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More than 100 people attend environmental activism camp
DARBY - Likening themselves to the patriots who raised a ruckus by dumping crates of tea into Boston Harbor two centuries ago, more than 100 environmental activists are camped in the Bitterroot National Forest backcountry this week, practicing nonviolent civil disobedience.
By the time they break camp Sunday, the assemblage will be well-versed in tactics both traditional and contemporary: filing lawsuits against unpopular decisions, sitting in trees to prevent their cutting, blockading roads and doorways, writing letters to newspaper editors, diffusing angry opponents.
Then the activists will take their message cross-country, protesting what they believe is an assault on the national forests by President Bush and his political appointees.
"All the way back to the Boston Tea Party, protesters have used acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to paint a picture for the people," Greenpeace organizer Jackie Downing said Tuesday. "A tree-sit serves the same purpose; it paints a picture."
Downing was on belay, pulling herself up a rope and into the crown of a ponderosa pine tree. Instructor Lynn Stone watched from below, ready when needed with words of encouragement or caution.
"We stay nonviolent and safe," said Stone, who grew up in Lexington, Mass., and lives now in Maine. "We use these tactics when all others fail; we use them appropriately.
"When I do a direct action, I do so proud to be an American," Stone said. "It's not a right that people all over the world have access to. It's a freedom I cherish."
If the colonists had called a press conference to decry the British tax on tea, their protest would never have made the history books, she said. By disguising themselves as Indians and sneaking aboard ships, they drew attention to the issue in a manner that every American schoolchild knows by rote.
So, too, do environmental activists need to grab the public eye, said Andrew George, who spent Tuesday morning teaching "environmental organizing" to a group of 20-plus activists circled around a campfire.
"The media is what this is about," he said. "One by one, our civil rights are being taken away. This is what's left - the most traditional, mom-and-apple-pie way to show your patriotism: by engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience."
An organizer for the National Forest Protection Alliance in Chapel Hill, N.C., George told how he and others staged protests at Staples, Home Depot, Lowe's and other large retailers, in an attempt to convince them to stop selling products made from timber collected in national forests.
It's an effective technique, he said, "because these stores don't want protesters hanging from the rafters."
It's also the oldest form of democracy, George insisted. "It's the protest spilling over into the marketplace. It's what the Greeks called agora - the marketplace of ideas."
"Clearly, it is important to have people who draw attention to these issues in these very public ways," said Matthew Koehler, whose Native Forest Network occasionally participates in sidewalk rallies, but more often testifies at public hearings, writes comments for public hearings and files administrative appeals and lawsuits.
"We need all these tools," he said. "No single form of protest is enough."
The weeklong encampment, sponsored by Greenpeace and the National Forest Protection Alliance, is testimony to the sad state of the nation's environmental affairs, said Scott Paul, forest campaign coordinator for Greenpeace in Washington, D.C.
For the past five or six years, Paul led a campaign intended to stop the importation of endangered wood products from overseas - an effort which eventually resulted in a halt to mahogany imports. Now Greenpeace is looking closer to home, at the U.S. Forest Service and its management of the national forests.
This summer, Greenpeace will send one of its notorious activist-piloted boats to Alaska to draw attention to unwanted logging in the Tongass National Forest. "We'll use the ship as a platform for delivering our message - to draw attention to the issue," Paul said.
So, too, will the protests that result from this week's training camp shine a light on practices and proposals the environmentalists abhor, he said.
But they will also provoke counter-protests.
The Bitterroot National Forest, its West Fork Ranger District and western Montana media have received a steady stream of complaints about the training camp in recent days, most from local residents wondering why the Forest Service would allow the encampment and why the protesters are not considered "eco-terrorists."
West Fork District Ranger Dave Campbell gave the group a permit to use the campsite - which is about 40 miles southwest of Darby - and has fielded many of the resulting complaints.
In an e-mail sent to the Forest Consensus Council, Campbell explained: "So why issue a permit to a group that intends to practice techniques some feel are in opposition to national forest management? It's America, land of the free. We are free to express our opinions and to assemble with others. The proposed activity on the permit contains nothing illegal. The applicants have complied with all of our rules and regulations in applying for the permit and have supplied us with information we have requested. The process, and indeed the area, is the same we have used for other groups: church groups, family reunions, etc."
