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| Politics: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures |
Posted by
Ironboots on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 04:34 AM PST
July 28, about ten in the morning. The sun is just barely making it over the top of the ridge above us, driving off the horrible flies that persecute us in the shade. Burnt trees mingle with giant green old growth, while tons of raspberries grow beneath. I am sitting on the road, putting finishing touches on a walking stick I’m making. About two hundred feet down the road is a slash pile and a rock wall. Then about 50 feet behind me is another slash pile nestled under a web of ropes. These ropes lead off the road up to a platform 70 feet in the air. A red-headed girl named Kay Pittwald lives there on a single sheet of plywood. I admire her courage, not just being high up in the air, but I know she’ll probably be arrested if the cops try to take it all down.
“CAR!” yells the girl in the platform. We become anxious at the sound of that word. It could be Freddies (Forest Service cops) driving down the road. Then they come into view. Two cop cars. Then three. Four. Six. The cop cars just keep coming. Some are unmarked; some are sheriffs; others are Forest Service pickups or Suburbans. Twelve in all. Those of us on the ground walk out to meet them.
They put up a police line between the slash pile and our cars and tell us to get on the other side. We don’t want to get arrested, so we comply. Achilles drives to the town of Agness, eight miles away, where the nearest payphone is at. He’ll let the outside world know that we’ve got company up here. Meanwhile, I’m copying down the license plates of all the cop vehicles.
A front-end loader drives by and my heart sinks. The mechanical beast effortlessly pushes the slash pile and the rock wall out of the roadway. It then drives on around the curve to tackle the rest. I hear chainsaws and the rumble of the ‘dozer in the distance by the platform.
All hope is gone by now, but we try to cheer up Kay over the radio. “We love you, Kay!” “Keep it wild forever!” “How do you know when a cop is lying? His lips are moving!” We get some pots and pans out of my car and begin a little drumming circle to raise morale.
Apollo, a photographer for the New York Times, is talking with a cop at the police line. He’d like to get in and take some pictures, but the cops aren’t willing. He refocuses his attention on us, snapping some pictures of us lounging about on the side of the road. A butterfly lands on Artemis, and he takes a picture of her.
We see far off that they have a cherry-picker and are lowering the platform. A million “if only…”s run through our heads as we know the structural design of the platform should have been more bulletproof.
We had left our stuff behind when the cops came, so we had asked the cops if we’d be allowed to enter the crime scene and get our gear. Now that the platform was lowered, they said that they would allow us to do so, as long as we gave our real names and contact info. We were suspicious, but they said it was so that if anything was stolen, they could pin down who took it. Yeah right. So Artemis, Apollo, and I volunteered to get everyone’s stuff. We were led down to the base camp by a couple of cops. Apollo got his stuff and walked back to the road. I was next. I grabbed what I could, claimed it as mine, and headed back toward the road alone.
A couple of cops stopped me on the way and asked me to put down my stuff. I did, and they arrested me on Interfering with an Agricultural Operation. “I’M GETTING ARRESTED!!!” I yelled out, to warn Artemis about the cops. THOSE FUCKIN’ PIGS TRICKED US!’ I thought as I was led up to the road. They patted me down and put everything in plastic bags. As I was led to a police car I walked past Kay, sitting in the backseat of a cruiser. I waved to her, and she had a big smile on her face. No pig was gonna keep us down.
Apollo was already in the car, and he was fretting really bad. I felt sorry for him, an innocent photographer caught up in all this. But pigs will be pigs. I was quiet for the most part, just taking the whole experience in. As we drove past our friends, I waved. I was glad they were safe and I didn’t want them to worry too much about me.
At the station, they took my belt, bandanna, and boots. My shorts were a little bit large without the belt and so I had to pull them up constantly. We sat in the holding cell for a while until they got around to booking us. We got dinner, but the girls went on a hunger strike. I had already started eating, so I just finished it. (Except for the really nasty ground beef stuff… fuckin’ animal killers)
I got a set of orange scrubs and sandals, showered (I was really dirty…), and they took my fingerprints. Then I was put in a cellblock with Apollo and a dude named Odysseus. Odysseus got arrested for driving with a suspended license. He’d been trying to get back to his wife in Crescent City, but without any ride, he had been forced to drive himself. And as luck would have it, he was driving while black, too. Odysseus knew the whole system pretty well, and he answered most of our questions as to what was going to happen.
The next day I was brought into a packed courtroom with the two girls. Most of my friends on the outside were in that courtroom. I smiled at a few, but for the most part behaved. I retained a public defender and was returned to my cell.
I spent seven long days in that jail. There was little to do besides sleep and eat. That morning I started fasting in solidarity with the girls, and I didn’t eat for two days, which made the time go by even slower. The food they served was unappetizing anyway, with major meat portions in every meal. After ending my fast, I traded with Odysseus for vegetarian portions and gave him the animal flesh.
