism, racism, classism, and other oppressions will bring success.

If there is any benefit to the consolidation of power, it is that this fact is increasingly obvious: we must either defeat the system of industrial capitalism, with its imperial and colonial methods, or be obliterated by it. Either we bring down the dominant culture and make strides forward in all of our struggles, or we allow this culture to devour what’s left of the planet, and all of our struggles will be defeated: we win or lose together.