'Restoration ideal' leads to job creation
by Greg King, 12/4/2007
Humboldt County Supervisor Roger Rodoni calls me a “Luddite” whose favorite tool is “litigation” because the Northcoast Environmental Center asked the California Department of Transportation to provide an environmental impact report before widening U.S. Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park (The Eureka Reporter, Nov. 28).
Rodoni doesn’t get it. Luddites don’t litigate, and requesting an EIR is not the same as a lawsuit. While the NEC may occasionally sue to correct serious wrongs, it would much rather find common ground on the issues — environmental and economic — that affect us all.
Rodoni’s comment was preceded on Nov. 23 by an acidic Eureka Reporter opinion article by John Campbell, who, like Rodoni, is an economic beneficiary of Maxxam Corp. Campbell dedicated himself to laying at my feet all the ruin, real and imagined, he sees surrounding him in Humboldt County. It’s no wonder the former Pacific Lumber Co. president, now Fortuna mayor, is currently under investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to disclose his ongoing financial obligations to PALCO, even while he votes on issues that would benefit his former employer.
While the two Maxxam loyalists waste words on a polarization campaign, many of us — left, right and center — are building alliances and working together to develop workable programs and visions for our ever-changing communities. Rodoni and Campbell fear these alliances and have set out to destroy them. In the process, their own worth as elected officials has been greatly diminished.
Campbell sees “living-wage” jobs disappearing in Humboldt County; however, with the exception of the timber industry, which has cut itself out of inventory, and the fishing industry, which suffers primarily from habitat degradation caused by industrial logging, several sectors of the Humboldt County economy are thriving.
The Humboldt County Workforce Investment Board reports that rapid job growth is occurring in several sectors — including health care, building and systems construction, specialty foods and beverages, investment support services and niche marketing.
Looking for work in the woods? The Mattole Restoration Council is now the largest employer in the Mattole River watershed, providing more than 100 good-paying seasonal and full-time jobs, with an annual budget approaching $3 million. As Big Timber cuts its way out of existence and prepares to sell off land to maintain profits, the restoration economy thrives and suggests an alternative to hillside subdivisions.
According to the 2004 study, “Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Natural Resources Restoration System in Humboldt County, California,” the county “is at the leading edge of restoration practices and serves as a model for how restoration work can be accomplished. … Restoration generates significant employment and has the potential to generate much more. The revenue it currently generates rivals and in some instances exceeds the value of other resource-based sectors of the regional economy.”
It would be refreshing to see Campbell and Rodoni embracing the restoration ideal for our region and otherwise promoting infrastructure improvements that will serve the small but healthy regional economy of scale that we enjoy. This won’t happen. Both men have repeatedly failed their constituents and should resign.
The NEC understands that many small, high-quality businesses in our area would like to see Highway 101 widened through Richardson Grove to allow larger trucks into Humboldt County. The NEC supports these businesses, we’re sensitive to their concerns and we appreciate the solidity they offer our region. Nevertheless, we must protect the old-growth redwood trees at Richardson Grove, and we must ensure that box stores and strip malls don’t mushroom here at the expense of the small, locally owned businesses that keep our economy strong.
In some ways it is our isolation that protects the economy and ecology of the North Coast. The NEC’s Sustainable Communities program is designed to promote and support an economy based on small- and medium-sized local businesses that are dedicated to strengthening and protecting values such as clean air and water, healthy habitats, and adequately funded schools, hospitals and government services. We’re doing the important and sometimes unpopular advance work to ensure that long-term and permanent changes occur in our region only if they truly benefit our people, our land and water, and our economy.
(Greg King is executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center.)
Showing posts with label Earth First. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth First. Show all posts
10.04.2007
Evaluating the D.A. recall
From the McKinleyville Press
Evaluating the D.A. recall
Activist, attorney, officials offer varying and surprising views
By Daniel Mintz
Press Staff Writer
"There will be political consequences - I know that."
Spoken by District Attorney Paul Gallegos just after he filed the fraud lawsuit that would jump-start a recall election, the quote could be generally applied to the whole of his first year in power.
Gallegos has commandeered the county's attention in a scant 14 months of helming the D.A.'s office and has been alternately described as a beacon of democracy and a misguided bumbler. Perhaps more than anything else in the county's recent history, Gallegos' emergence as D.A. and the drive to remove him has fired up political divisions that preceded him by many years.
The dynamics of bitterly combative elections aren't put in place in as short a time as Gallegos has been district attorney. Heavy campaigning now dominates public attention but there are important and talked-about aspects of the recall that aren't reflected in the steadily intensifying election gamesmanship.
And the recall's impacts may not be as obvious or as linear as the polarized campaigns make them seem.
The recall and environmental activism
The fraud lawsuit against Pacific Lumber Company (PL) is a looming presence, and though its focus has shifted from environmental damage to alleged financial gain, it has mobilized the county's environmental movement in support of Gallegos.
Having a PL nemesis as D.A. would have been an activist's fantasy not long ago, and Gallegos is drawing the impassioned support of many environmentalists - as he did in 2002, when he successfully ran for office against longtime former D.A. Terry Farmer.
But some have doubts. "The environmental community at large did not pick this fight," said veteran Earth First!er Darryl Cherney on the lawsuit and the ensuing power struggle. "There was nothing approaching consensus from any contingent of the environmental movement that this was a battle we wished to fight."
Cherney has watched the recall's procession of events with concern. A key organizer during the historic years that preceded the 1999 Headwaters Deal, Cherney believes that the movement's been drawn into a political brawl that threatens its progress regardless of outcome.
"The nanosecond this suit was announced, I knew the D.A. would face a recall and I think the D.A. knew it too," Cherney continued. "But what the D.A. didn't think through was the stress it would put on his supporters."
Resistance to the influence and logging practices of PL has been an effort - and for some, an obsession - that has been ongoing ever since the mid-1980s, when the Houston, Texas-based megacorporation Maxxam took the company over. But Cherney thinks the lawsuit and the recall mark a dangerous turn.
"Nobody can accuse me of being 'soft on Maxxam,' but in all the years I've taken them on and in all the incredibly adventurous battles we've waged against them, we took risks but we didn't gamble and I think that's the difference here - the risks we took were calculated and this gamble has not been calculated by the D.A."
Cherney wonders if Gallegos and Assistant D.A. Tim Stoen, who was hired by Gallegos and is the suit's lead prosecutor, have blown away an unusual opportunity for progressive gain.
"Neither he nor Stoen took into account that their supporters would have to mount months of stressful campaigning and raise tens of thousands of dollars to fight off Maxxam in what could be a losing battle," Cherney said.
Bad moves?
Cherney's educated guess is that the D.A. will indeed be recalled, and he said he "sees it all as being unnecessary." Gallegos made a drastic mistake almost as soon as he took office, Cherney continued.
He's been familiar with Stoen's work in Mendocino County since 1989, he said, adding that Gallegos' enlistment of Stoen as second in command began a series of blunders. Stoen's personally disastrous association with People's Temple demagogue Jim Jones is an obvious reason why hiring him was a bad move, Cherney continued, but there are other factors.
"It's not that Tim Stoen was fooled by Jim Jones - what disturbs me is that he hasn't seemed to have learned anything from his experience."
Cherney suggested that Stoen, who plunged into preparation of the lawsuit and focused on it almost exclusively during his first eight weeks on the job, again allowed himself to be duped.
"And if we lose the D.A.'s race, we will have experienced an environmental Jonestown here, in Humboldt County, led by Tim Stoen," Cherney said.
He was asked what will be lost if Gallegos is ousted. "Let me reverse that, because Gallegos has presented us with a lose/lose situation. Even if we win the recall, we will have still spent all of our environmental and political capital - and Gallegos will have to start campaigning for re-election in two years, and we will be fighting this battle all over again."
If the recall succeeds, Cherney added, "the loss is even deeper because we'll have been dragged into a battlefield for which we are unprepared, and potentially led to slaughter."
Cherney may not be be winning favor with his forthright commentary (he says his associates come down on him "like a ton of bricks" when he shares his thoughts) and he said his conclusions are painfully realized.
"But I think the liberal left environmental community of Humboldt County is in denial - we're blaming PL for this battle we're in, but a true warrior doesn't whine about the strength of his or her adversary, and we're getting a lot of that from Gallegos supporters."
The formation of the Alliance for Ethical Business (AEB, a non-profit group founded by Richard Salzman, Gallegos' campaign manager) was another error, Cherney continued.
The AEB sprang forth at the same time recall fervor appeared to, and its expressed purpose has been to support the lawsuit. Cherney attended an AEB benefit in Southern Humboldt and said that it misrepresented the group's intent - the event looked and sounded like one to support Paul Gallegos, he continued, and he isn't sure that people completely realized what they were aiding was a private organization.
A better move would have been to have formed a political campaign to encourage people not to sign recall petitions, said Cherney, who characterized the creation of the AEB as a "disastrous mistake in judgment."
The Gallegos campaign's incessant targeting of PL is another strategy that will backfire, Cherney believes. He thinks that the apparent victory of forcing the recall committee to mention PL in its ads due to the company's heavy funding will actually draw more votes for the recall.
Cherney questioned the value of highlighting PL funding instead of explaining why Gallegos has what it takes to be a good D.A. "For one thing, everybody knows PL has put money into this," he continued. "Two, nobody cares and three, all the people who do care have already made up their minds."
Gallegos had made some puzzling decisions, Cherney believes, and he cited the D.A.'s dramatic rollback of his medical marijuana limits as "a textbook case of political spinelessness" that has only served to disappoint an important element of his support base.
"The moral is that running somebody for office who has progressive politics is not enough," Cherney continued. He stressed that candidates have to be chosen carefully and be evaluated on a basis that includes consideration of administrative and leadership skills.
"I'll tell you this," he concluded. "It's so critical that we learn our lessons. People always say 'PL's a villain' and if we always blame Maxxam for every loss we suffer, we are never going to learn how to play this game better."
Takeover's lingering aftermath
As an attorney, Bill Bertain has been in the game for over 18 years. He launched legal actions to block Maxxam's takeover of PL and has helped gain settlements for residents of Stafford and other areas said to be impacted by PL's logging. And he portrays Maxxam as the recall's knob-twister.
Bertain views the recall as an extension of Maxxam's involvement in the county since the mid-'80s. "One can't understand what's going on now until one understands what happened then," he said. "What we have seen is an ongoing pattern of deceit."
The ultimate expression of that, in Bertain's view, is PL's heavy funding of the recall and the company's simultaneous assertion that the election is largely about safety issues. And to Bertain, the political actions of the company are directly linked to Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz.
"He is again attempting, with much more energy and viciousness, to influence many fine people into misplacing their loyalties," Bertain continued. "And he's using the recall as a means of doing it, through funding and by having his people direct it."
Bertain characterizes the Maxxam takeover as "an invasion of the county" that was achieved through fraud. It's a situation that's continuing and hitting a peak, Bertain added, with tragic effects.
"Hurwitz has distorted many aspects of life in Humboldt County - political, social and environmental - and it's a sad, sad story. He's caused a lot of dissension and divisiveness. And now that he has somebody going against him, he's playing off it again."
Asked if the recall also represents a cultural divide, Bertain said it may to some degree. "But then again, I'm Catholic, pro-life and a Republican - and my family has been here since 1882."
Bertain was born in the PL-owned lumber town of Scotia, and grew up there and in Rio Dell. His family operated the Bertain's Laundry and Dry Cleaning business in Scotia from 1920 to 1992 and "it breaks my heart to see what Hurwitz has done to the company."
The lawsuit and the recall can't be convincingly separated, Bertain continued. "The stakes must be pretty high for PL, considering the amount of money they've put in and that they're resorting to political tactics that have never been seen before in Humboldt County."
The recall has "saddened a number of people and confused a lot of people," said Bertain.
They may not understand the lawsuit's relevance, he continued, because PL has paid for an advertising blitz that may be succeeding in obscuring it. But he also believes that Gallegos is highly respected by many. "Some people who don't have the courage that Paul has might have shied away from such a battle because of the wealth of the defendant. But I admire him for taking up the challenge and I think a lot of other people do, too."
Is the election a "referendum on PL," as some have suggested? "I think PL pretty much made it that by funding the recall," Bertain responded.
And he looks at the recall as an important moment in county history.
"I think PL helped get the recall going and has obviously put money into it - and so brought it to this state of controversy and divisiveness. It's part of the ongoing saga brought to us by Hurwitz and I look at this in many ways as a defining issue for people here in Humboldt County."
The pro-recall campaign rhetoric is "playing off people's prejudices," Bertain continued, and pitting longtime residents against more recent ones, conservatives against hippies, and so forth. "Hurwitz is clever and he's hired clever people to take advantage of people's fears."
Cultural collisions
Elected officials have mostly avoided recall commentary, as the contest is too hotly waged to dive into. Second District Supervisor Roger Rodoni is running for re-election and when pressured to reveal his stance during debates, he's repeatedly said that he'll keep his views on the recall private.
Rodoni, however, does see more general aspects of the recall that are open to discussion.
He views the election as something more than a political pie fight between the timber industry and environmentalists. Rodoni described it as a "cultural clash" whose roots extend back to the late 1960s, when "societal and world views were changing, and there was exposure to a larger world by young people and a reluctance of the older generation to accept brand new philosophies and ideologies."
Rodoni first used the term "generation gap" but then conceded that there really is no accurate or pat label for the division the county's seeing. "What it gets down to is one side accusing the other of not thinking right - reason and logic take a back seat, and the truth loses."
Is the recall election a sign that the county is changing? "There are claims to that effect, but in my travels, I don't run into that much - I observe the opposite, that there is strong opposition to change."
Rodoni has been portrayed as the political linchpin of the southern region's old guard of ranchers, large and small timber operators and business interests. He does draw lots of support from those quarters, and reports that the recall's perceived impact goes beyond PL.
"By focusing on PL, what some of the opponents of the recall seem to miss is that there are other huge timber companies in the county who are watching this and are nervous," said Rodoni. "And they believe that they may be accused of something even if they're innocent. We've got that angle with the D.A. - in some people's minds, he's got a gunslinger attitude and it's not good for business."
Those considerations are relevant when considering that the county's traditional logging and agricultural economies are on the wane. And Rodoni thinks that accusing PL of "buying" signatures on recall petitions by funding the drive to collect them ignores the presence of genuine dissatisfaction with Gallegos.
Rodoni doubts that anti-PL recall rhetoric will affect the company's credibility. "People are, in a word, jaded," he continued. "People have had enough of it - right, wrong or indifferent, people are tired of it and this kind of stuff is just one of PL's business hazards."
Divisive times
Having been elected on a platform that heavily emphasized consensus-building, Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist is witnessing the recall's frenzied political swordsmanship with disappointment.
She believes that the recall wouldn't be happening if not for PL's hefty funding, but she also thinks both sides have fueled the contest's antagonism. The formation of the AEB was a mistake, Geist said, because it opened the Gallegos campaign to criticism and further provoked PL.
She believes that Gallegos has tossed the concept of impartiality by railing against the company, and "I think some people see that as an abuse of power."