Every day I called my legal support person, Athena, back in town. She was an important source of news and advice, since my public defender was not very experienced in jail solidarity. She was wonderful, always giving me a kind ear and making sure I was okay. Calling her was the highlight of every day for me and really kept me going.
Every afternoon we were let out for an hour of exercise. The exercise area was just a larger box than our cellblock in which to pace around in. We got to see the sky, though, which was heartening, and I heard the cries of gulls on the beach just a block away.
Sunday night I received some books, which were a godsend. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was my favorite. When you have a lot of time on your hands, a book like that is perfect. I read it slowly, reading a chapter at a time and thinking about it.
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| Note: Names have been changed to Greek mythos to protect their identities. I tried to keep the names as similar to their personas as possible. |
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Total ratings : 8
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| Pigs are Beautiful Creatures | Login/Create an account | 12 Comments |
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by EyeCandyRayce (aesaraymondsdottir@yahoo.com)
on Oct 09, 2004 - 01:04 AM
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When I first moved to Washington State I went on many road trips (and still do). I would go to forest after forest and on the way I would see acre upon acre cut down and destroyed. I thought of how this land used to be with such thick forest that it was considered a very hostile trip and now look at it! DESTROYED!
I support you and your friends. I think you need to contact news stations in the big cities and tell them your story. Get the press as deeply involved as possible. Expecially them keeping someone out of college and forcing them to live in a city with no job, money, lodging or food! The best way to raise hell is to pull the public in.
Hell.. try and get in touch with the reporter who got tossed in jail with you guys. See if you can get him involved as well.
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by Ironboots on Oct 12, 2004 - 08:57 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://rangerjacket.tripod.com | Yeah, we're working on it... On October fourth, a whole bunch of us went around Grants Pass, handing out information and talking to people (enviro-mormons).
And the reporter who was arrested is back in the area. He's on assignment for some New York magazine, so he's already working to publicize the issue. He's going around the whole Northwest, taking pictures and talking to people, which is really great. |
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The Good Fight
by Monolycus on Oct 10, 2004 - 02:05 AM
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Geez, Boots. There are many conservancy groups in the United States with which you can become affiliated. I realise that it does not feel as "hands on" as rallying, but the only way to stop these suicidal maniacs is to have the courts on your side. Even though the David Suzuki Foundation is located in Canada, they have made many legal appeals within the US court system and had a very positive impact upon environmental issues with nobody's life being ruined with a conviction. Look them up, or better still, ask them for assistance and representation in preventing the clear cutting. I admire your ethos wholeheartedly, my friend, but I have concerns about the efficacy of your approach to the problem.
Incidentally, the ploy of "your friends have signed (usually a confession implicating you)" when you are being interrogated and unable to contact them goes back to the earliest days of the Soviet Union. First, there is no way to ascertain that this is true, but second, and more importantly, it NEVER helps your situation to assume it is and sign what they want you to. Thought you might have picked up that they will lie to you to get what they want from you when they arrested you in the first place. If you are going to use an approach that is antagonistic to the system instead of complementary, you ABSOLUTELY have to be savvy about their tactics.
I wish you the best of luck.
~M.
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Re: The Good Fight
by Ironboots on Oct 12, 2004 - 09:21 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://rangerjacket.tripod.com | Thanks, we need all the luck we can get.
I agree with you that the courts are the way to the jugular. Unfortunately, there is politics involved in getting the enviro groups to sue.
Under the Northwest Forest Plan, some of the forest was set aside to be old growth (LSR), and some was set aside to be logged at a future date (matrix land). The enviro groups are only suing on the LSR and roadless area sales because if they sue on everything, it will put their democrat allies in a bind in having to support it. Then the democrats will look like tree-hugging hippies and lose public support. So even though much of matrix is old-growth and just as sensitive and precious as LSR, they refuse to include it in their lawsuits.
The good news is that some of these matrix sales have Port Orford root disease restrictions on them, meaning they can't log in wet weather and after September 30 in order to prevent the spread of this disease. And since they haven't stopped logging, we should be able to prod somebody into suing the Forest Service for not enforcing it.
Finally there are people out in the field monitoring logging operations to make sure that riparian buffers are respected and that they aren't stealing green trees.
"If you are going to use an approach that is antagonistic to the system instead of complementary, you ABSOLUTELY have to be savvy about their tactics." I know... I'm learning.
As for on-the-ground tactics, it was hoped that the first action would have developed into a long-term free state, like what occurred at the Warner Creek timber sale in 96. The loggers didn't get one black stick there, and we were hoping that a free state could get started here, since the enviros weren't going to sue on this sale. But alas, there were holes in the armor, and the roadblock was dismantled. Next time we'll be wiser.
The second action was more of a publicity stunt, in my opinion. It did cost them a bit of money, I think, but mainly it generated another little ripple of media attention which helps to get politicians and enviro groups off their butts to do the right thing. I'm not sure if getting arrested for publicity's sake is the best thing in this situation.
