Subject: Judi Bari: Scenes from the Revolution From: Jym Dyer Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive Followup-To: alt.activism.d Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu Organization: PACH ================================================================ [From the August 1, 1991 issue of _Earth_First!_Journal_] [Also from the June 5, 1991 issue of _Anderson_Valley_Advertiser_] Scenes From the Revolution by Judi Bari The original plan for Ecotopia Summer was to concentrate our actions into a few pre-set weeks of protest. That way we wouldn't have to run base camps all summer, and we would have a chance to recover from one action before the next got started. Our slogan this year is "activists are not renewable resources." But the best laid plans don't always work out, and when the trees started falling, we got our butts there whether we were ready or not. Redwood Summer got an unexpected early start last week, and it's not looking good on the law enforcement end of things. Our non-violent protests were met with discrimination and excessive force by the Mendocino Co. Sheriff's Department, and if we can't get Sheriff Tuso to do better than that, it's going to be another hard summer indeed. Things began just before Memorial Day, when we got a midnight call from a sympathetic Caltrans employee. Caltrans is the California state highway agency whose function is to pave every inch of the state so that we can get from Hell to Damnation faster. The local EF! action group who faces off with Caltrans is referred to as "Ecotrans." The Caltrans employee who called us said they were going to cut five old growth redwoods on Hwy. 20 the next morning. We're so close to the end of the forest in Mendocino County that we're defending the old growth tree by tree, and these were the same five trees that Earth First! Ecotrans had saved from the chainsaw last fall. They are also part of a much larger Caltrans plan to widen Hwy. 20 and take out that whole corridor. By the time the tree-falling crew got out on the road the next morning, six EF!ers were already there. They climbed one tree and hugged the others, while the fallers moved in as quickly as they could. Anna Marie Stenberg jumped in front of a logger who was trying to girdle a tree with his ax. When he continued chopping around her, endangering her life, Anna Marie grabbed his ax and threw it down a ravine. Now someday, when people finally realize how precious these last few old growth trees are, Anna Marie will be remembered as a folk hero. But the stunned logger just exclaimed, "Hey, that's a $35 ax!" and punched her. By 10 AM about 15 people had arrived. Mendo Sheriff Berle Murray -- one of the two deputies who responded to the death threats against me last year by saying "if you turn up dead, then we'll investigate" -- showed up and began arresting the tree huggers, who by now were standing in front of moving chainsaws to stop the cutting. When they put up passive resistance, Berle quickly deputized a Caltrans employee to help haul the EF!ers off the tree. In spite of the impropriety of deputizing hostile partisans to help arrest EF!ers, no disasters ensued (this time). They handcuffed four EF!ers and got them away from the trees. Then an amazing thing happened. Berle Murray came up to Anna Marie and asked her if she wanted to make a citizen's arrest of the logger who punched her. That's the first time in the history of the timber wars in Mendo Co. that they've let us arrest one of them, no matter what they did to us. Anna Marie said sure, and, with her hands still handcuffed behind her back, turned to the logger and said, "You're under arrest." Despite the drama, four of the trees went down that day. Biocentric attorney Rod Jones responded by filing a lawsuit against Caltrans for wrongful death, in the name of Dead Redwood #1, Dead Redwood #2, Dead Redwood #3, and Dead Redwood #4. And, for the weekend tourist traffic, EF! Ecotrans came back at night and poured red paint over the stumps, with signs sticking up saying "Redwood Murder." When Caltrans tore down the signs, EF! came back and hung a banner across the highway saying, "Stop Caltrans Redwood Murder -- Ecotopia Earth First! Ecotrans." That sign stayed up for the rest of the holiday weekend. But Tuesday morning Caltrans was there to take down the banner. Only, Ecotrans was there first. They raced each other to the trees, and while the Caltrans climber was putting on his spurs Naomi (a grandmother of two) free-climbed ahead of him. "It felt like Jack and the Beanstalk, with these hairy arms coming up behind me," she said. Naomi got to the banner first and untied the guy line so that Dave, who was up the tree on the other side, could reel in the banner. Meanwhile a Caltrans climber was going up Dave's tree. And just when he got up and tried to grab the banner, Dave tossed it down to another protestor on the ground, who is also named Dave (as are all Ecotrans men). Berle Murray was also at the base of the tree. When he saw Dave catch the banner, some ancient reflex from high school snapped in and, without giving an order to stop or anything, he tackled Dave. California Highway Patrol officer Fred Shearer piled on too, and Dave went down, breaking his front tooth. Murray wrapped construction twine around Dave's wrists and used pain compliance holds to jerk his hands behind him and handcuff him. So, having totally blown the arrest, Berle Murray did what all police departments do in this situation -- he charged Dave Mullin with assaulting an officer. They hauled him down to Ukiah and booked him on this totally bogus charge, and, as far as we can see, they actually intend to prosecute. In fact, both Sheriff Tuso and DA Susan Massini went on local TV to denounce our charge of excessive force. This is particularly improper since (1) neither of them has talked to the victim, Dave Mullin, to get his side of the story, and (2) nobody has even filed a charge against the Sheriff's Dept. yet. We didn't have much time to ponder this problem, though, before the next action came up. EF! got a call from Anderson Valley, where people have been battling in the courts with local gyppo logger Charlie Hiatt over his cutting of baby trees. A temporary restraining order (TRO) was supposed to come through on Monday, so Hiatt had hired 20 fallers to take down all the trees over the weekend, before the court could act. EF! responded like the Volunteer Fire Department, with a crew going out and Robert and Brian krypto-locking themselves to a cattle grate in the road, shutting down the cut for the day. At one point, while the EF!ers were locked to the cattle grate, a retired logger in his 70s passed on his way to church and decided to run over some hippies with his pickup truck. People pleaded with him to stop, telling him that the protesters were locked down and couldn't move out of the way. Two EF!ers stood in front of the truck to get it to stop, and they were both pushed down under the grill. The truck was finally stopped, inches from the legs of the people locked down in the road, when Deputy Squires, a county sheriff, jumped in and removed the keys. The man and his wife were both ranting to the EF!ers that "people like you" should be killed. So there's no question about it: the sheriff saved our people's asses. But then they let the guy go without arresting him! Not only had he just assaulted us, he continued to threaten us in the presence of the Mendo Sheriffs. They say they have filed an incident report, and he may be prosecuted. But compare his treatment to that of Dave Mullin, who broke no laws and was nonviolent. The Sheriffs sure didn't tackle the old man in Boonville or use compliance holds to restrain him. They said they would only arrest him if the EF!ers would make a citizen's arrest, then they proceeded to arrest the EF!ers without forcing Hiatt to make a citizen's arrest. Why couldn't they arrest a man who had just committed a violent crime in their presence? But hey, nobody ever said law enforcement was fair or logical. I suspect that this policy of forcing us to make citizens arrests comes not from Deputy Squires, who, by all accounts behaved fairly and professionally, but from Sheriff Tuso. And I guess it's an improvement over last year, when the Mendo Sheriffs wouldn't assist us no matter what. But it's still not enough. We need equal protection of the law in this highly volatile struggle. We're nonviolent, but we're not going to go away and let the trees go down. And we're not going to tolerate violence against us or unfair treatment from the sheriff's department. ================================================================ This article copyrighted 1991 by the _Earth_First!_Journal_, but permission to reprint it is granted provided that credit is given. (It's probably a good idea to include this notice, as well.) The _Earth_First!_Journal_ is published eight times a year, and yearly subscriptions are $20. Send subscriptions or questions to Earth First!, POB 5176, Missoula, MT 59806.