Geist also noted that Gallegos and Stoen have chosen to make the PL suit a public case, going as far as promoting it in meetings with chamber of commerce groups. "One wonders why they're not treating this like any other case," she said. "If they had stuck with an attitude that suggested 'the court will determine the outcome' and gone that track, I truly believe there would not have been a recall."
A concentration on PL and its role in the recall may be relevant, Geist added, but she also noted that aside from responses to "soft on crime" allegations, "there has been nothing new introduced as far as Paul's performance as D.A."
Nor does Geist think the lawsuit is the momentous lever for change that some seem to believe it to be. "I've heard people say that this case could change the way timber harvesting is done, and I disagree. The way to do that is by changing the Forest Practices Act and the way permitting and environmental reviews are done - and that's a fight that takes place in Sacramento."
Division is the recall's most easily observed effect, said Geist, and it isn't helping people understand what's going on. "We're not having two discussions that I think are important - one, what will it take to restore stability to the D.A.'s office; and two, that good government should be boring. If an official does the job well, there is minimal drama and what we're seeing now is lots of drama that's causing divisiveness in the community and we're seeing it come from both sides."
A dangerous year
Gallegos is now infamous for creating various and incessant stirs. His first year is a chronicle of headline-friendly controversies - and they began even before he took office. After the 2002 election win he told a reporter that he'd fire "14 or 15" attorneys if necessary, a comment that created panic in the D.A.'s office and established an immediate sense of mistrust.
Police groups have expressed dissatisfaction with him, and a schism developed between Gallegos and the Board of Supervisors after it rejected his proposal to contract a high-profile outside law firm to aid the PL lawsuit. Much of Gallegos' considerable community support viewed this as an example of established leadership retreating from its responsibilities.
Despite being heavily lobbied otherwise, Geist was one of four supervisors who voted against the contract proposal. She said the decision wasn't difficult to arrive at, as the proposal was in only in draft form. The lawsuit itself was only a sketch at that point - inflammatory references to gross environmental damage had to be removed and the suit was amended.
The original version of the suit alleged that PL's fraud allowed the company "to be able to cut down an estimated 100,000 trees on unstable slopes it could not have otherwise been allowed to do," thus facilitating extra profits. The logging in unstable areas has proceeded, the first version asserted, causing "major landslides and destruction to the streams, bridges, roads and homes of Humboldt County."
An amended suit was portrayed as an "expansion" of content, but it removed those shocking accusations and shifted the focus to whether environmental reviews were adequate. A press release from Gallegos had proclaimed that logging on unstable slopes was no longer an issue, though the alleged fraud is directed at a study assessing timber harvesting on unstable slopes.
But the lawsuit had already become a celebrated or reviled cause, and Geist is concerned that debating it - and having a slugfest with PL in a political arena - is exacting social damages. "I'm reluctant to weigh in with a public position (on the recall) because in this atmosphere, it doesn't contribute to anything - we have looming issues we need to be working on and we need cohesion," she said.
Financial resources are also important, Geist continued, and they're being fed into political furnaces. "A tremendous amount of money and energy has been given to the AEB and (Gallegos' campaign committee)," she said. "Tremendous amounts of financial capital have been poured in, perhaps $250,000 combined, and that's only what's being tracked - the AEB is not a political action committee, so we have no idea of the money it has raised. And I think a number of non-profits are seeing their grant money drying up and going away. I can't help but to think there could have been a more constructive use of money."
Government operations have also been impacted. "There's an overall feeling of great uncertainty and it feels like there's a siege mentality up on the fourth floor (of county headquarters, where the D.A.'s office is located)," said Geist. "The general public will probably never understand the tremendous amount of pressure Paul is under and it's not just him - it radiates through the entire department."
Political fallout
With the election a week away, people are considering post-recall scenarios with concern. Geist noted that the mechanics of many criminal cases have been thrust before the public for judgment, which is a bad precedent.
"Could you imagine being a defendant and wondering whether your case will be tried in public?" she asked. "You begin to wonder how politics might affect charging and sentencing, and that causes me to be very concerned."
Both Rodoni and Geist believe that Worth Dikeman's candidacy could have a pronounced effect on the election's outcome. Rodoni said that Dikeman has a campaign presence in his district that's twice that of his own and was asked if he thought Dikeman, a veteran prosecutor, has increased the recall's chances of success.
"Emphatically - yes," Rodoni responded.
Geist said Dikeman will appeal to people who are shell-shocked by political warfare. "For people who look at this as something other than a Pacific Lumber issue and have concerns about the office itself, (Dikeman) comes in with credibility and stability, and that will be appealing to people who are tired of the drama."
But Geist thinks the most significant changes after election day will be social, not political. "A lot of people will have been divided into camps, and will be physically and emotionally worn out - probably no one more so than Paul and his family."
There is also a category of people that hasn't been talked about much - those who aren't tuned in to the election's bombastic parrying and may not care much. "I am sometimes surprised to run into people who ask me what the recall's all about," Geist related. "There are some people who aren't even paying attention to this - and it's almost refreshing."
Evaluating the D.A. recall
Activist, attorney, officials offer varying and surprising views
By Daniel Mintz
Press Staff Writer
"There will be political consequences - I know that."
Spoken by District Attorney Paul Gallegos just after he filed the fraud lawsuit that would jump-start a recall election, the quote could be generally applied to the whole of his first year in power.
Gallegos has commandeered the county's attention in a scant 14 months of helming the D.A.'s office and has been alternately described as a beacon of democracy and a misguided bumbler. Perhaps more than anything else in the county's recent history, Gallegos' emergence as D.A. and the drive to remove him has fired up political divisions that preceded him by many years.
The dynamics of bitterly combative elections aren't put in place in as short a time as Gallegos has been district attorney. Heavy campaigning now dominates public attention but there are important and talked-about aspects of the recall that aren't reflected in the steadily intensifying election gamesmanship.
And the recall's impacts may not be as obvious or as linear as the polarized campaigns make them seem.
The recall and environmental activism
The fraud lawsuit against Pacific Lumber Company (PL) is a looming presence, and though its focus has shifted from environmental damage to alleged financial gain, it has mobilized the county's environmental movement in support of Gallegos.
Having a PL nemesis as D.A. would have been an activist's fantasy not long ago, and Gallegos is drawing the impassioned support of many environmentalists - as he did in 2002, when he successfully ran for office against longtime former D.A. Terry Farmer.
But some have doubts. "The environmental community at large did not pick this fight," said veteran Earth First!er Darryl Cherney on the lawsuit and the ensuing power struggle. "There was nothing approaching consensus from any contingent of the environmental movement that this was a battle we wished to fight."
Cherney has watched the recall's procession of events with concern. A key organizer during the historic years that preceded the 1999 Headwaters Deal, Cherney believes that the movement's been drawn into a political brawl that threatens its progress regardless of outcome.
"The nanosecond this suit was announced, I knew the D.A. would face a recall and I think the D.A. knew it too," Cherney continued. "But what the D.A. didn't think through was the stress it would put on his supporters."
Resistance to the influence and logging practices of PL has been an effort - and for some, an obsession - that has been ongoing ever since the mid-1980s, when the Houston, Texas-based megacorporation Maxxam took the company over. But Cherney thinks the lawsuit and the recall mark a dangerous turn.
"Nobody can accuse me of being 'soft on Maxxam,' but in all the years I've taken them on and in all the incredibly adventurous battles we've waged against them, we took risks but we didn't gamble and I think that's the difference here - the risks we took were calculated and this gamble has not been calculated by the D.A."
Cherney wonders if Gallegos and Assistant D.A. Tim Stoen, who was hired by Gallegos and is the suit's lead prosecutor, have blown away an unusual opportunity for progressive gain.
"Neither he nor Stoen took into account that their supporters would have to mount months of stressful campaigning and raise tens of thousands of dollars to fight off Maxxam in what could be a losing battle," Cherney said.
Bad moves?
Cherney's educated guess is that the D.A. will indeed be recalled, and he said he "sees it all as being unnecessary." Gallegos made a drastic mistake almost as soon as he took office, Cherney continued.
He's been familiar with Stoen's work in Mendocino County since 1989, he said, adding that Gallegos' enlistment of Stoen as second in command began a series of blunders. Stoen's personally disastrous association with People's Temple demagogue Jim Jones is an obvious reason why hiring him was a bad move, Cherney continued, but there are other factors.
"It's not that Tim Stoen was fooled by Jim Jones - what disturbs me is that he hasn't seemed to have learned anything from his experience."
Cherney suggested that Stoen, who plunged into preparation of the lawsuit and focused on it almost exclusively during his first eight weeks on the job, again allowed himself to be duped.
"And if we lose the D.A.'s race, we will have experienced an environmental Jonestown here, in Humboldt County, led by Tim Stoen," Cherney said.
He was asked what will be lost if Gallegos is ousted. "Let me reverse that, because Gallegos has presented us with a lose/lose situation. Even if we win the recall, we will have still spent all of our environmental and political capital - and Gallegos will have to start campaigning for re-election in two years, and we will be fighting this battle all over again."
If the recall succeeds, Cherney added, "the loss is even deeper because we'll have been dragged into a battlefield for which we are unprepared, and potentially led to slaughter."
Cherney may not be be winning favor with his forthright commentary (he says his associates come down on him "like a ton of bricks" when he shares his thoughts) and he said his conclusions are painfully realized.
"But I think the liberal left environmental community of Humboldt County is in denial - we're blaming PL for this battle we're in, but a true warrior doesn't whine about the strength of his or her adversary, and we're getting a lot of that from Gallegos supporters."
The formation of the Alliance for Ethical Business (AEB, a non-profit group founded by Richard Salzman, Gallegos' campaign manager) was another error, Cherney continued.
The AEB sprang forth at the same time recall fervor appeared to, and its expressed purpose has been to support the lawsuit. Cherney attended an AEB benefit in Southern Humboldt and said that it misrepresented the group's intent - the event looked and sounded like one to support Paul Gallegos, he continued, and he isn't sure that people completely realized what they were aiding was a private organization.
A better move would have been to have formed a political campaign to encourage people not to sign recall petitions, said Cherney, who characterized the creation of the AEB as a "disastrous mistake in judgment."
The Gallegos campaign's incessant targeting of PL is another strategy that will backfire, Cherney believes. He thinks that the apparent victory of forcing the recall committee to mention PL in its ads due to the company's heavy funding will actually draw more votes for the recall.
Cherney questioned the value of highlighting PL funding instead of explaining why Gallegos has what it takes to be a good D.A. "For one thing, everybody knows PL has put money into this," he continued. "Two, nobody cares and three, all the people who do care have already made up their minds."
Gallegos had made some puzzling decisions, Cherney believes, and he cited the D.A.'s dramatic rollback of his medical marijuana limits as "a textbook case of political spinelessness" that has only served to disappoint an important element of his support base.
"The moral is that running somebody for office who has progressive politics is not enough," Cherney continued. He stressed that candidates have to be chosen carefully and be evaluated on a basis that includes consideration of administrative and leadership skills.
"I'll tell you this," he concluded. "It's so critical that we learn our lessons. People always say 'PL's a villain' and if we always blame Maxxam for every loss we suffer, we are never going to learn how to play this game better."
Takeover's lingering aftermath
As an attorney, Bill Bertain has been in the game for over 18 years. He launched legal actions to block Maxxam's takeover of PL and has helped gain settlements for residents of Stafford and other areas said to be impacted by PL's logging. And he portrays Maxxam as the recall's knob-twister.
Bertain views the recall as an extension of Maxxam's involvement in the county since the mid-'80s. "One can't understand what's going on now until one understands what happened then," he said. "What we have seen is an ongoing pattern of deceit."
The ultimate expression of that, in Bertain's view, is PL's heavy funding of the recall and the company's simultaneous assertion that the election is largely about safety issues. And to Bertain, the political actions of the company are directly linked to Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz.
"He is again attempting, with much more energy and viciousness, to influence many fine people into misplacing their loyalties," Bertain continued. "And he's using the recall as a means of doing it, through funding and by having his people direct it."
Bertain characterizes the Maxxam takeover as "an invasion of the county" that was achieved through fraud. It's a situation that's continuing and hitting a peak, Bertain added, with tragic effects.
"Hurwitz has distorted many aspects of life in Humboldt County - political, social and environmental - and it's a sad, sad story. He's caused a lot of dissension and divisiveness. And now that he has somebody going against him, he's playing off it again."
Asked if the recall also represents a cultural divide, Bertain said it may to some degree. "But then again, I'm Catholic, pro-life and a Republican - and my family has been here since 1882."
Bertain was born in the PL-owned lumber town of Scotia, and grew up there and in Rio Dell. His family operated the Bertain's Laundry and Dry Cleaning business in Scotia from 1920 to 1992 and "it breaks my heart to see what Hurwitz has done to the company."
The lawsuit and the recall can't be convincingly separated, Bertain continued. "The stakes must be pretty high for PL, considering the amount of money they've put in and that they're resorting to political tactics that have never been seen before in Humboldt County."
The recall has "saddened a number of people and confused a lot of people," said Bertain.
They may not understand the lawsuit's relevance, he continued, because PL has paid for an advertising blitz that may be succeeding in obscuring it. But he also believes that Gallegos is highly respected by many. "Some people who don't have the courage that Paul has might have shied away from such a battle because of the wealth of the defendant. But I admire him for taking up the challenge and I think a lot of other people do, too."
Is the election a "referendum on PL," as some have suggested? "I think PL pretty much made it that by funding the recall," Bertain responded.
And he looks at the recall as an important moment in county history.
"I think PL helped get the recall going and has obviously put money into it - and so brought it to this state of controversy and divisiveness. It's part of the ongoing saga brought to us by Hurwitz and I look at this in many ways as a defining issue for people here in Humboldt County."
The pro-recall campaign rhetoric is "playing off people's prejudices," Bertain continued, and pitting longtime residents against more recent ones, conservatives against hippies, and so forth. "Hurwitz is clever and he's hired clever people to take advantage of people's fears."
Cultural collisions
Elected officials have mostly avoided recall commentary, as the contest is too hotly waged to dive into. Second District Supervisor Roger Rodoni is running for re-election and when pressured to reveal his stance during debates, he's repeatedly said that he'll keep his views on the recall private.
Rodoni, however, does see more general aspects of the recall that are open to discussion.
He views the election as something more than a political pie fight between the timber industry and environmentalists. Rodoni described it as a "cultural clash" whose roots extend back to the late 1960s, when "societal and world views were changing, and there was exposure to a larger world by young people and a reluctance of the older generation to accept brand new philosophies and ideologies."
Rodoni first used the term "generation gap" but then conceded that there really is no accurate or pat label for the division the county's seeing. "What it gets down to is one side accusing the other of not thinking right - reason and logic take a back seat, and the truth loses."
Is the recall election a sign that the county is changing? "There are claims to that effect, but in my travels, I don't run into that much - I observe the opposite, that there is strong opposition to change."
Rodoni has been portrayed as the political linchpin of the southern region's old guard of ranchers, large and small timber operators and business interests. He does draw lots of support from those quarters, and reports that the recall's perceived impact goes beyond PL.
