Fly Greenfield
Blackberry House Info. Center
revfly@pacific.net
It's just before noon, and as I write, sparks are flying from saws on lockboxes, but that's ahead of the story.
First, yesterday:
Well, truth be told, folks were caught off guard. People got complascent
and bailed from their posts. There was some confusion in camp and too many
people were up the hill. Somehow the cops knew it was the time to roll en
masse in early morning. So to whoever tipped them off (and probably helped
create some of that confusion in the first place) congratulations.
The barricade is gone. The cops knew better than to mess with the altar-- it has been gathered up and moved to Grizzly Creek campground. It took time, but the bipod and tripod are down. And all the way up at Monstertown, the two women who were locked down to the equipment got peppersprayed. This just days after Lewis got a big column in the Press Democrat justifying the use of pepperspray. Five arrested, others were cited and released.
This morning, nine people (including Ayr and Alicia Littletree, not sure who else) returned to the driveway where the barricade was and locked it down, with about thirty witnesses across the road. According to the Ecotopia News office, police went straight for the pepperspray. When the witnesses saw this, they circled up, and another twelve stepped forward and sat locking arms in the middle of Hwy 36, refusing to be intimidated by the pepperspray. The lockdowners were able to endure the pepperspray to the extent that the cops are back to the ol' diamond saw trying to cut them out.
Basecamp remains at Grizzly Creek State Park. Basic needs remain the same, and there is room for as many who will come to participate in this Gandhian truth experiment. The Earth First! jail support system is now activated, and is another place for people to plug in (also a great, safe learning opportunity for those who are new to this stuff or don't want to be on the front lines-- it is vital to our movement survival).
How "Not Over" is the Gypsy Mountain Occupation?
(EDITORIAL)
This is what we've come to. I hope people realize what it takes to get peppersprayed and then continuing to sit, peacefully waiting it out. Everyone's harvesting their jalapenos and cayenne right now. If you're not busy for the afternoon, try cutting one open, squeezing the juice in your eyes, and then see how long you can keep your hands locked into steel sleeves. It's more doable with the love and support of friends nearby. Consider it practice for the millenial police state. I guess I'm not really suggesting this, it's dangerous as hell. People have died from pepperspray.
But count on this: for the short term, the torture and deception will continue. I recently learned that during the pepperspray trials in the bay, one officer was asked about a segment of videotape that showed the swab in direct contact with a woman's eyeball. His explanation: What looks like the pupil is actually the shadow of the swab tip, and what looks like the white of the eyeball is actually glare in the camera. (The audio track of this tape contains the officers' coughing, sniffing, and wheezing just from the background fumes.)
I lived in Minneapolis in 1990. I heard on the radio about the bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, people I didn't know at the time. For those who were here then, it's deja vu, but only partially. Judi was a special case, an exemplary organizer who was building powerful alliances between communities of timber workers and environmentalists-- so there was (apparently) a great deal of practice, threatening, and disinformation arranged in the interest of taking her out. Now, 8 1/2 years later, the case is still in court. Holding Judi and Darryl suspect in their own assasination attempt was long ago thrown out of court under tons of evidence, yet still no new suspects have ever been named. The current delay (in a string of numerous delays in the civil rights lawsuit against the FBI) is that the Oakland Police are appealing the district court's ruling that they do not get qualified immunity-- individual officers and agents are really trying to say they don't have to stand trial in this matter. Processing this appeal will likely take the case into next year. Ho Hum. Step right up, see CointelPro alive and well. For more info on this matter, contact the Redwood Summer Justice Project, PO Box 14720, Santa Rosa, CA 95402, 707 887 0262, www.monitor.net/~bari
One of David Chain's accomplishments is to demonstrate that ordinary run-of-the-mill hippies are now eligible for Maxxam's systematic campaign of genocide. IT COULD HAVE BEEN ANY ONE OF US. And make no mistake-- the summer of escalating violence in the Mattole makes it clear that this IS systematic. Are Earth First!ers now just one more species for which PL can get an "incidental take" permit?
And that's where the deja vu happens-- the only one being blamed for the attempted (this time successful) murder is the victim. The local corporate media are still mostly doing the dirty propaganda work, and each of our actions makes it clear who the law enforcement are working for.
This never means we're leaving the forest, so stuff you can always count on us needing is wool socks and soy milk. And more gear for more people to sit in more of the canopy, especially small electrical generators, adaptable to foot power, for computers and cell phones. It's the one thing they'll never bust. Something happened 65 million years ago, where the global climate shifted, the dominant animal form died out, and a few species of land-dwelling mammals decided to relocate in the oceans. That's when the redwoods showed up. Now the earth's surface is shifting again, the top of the pyramid is crashing, and a few pavement-dwelling primates are going feral and returning to the arboreal life. And it centers around the last of those redwoods.
This is not your average plant community. Redwoods are too tall to stand on their own-- they reach out and hold one another. Once mature, a tree will sprout successors from its root base, and so on. When one falls over, vertical branches become trunks and keep going, while the fallen trunk will root where it touches the earth. One cannot measure girth or count rings and know a tree's age. Nothing there is ever "dead." From the soil to the canopy, the old forest is a single woven organism that until recently blanketed the hills of the coastal region.
That this place has a memory is not mysticism. It has experienced ice ages, precessions of the earth's axis, millions of years of weather systems. Through the salmon and the fog, the forest has shared its food and its very breath with the ocean since just after the whales first appeared. Whole families of organisms have evolved and gone extinct within its body, and all these things are contained in living cellular memory. Removal of the forest is erasing this memory. And yet, as the final shreds of the old forest give up their life to a plague of sprawling primates, somehow that vital force is being transferred. New realities are emerging:
Laid-off mill workers and senior citizens locking themselves to logging road gates, including a seventy year old woman locked to her own walker.
Pacific Lumber's number one old-growth faller filing suit against the company for hazardous and illegal forest practices.
There are cops hired as armed guards over lawless corporate plunder. But there's the one cop, holding the line with his buddies, who for a brief moment loses his focus to a sea of drumbeats, rainbow colors in sensual movement, riteous laughter-- then sees himself a link in a chain of riot gear, feels silly, and wishes silently that he were on the other side. And there is the smiling elf-child, who notices that cop and says respectfully, "Come join us, you will be welcome in our basecamp."
Rabbis are telling corporate bullies to change their ways before they bring about plagues and natural disasters of Biblical proportions.
In stone cathedrals, there are Christians praying for trees.
There are circles of witches, reawakened from the ashes of persecution, singing ancient sacred songs, dodging security to return to the forest and offer prayers of love and healing for ALL beings, including the pitiful Mr. Hurwitz....
We think big, because it does not honor this place to ask for small things. This is the rebirth of many ancient worlds, invisible to the eyes of greed and domination, silent behind the wail of industrial machinery, yet more alive than is customarily thought possible. This is the beginning of many futures, because our efforts to protect this place yeild massive growth in our own lives. As our tribe grows and strengthens, we see that we are not saving the forest as much as the forest is saving us. In ever-increasing numbers, people are opening to the voices of trees. We know who the cops are paid to work for, but where are their hearts? How many more peaceful, immobilized people does a guy have to torture before loosing the stomach for it?
It's not your technology that needs an upgrade, but your consciousness. Evolve! Fear is poisoning you! What you call comfort is cancer. What you call power is insanity. Look within. Open the cages. There you will find the courage to stop taking life from mother earth, and begin receiving the life she offers.
--"Reverend" fly Greenfield