TS - A new Cold War for Humboldt County

A new Cold War for Humboldt County
My Word by Stephen Lewis The Times-Standard
Article Last Updated: Monday, March 28, 2005 - 6:14:43 AM PST

In Times-Standard's March 21 My Word, Jared Rossman notes my countercultural background and wonders if I was "scared away from my principles." No, Jared, I wasn't. If anything I am frightened of political activists using environmental issues to promote an old leftist anti-corporate agenda that is extremely harmful to Humboldt County, environmentally and socially. I am frightened of people who deliberately have brought back the Cold War into Humboldt County where most everywhere else it ended with the fall of the militant socialist world order in the early 1990s. I am frightened of counterculture protesters who never learned the history of their own movement and are busy committing all the same mistakes that have kept the counterculture movement stagnating for over 40 years at the protest level instead of moving forward to create the viable, sustainable, alternative co-operative economy that was once the main goal of all such activism.

My counterculture principles would never allow me to lie to the public in order to promote a political agenda. That is why I am not supporting the social war that those tree-sitter, EPIC, lawsuit folks you are so proud of have brought to Humboldt County. Of course I am not on any radical activists' friendship lists because I bring a message none of them wants to hear, as it contradicts the radical environmental scam's propaganda, overthrowing with proven environmental protection facts everything radical activists say in their determined effort to rerun the Left's old Cold War movie right here in Humboldt County.

What is the scam, the lie I'm talking about? It is the "Timber War" that radicals say they mount against Pacific Lumber Co. because of the terrible eco-damage this one corporate capitalist business is doing to Humboldt County watersheds, watercourses and endangered species habitat. Telling lies to promote a social war was never part of the counterculture principles I hold. Telling lies about environmental degradation that end up hurting Humboldt County workers and their families is no part of my counterculture values. Attacking the main economic base for many mainstream Humboldt residents while promoting the political careers of ambitious politicians willing to protect the counterculture homesteader's illegal economic base is not part of the counterculture values I recognize. Criticizing corporate timber owners for their lifestyle excesses, then seeing homesteaders parade their land acquisitions, their trips to Cancun, to Bali, etc., in other words living a lifestyle far closer to those jet-set corporate executives you so heavily criticize than anything any Palco worker is likely to see in his or her lifetime, this is no part of my counterculture.

Do you understand why mainstream Humboldt County citizens having to eke out a living without resorting to high bucks criminal activity would feel resentment over outsiders coming into Humboldt County by the thousands and then proceeding to make social war on their mainstream neighbors accusing them of environmental damage that they themselves are far more guilty of? Do you understand that the ecological truth in Humboldt County is that 225 Palco workers impacting Palco watersheds on any given day working under the nation's most stringent environmental protection regulations cannot and do not equal the negative environmental impact of 10,000 unregulated homesteaders? Falsifying the degree of eco-damage by logging operations, hiding the degree of eco-damage by homesteaders, is the ugly environmental activist scam that causes so much unnecessary pain to mainstream workers and their families. When activists begin to tell the truth to Humboldt residents, then I will be happy to have you back into the real counterculture where building cooperative compassionate ties between all members of our beautiful Humboldt County is the highest principle.

Stephen Lewis is an artist and writer. He lives in Rio Dell.
The opinions expressed in this My Word piece do not necessarily reflect the editorial viewpoint of the Times-Standard.