"By focusing on PL, what some of the opponents of the recall seem to miss is that there are other huge timber companies in the county who are watching this and are nervous," said Rodoni. "And they believe that they may be accused of something even if they're innocent. We've got that angle with the D.A. - in some people's minds, he's got a gunslinger attitude and it's not good for business."
Those considerations are relevant when considering that the county's traditional logging and agricultural economies are on the wane. And Rodoni thinks that accusing PL of "buying" signatures on recall petitions by funding the drive to collect them ignores the presence of genuine dissatisfaction with Gallegos.
Rodoni doubts that anti-PL recall rhetoric will affect the company's credibility. "People are, in a word, jaded," he continued. "People have had enough of it - right, wrong or indifferent, people are tired of it and this kind of stuff is just one of PL's business hazards."
Divisive times
Having been elected on a platform that heavily emphasized consensus-building, Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist is witnessing the recall's frenzied political swordsmanship with disappointment.
She believes that the recall wouldn't be happening if not for PL's hefty funding, but she also thinks both sides have fueled the contest's antagonism. The formation of the AEB was a mistake, Geist said, because it opened the Gallegos campaign to criticism and further provoked PL.
She believes that Gallegos has tossed the concept of impartiality by railing against the company, and "I think some people see that as an abuse of power."
Geist also noted that Gallegos and Stoen have chosen to make the PL suit a public case, going as far as promoting it in meetings with chamber of commerce groups. "One wonders why they're not treating this like any other case," she said. "If they had stuck with an attitude that suggested 'the court will determine the outcome' and gone that track, I truly believe there would not have been a recall."
A concentration on PL and its role in the recall may be relevant, Geist added, but she also noted that aside from responses to "soft on crime" allegations, "there has been nothing new introduced as far as Paul's performance as D.A."
Nor does Geist think the lawsuit is the momentous lever for change that some seem to believe it to be. "I've heard people say that this case could change the way timber harvesting is done, and I disagree. The way to do that is by changing the Forest Practices Act and the way permitting and environmental reviews are done - and that's a fight that takes place in Sacramento."
Division is the recall's most easily observed effect, said Geist, and it isn't helping people understand what's going on. "We're not having two discussions that I think are important - one, what will it take to restore stability to the D.A.'s office; and two, that good government should be boring. If an official does the job well, there is minimal drama and what we're seeing now is lots of drama that's causing divisiveness in the community and we're seeing it come from both sides."
A dangerous year
Gallegos is now infamous for creating various and incessant stirs. His first year is a chronicle of headline-friendly controversies - and they began even before he took office. After the 2002 election win he told a reporter that he'd fire "14 or 15" attorneys if necessary, a comment that created panic in the D.A.'s office and established an immediate sense of mistrust.
Police groups have expressed dissatisfaction with him, and a schism developed between Gallegos and the Board of Supervisors after it rejected his proposal to contract a high-profile outside law firm to aid the PL lawsuit. Much of Gallegos' considerable community support viewed this as an example of established leadership retreating from its responsibilities.
Despite being heavily lobbied otherwise, Geist was one of four supervisors who voted against the contract proposal. She said the decision wasn't difficult to arrive at, as the proposal was in only in draft form. The lawsuit itself was only a sketch at that point - inflammatory references to gross environmental damage had to be removed and the suit was amended.
The original version of the suit alleged that PL's fraud allowed the company "to be able to cut down an estimated 100,000 trees on unstable slopes it could not have otherwise been allowed to do," thus facilitating extra profits. The logging in unstable areas has proceeded, the first version asserted, causing "major landslides and destruction to the streams, bridges, roads and homes of Humboldt County."
An amended suit was portrayed as an "expansion" of content, but it removed those shocking accusations and shifted the focus to whether environmental reviews were adequate. A press release from Gallegos had proclaimed that logging on unstable slopes was no longer an issue, though the alleged fraud is directed at a study assessing timber harvesting on unstable slopes.
But the lawsuit had already become a celebrated or reviled cause, and Geist is concerned that debating it - and having a slugfest with PL in a political arena - is exacting social damages. "I'm reluctant to weigh in with a public position (on the recall) because in this atmosphere, it doesn't contribute to anything - we have looming issues we need to be working on and we need cohesion," she said.
Financial resources are also important, Geist continued, and they're being fed into political furnaces. "A tremendous amount of money and energy has been given to the AEB and (Gallegos' campaign committee)," she said. "Tremendous amounts of financial capital have been poured in, perhaps $250,000 combined, and that's only what's being tracked - the AEB is not a political action committee, so we have no idea of the money it has raised. And I think a number of non-profits are seeing their grant money drying up and going away. I can't help but to think there could have been a more constructive use of money."
Government operations have also been impacted. "There's an overall feeling of great uncertainty and it feels like there's a siege mentality up on the fourth floor (of county headquarters, where the D.A.'s office is located)," said Geist. "The general public will probably never understand the tremendous amount of pressure Paul is under and it's not just him - it radiates through the entire department."
Political fallout
With the election a week away, people are considering post-recall scenarios with concern. Geist noted that the mechanics of many criminal cases have been thrust before the public for judgment, which is a bad precedent.
"Could you imagine being a defendant and wondering whether your case will be tried in public?" she asked. "You begin to wonder how politics might affect charging and sentencing, and that causes me to be very concerned."
Both Rodoni and Geist believe that Worth Dikeman's candidacy could have a pronounced effect on the election's outcome. Rodoni said that Dikeman has a campaign presence in his district that's twice that of his own and was asked if he thought Dikeman, a veteran prosecutor, has increased the recall's chances of success.
"Emphatically - yes," Rodoni responded.
Geist said Dikeman will appeal to people who are shell-shocked by political warfare. "For people who look at this as something other than a Pacific Lumber issue and have concerns about the office itself, (Dikeman) comes in with credibility and stability, and that will be appealing to people who are tired of the drama."
But Geist thinks the most significant changes after election day will be social, not political. "A lot of people will have been divided into camps, and will be physically and emotionally worn out - probably no one more so than Paul and his family."
There is also a category of people that hasn't been talked about much - those who aren't tuned in to the election's bombastic parrying and may not care much. "I am sometimes surprised to run into people who ask me what the recall's all about," Geist related. "There are some people who aren't even paying attention to this - and it's almost refreshing."
10.02.2007
Where are the Greens? The Dems?
See, Shunka, they don't care about you. Right now you are not useful. If you were they would use you. But the tree-sitters have outlived their usefulness. There's bigger money in the new, more litigious models, like "Baykeeper." Those of you with the high ideals were willing and useful tools to be discarded once they have been played out. It's kind of disgusting, and kind of sad. If they did care, the five grand would be nothing. Just look at what they must be spending on hte "Baykeeper" office in Old Town. They bought him a brand new Boston Whaler so he could take KPIX reporters out on "tours" of the bay. A nice new office, banks of computers, you think? New weapons. Leaving you in the dust.
***
Hello friends!
This is one of those times when we could really use your help!
I've been doing everything I can to keep the North Coast Earth First! Media office up and running, tabling every day possible, and I'm getting really exhausted trying to make ends meet.
Please, if you want to see the North Coast Earth First! office continue to exist, send some support now.
Where are the Greens? The Dems?
Operating this office for a full year could be done for $5,000.
I know that this is a small amount for many organizations, and, seriously, I've been thinking of shutting this office down if some serious support doesn't come through soon.
Other organizations operate on budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars; we could do our thing here on five thousand, yet we're lucky to get pocket change.
We're not a 501(c)3, so we don't qualify for most of the grants offered by mainstream organizations, so PLEASE, if you can help, I'm nearing the end of my rope on this project.
Seriously, folks, if you want to see the North Coast Earth First! movement continue to have an office to work and organize out of, we need some real support. I know that times are tough for most of us, yet I also know that the funds are out there, floating around from hand to hand, and that we could do SO MUCH with SO LITTLE.
$5,000 for an annual budget is very humble, I believe, and few people would be willing to work for an entire year for such a pittance, yet I am willing to maintain this office, WITH NO PAY, as long as the basic costs are covered.
PLEASE, folks, pull on whatever strings you have...I had to put in $50 of my own hard-earned money, just today, to cover some NCEF! Media bills, which leaves me with about $20 to live on. So now the EF! account has about $4, and I have about $20, and I feel like I'm drowning in this project, so please do whatever you can to help, before I decide to throw in the towel.
NCEF! Media needs a liferaft, and I need a break from non-stop tabling!
You can go to our website to make an online donation via PayPal, at
http://www.northcoa stearthfirst. org/NCEFdonation s.htm
or you can send 'em via snail mail to:
NCEF! Media
920 Samoa Blvd., Ste. #221
Arcata, CA 95521
Thanks for your interest in North Coast Earth First!
The tree-sits are still ongoing, and we're doing everything we can to support and promote them, which is why the NCEF! Media office exists.
Nobody gets paid, it's 100% volunteer, which means that 100% of your donation goes directly to supporting direct action, which includes keeping this office going as a support and media center. Please help if you can!
Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan
North Coast Earth First! & NCEF! Media
***
Hello friends!
This is one of those times when we could really use your help!
I've been doing everything I can to keep the North Coast Earth First! Media office up and running, tabling every day possible, and I'm getting really exhausted trying to make ends meet.
Please, if you want to see the North Coast Earth First! office continue to exist, send some support now.
Where are the Greens? The Dems?
Operating this office for a full year could be done for $5,000.
I know that this is a small amount for many organizations, and, seriously, I've been thinking of shutting this office down if some serious support doesn't come through soon.
Other organizations operate on budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars; we could do our thing here on five thousand, yet we're lucky to get pocket change.
We're not a 501(c)3, so we don't qualify for most of the grants offered by mainstream organizations, so PLEASE, if you can help, I'm nearing the end of my rope on this project.
Seriously, folks, if you want to see the North Coast Earth First! movement continue to have an office to work and organize out of, we need some real support. I know that times are tough for most of us, yet I also know that the funds are out there, floating around from hand to hand, and that we could do SO MUCH with SO LITTLE.
$5,000 for an annual budget is very humble, I believe, and few people would be willing to work for an entire year for such a pittance, yet I am willing to maintain this office, WITH NO PAY, as long as the basic costs are covered.
PLEASE, folks, pull on whatever strings you have...I had to put in $50 of my own hard-earned money, just today, to cover some NCEF! Media bills, which leaves me with about $20 to live on. So now the EF! account has about $4, and I have about $20, and I feel like I'm drowning in this project, so please do whatever you can to help, before I decide to throw in the towel.
NCEF! Media needs a liferaft, and I need a break from non-stop tabling!
You can go to our website to make an online donation via PayPal, at
http://www.northcoa stearthfirst. org/NCEFdonation s.htm
or you can send 'em via snail mail to:
NCEF! Media
920 Samoa Blvd., Ste. #221
Arcata, CA 95521
Thanks for your interest in North Coast Earth First!
The tree-sits are still ongoing, and we're doing everything we can to support and promote them, which is why the NCEF! Media office exists.
Nobody gets paid, it's 100% volunteer, which means that 100% of your donation goes directly to supporting direct action, which includes keeping this office going as a support and media center. Please help if you can!
Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan
North Coast Earth First! & NCEF! Media
9.22.2007
Earth Firsters need socks! hahahahahahaha
Guys. Get jobs. Buy your own socks.
North Coast Earth First! September 2007 Update
North Coast Earth First! No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!
September 2007
in this issue
:: Nanning Creek
:: Fern Gully
:: NCEF! teach-in for Americorp youth group
:: North Coast Earth First! Media
Hello Friends!
September 15th marks the end of marbled murrellet nesting season, which also
means the beginning of Old Growth Redwood logging season. The marbled
murrellet is a small, endangered seabird, which needs the Old Growth
Redwoods to complete its nesting cycle. As September 15th approaches,
activists prepare for potential attacks on Old Growth Redwood groves....
Nanning Creek
Raids and arrests signify potential attack
Near the beginning of this month, activists from the Nanning Creek/Spooner
affinity group discovered that Pacific Lumber Co. had hired their extraction
climbers to remove platforms and gear from the tree-village. Two people were
cited and released, after being detained by Pacific Lumber Co. management,
in the first few days of September. Activists are bracing for a potential
attack on the tree-sits, and logging in the area, once the end of marbled
murrelet season has passed, on September 15th. Some long-time activists say
that the "Spooner" tree is the largest Redwood they have ever seen, some 298
feet tall and 14 feet in diameter at breast hieght (d.b.h.). Your help is
needed to save Spooner and the grove surrounding this magificent Old Growth
Redwood tree.
Spooner Tree-Sit Raided
NCEF! teach-in for Americorp youth group
Tour of Pacific Lumber mill reveals interesting comments
On August 5th, 2007, NCEF! activist and organizer Shunka Wakan did an
hour-long presentation to a group of 23 eleventh-graders from Maine, who
were taking part in an Americorps Vista Trekkers program. The talk was
well-received by the students, followed by a question and answer session at
the end, and a howling picture to memorialize the event. The next day, the
students toured the Pacific Lumber Co., during which time they were told
that PL had decided to stop logging Old Growth! The Americorps director e-
mailed a question regarding the comments back to NCEF!, saying that, "The
man they spoke with said PALCO had decided not to cut down any old growth
trees. He later said that they would cut down 100 year old trees but not
500-1000 year old trees." NCEF! activist Shunka Wakan began calling Pacific
Lumber Co. to answer the students' question, yet was unable to speak with
anyone directly, and PL has refused to return his calls. These facts have
been forwarded to some local media outlets, and we hope to get a public
response from Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Co. soon. Either Maxxam/PL has decided
to stop logging Old Growth and didn't bother to make a public announcement
about it, or we've caught them lying to the youth! We'll keep you posted....
North Coast Earth First! Website
Fern Gully
Freshwater tree-sits persist
Standing above Garfield Elementary school, in the community of Freshwater,
the Fern Gully grove contains several Old Growth Redwood trees, threatened
by the greed of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Co. Activists have been occupying Fern
Gully for almost four years now, and it looks like the non-violent civil
disobedience campaign will be ongoing for another year, now that Maxxam/PL
has extended the timber harvest plan for yet another year beyond its normal
three-year duration. Many people feel that this grove should be protected,
not only for the trees themselves and the wildlife which depend on it for
their livelihood, yet also for the generations of children who will be
cycling through Garfield Elementary School for many years to come. Should
the children have the rare opportunity to see an Old Growth Redwood grove
every day at school, or be forced to look at yet another Maxxam/PL clearcut?
Action is needed to permanently save this grove, for its intrinsic value and
for the youngsters!
Fern Gully Website
North Coast Earth First! Media
Earth First! media center needs your help!
The NCEF! Media center is a vital resource to forest activists in northern
Humboldt County, yet we're struggling to stay afloat. A series of postings
have been recently published on Tribe.net, calling out for substantial
support to keep the NCEF! Media office going. For $5,000, we could pay the
rent and phone/DSL for a full year, with a couple hundred left over for
miscellaneous expenses. We know that $5,000 is a lot of money to most of us,
yet there are many people to whom this is not an extraordinary amount, and
so we are appealing to everyone who might have, or know someone who has,
that kind of support to spare. For those of us who are on the ultimate
shoestring budget, there's still the $10-a- month support plan, which you
can sign up for on our website and have $10 monthly donations automatically
made via PayPal. We'd love to find a year's worth of support, so that we
don't have to bother people with fundraising all the time, yet we're willing
to do what needs to be done to keep this support center open and
functioning. Please help if you can! Earth First!