As he gave visiting reporters a tour of the camp Tuesday, Paul said neither the camp's 40 instructors nor its 70 students are "into breaking laws."
"We're into peaceful, time-honored types of nonviolent protest," he said. Trainees will spend part of every day in climbing class. One afternoon will be devoted to various types of blockades - to the tactics that successfully kept logging trucks out of Idaho's Cove-Mallard roadless area in recent years.
On Wednesday afternoon, the camp will talk about the media. They'll learn backcountry first aid and orienteering. They'll practice how to remain calm when confronted by angry detractors. They'll learn about healthy forests legislation due for a vote in the U.S. Senate during July.
"Some of these tactics are a last resort," said Mateo Williford, a Greenpeace activist from San Francisco and supplier of the solar panels that provide electricity for the camp. "But these days, we're getting down to our last resort."
Environmentalists sit in trees and block access to forest roads because it works, he said. "When someone climbs into a tree and says, 'You're not going to cut this tree because I'm sitting in it,' the tree doesn't get cut."
Don Muller said he's counting on the power of direct action. A bookseller from Sitka, Alaska, and one of the few gray-haired students at the camp, Muller said environmentalists are desperate to stop the Bush administration from logging the Tongass National Forest.
"This is the largest remaining continuous temperate rainforest in the world," he said, "and it is under a death threat from the Bush administration."
Most recently, administration officials proposed exempting the Tongass from roadless-area protection.
"If every American could see the Tongass and southeast Alaska, they would be outraged to think the Bush administration wants to log it," Muller said. "Those of us who live there are working hard to protect these places for all people and not just for the timber industry."
Will he sit in a tree to stop a timber sale? "Absolutely," Muller said as he readjusted his climbing gear. "I see myself and other Alaskans and other Americans sitting in trees and successfully protecting them from logging. Absolutely. We must."
In Virginia's Jefferson National Forest, "70-year-old grannies are learning how to sit in trees," George said. In Alaska, Muller intends to teach everyone who's willing and able to do the same.
"They can take away our right to appeal or to file lawsuits or to participate in forest management, but they can't take away non-violent direct action," Muller said. "That's how this country began. It's at the very heart of who we are and how far we will go to protect the places we love."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at [email protected]
DARBY - Likening themselves to the patriots who raised a ruckus by dumping crates of tea into Boston Harbor two centuries ago, more than 100 environmental activists are camped in the Bitterroot National Forest backcountry this week, practicing nonviolent civil disobedience.
By the time they break camp Sunday, the assemblage will be well-versed in tactics both traditional and contemporary: filing lawsuits against unpopular decisions, sitting in trees to prevent their cutting, blockading roads and doorways, writing letters to newspaper editors, diffusing angry opponents.
Then the activists will take their message cross-country, protesting what they believe is an assault on the national forests by President Bush and his political appointees.
"All the way back to the Boston Tea Party, protesters have used acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to paint a picture for the people," Greenpeace organizer Jackie Downing said Tuesday. "A tree-sit serves the same purpose; it paints a picture."
Downing was on belay, pulling herself up a rope and into the crown of a ponderosa pine tree. Instructor Lynn Stone watched from below, ready when needed with words of encouragement or caution.
"We stay nonviolent and safe," said Stone, who grew up in Lexington, Mass., and lives now in Maine. "We use these tactics when all others fail; we use them appropriately.
"When I do a direct action, I do so proud to be an American," Stone said. "It's not a right that people all over the world have access to. It's a freedom I cherish."
If the colonists had called a press conference to decry the British tax on tea, their protest would never have made the history books, she said. By disguising themselves as Indians and sneaking aboard ships, they drew attention to the issue in a manner that every American schoolchild knows by rote.
So, too, do environmental activists need to grab the public eye, said Andrew George, who spent Tuesday morning teaching "environmental organizing" to a group of 20-plus activists circled around a campfire.
"The media is what this is about," he said. "One by one, our civil rights are being taken away. This is what's left - the most traditional, mom-and-apple-pie way to show your patriotism: by engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience."
An organizer for the National Forest Protection Alliance in Chapel Hill, N.C., George told how he and others staged protests at Staples, Home Depot, Lowe's and other large retailers, in an attempt to convince them to stop selling products made from timber collected in national forests.
It's an effective technique, he said, "because these stores don't want protesters hanging from the rafters."
