activist arrested in nebraska is a member of the transphobic group deep green resistance

Yesterday Nebraska authorities arrested T.R. McKenzie for allegedly threatening a beer truck driver, destroying beer containers, and slashing the truck’s front tires with other activists on May 3. Activists in the area are seeking to end alcohol sales in Whiteclay, Nebraska, because the town borders the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where alcohol is banned but alcoholism has become a plague. It’s unclear whether McKenzie was involved in the incident at issue.

To make matters worse, however, McKenzie is apparently a member of the transphobic group Deep Green Resistance, which started as a book by the same name. Aric McBay, the primary author of the book, was one of the founders of the group. Yet he left the group at the beginning of 2012, after a transgender-inclusive policy was cancelled by his co-authors (and co-founders of the group) – Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith. According to a note McBay posted on his website last week,

I find these transphobic attitudes to be disgusting and deeply troubling, and it bothers me a lot to have any past association with people promoting transphobia. For me, trans rights and trans inclusion are fundamental to building effective movements and to building a world worth living in. … And transphobia–like racism and sexism and classism and homophobia–is a poison that those in power use to destroy movements and ruin lives.