North Coast Earth First! Donations Page
The tree-sitters have requested rain gear, which includes wool sweaters and
socks!
Donations can be sent to the following address:
NCEF! Media
920 Samoa Blvd., Suite #221
Arcata, CA 95521
Thanx so much for your interest in and support of North Coast Earth First!
and non-violent civil disobedience and direct action campaigns worldwide!
Earth First!
Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan
North Coast Earth First! September 2007 Update
North Coast Earth First! No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!
September 2007
in this issue
:: Nanning Creek
:: Fern Gully
:: NCEF! teach-in for Americorp youth group
:: North Coast Earth First! Media
Hello Friends!
September 15th marks the end of marbled murrellet nesting season, which also
means the beginning of Old Growth Redwood logging season. The marbled
murrellet is a small, endangered seabird, which needs the Old Growth
Redwoods to complete its nesting cycle. As September 15th approaches,
activists prepare for potential attacks on Old Growth Redwood groves....
Nanning Creek
Raids and arrests signify potential attack
Near the beginning of this month, activists from the Nanning Creek/Spooner
affinity group discovered that Pacific Lumber Co. had hired their extraction
climbers to remove platforms and gear from the tree-village. Two people were
cited and released, after being detained by Pacific Lumber Co. management,
in the first few days of September. Activists are bracing for a potential
attack on the tree-sits, and logging in the area, once the end of marbled
murrelet season has passed, on September 15th. Some long-time activists say
that the "Spooner" tree is the largest Redwood they have ever seen, some 298
feet tall and 14 feet in diameter at breast hieght (d.b.h.). Your help is
needed to save Spooner and the grove surrounding this magificent Old Growth
Redwood tree.
Spooner Tree-Sit Raided
NCEF! teach-in for Americorp youth group
Tour of Pacific Lumber mill reveals interesting comments
On August 5th, 2007, NCEF! activist and organizer Shunka Wakan did an
hour-long presentation to a group of 23 eleventh-graders from Maine, who
were taking part in an Americorps Vista Trekkers program. The talk was
well-received by the students, followed by a question and answer session at
the end, and a howling picture to memorialize the event. The next day, the
students toured the Pacific Lumber Co., during which time they were told
that PL had decided to stop logging Old Growth! The Americorps director e-
mailed a question regarding the comments back to NCEF!, saying that, "The
man they spoke with said PALCO had decided not to cut down any old growth
trees. He later said that they would cut down 100 year old trees but not
500-1000 year old trees." NCEF! activist Shunka Wakan began calling Pacific
Lumber Co. to answer the students' question, yet was unable to speak with
anyone directly, and PL has refused to return his calls. These facts have
been forwarded to some local media outlets, and we hope to get a public
response from Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Co. soon. Either Maxxam/PL has decided
to stop logging Old Growth and didn't bother to make a public announcement
about it, or we've caught them lying to the youth! We'll keep you posted....
North Coast Earth First! Website
Fern Gully
Freshwater tree-sits persist
Standing above Garfield Elementary school, in the community of Freshwater,
the Fern Gully grove contains several Old Growth Redwood trees, threatened
by the greed of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Co. Activists have been occupying Fern
Gully for almost four years now, and it looks like the non-violent civil
disobedience campaign will be ongoing for another year, now that Maxxam/PL
has extended the timber harvest plan for yet another year beyond its normal
three-year duration. Many people feel that this grove should be protected,
not only for the trees themselves and the wildlife which depend on it for
their livelihood, yet also for the generations of children who will be
cycling through Garfield Elementary School for many years to come. Should
the children have the rare opportunity to see an Old Growth Redwood grove
every day at school, or be forced to look at yet another Maxxam/PL clearcut?
Action is needed to permanently save this grove, for its intrinsic value and
for the youngsters!
Fern Gully Website
North Coast Earth First! Media
Earth First! media center needs your help!
The NCEF! Media center is a vital resource to forest activists in northern
Humboldt County, yet we're struggling to stay afloat. A series of postings
have been recently published on Tribe.net, calling out for substantial
support to keep the NCEF! Media office going. For $5,000, we could pay the
rent and phone/DSL for a full year, with a couple hundred left over for
miscellaneous expenses. We know that $5,000 is a lot of money to most of us,
yet there are many people to whom this is not an extraordinary amount, and
so we are appealing to everyone who might have, or know someone who has,
that kind of support to spare. For those of us who are on the ultimate
shoestring budget, there's still the $10-a- month support plan, which you
can sign up for on our website and have $10 monthly donations automatically
made via PayPal. We'd love to find a year's worth of support, so that we
don't have to bother people with fundraising all the time, yet we're willing
to do what needs to be done to keep this support center open and
functioning. Please help if you can! Earth First!
North Coast Earth First! Donations Page
The tree-sitters have requested rain gear, which includes wool sweaters and
socks!
Donations can be sent to the following address:
NCEF! Media
920 Samoa Blvd., Suite #221
Arcata, CA 95521
Thanx so much for your interest in and support of North Coast Earth First!
and non-violent civil disobedience and direct action campaigns worldwide!
Earth First!
Forever Wild,
Shunka Wakan
5.01.2007
Two more suits - it never ends
March 14, 1999
MacGuffin Communications
366 California Ave. #7
Palo Alto, CA 94306
>
Contact: Adam Miller 650-851-1147
Michael Evenson 707-629-3679
For Immediate Release:
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
Judge Blasts Department of Forestry for Abuse of Discretion
Following close on the heels of the government's acquisition of the
Headwaters Forest from the Pacific Lumber Company, a Humboldt County
Superior Court Judge ordered the California Department of Forestry (CDF)
to rescind approval of two Pacific Lumber Company timber harvest plans
in Northern California.
On March 9, Judge W. Bruce Watson ruled that CDF's approval of plans to
clearcut nearly 200 acres of old growth Douglas-fir above Sulphur Creek
in the Mattole River watershed, violate state law. Watson wrote in his
decision "CDF's failure to meaningfully analyze, evaluate, consider, and
use the comments, opinions and recommendations of other public agencies,
experts within their fields, as the law requires is prejudicial abuse of
discretion..."
Serving as his own attorney, Michael Evenson, 53, filed the two lawsuits
in the summer of 1998. Evenson is a rancher who lives at the mouth of
the Mattole River near Petrolia, California (population 100), the
westernmost point in the continental United States.
"It's like David and Goliath," said Bob Martel of the Humboldt Watershed
Council. "A lone citizen, without a lawyer, prevailed in court against
an opponent as menacing as Pacific Lumber's owner, Charles Hurwitz, with
his legendary platoon of lawyers. These THPs would have affected the
entire community downstream. Homes and productive farmland would have
been washed away. This is a victory for everyone."
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our
property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was
arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific
Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see
what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These
landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon
can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our
homes."
The Mattole Valley is in the most seismically active terrain in the
country. The exceedingly steep slopes, highly erosive soils, and
rainfall of up to 200 inches make sustainable logging by clearcut
impossible.
In his 18 page ruling, Judge Watson also said the cumulative impacts
assessment in the THPs as approved by CDF appear inadequate. "Both
[THPs] encompass a large portion of a small watershed that has been
seriously degraded, most likely due to cumulative adverse impacts caused
by a variety of land use practices [logging]," wrote Judge Watson.
This information has been known to CDF since at least 1990..." His
ruling confirms CDF does not have the expertise to make biological
decisions, and Watson's decision will likely affect approval of other
timber harvest plans in areas where the risk of landslides is a concern.
The agencies were unanimous in their determinations that the area is
extremely unstable, and that logging on slopes as steep as 80% increased
the likelihood of landslides that would, in turn threaten the dwindling
populations of the endangered coho salmon. Watson cited the objections
raised by state Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries
Service, North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Environmental
Protection Agency and US Geological Survey.
Watson wrote "CDF is mandated by law to consider the concerns expressed,
and address those concerns, by either finding they are without
foundation, which appears unlikely given the record, or account for
concerns, which accounting is supported by the record. In [these THPs]
CDF did neither, that failure is an abuse of discretion."
Attorneys for both CDF and for Pacific Lumber claimed that the Habitat
Conservation Plan accepted as a condition of the Headwaters acquisition,
would provide adequate protection for Sulphur Creek, and that it
included higher standards of protection than existing state law
requires.
Judge Watson did not agree. He wrote: "Irrespective of the [HCP]
agreement, however, given the substantial concerns expressed by the
other agencies, CDF would have been remiss in approving [the THPs] in
any event."
Judge Watson ruled in favor of Evenson on all counts, and awarded court
costs.
"After a decade of liquidation logging, Pacific Lumber doesn't have any
old growth forest left to cut that doesn't endanger species and
downstream residents." said Evenson. "There's nothing to cut but the
steepest, most landslide-prone slopes."
"CDF can no longer rubber stamp THPs, disregarding the concerns of the
regulatory agencies." Bob Martel explained. "They should defer to the
determinations of wildlife agencies charged with the protection of
public trust values."
"This decision isn't just a victory for salmon and neighbors." said
Evenson. "It's also a victory for Pacific Lumber employees who's very
future is jeopardized by unsustainable logging practices. Every
hillside they've logged surrounding these THPs is riddled with
landslides. Trees don't grow on landslides. Judge Watson reminded us
that the law has the future of timber workers in mind."
"You can't have sustainable timber jobs without practicing sustainable
forestry." said Evenson.
Earth First! Media Center
Andy Caffrey, director
efmc@asis.com
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/9901/
We have so much more to do! We are working so hard to get the word out to
the world via the Internet on these crucial and cutting-edge campaigns
against these outrageous atrocities! Our postings about David Chain's
killing have now gone out to over a million people on five continents and
been translated into French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
_____________________________________
WE NEED YOUR HELP RIGHT NOW
We have just gone through a tormenting last five months and are flat broke
with broken down gear, scant supplies, and late bills to cover. We are in
need of certain supplies as well, such as Epson 740 ink cartridges, zip
disks, videotape, postage, and subscriptions to periodicals, if we are to
continue on after March.
Please send contributions to further our work in support of the above and
dozens of other EF! campaigns, payable to "Earth First!," to
Earth First! Media Center
MacGuffin Communications
366 California Ave. #7
Palo Alto, CA 94306
>
Contact: Adam Miller 650-851-1147
Michael Evenson 707-629-3679
For Immediate Release:
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
Judge Blasts Department of Forestry for Abuse of Discretion
Following close on the heels of the government's acquisition of the
Headwaters Forest from the Pacific Lumber Company, a Humboldt County
Superior Court Judge ordered the California Department of Forestry (CDF)
to rescind approval of two Pacific Lumber Company timber harvest plans
in Northern California.
On March 9, Judge W. Bruce Watson ruled that CDF's approval of plans to
clearcut nearly 200 acres of old growth Douglas-fir above Sulphur Creek
in the Mattole River watershed, violate state law. Watson wrote in his
decision "CDF's failure to meaningfully analyze, evaluate, consider, and
use the comments, opinions and recommendations of other public agencies,
experts within their fields, as the law requires is prejudicial abuse of
discretion..."
Serving as his own attorney, Michael Evenson, 53, filed the two lawsuits
in the summer of 1998. Evenson is a rancher who lives at the mouth of
the Mattole River near Petrolia, California (population 100), the
westernmost point in the continental United States.
"It's like David and Goliath," said Bob Martel of the Humboldt Watershed
Council. "A lone citizen, without a lawyer, prevailed in court against
an opponent as menacing as Pacific Lumber's owner, Charles Hurwitz, with
his legendary platoon of lawyers. These THPs would have affected the
entire community downstream. Homes and productive farmland would have
been washed away. This is a victory for everyone."
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our
property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was
arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific
Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see
what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These
landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon
can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our
homes."
The Mattole Valley is in the most seismically active terrain in the
country. The exceedingly steep slopes, highly erosive soils, and
rainfall of up to 200 inches make sustainable logging by clearcut
impossible.
In his 18 page ruling, Judge Watson also said the cumulative impacts
assessment in the THPs as approved by CDF appear inadequate. "Both
[THPs] encompass a large portion of a small watershed that has been
seriously degraded, most likely due to cumulative adverse impacts caused
by a variety of land use practices [logging]," wrote Judge Watson.
This information has been known to CDF since at least 1990..." His
ruling confirms CDF does not have the expertise to make biological
decisions, and Watson's decision will likely affect approval of other
timber harvest plans in areas where the risk of landslides is a concern.
The agencies were unanimous in their determinations that the area is
extremely unstable, and that logging on slopes as steep as 80% increased
the likelihood of landslides that would, in turn threaten the dwindling
populations of the endangered coho salmon. Watson cited the objections
raised by state Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries
Service, North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Environmental
Protection Agency and US Geological Survey.
Watson wrote "CDF is mandated by law to consider the concerns expressed,
and address those concerns, by either finding they are without
foundation, which appears unlikely given the record, or account for
concerns, which accounting is supported by the record. In [these THPs]
CDF did neither, that failure is an abuse of discretion."
Attorneys for both CDF and for Pacific Lumber claimed that the Habitat
Conservation Plan accepted as a condition of the Headwaters acquisition,
would provide adequate protection for Sulphur Creek, and that it
included higher standards of protection than existing state law
requires.
Judge Watson did not agree. He wrote: "Irrespective of the [HCP]
agreement, however, given the substantial concerns expressed by the
other agencies, CDF would have been remiss in approving [the THPs] in
any event."
Judge Watson ruled in favor of Evenson on all counts, and awarded court
costs.
"After a decade of liquidation logging, Pacific Lumber doesn't have any
old growth forest left to cut that doesn't endanger species and
downstream residents." said Evenson. "There's nothing to cut but the
steepest, most landslide-prone slopes."
"CDF can no longer rubber stamp THPs, disregarding the concerns of the
regulatory agencies." Bob Martel explained. "They should defer to the
determinations of wildlife agencies charged with the protection of
public trust values."
"This decision isn't just a victory for salmon and neighbors." said
Evenson. "It's also a victory for Pacific Lumber employees who's very
future is jeopardized by unsustainable logging practices. Every
hillside they've logged surrounding these THPs is riddled with
landslides. Trees don't grow on landslides. Judge Watson reminded us
that the law has the future of timber workers in mind."
"You can't have sustainable timber jobs without practicing sustainable
forestry." said Evenson.
Earth First! Media Center
Andy Caffrey, director
efmc@asis.com
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/9901/
We have so much more to do! We are working so hard to get the word out to
the world via the Internet on these crucial and cutting-edge campaigns
against these outrageous atrocities! Our postings about David Chain's
killing have now gone out to over a million people on five continents and
been translated into French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
_____________________________________
WE NEED YOUR HELP RIGHT NOW
We have just gone through a tormenting last five months and are flat broke
with broken down gear, scant supplies, and late bills to cover. We are in
need of certain supplies as well, such as Epson 740 ink cartridges, zip
disks, videotape, postage, and subscriptions to periodicals, if we are to
continue on after March.