It's also the oldest form of democracy, George insisted. "It's the protest spilling over into the marketplace. It's what the Greeks called agora - the marketplace of ideas."
"Clearly, it is important to have people who draw attention to these issues in these very public ways," said Matthew Koehler, whose Native Forest Network occasionally participates in sidewalk rallies, but more often testifies at public hearings, writes comments for public hearings and files administrative appeals and lawsuits.
"We need all these tools," he said. "No single form of protest is enough."
The weeklong encampment, sponsored by Greenpeace and the National Forest Protection Alliance, is testimony to the sad state of the nation's environmental affairs, said Scott Paul, forest campaign coordinator for Greenpeace in Washington, D.C.
For the past five or six years, Paul led a campaign intended to stop the importation of endangered wood products from overseas - an effort which eventually resulted in a halt to mahogany imports. Now Greenpeace is looking closer to home, at the U.S. Forest Service and its management of the national forests.
This summer, Greenpeace will send one of its notorious activist-piloted boats to Alaska to draw attention to unwanted logging in the Tongass National Forest. "We'll use the ship as a platform for delivering our message - to draw attention to the issue," Paul said.
So, too, will the protests that result from this week's training camp shine a light on practices and proposals the environmentalists abhor, he said.
But they will also provoke counter-protests.
The Bitterroot National Forest, its West Fork Ranger District and western Montana media have received a steady stream of complaints about the training camp in recent days, most from local residents wondering why the Forest Service would allow the encampment and why the protesters are not considered "eco-terrorists."
West Fork District Ranger Dave Campbell gave the group a permit to use the campsite - which is about 40 miles southwest of Darby - and has fielded many of the resulting complaints.
In an e-mail sent to the Forest Consensus Council, Campbell explained: "So why issue a permit to a group that intends to practice techniques some feel are in opposition to national forest management? It's America, land of the free. We are free to express our opinions and to assemble with others. The proposed activity on the permit contains nothing illegal. The applicants have complied with all of our rules and regulations in applying for the permit and have supplied us with information we have requested. The process, and indeed the area, is the same we have used for other groups: church groups, family reunions, etc."
As he gave visiting reporters a tour of the camp Tuesday, Paul said neither the camp's 40 instructors nor its 70 students are "into breaking laws."
"We're into peaceful, time-honored types of nonviolent protest," he said. Trainees will spend part of every day in climbing class. One afternoon will be devoted to various types of blockades - to the tactics that successfully kept logging trucks out of Idaho's Cove-Mallard roadless area in recent years.
On Wednesday afternoon, the camp will talk about the media. They'll learn backcountry first aid and orienteering. They'll practice how to remain calm when confronted by angry detractors. They'll learn about healthy forests legislation due for a vote in the U.S. Senate during July.
"Some of these tactics are a last resort," said Mateo Williford, a Greenpeace activist from San Francisco and supplier of the solar panels that provide electricity for the camp. "But these days, we're getting down to our last resort."
Environmentalists sit in trees and block access to forest roads because it works, he said. "When someone climbs into a tree and says, 'You're not going to cut this tree because I'm sitting in it,' the tree doesn't get cut."
Don Muller said he's counting on the power of direct action. A bookseller from Sitka, Alaska, and one of the few gray-haired students at the camp, Muller said environmentalists are desperate to stop the Bush administration from logging the Tongass National Forest.
"This is the largest remaining continuous temperate rainforest in the world," he said, "and it is under a death threat from the Bush administration."
Most recently, administration officials proposed exempting the Tongass from roadless-area protection.
"If every American could see the Tongass and southeast Alaska, they would be outraged to think the Bush administration wants to log it," Muller said. "Those of us who live there are working hard to protect these places for all people and not just for the timber industry."
Will he sit in a tree to stop a timber sale? "Absolutely," Muller said as he readjusted his climbing gear. "I see myself and other Alaskans and other Americans sitting in trees and successfully protecting them from logging. Absolutely. We must."
In Virginia's Jefferson National Forest, "70-year-old grannies are learning how to sit in trees," George said. In Alaska, Muller intends to teach everyone who's willing and able to do the same.
"They can take away our right to appeal or to file lawsuits or to participate in forest management, but they can't take away non-violent direct action," Muller said. "That's how this country began. It's at the very heart of who we are and how far we will go to protect the places we love."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at [email protected]
