Karen Coulter and the Religious Roots of Radicalism in North America
- Karen Coulter and the Religious Roots of Radicalism in North America
Introduction
"I have a spiritual connection and an emotional connection to place . . . with nature [which] keeps me more pure in my ideology and more radical in the positions I take."
—Karen Coulter1
Born in 1958, Karen Coulter grew up during a period of marked social change in the United States. The Civil Rights Movement, which was already in full swing, and the second-wave feminist movement, which began in the early 1960s, influenced the social milieu of her childhood and shaped her perceptions about social justice. The publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) also inspired [End Page 51] an increased awareness of environmental issues among the general public during the 1960s.2 Coulter's mother first introduced her to the idea that humans alter their environments, and the concomitant call to limit the human penchant for dramatic alteration of the natural world colored Coulter's childhood and early adolescence.
Coulter's lifelong commitment to activism began at age 11, when she testified as part of Wild Horse Annie's children's campaign in front of the Nevada State Legislature on behalf of the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Protection Act.3 It was not until several years later, however, that Coulter became deeply engaged in environmental activism. In early 1980, while she was enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Coulter learned about a plan for the inception of the MX Missile in Nevada and Utah.4 Development of the infrastructure necessary for the missile's mobility was a central concern for anti-nuclear activists focused on the MX project. Apprehension primarily revolved around the widespread destruction of Western landscapes that was projected and would likely transpire during the construction of the rail system necessary for the missile's transportation. When she learned that this proposed project would directly impact the hills outside of Reno, Nevada, which she called home, Coulter became involved in anti-nuclear protests, participating in direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience against the MX project.
Her "not in my backyard" (NIMBY)-inspired anti-nuclear activism continued into the mid 1980s, when the anti-nuclear movement began to dissipate in the United States due to the ebbing of the Cold War. Exhilarated by early successes during the MX project, which included President Ronald Reagan's abandonment of the infrastructure necessary for the mobile missile system in 1982,5 Coulter became committed to environmental protection through activism and civil disobedience, and readily turned her focus to other environmental justice concerns.
After the MX project, Coulter became a campaigner for the well-known environmental organization Greenpeace and later joined the radical environmental movement Earth First! (EF!), a movement she was still active in as of 2023. In 1991, she co-founded Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, a nonprofit environmental organization fighting to protect old-growth forests and to prevent logging in roadless areas in Oregon. Throughout her activist career, Coulter has worked to foster diversity, fighting to make movements [End Page 52] more inclusive (especially in terms of gender and ethnicity) and to bring awareness to various forms of social and environmental injustice. More than anything else, Coulter emphasized, it is her spiritual connection to nature that has kept her engaged in activism and fighting for the protection and preservation of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem viability.
A closer examination of Coulter's life and work, I argue, illuminates two important points about the cultural milieu of her time, including and especially about the trajectory of radicalism in North America. First, Coulter's activism, much of which falls under the definition of "radical" activism, reflects changing sociopolitical trends in the United States, and provides a unique lens for viewing radicalism during this particular historical moment. Radical activism—activism that incorporates civil disobedience, sabotage, and, in some rare cases, violent tactics—has been used by numerous individuals and groups in the United States and beyond to influence social and political change. As Bron Taylor has shown, radical activism includes a "bricolage of diverse religious, political, and scientific beliefs" and may be understood as a form...