Please send contributions to further our work in support of the above and
dozens of other EF! campaigns, payable to "Earth First!," to
Earth First! Media Center
Well, well, well. Look who they used as "Resources:" The Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, 510-658-0702; Environmental Protection Information Center, 707-923-2931; Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, 202-208-7351.
Check the way things are characterized.
The Junk Bond Boss Meets the Ancient Sequoia
by Sharon Seidenstein
Ancient redwoods are priceless, from an environmentalist's point of view, but now green activists are trying to attach a price tag to the trees in order to preserve them. Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz controls one of the last groves of old-growth redwoods in private hands, and environmentalists are lobbying for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap, with Hurwitz giving the trees to the U.S. government to pay back some of the $1.6 billion it spent bailing out a savings and loan Hurwitz managed into bankruptcy. Hurwitz says the government should either buy the land at fair market value, or get out of his way and let him log.
The direct action group Earth First! was the first to suggest that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) accept the redwoods of Pacific Lumber Company's Headwaters Forest in Northern California as payment for its 1988 bailout of depositors of Hurwitz's United Savings & Loan of Texas. In its usual fashion, Earth First! made the suggestion politely, at a 1993 demonstration at the FDIC's Washington, D.C. headquarters. A lot is at stake. The forest's Headwaters Grove is home to 1000-year-old redwoods standing hundreds of feet tall and shielding the habitats of the Northern spotted owl and other threatened and endangered species. It is a remnant of a forest that once blanketed the West Coast from Big Sur to southern Oregon, 96% of which has vanished under 150 years of liquidation logging.
Since the 1993 demonstration, Greenpeace, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and Senators and Congresspeople have joined in the call for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap. They are appealing to the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Clinton Administration to negotiate forgiveness of all or part of Hurwitz's debt to the federal government in exchange for 57,000 to 76,000 acres of Headwaters Forest, to be placed into public hands for long-term protection.
Debt-for-nature swaps, although rare in the United States, are not unheard of. In 1988, the Bank of America gave the state of California a nature preserve in the northern part of the state, three other properties and $27 million to clear a debt of about $54 million. In the early 1990s, Howard Hughes' estate swapped wetlands near the Los Angeles Airport in exchange for state taxes due. Outside the United States, Third World countries have traded ecologically valuable resources to relieve debt. This controversial version of the swap has helped protect tropical forests and grasslands in Bolivia, parks on the island of Palawan in the Philippines and a dozen other sites.
A swap of S&L debt for nature seems like a far-fetched plan if you ask Richard Keeton, Hurwitz's lawyer. He took time out from his busy schedule, fielding lawsuits from people seeking his client's cash, to tell me in a good-natured way that any debt-for-nature idea is ìbeating a dead horse.î Since his client is innocent of wrongdoing, he explained, there is no debt.
But it could be one of the FDIC's options, because of the convoluted and seemingly illegal connections Hurwitz created between his S&L and the go-go world of junk bond financing of the 1980s. Hurwitz bought the redwoods with his own swap ó the FDIC claims he buried his Texas S&L by having it buy junk bonds nobody wanted from Michael Milken's junk bond factory at Drexel, Burnham, Lambert in New York City. In turn, Milken helped Hurwitz engineer the takeover of Pacific Lumber and received his business issuing the junk bonds to pay for it.
The takeover has led to the equivalent of a work speedup in the forests. Because junk bonds are risky, or backed by assets of lower value, they burden the companies that issue them with high interest payments. To pay off the loans and interest on $600 million of junk bonds (and $300 million of bank loans) issued to pay for the company, Hurwitz has doubled Pacific Lumber's traditional rate of logging, sold off assets and allegedly raided the employee pension fund. Before the takeover, Pacific Lumber's relatively conservative harvesting practices had kept the forests healthy while other timber companies had destroyed theirs. But now the only thing that protects the Headwaters Grove from logging is an injunction won by an environmental group ó which is likely to end in September.
Junk Bonds for Sale Cheap
Last year, The Wall Street Journal described Hurwitz's United Savings and Loan of Texas as ìa highflying thrift heavily involved in junk bonds, arbitrage and speculative real estate plays.î Its failure was one of the most costly of the S&L bailouts of the 1980s, and centrally involved in the junk bond crisis that cost the U.S. government $134 billion to clean up.
The S&L's complicated financial transactions with Hurwitz's Maxxam Corporation essentially freed up its federally insured deposits to fund Maxxam's hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber. In effect, the government argued in a 1991 lawsuit against Michael Milken, Hurwitz transferred the assets of the federally-insured S&L to Maxxam (see box). This suggests that Hurwitz and Maxxam Corporation acquired Pacific Lumber and Headwaters Forest illegally, and the takeover of the lumber company ìled to the failure of the savings and loan and subsequent bailout,î as one environmental lawyer put it.
The Hurwitz camp categorically denies any wrongdoing. For one, they claim Hurwitz did not legally control United Savings & Loan. His lawyer also says that the FDIC cannot legally ìsecond guessî today actions taken according to Hurwitz's best business judgment in the 1980s.
If the Suit Fits. . . File It
Charles Hurwitz is a wealthy man. He is principal shareholder and CEO of Maxxam, Inc., whose assets were recently estimated at $3.8 billion. Hurwitz, or Maxxam, own Kaiser Aluminum, Federated Development Company of New York, Pacific Lumber and United Financial Group, the former holding company of United Savings and Loan of Texas. Pacific Lumber owns 189,000 acres in Northern California plus two mills. The acreage includes nearly all old-growth redwoods in private hands, some 6,000 acres. Prime old-growth redwood trees, like many of the 300-foot giants in Headwaters Grove, are worth $100,000 each at the lumber yard.
But apparently Hurwitz owes a lot of people a lot of money ó and many are finally going after it. He has faced three shareholder suits linked to Pacific Lumber alone: one an attempt to block the takeover of Pacific Lumber, the second by Pacific Lumber's original shareholders who felt they had been sold out for a ludicrous price, and a third challenging his raid of the employee pension fund. In 1995, the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision and a Humboldt County community activist filed three new suits against him.
FDIC v. Hurwitz, filed in August 1995, seeks a $250 million damage award from the financier directly; Maxxam is not named in the suit. It accuses Hurwitz of having United Savings & Loan buy junk bonds from Drexel in exchange for the firm financing his takeovers. He then hid the true condition of the S&L ìby a pattern of deceptive financial reporting and balance sheet manipulation.î As it sunk deeper into a hole, the S&L increased its liabilities beyond legal limits, gambled on ìcumbersome real estate projects with no realistic chance of success and invested in complex financial instruments which the officers understood poorly and which resulted in staggering losses to the association.î
The FDIC suit
Under Hurwitz's control, the financial condition of United Savings steadily deteriorated. As the institution's financial health plummeted, Hurwitz, senior officers and United Savings board members serving at Hurwitz's request undertook greater and greater risks until both the officers and board members ìbecame entirely indifferent to losses the institution might incur,î the FDIC charged in its lawsuit against Hurwitz.
But according to FDIC chair Ricki Tigert-Helfer, the lawsuit cannot compel Maxxam, Pacific Lumber or their boards of directors to consider a debt-for-nature swap since they might decide to use other assets to satisfy their liability.
"Nevertheless," she added in a letter to Jill Ratner, a lawyer with the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, "the FDIC is open to any appropriate settlement of its claim, including a debt-for-nature swap."
Additional pressure for a debt-for-nature swap came from yet another lawsuit, filed in January 1995 by Humboldt activist Robert Martel in U.S. District Court. It asks that Maxxam repay losses related to the Savings & Loan and that the judge award as much as $4.8 billion in damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers.
Nearly a year later, in December 1995, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision filed 13 claims in administrative court charging Hurwitz, Maxxam, Federated Development and former and present directors of United Savings and Loan and its holding company with contributing to the failure of the S&L by turning it into ìa vehicle for speculative, highly leveraged, high risk investmentsî from a traditional home mortgage lender. In order to keep financing takeovers while maintaining its stated net worth, the thrift had to sell off its assets.
The suit seeks civil penalties of more than $800,000, restitution and a ban on the financiers from working in the banking industry. Among its other claims: that the financiers failed to properly maintain the minimum net worth of the S&L, which regulators had made a condition for approving the merger of United Savings & Loan and another thrift in 1983; violated a ban against affiliated parties engaging in transactions when the S&L bought junk bonds from Drexel, Burnham, Lambert; failed to maintain the minimum capital required by law; and paid out ìunsafe and unsoundî bonuses, settlements and severance packages to officers and directors.
Languishing and Dying in Congress
The U.S. Congress and the Clinton Administration are well aware of Headwaters and Hurwitz. In 1994, then-Representative Dan Hamburg (D-CA) introduced a bill in the House that authorized the U.S. Forest Service to begin negotiating with Pacific Lumber and other landowners of Headwaters to attach the forest to the Six Rivers National Forest. Although the bill eventually passed the House, the Senate version introduced by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) did not come up for a vote.
Hurwitz has a close ally in Frank Riggs (R-CA), the Congressman who defeated Hamburg in the Republican sweep of 1994. In June, Riggs was soundly rebuffed by his colleagues when he tried to win passage of a rider limiting enforcement of the Endangered Species Act on Pacific Lumber land. Perhaps Pacific Lumber was tired of being challenged by a local environmental group for its violations of environmental law. The Environmental Protection Information Center won nine suits that overturned Headwaters timber harvest plans.
The House also defeated a bill Riggs introduced that would have opened Headwaters to logging if negotiations between the Forest Service and the landowners fell through within an 18-month period.
Meanwhile, environmentalists, senators, representatives, Vice President Al Gore and high-level administrators in the departments of the Treasury and the Interior have been busy exchanging letters and holding meetings. One of the most hopeful meetings took place in February in Sacramento with Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi, California state officials and Hurwitz.
Searching for Cover
It's now June.
Pacific Lumber is busy logging. They have already cut a large swath through Headwaters Grove and logged significant portions of second-growth and residual-growth forest. Suits filed by the Environmental Protection Information Center have largely kept the chainsaws out of the most pristine groves, but the court injunction that currently protects the Headwaters Grove will probably be lifted in time for autumn logging.
The neighboring Elk River Timber has indicated it is willing to sell its land to public trust, but in the meanwhile is logging in a threatened species' habitat.
The Environmental Protection Information Center continues its legal battles, challenging a timber harvest plan along the South Fork Elk River drainage in a June lawsuit.
The FDIC suit against Hurwitz and his cohorts is pending in Judge Lynn Hughes' federal court in Houston, awaiting rulings on various motions, including one filed by Hurwitz's lawyers to dismiss the case. The Office of Thrift Supervision's suit is scheduled for a hearing in May 1997 in Houston, but OTS has not frozen Maxxam's assets, as it has the power to do if it thinks they will not be around once the lawsuit is over. Martel's suit seeking damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers has been transferred, also to Texas.
One possible sign of hope: Deputy Interior Secretary Garamendi recently said that the federal and California governments are discussing with Hurwitz the acquisition of Headwaters Forest ó although they are not specifically talking about a debt-for-nature swap or settling the lawsuits. It will be several months before the public can expect to hear of a possible agreement.
That's about the time the young Coho salmon of Headwaters will be searching for rapidly declining cool waters and scarce adequate cover.
Resources: The Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, 510-658-0702; Environmental Protection Information Center, 707-923-2931; Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, 202-208-7351.
Issue #207, September-October 1996
Check the way things are characterized.
The Junk Bond Boss Meets the Ancient Sequoia
by Sharon Seidenstein
Ancient redwoods are priceless, from an environmentalist's point of view, but now green activists are trying to attach a price tag to the trees in order to preserve them. Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz controls one of the last groves of old-growth redwoods in private hands, and environmentalists are lobbying for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap, with Hurwitz giving the trees to the U.S. government to pay back some of the $1.6 billion it spent bailing out a savings and loan Hurwitz managed into bankruptcy. Hurwitz says the government should either buy the land at fair market value, or get out of his way and let him log.
The direct action group Earth First! was the first to suggest that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) accept the redwoods of Pacific Lumber Company's Headwaters Forest in Northern California as payment for its 1988 bailout of depositors of Hurwitz's United Savings & Loan of Texas. In its usual fashion, Earth First! made the suggestion politely, at a 1993 demonstration at the FDIC's Washington, D.C. headquarters. A lot is at stake. The forest's Headwaters Grove is home to 1000-year-old redwoods standing hundreds of feet tall and shielding the habitats of the Northern spotted owl and other threatened and endangered species. It is a remnant of a forest that once blanketed the West Coast from Big Sur to southern Oregon, 96% of which has vanished under 150 years of liquidation logging.
Since the 1993 demonstration, Greenpeace, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and Senators and Congresspeople have joined in the call for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap. They are appealing to the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Clinton Administration to negotiate forgiveness of all or part of Hurwitz's debt to the federal government in exchange for 57,000 to 76,000 acres of Headwaters Forest, to be placed into public hands for long-term protection.
Debt-for-nature swaps, although rare in the United States, are not unheard of. In 1988, the Bank of America gave the state of California a nature preserve in the northern part of the state, three other properties and $27 million to clear a debt of about $54 million. In the early 1990s, Howard Hughes' estate swapped wetlands near the Los Angeles Airport in exchange for state taxes due. Outside the United States, Third World countries have traded ecologically valuable resources to relieve debt. This controversial version of the swap has helped protect tropical forests and grasslands in Bolivia, parks on the island of Palawan in the Philippines and a dozen other sites.
A swap of S&L debt for nature seems like a far-fetched plan if you ask Richard Keeton, Hurwitz's lawyer. He took time out from his busy schedule, fielding lawsuits from people seeking his client's cash, to tell me in a good-natured way that any debt-for-nature idea is ìbeating a dead horse.î Since his client is innocent of wrongdoing, he explained, there is no debt.
But it could be one of the FDIC's options, because of the convoluted and seemingly illegal connections Hurwitz created between his S&L and the go-go world of junk bond financing of the 1980s. Hurwitz bought the redwoods with his own swap ó the FDIC claims he buried his Texas S&L by having it buy junk bonds nobody wanted from Michael Milken's junk bond factory at Drexel, Burnham, Lambert in New York City. In turn, Milken helped Hurwitz engineer the takeover of Pacific Lumber and received his business issuing the junk bonds to pay for it.
The takeover has led to the equivalent of a work speedup in the forests. Because junk bonds are risky, or backed by assets of lower value, they burden the companies that issue them with high interest payments. To pay off the loans and interest on $600 million of junk bonds (and $300 million of bank loans) issued to pay for the company, Hurwitz has doubled Pacific Lumber's traditional rate of logging, sold off assets and allegedly raided the employee pension fund. Before the takeover, Pacific Lumber's relatively conservative harvesting practices had kept the forests healthy while other timber companies had destroyed theirs. But now the only thing that protects the Headwaters Grove from logging is an injunction won by an environmental group ó which is likely to end in September.
Junk Bonds for Sale Cheap
Last year, The Wall Street Journal described Hurwitz's United Savings and Loan of Texas as ìa highflying thrift heavily involved in junk bonds, arbitrage and speculative real estate plays.î Its failure was one of the most costly of the S&L bailouts of the 1980s, and centrally involved in the junk bond crisis that cost the U.S. government $134 billion to clean up.