'boots |
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by Shade (Shade@Gothcult.com)
on Oct 10, 2004 - 04:34 PM
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I am really impressed IronBoots. I spent an unknown portion (the greater portion I know that much) of the first 13 years of my life in Oregon. I know some of the forests in that state like the back of my hand. Or at least I used to. Now the forests I knew are gone.
I remember watching the deer come out of the forest from my bedroom window in the evening. It was a magical sight on a clear night. The forest line was all of five hundred feet from my house and I could watch them emerge and I swear they glowed.
I remember walking through those woods and laying down in the river bed. In one place the river had been running over a single boulder for easily a thousand years. The bed was seventy feet wide at one point, the river was all of four inches deep and in the middle of the summer you could go lay in the water and get a tan at the same time. The running water was just enough to keep the mosquitos at bay, and you could watch the animals flirt with nature while the day rushed through your hair in the form of the river.
Now that river is gone, the forest is gone, it hasn't even been replaced with a mall or a parking lot, it's just gone. The boulder was scraped clean by the tires of logging trucks, the trees have been sold. The private graveyard has vanished without a trace and the sixteen year old girl who died in 1873 will never, ever have an eight year old boy profess undying love and bury his lost tooth above her head again.
So thank you for preserving, if even for five more hours, the forest that you were able to save. For every eco-ecosystem that exists, there are also a thousand thousand memories, and those are just as fragile as the ecosystem itself, the only difference is the eco system can remake itself. Our humanity cannot.
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by Ironboots on Oct 12, 2004 - 11:04 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://rangerjacket.tripod.com | I didn't really do much, shade. Most credit goes to Kay, for stepping up to the biggest responsibility of being on the platform. And credit still goes to others like the mainstream enviro groups, the crusty activists that came before us, and also all the people out there who may not blockade a road, but still take the chance to write politicians in support of all things wild. I'm just one little dude that accidentally got arrested.
But yeah, I am totally with you when you describe the forest. I am never as calm and collected as I am when I am in the woods. Its getting back to one's roots, back before civilization and "progress". Although most of us lack the skills to permanently make it our home, humans are in their element in the wilderness. Wild things are a part of us, and we are wild. When we reduce forests to being x amount of board feet in x acres, we reduce ourselves to machines, and we lose what makes us wild.
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by Anonymous-Coward on Oct 12, 2004 - 09:21 PM
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That's a hell of a way to spend a couple of weeks, man. I grew up in one of the close to south mountain states, and it had beautiful mountains, covered with beautiful trees that would occasionally be completely cleared by a mining operation.
But what pisses me off even more is the government trying to justify the clear cutting of old growth forest by saying that they are preserving the ecosystem. The ecosystem has been preserving itself for millennia, change is not necessarily a bad thing. The global environment changes over time, and doesn’t really care if we notice or not. What happens is you get a bunch of people who think they know what the correct “environment” should be throwing off the natural balance.
A fire is a good thing. It clears up the underbrush and helps seedlings to sprout. There are certain types of seeds that won’t open until they have been heated to a certain temperature. Not having fires means lots of undergrowth, weeds, non-native plants, and other invasive species have time to work in. It becomes a million acre powder keg waiting for a strike of lighting, or an idiot tossing his smoke out the window, and boom, suddenly you have a “natural disaster” on your hands, only, it’s been caused by people trying to impose restrictions on the natural process.
I’m glad to know your out there fighting the good fight, while all I do is sit here and whine. Keep at it, and try to stay out of way of those authorities who are of course only "looking out for your best interests".
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by pale-face (-)
on Oct 14, 2004 - 09:22 AM
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Ironboots, don’t worry about the derogatory pig comments. there is no other way to call cops when they are on a ego trip... or judges for that matter. they think there god when they are upon their stand. pompous asses swayed my the political beliefs and handouts. damn greedy bastards.
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Re: Pigs are Beautiful Creatures
by RedQueen (-)
on Oct 19, 2004 - 09:48 AM
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I have no legal advice to offer, but I know how you feel. The land my grandparents have lived on for years has been sold out from underneath them, and will soon be developed into subdivisions. Their house is a 125 year-old farm house sitting perched on the edge of some of the most beautiful wooded hills I have ever walked in. The woods are home to deer, coyotes, hawks, owls, and other wildlife, not to mention countless Native burial sites and artifacts. There is a Civil War cemetary on that land as well. The site near the cemetary is also a very powerful place spiritually, one my mother struggled to get recognized for the Native Americans before it was too late. Now it is too late.
I am continuously saddened by the careless disregard for nature and the environment here in America, and your story just went right to my heart. You have my best wishes and strongest hope, however much that might mean to you. Good luck, IronBoots. I hope someday you can walk again in the forests that mean so much to you.
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