The S&L's complicated financial transactions with Hurwitz's Maxxam Corporation essentially freed up its federally insured deposits to fund Maxxam's hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber. In effect, the government argued in a 1991 lawsuit against Michael Milken, Hurwitz transferred the assets of the federally-insured S&L to Maxxam (see box). This suggests that Hurwitz and Maxxam Corporation acquired Pacific Lumber and Headwaters Forest illegally, and the takeover of the lumber company ìled to the failure of the savings and loan and subsequent bailout,î as one environmental lawyer put it.
The Hurwitz camp categorically denies any wrongdoing. For one, they claim Hurwitz did not legally control United Savings & Loan. His lawyer also says that the FDIC cannot legally ìsecond guessî today actions taken according to Hurwitz's best business judgment in the 1980s.
If the Suit Fits. . . File It
Charles Hurwitz is a wealthy man. He is principal shareholder and CEO of Maxxam, Inc., whose assets were recently estimated at $3.8 billion. Hurwitz, or Maxxam, own Kaiser Aluminum, Federated Development Company of New York, Pacific Lumber and United Financial Group, the former holding company of United Savings and Loan of Texas. Pacific Lumber owns 189,000 acres in Northern California plus two mills. The acreage includes nearly all old-growth redwoods in private hands, some 6,000 acres. Prime old-growth redwood trees, like many of the 300-foot giants in Headwaters Grove, are worth $100,000 each at the lumber yard.
But apparently Hurwitz owes a lot of people a lot of money ó and many are finally going after it. He has faced three shareholder suits linked to Pacific Lumber alone: one an attempt to block the takeover of Pacific Lumber, the second by Pacific Lumber's original shareholders who felt they had been sold out for a ludicrous price, and a third challenging his raid of the employee pension fund. In 1995, the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision and a Humboldt County community activist filed three new suits against him.
FDIC v. Hurwitz, filed in August 1995, seeks a $250 million damage award from the financier directly; Maxxam is not named in the suit. It accuses Hurwitz of having United Savings & Loan buy junk bonds from Drexel in exchange for the firm financing his takeovers. He then hid the true condition of the S&L ìby a pattern of deceptive financial reporting and balance sheet manipulation.î As it sunk deeper into a hole, the S&L increased its liabilities beyond legal limits, gambled on ìcumbersome real estate projects with no realistic chance of success and invested in complex financial instruments which the officers understood poorly and which resulted in staggering losses to the association.î
The FDIC suit
Under Hurwitz's control, the financial condition of United Savings steadily deteriorated. As the institution's financial health plummeted, Hurwitz, senior officers and United Savings board members serving at Hurwitz's request undertook greater and greater risks until both the officers and board members ìbecame entirely indifferent to losses the institution might incur,î the FDIC charged in its lawsuit against Hurwitz.
But according to FDIC chair Ricki Tigert-Helfer, the lawsuit cannot compel Maxxam, Pacific Lumber or their boards of directors to consider a debt-for-nature swap since they might decide to use other assets to satisfy their liability.
"Nevertheless," she added in a letter to Jill Ratner, a lawyer with the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, "the FDIC is open to any appropriate settlement of its claim, including a debt-for-nature swap."
Additional pressure for a debt-for-nature swap came from yet another lawsuit, filed in January 1995 by Humboldt activist Robert Martel in U.S. District Court. It asks that Maxxam repay losses related to the Savings & Loan and that the judge award as much as $4.8 billion in damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers.
Nearly a year later, in December 1995, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision filed 13 claims in administrative court charging Hurwitz, Maxxam, Federated Development and former and present directors of United Savings and Loan and its holding company with contributing to the failure of the S&L by turning it into ìa vehicle for speculative, highly leveraged, high risk investmentsî from a traditional home mortgage lender. In order to keep financing takeovers while maintaining its stated net worth, the thrift had to sell off its assets.
The suit seeks civil penalties of more than $800,000, restitution and a ban on the financiers from working in the banking industry. Among its other claims: that the financiers failed to properly maintain the minimum net worth of the S&L, which regulators had made a condition for approving the merger of United Savings & Loan and another thrift in 1983; violated a ban against affiliated parties engaging in transactions when the S&L bought junk bonds from Drexel, Burnham, Lambert; failed to maintain the minimum capital required by law; and paid out ìunsafe and unsoundî bonuses, settlements and severance packages to officers and directors.
Languishing and Dying in Congress
The U.S. Congress and the Clinton Administration are well aware of Headwaters and Hurwitz. In 1994, then-Representative Dan Hamburg (D-CA) introduced a bill in the House that authorized the U.S. Forest Service to begin negotiating with Pacific Lumber and other landowners of Headwaters to attach the forest to the Six Rivers National Forest. Although the bill eventually passed the House, the Senate version introduced by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) did not come up for a vote.
Hurwitz has a close ally in Frank Riggs (R-CA), the Congressman who defeated Hamburg in the Republican sweep of 1994. In June, Riggs was soundly rebuffed by his colleagues when he tried to win passage of a rider limiting enforcement of the Endangered Species Act on Pacific Lumber land. Perhaps Pacific Lumber was tired of being challenged by a local environmental group for its violations of environmental law. The Environmental Protection Information Center won nine suits that overturned Headwaters timber harvest plans.
The House also defeated a bill Riggs introduced that would have opened Headwaters to logging if negotiations between the Forest Service and the landowners fell through within an 18-month period.
Meanwhile, environmentalists, senators, representatives, Vice President Al Gore and high-level administrators in the departments of the Treasury and the Interior have been busy exchanging letters and holding meetings. One of the most hopeful meetings took place in February in Sacramento with Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi, California state officials and Hurwitz.
Searching for Cover
It's now June.
Pacific Lumber is busy logging. They have already cut a large swath through Headwaters Grove and logged significant portions of second-growth and residual-growth forest. Suits filed by the Environmental Protection Information Center have largely kept the chainsaws out of the most pristine groves, but the court injunction that currently protects the Headwaters Grove will probably be lifted in time for autumn logging.
The neighboring Elk River Timber has indicated it is willing to sell its land to public trust, but in the meanwhile is logging in a threatened species' habitat.
The Environmental Protection Information Center continues its legal battles, challenging a timber harvest plan along the South Fork Elk River drainage in a June lawsuit.
The FDIC suit against Hurwitz and his cohorts is pending in Judge Lynn Hughes' federal court in Houston, awaiting rulings on various motions, including one filed by Hurwitz's lawyers to dismiss the case. The Office of Thrift Supervision's suit is scheduled for a hearing in May 1997 in Houston, but OTS has not frozen Maxxam's assets, as it has the power to do if it thinks they will not be around once the lawsuit is over. Martel's suit seeking damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers has been transferred, also to Texas.
One possible sign of hope: Deputy Interior Secretary Garamendi recently said that the federal and California governments are discussing with Hurwitz the acquisition of Headwaters Forest ó although they are not specifically talking about a debt-for-nature swap or settling the lawsuits. It will be several months before the public can expect to hear of a possible agreement.
That's about the time the young Coho salmon of Headwaters will be searching for rapidly declining cool waters and scarce adequate cover.
Resources: The Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, 510-658-0702; Environmental Protection Information Center, 707-923-2931; Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, 202-208-7351.
Issue #207, September-October 1996
4.10.2007
so much for a kinder, gentler NEC...
This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
***
In a message dated 4/5/2007 3:24:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time, salzman@inreach.com writes:
From our friends at the NEC, in case you have not yet picked up your copy of Eco-News:
http://yournec.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=541&topic=37
ECONEWS: Shedding Light On Sunshine, Simpson, PacifiCorp
Thursday, April 05, 2007
by Greg King
A confluence of potentially unfortunate events is worth noting this spring, as the NEC develops and reinforces programs to protect habitat and rural communities on the North Coast. The following list is not exhaustive, but is representative of what’s at stake.
Let’s start with the Arkleys. The family that has made many generous contributions to North Coast life has all but negated the positive value of these efforts with a bullying agenda apparently aimed at making Humboldt and Orange counties indistinguishable.
Robin Arkley Jr.’s “Humboldt Sunshine” lawsuit against the county’s planning process is a bitter salvo on behalf of tract homes and strip malls, freeways and unchecked growth.
Humboldt Sunshine is most committed to unlimited profits for a quite limited few, at the expense of air and water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, a vibrant economy of scale and the uniqueness and rural character of our communities.
Guardians
The NEC is responding to these and other 20th century development plans by creating a “Sustainable Communities” program. Sustainable Communities will promote “slow growth” and “smart growth” developments, including clustered and live-work housing to protect open space and habitat; school and community gardens; alternative energy sources and conservation measures; and dedicated navigation routes for non-motorized transportation.
Just up the hill from the Arkley initiatives, Green Diamond Resource Co. (formerly Simpson Timber) is seeking an amendment to its 1992 Habitat Conservation Plan that would allow the company to kill eight pairs of spotted owls. This is in addition to the documented (and government-sanctioned) destruction by the company, since 1992, of at least 45 pairs of spotted owls on its 493,000 acres in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Last year Green Diamond also applied to federal agencies for a permit to kill protected salmon and steelhead. This proposal comes at a time when salmonids and spotted owls are in decline throughout the West. These are “indicator species” whose dwindling numbers tell us that our terrestrial and aquatic habitats are in peril.
As always, the NEC is tracking and commenting on requests by businesses to destroy habitat. Though litigation is always a last-resort measure, we will not hesitate to stand in the way of a plan that threatens to kill the last owls and salmon.
Up the Klamath River, where dam-removal represents the “no-brainer” of the century, PacifiCorp, owner of the four dams up for relicensing, is now setting the stage for keeping the dams in place.
A new PacifiCorp study, flying in the face of all other data, claims that it would be cheaper to build fish ladders than it would be to remove the dams. Even if the company’s numbers are correct (which is doubtful), the question arises: Cheaper for whom? Certainly not Klamath salmon that may be on the brink of extinction.
The NEC remains at the forefront of a massive conservation collaboration aimed at restoring spawning habitat by removing the Klamath dams. The meetings are endless, the paperwork measured in yards.
But the goal is extraordinary: the largest dam removal project in history, reclaiming hundreds of miles of wild river for the salmon and other species that now desperately need it.
----
The NEC is Community Supported!
There are many ways you can help us keep the doors open. Here are a few of them.
Become a Member
You can receive the ECONEWS and support our work by becoming a member!
Your private cabin on the Smith River!
Join the 50 / 50 Club!
This is a way for you to add to the financial stability of the NEC. Monthly pledges provide a solid foundation for our work. You can set this up through our web site so the amount you chose is automatically deducted from your charge account each month.
If you are able to contribute $50 each month, consider joining our 50 / 50 Club! Your donation will be split 50 / 50 between operational expenses and our new building. And as an incentive, if you pay for a night at his cabin on the Smith River, Joe Gillespie will provide a second night at no charge!
Sign up here to make a monthly pledge, or a one time donation!
http://www.guidestar.org/partners/networkforgood/donate.jsp?ein=23-7122386
---
--
The following information is a reminder of your current mailing
list subscription:
You are subscribed to the following list:
Redwood Progressive
(aka Richard Salzman aka the so-called "Alliance for Ethical Business" aka Behind the Redwood Curtain aka ourhumboldt.org, aka R. Trent Williams aka .......)
***
In a message dated 4/5/2007 3:24:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time, salzman@inreach.com writes:
From our friends at the NEC, in case you have not yet picked up your copy of Eco-News:
http://yournec.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=541&topic=37
ECONEWS: Shedding Light On Sunshine, Simpson, PacifiCorp
Thursday, April 05, 2007
by Greg King
A confluence of potentially unfortunate events is worth noting this spring, as the NEC develops and reinforces programs to protect habitat and rural communities on the North Coast. The following list is not exhaustive, but is representative of what’s at stake.
Let’s start with the Arkleys. The family that has made many generous contributions to North Coast life has all but negated the positive value of these efforts with a bullying agenda apparently aimed at making Humboldt and Orange counties indistinguishable.
Robin Arkley Jr.’s “Humboldt Sunshine” lawsuit against the county’s planning process is a bitter salvo on behalf of tract homes and strip malls, freeways and unchecked growth.
Humboldt Sunshine is most committed to unlimited profits for a quite limited few, at the expense of air and water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, a vibrant economy of scale and the uniqueness and rural character of our communities.
Guardians
The NEC is responding to these and other 20th century development plans by creating a “Sustainable Communities” program. Sustainable Communities will promote “slow growth” and “smart growth” developments, including clustered and live-work housing to protect open space and habitat; school and community gardens; alternative energy sources and conservation measures; and dedicated navigation routes for non-motorized transportation.
Just up the hill from the Arkley initiatives, Green Diamond Resource Co. (formerly Simpson Timber) is seeking an amendment to its 1992 Habitat Conservation Plan that would allow the company to kill eight pairs of spotted owls. This is in addition to the documented (and government-sanctioned) destruction by the company, since 1992, of at least 45 pairs of spotted owls on its 493,000 acres in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Last year Green Diamond also applied to federal agencies for a permit to kill protected salmon and steelhead. This proposal comes at a time when salmonids and spotted owls are in decline throughout the West. These are “indicator species” whose dwindling numbers tell us that our terrestrial and aquatic habitats are in peril.
As always, the NEC is tracking and commenting on requests by businesses to destroy habitat. Though litigation is always a last-resort measure, we will not hesitate to stand in the way of a plan that threatens to kill the last owls and salmon.
Up the Klamath River, where dam-removal represents the “no-brainer” of the century, PacifiCorp, owner of the four dams up for relicensing, is now setting the stage for keeping the dams in place.
A new PacifiCorp study, flying in the face of all other data, claims that it would be cheaper to build fish ladders than it would be to remove the dams. Even if the company’s numbers are correct (which is doubtful), the question arises: Cheaper for whom? Certainly not Klamath salmon that may be on the brink of extinction.
The NEC remains at the forefront of a massive conservation collaboration aimed at restoring spawning habitat by removing the Klamath dams. The meetings are endless, the paperwork measured in yards.
But the goal is extraordinary: the largest dam removal project in history, reclaiming hundreds of miles of wild river for the salmon and other species that now desperately need it.
----
The NEC is Community Supported!
There are many ways you can help us keep the doors open. Here are a few of them.
Become a Member
You can receive the ECONEWS and support our work by becoming a member!
Your private cabin on the Smith River!
Join the 50 / 50 Club!
This is a way for you to add to the financial stability of the NEC. Monthly pledges provide a solid foundation for our work. You can set this up through our web site so the amount you chose is automatically deducted from your charge account each month.
If you are able to contribute $50 each month, consider joining our 50 / 50 Club! Your donation will be split 50 / 50 between operational expenses and our new building. And as an incentive, if you pay for a night at his cabin on the Smith River, Joe Gillespie will provide a second night at no charge!
Sign up here to make a monthly pledge, or a one time donation!
http://www.guidestar.org/partners/networkforgood/donate.jsp?ein=23-7122386
---
--
The following information is a reminder of your current mailing
list subscription:
You are subscribed to the following list:
Redwood Progressive
(aka Richard Salzman aka the so-called "Alliance for Ethical Business" aka Behind the Redwood Curtain aka ourhumboldt.org, aka R. Trent Williams aka .......)
4.03.2007
more Shunka emails Paul Gallegos
This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
***
To:
"North Coast Earth First!"
From:
"Shunka Wakan" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Date:
Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:27:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:
[NCEF!] Letters from Gallegos, part I
On March 17th, 2005, a criminal homicide complaint was filed against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber Co., for the murder of David "Gypsy" Chain. Gypsy was killed, on September 17th, 1998, when an enraged Maxxam/PL logger began intentionally falling trees towards a group of non-violent North Coast Earth First! acitivsts. Video footage of the logger was taken less than an hour before Gypsy's death; the videotape clearly documents the logger saying "get outta here, or else I'll MAKE SURE I've got a tree comin' this way!" [profanity edited out].
In the investigation that followed Gypsy's death, Earth First! was initially blamed, though never formally charged, and the final conclusion, by the district attorney's office, was that Gypsy's death was an "accident." So, if you're a big timber corporation in Humboldt County, California, then you can get caught falling trees at people, killing them, and still get away with it... "accident"...total corruption!
Our new district attorney, Paul Gallegos, said that he would re-open the Gypsy investigation if he were elected, during a local public radio call-in show. He was elected, in fact, and has still not yet re-opened the investigation...well, he did admit that he opened the case when he first got into office, and decided that there "wasn't enough evidence."
So let me get this straight...you can have video footage (videotapes don't lie) of a direct threat on someone's life, and, when that person gets killed as a direct result of those threats being carried out, and that's "not enough evidence" to prove that anything more than an "accident" occurred. What more do you need?
So I filed a criminal complaint against Maxxam/PL, on March 17th, 2005, for homicide, since there's no statute of limitations on murder. The complaint also included former Humboldt County district attorney Terry Farmer, former sheriff Dennis Lewis, and former homicide detective Juan Freeman, for criminal conspiracy to conceal homicide.
I then did interviews on the subject, on local and national radio shows, issued a press release to nationwide media, and posted the complaint on our website, at www.northcoastearthfirst.org.
About a week later, I e-mailed Paul Gallegos with a copy of the press release, and a link to the complaint, just in case the Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept. had failed to forward the complaint to his office. No replies from Paul Gallegos...
On the same day, however, Paul Gallegos sent this lengthy reply to a concerned citizen who e-mailed Paul to find out what was going on with the criminal homicide complaint.
See how Paul denies the very existence of the complaint, and then goes on to deny filing charges against Earth First!
He had already filed the bogus felony assault charges against Phoenix at the time of this writing, which were reduced to misdemeanor charges by Judge Feeney on Friday, by the way (press release soon to come to the listserver).
Ignoring legitimate complaints from people who have real evidence, lying to the public, and pressing felony charges against assaulted and battered activists...the real Paul Gallegos...
This is an e-mail that Gallegos wrote to another concerned Humboldt County citizen...he won't return any of my e-mails...I faxed him a copy of the complaint, stamped by the Humboldt Co. Sheriff's Dept., the very next day. I marked it "urgent" and "please reply" and haven't heard a word...
--- "Gallegos, Paul"
wrote:
> Thank you for your email. While I prefer to answer
> specific questions so I know what I am being asked,
> I will try to respond to your inquiry.
>
> No. Our office has exclusive jurisdiction over
> criminal complaints. No criminal complaint has been
> filed regarding the David Chain.
>
> As I have said publicly many times, on taking office
> I did look into the case involving the death of
> David Chain. After reviewing the information and
> concluding that there was not sufficient information
> to justify filing a criminal charge I made the
> decision that no criminal charge would be filed.
>
> Despite what individuals may want, supporters or
> opponents, I must make decisions based on the facts
> and the law. To do otherwise would be to use the
> authority of this office for persecution not
> prosecution. I will not participate in that.
>
> Regarding the claim that I am making Earth First!
> the sacrificial lamb for my political career, that
> is absurd. For one, that is the exact claim PALCO
> and its advocates makes against me for filing our
> lawsuit against them. For another, nothing has been
> filed against Earth First! How exactly are they a
> sacrificial lamb?
>
> Finally, I hope your belief that I would stand up to
> the waste and tyranny of Maxxam Corp was not the
> only reason you voted for me. For although, I have
> clearly shown that I will stand up to Maxxam Corp.,
> there is much, much more that this Office is about.
>
> This Office has stood up to many, many institutions
> that thought/think they control Humboldt County. The
> People of Humboldt County control Humboldt County.
> It is my commitment to that idea, to the
> enfranchisement of all people, to the protection of
> the rights of citizens, to the improvement of public
> safety and quality of life, as well as many, many
> other things that should justify your vote for me.
>
> I will go one step further: Every citizen, whether
> you like or dislike them, is entitled to the same
> protections of and from our laws. I would rather
> lose your vote and the vote of all people than fail
> to honor that principle both in word and deed. I
> hope this answers your questions. If not and you
> have more questions of me, please feel free to email
> me.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Paul V. Gallegos
>
***
To:
"North Coast Earth First!"
From:
"Shunka Wakan"
Date:
Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:27:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:
[NCEF!] Letters from Gallegos, part I
On March 17th, 2005, a criminal homicide complaint was filed against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber Co., for the murder of David "Gypsy" Chain. Gypsy was killed, on September 17th, 1998, when an enraged Maxxam/PL logger began intentionally falling trees towards a group of non-violent North Coast Earth First! acitivsts. Video footage of the logger was taken less than an hour before Gypsy's death; the videotape clearly documents the logger saying "get outta here, or else I'll MAKE SURE I've got a tree comin' this way!" [profanity edited out].
In the investigation that followed Gypsy's death, Earth First! was initially blamed, though never formally charged, and the final conclusion, by the district attorney's office, was that Gypsy's death was an "accident." So, if you're a big timber corporation in Humboldt County, California, then you can get caught falling trees at people, killing them, and still get away with it... "accident"...total corruption!
Our new district attorney, Paul Gallegos, said that he would re-open the Gypsy investigation if he were elected, during a local public radio call-in show. He was elected, in fact, and has still not yet re-opened the investigation...well, he did admit that he opened the case when he first got into office, and decided that there "wasn't enough evidence."
So let me get this straight...you can have video footage (videotapes don't lie) of a direct threat on someone's life, and, when that person gets killed as a direct result of those threats being carried out, and that's "not enough evidence" to prove that anything more than an "accident" occurred. What more do you need?
So I filed a criminal complaint against Maxxam/PL, on March 17th, 2005, for homicide, since there's no statute of limitations on murder. The complaint also included former Humboldt County district attorney Terry Farmer, former sheriff Dennis Lewis, and former homicide detective Juan Freeman, for criminal conspiracy to conceal homicide.
I then did interviews on the subject, on local and national radio shows, issued a press release to nationwide media, and posted the complaint on our website, at www.northcoastearthfirst.org.
About a week later, I e-mailed Paul Gallegos with a copy of the press release, and a link to the complaint, just in case the Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept. had failed to forward the complaint to his office. No replies from Paul Gallegos...
On the same day, however, Paul Gallegos sent this lengthy reply to a concerned citizen who e-mailed Paul to find out what was going on with the criminal homicide complaint.
See how Paul denies the very existence of the complaint, and then goes on to deny filing charges against Earth First!
He had already filed the bogus felony assault charges against Phoenix at the time of this writing, which were reduced to misdemeanor charges by Judge Feeney on Friday, by the way (press release soon to come to the listserver).
Ignoring legitimate complaints from people who have real evidence, lying to the public, and pressing felony charges against assaulted and battered activists...the real Paul Gallegos...
This is an e-mail that Gallegos wrote to another concerned Humboldt County citizen...he won't return any of my e-mails...I faxed him a copy of the complaint, stamped by the Humboldt Co. Sheriff's Dept., the very next day. I marked it "urgent" and "please reply" and haven't heard a word...
--- "Gallegos, Paul"
wrote:
> Thank you for your email. While I prefer to answer
> specific questions so I know what I am being asked,
> I will try to respond to your inquiry.
>
> No. Our office has exclusive jurisdiction over
> criminal complaints. No criminal complaint has been
> filed regarding the David Chain.
>
> As I have said publicly many times, on taking office
> I did look into the case involving the death of
> David Chain. After reviewing the information and
> concluding that there was not sufficient information
> to justify filing a criminal charge I made the
> decision that no criminal charge would be filed.
>
> Despite what individuals may want, supporters or
> opponents, I must make decisions based on the facts
> and the law. To do otherwise would be to use the
> authority of this office for persecution not
> prosecution. I will not participate in that.
>
> Regarding the claim that I am making Earth First!
> the sacrificial lamb for my political career, that
> is absurd. For one, that is the exact claim PALCO
> and its advocates makes against me for filing our
> lawsuit against them. For another, nothing has been
> filed against Earth First! How exactly are they a
> sacrificial lamb?
>
> Finally, I hope your belief that I would stand up to
> the waste and tyranny of Maxxam Corp was not the
> only reason you voted for me. For although, I have
> clearly shown that I will stand up to Maxxam Corp.,
> there is much, much more that this Office is about.
>
> This Office has stood up to many, many institutions
> that thought/think they control Humboldt County. The
> People of Humboldt County control Humboldt County.
> It is my commitment to that idea, to the
> enfranchisement of all people, to the protection of
> the rights of citizens, to the improvement of public
> safety and quality of life, as well as many, many
> other things that should justify your vote for me.
>
> I will go one step further: Every citizen, whether
> you like or dislike them, is entitled to the same
> protections of and from our laws. I would rather
> lose your vote and the vote of all people than fail
> to honor that principle both in word and deed. I
> hope this answers your questions. If not and you
> have more questions of me, please feel free to email
> me.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Paul V. Gallegos
>
Shunka Wakan emails Paul Gallegos
This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
***
--- Shunka Wakan wrote:
To: northcoastearthfirst at yahoogroups.com
From: Shunka Wakan
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:01:57 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [NCEF!] Recent dialogue with Paul Gallegos
Hello, friends!
I thought you might be interested in the latest responses from Paul Gallegos, regarding the David "Gypsy" Chain case. The last I heard from Paul, he was promising to forward the Gypsy case file to Tim Stoen (who left his office shortly thereafter) and Steve Schectman (the lawyer in the David "Gypsy" Chain civil suit and recently deputized as an investigator for the D.A.'s office).
Promises, promises...
This e-mail reads from most recent to the beginning of the most recent dialogue, sparked by the attorney general's response to Tom Krohmer's appeal to the A.G.'s office to re-open the Gypsy case. Paul Gallegos likes to refer me to the A.G.'s office, who then refers us back to the local D.A. - a political ping-pong game, intended to keep the public running around in circles, with no results, as usual.
These men are civil servants, so they need to hear YOUR voices, to let them know that there are a LOT of people out there who demand justice (or at least a shot at it, in the form of a jury trial) from their elected "officials."
Ok, here it is...remember, this starts with my response to Paul Gallegos, written just this morning. I'm responding to the e-mail that I received from Paul Gallegos just this morning, as well. Does this not enrage you? It should!
This is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. If I had any doubts about this case, I would not be so adamant about it. The facts are clear, and we have them on videotape. You promised to forward this case to Tim Stoen and Steve Schectman, and I have still heard nothing from any of you regarding this case
How is Gypsy's death an "accident"? We have hard evidence that Gypsy's death was the result of an intentional act of violence against activists.
Your refusal to re-open this investigation, after promising to do so in your election campaign, sets a terrible precedent for corporate violence against non-violent activists.
We have the right to non-violently protest in this country, without being assaulted, battered, and/or
killed.
What kind of justification do you hold in your mind for Gypsy's death? How can this not be a clear case of aggravated assault and some degree of homicide?
And how can you justify pressing felony assault charges against Ramsey Gifford, when he was clearly the one assaulted by Eric Schatz and Co.? Niether Eric Schatz nor Michael Oxman are police officers, so they have no right to lay a hand on any member of the public. You are playing into the status quo that assumes that it's "ok" for Maxxam/Pacific Lumber to hire their own private contractors to physically apprehend members of the public. This is not a legitimate citizen's arrest, and it enables Maxxam/Pacific Lumber to break numerous laws, including yet not limited to the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, laws against assault, battery, and kidnapping.
The Gypsy case deserves it's day in court...there is no statute of limitations on murder, and, as an eyewitness and member of the public, I know, for a fact, that Gypsy's death was no mere "accident." Eric Schatz and Michael Oxman need to be charged for their violent crimes, as well, yet you refuse to do anything in either respect.
Do your job as a public servant, please.
Sincerely,
Shunka Wakan
>
> --- "Gallegos, Paul"
> wrote:
>
> > Shunka:
> >
> > I have spoken to you about this case repeatedly
> and
> > I accept that for you there is only one truth and
> > that is what You believe it to be. People must
> > accept your belief about truth or they are liars,
> > corrupt, stupid or some combination thereof.
> >
> > I have nothing to gain from not prosecuting anyone
> > or everyone for the death of David Chain. Clearly,
> I
> > do not expect to ever get the support of Pacific
> > Lumber Company or those aligned with them. Nor do
> I
> > anticipate that they will not fund, directly or
> > indirectly, a campaign against me. These are
> simple
> > truths.
> >
> > So, I regret your continued suffering and I hope
> > that time brings you peace.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Paul V. Gallegos
> >
> > p.s.
> >
> > The media contacted me in response to your
> attempts
> > to get media coverage. The timing had nothing to
> do
> > with me. I have a lot of work to do here. I don't
> > have time to think like that.
> >
> > sincerely again,
> >
> > Paul Gallegos
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Shunka Wakan [mailto:shunka_2004 at yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 10:37 PM
> > To: Gallegos, Paul
> > Subject: What law and what facts?
> >
> >
> > Paul Gallegos,
> >
> > In regards to your response to Tom Krohmer's
> > e-mail...
> > First, I'd like you to affirm that you wrote the
> > following response:
> >
> > "Gallegos, Paul"
> > wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for cc'ing me your email regarding David
> > Chain's death. No charges were filed in that case
> > because of the law and the facts. I do not feel
> > under
> > attack. Nor would I fail to file a complaint
> against
> > Pacific Lumber Company, or others if there was
> > evidence and/or law which warranted it.
> > Too often people wish me to use the powers of this
> > office to persecute instead of prosecute. I ran
> for
> > office with a commitment to the principle that
> > government has an obligation to balance the joint
> > interests of public safety and individual rights.
> I
> > remain committed to that goal. To file charges
> > against
> > someone(s) merely because people wanted me to,
> would
> > violate that obligation. I will not do that.
> > I hope this assists you.
> > Sincerely,
> > Paul V. Gallegos
> >
> > If you did write this, I'd like to ask you a few
> > questions about it.
> > What "law and facts" were you referring to?
> > When someone threatens to kill you, that's
> assault.
> > When someone kills you after making such threats,
> > that's homicide.
> > We have the facts and the law on our side.
> > I witnessed the threats and the homicide that
> > followed.
> > What more do you need?
> > A.E. Ammons said, "get the fuck outta here, or
> I'll
> > MAKE SURE I GOTTA TREE COMING THIS WAY!"
> > That clearly shows murderous intentions.
> > Then I saw Gypsy's body, after A.E. dropped a tree
> > AT
> > US, INTENTIONALLY.
> > How is this not a crime?
> > You promised to forward the case to Tim Stoen, who
> > has
> > ignored my phone calls and e-mails.
> > You promised to forward the case to Steve
> > Schectman...when I asked him about it, in person,
> he
> > said that you hadn't even spoken with him about
> it.
> > Is it time for another round of letters to the
> > editor
> > and internet postings?
> > I'm really sick of empty promises from
> politicians.
> > I'm really sick of politicians throwing people
> bones
> > to shut them up for the time being.
> > I'm really sick of public servants acting like
> > politicians.
> > Do your job and give this case a fair trial.
> > It's not your job to play judge and jury...this
> case
> > deserves it's day in court, and Maxxam has it
> > coming.
> > How long will the Humboldt Co. record reflect lies
> > about homicide?
> > How long will it take for you to live up to your
> > campaign promise to re-open this investigation?
> > It's clear to many people in this community that
> > David
> > "Gypsy" Chain's death was no mere "accident"?
> > How long until you listen to the voices of
> Humboldt
> > County?
> > I noticed the big article in the Journal, awhile
> > back,
> > talking about how you had just about finished
> going
> > over the old homicide cases in Humboldt
> > County...that
> > was right around the time that I was writing
> letters
> > to the editor, alerting the community that you
> were
> > refusing to make good on your campaign promise to
> > re-open the Gypsy case.
> > Interesting timing...
> > When will we see Justice for Gypsy?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Shunka Wakan
> >
***
--- Shunka Wakan
To: northcoastearthfirst at yahoogroups.com
From: Shunka Wakan
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:01:57 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [NCEF!] Recent dialogue with Paul Gallegos
Hello, friends!
I thought you might be interested in the latest responses from Paul Gallegos, regarding the David "Gypsy" Chain case. The last I heard from Paul, he was promising to forward the Gypsy case file to Tim Stoen (who left his office shortly thereafter) and Steve Schectman (the lawyer in the David "Gypsy" Chain civil suit and recently deputized as an investigator for the D.A.'s office).
Promises, promises...
This e-mail reads from most recent to the beginning of the most recent dialogue, sparked by the attorney general's response to Tom Krohmer's appeal to the A.G.'s office to re-open the Gypsy case. Paul Gallegos likes to refer me to the A.G.'s office, who then refers us back to the local D.A. - a political ping-pong game, intended to keep the public running around in circles, with no results, as usual.
These men are civil servants, so they need to hear YOUR voices, to let them know that there are a LOT of people out there who demand justice (or at least a shot at it, in the form of a jury trial) from their elected "officials."
Ok, here it is...remember, this starts with my response to Paul Gallegos, written just this morning. I'm responding to the e-mail that I received from Paul Gallegos just this morning, as well. Does this not enrage you? It should!
This is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. If I had any doubts about this case, I would not be so adamant about it. The facts are clear, and we have them on videotape. You promised to forward this case to Tim Stoen and Steve Schectman, and I have still heard nothing from any of you regarding this case
How is Gypsy's death an "accident"? We have hard evidence that Gypsy's death was the result of an intentional act of violence against activists.
Your refusal to re-open this investigation, after promising to do so in your election campaign, sets a terrible precedent for corporate violence against non-violent activists.
We have the right to non-violently protest in this country, without being assaulted, battered, and/or
killed.
What kind of justification do you hold in your mind for Gypsy's death? How can this not be a clear case of aggravated assault and some degree of homicide?
And how can you justify pressing felony assault charges against Ramsey Gifford, when he was clearly the one assaulted by Eric Schatz and Co.? Niether Eric Schatz nor Michael Oxman are police officers, so they have no right to lay a hand on any member of the public. You are playing into the status quo that assumes that it's "ok" for Maxxam/Pacific Lumber to hire their own private contractors to physically apprehend members of the public. This is not a legitimate citizen's arrest, and it enables Maxxam/Pacific Lumber to break numerous laws, including yet not limited to the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, laws against assault, battery, and kidnapping.
The Gypsy case deserves it's day in court...there is no statute of limitations on murder, and, as an eyewitness and member of the public, I know, for a fact, that Gypsy's death was no mere "accident." Eric Schatz and Michael Oxman need to be charged for their violent crimes, as well, yet you refuse to do anything in either respect.
Do your job as a public servant, please.
Sincerely,
Shunka Wakan
>
> --- "Gallegos, Paul"
> wrote:
>
> > Shunka:
> >
> > I have spoken to you about this case repeatedly
> and
> > I accept that for you there is only one truth and
> > that is what You believe it to be. People must
> > accept your belief about truth or they are liars,
> > corrupt, stupid or some combination thereof.
> >
> > I have nothing to gain from not prosecuting anyone
> > or everyone for the death of David Chain. Clearly,
> I
> > do not expect to ever get the support of Pacific
> > Lumber Company or those aligned with them. Nor do
> I
> > anticipate that they will not fund, directly or
> > indirectly, a campaign against me. These are
> simple
> > truths.
> >
> > So, I regret your continued suffering and I hope
> > that time brings you peace.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Paul V. Gallegos
> >
> > p.s.
> >
> > The media contacted me in response to your
> attempts
> > to get media coverage. The timing had nothing to
> do
> > with me. I have a lot of work to do here. I don't
> > have time to think like that.
> >
> > sincerely again,
> >
> > Paul Gallegos
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Shunka Wakan [mailto:shunka_2004 at yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 10:37 PM
> > To: Gallegos, Paul
> > Subject: What law and what facts?
> >
> >
> > Paul Gallegos,
> >
> > In regards to your response to Tom Krohmer's
> > e-mail...
> > First, I'd like you to affirm that you wrote the
> > following response:
> >
> > "Gallegos, Paul"
> > wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for cc'ing me your email regarding David
> > Chain's death. No charges were filed in that case
> > because of the law and the facts. I do not feel
> > under
> > attack. Nor would I fail to file a complaint
> against
> > Pacific Lumber Company, or others if there was
> > evidence and/or law which warranted it.
> > Too often people wish me to use the powers of this
> > office to persecute instead of prosecute. I ran
> for
> > office with a commitment to the principle that
> > government has an obligation to balance the joint
> > interests of public safety and individual rights.
> I
> > remain committed to that goal. To file charges
> > against
> > someone(s) merely because people wanted me to,
> would
> > violate that obligation. I will not do that.
> > I hope this assists you.
> > Sincerely,
> > Paul V. Gallegos
> >
> > If you did write this, I'd like to ask you a few
> > questions about it.
> > What "law and facts" were you referring to?
> > When someone threatens to kill you, that's
> assault.
> > When someone kills you after making such threats,
> > that's homicide.
> > We have the facts and the law on our side.
> > I witnessed the threats and the homicide that
> > followed.
> > What more do you need?
> > A.E. Ammons said, "get the fuck outta here, or
> I'll
> > MAKE SURE I GOTTA TREE COMING THIS WAY!"
> > That clearly shows murderous intentions.
> > Then I saw Gypsy's body, after A.E. dropped a tree
> > AT
> > US, INTENTIONALLY.
> > How is this not a crime?
> > You promised to forward the case to Tim Stoen, who
> > has
> > ignored my phone calls and e-mails.
> > You promised to forward the case to Steve
> > Schectman...when I asked him about it, in person,
> he
> > said that you hadn't even spoken with him about
> it.
> > Is it time for another round of letters to the
> > editor
> > and internet postings?
> > I'm really sick of empty promises from
> politicians.
> > I'm really sick of politicians throwing people
> bones
> > to shut them up for the time being.
> > I'm really sick of public servants acting like
> > politicians.
> > Do your job and give this case a fair trial.
> > It's not your job to play judge and jury...this
> case
> > deserves it's day in court, and Maxxam has it
> > coming.
> > How long will the Humboldt Co. record reflect lies
> > about homicide?
> > How long will it take for you to live up to your
> > campaign promise to re-open this investigation?
> > It's clear to many people in this community that
> > David
> > "Gypsy" Chain's death was no mere "accident"?
> > How long until you listen to the voices of
> Humboldt
> > County?
> > I noticed the big article in the Journal, awhile
> > back,
> > talking about how you had just about finished
> going
> > over the old homicide cases in Humboldt
> > County...that
> > was right around the time that I was writing
> letters
> > to the editor, alerting the community that you
> were
> > refusing to make good on your campaign promise to
> > re-open the Gypsy case.
> > Interesting timing...
> > When will we see Justice for Gypsy?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Shunka Wakan
> >
3.24.2007
[NCEF!] Letters from Gallegos, part I
This message is not flagged. [ Flag Message - Mark as Unread ]
To:
"North Coast Earth First!" northcoastearthfirst at yahoogroups.com
From:
"Shunka Wakan" shunka_2004 at yahoo.com Add to Address Book
Date:
Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:27:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:
[NCEF!] Letters from Gallegos, part I
On March 17th, 2005, a criminal homicide complaint was filed against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber Co., for the murder of David "Gypsy" Chain. Gypsy was killed, on September 17th, 1998, when an enraged Maxxam/PL logger began intentionally falling trees towards a group of non-violent North Coast Earth First! acitivsts. Video footage of the logger was taken less than an hour before Gypsy's death; the videotape clearly documents the logger saying "get outta here, or else I'll MAKE SURE I've got a tree comin' this way!" [profanity edited out].
In the investigation that followed Gypsy's death, Earth First! was initially blamed, though never formally charged, and the final conclusion, by the district attorney's office, was that Gypsy's death was an "accident." So, if you're a big timber corporation in Humboldt County, California, then you can get caught falling trees at people, killing them, and still get away with it..."accident"...total corruption!
Our new district attorney, Paul Gallegos, said that he would re-open the Gypsy investigation if he were elected, during a local public radio call-in show. He was elected, in fact, and has still not yet re-opened the investigation...well, he did admit that he opened the case when he first got into office, and decided that there "wasn't enough evidence."
So let me get this straight...you can have video footage (videotapes don't lie) of a direct threat on someone's life, and, when that person gets killed as a direct result of those threats being carried out, and that's "not enough evidence" to prove that anything more than an "accident" occurred. What more do you need?
So I filed a criminal complaint against Maxxam/PL, on March 17th, 2005, for homicide, since there's no statute of limitations on murder. The complaint also included former Humboldt County district attorney Terry Farmer, former sheriff Dennis Lewis, and former homicide detective Juan Freeman, for criminal conspiracy to conceal homicide.
I then did interviews on the subject, on local and national radio shows, issued a press release to nationwide media, and posted the complaint on our website, at www.northcoastearthfirst.org.
About a week later, I e-mailed Paul Gallegos with a copy of the press release, and a link to the complaint, just in case the Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept. had failed to forward the complaint to his office. No replies from Paul Gallegos...
On the same day, however, Paul Gallegos sent this lengthy reply to a concerned citizen who e-mailed Paul to find out what was going on with the criminal homicide complaint.
See how Paul denies the very existence of the complaint, and then goes on to deny filing charges against Earth First!
He had already filed the bogus felony assault charges against Phoenix at the time of this writing, which were reduced to misdemeanor charges by Judge Feeney on Friday, by the way (press release soon to come to the listserver).
Ignoring legitimate complaints from people who have real evidence, lying to the public, and pressing felony charges against assaulted and battered activists...the real Paul Gallegos...
This is an e-mail that Gallegos wrote to another concerned Humboldt County citizen...he won't return any of my e-mails...I faxed him a copy of the complaint, stamped by the Humboldt Co. Sheriff's Dept., the very next day. I marked it "urgent" and "please reply" and haven't heard a word...
--- "Gallegos, Paul"
wrote:
> Thank you for your email. While I prefer to answer
> specific questions so I know what I am being asked,
> I will try to respond to your inquiry.
>
> No. Our office has exclusive jurisdiction over
> criminal complaints. No criminal complaint has been
> filed regarding the David Chain.
>
> As I have said publicly many times, on taking office
> I did look into the case involving the death of
> David Chain. After reviewing the information and
> concluding that there was not sufficient information
> to justify filing a criminal charge I made the
> decision that no criminal charge would be filed.
>
> Despite what individuals may want, supporters or
> opponents, I must make decisions based on the facts
> and the law. To do otherwise would be to use the
> authority of this office for persecution not
> prosecution. I will not participate in that.
>
> Regarding the claim that I am making Earth First!
> the sacrificial lamb for my political career, that
> is absurd. For one, that is the exact claim PALCO
> and its advocates makes against me for filing our
> lawsuit against them. For another, nothing has been
> filed against Earth First! How exactly are they a
> sacrificial lamb?
>
> Finally, I hope your belief that I would stand up to
> the waste and tyranny of Maxxam Corp was not the
> only reason you voted for me. For although, I have
> clearly shown that I will stand up to Maxxam Corp.,
> there is much, much more that this Office is about.
>
> This Office has stood up to many, many institutions
> that thought/think they control Humboldt County. The
> People of Humboldt County control Humboldt County.
> It is my commitment to that idea, to the
> enfranchisement of all people, to the protection of
> the rights of citizens, to the improvement of public
> safety and quality of life, as well as many, many
> other things that should justify your vote for me.
>
> I will go one step further: Every citizen, whether
> you like or dislike them, is entitled to the same
> protections of and from our laws. I would rather
> lose your vote and the vote of all people than fail
> to honor that principle both in word and deed. I
> hope this answers your questions. If not and you
> have more questions of me, please feel free to email
> me.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Paul V. Gallegos
>
__________________________________________________
To:
"North Coast Earth First!" northcoastearthfirst at yahoogroups.com
From:
"Shunka Wakan" shunka_2004 at yahoo.com Add to Address Book
Date:
Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:27:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:
[NCEF!] Letters from Gallegos, part I
On March 17th, 2005, a criminal homicide complaint was filed against Maxxam Corp./Pacific Lumber Co., for the murder of David "Gypsy" Chain. Gypsy was killed, on September 17th, 1998, when an enraged Maxxam/PL logger began intentionally falling trees towards a group of non-violent North Coast Earth First! acitivsts. Video footage of the logger was taken less than an hour before Gypsy's death; the videotape clearly documents the logger saying "get outta here, or else I'll MAKE SURE I've got a tree comin' this way!" [profanity edited out].
In the investigation that followed Gypsy's death, Earth First! was initially blamed, though never formally charged, and the final conclusion, by the district attorney's office, was that Gypsy's death was an "accident." So, if you're a big timber corporation in Humboldt County, California, then you can get caught falling trees at people, killing them, and still get away with it..."accident"...total corruption!
Our new district attorney, Paul Gallegos, said that he would re-open the Gypsy investigation if he were elected, during a local public radio call-in show. He was elected, in fact, and has still not yet re-opened the investigation...well, he did admit that he opened the case when he first got into office, and decided that there "wasn't enough evidence."
So let me get this straight...you can have video footage (videotapes don't lie) of a direct threat on someone's life, and, when that person gets killed as a direct result of those threats being carried out, and that's "not enough evidence" to prove that anything more than an "accident" occurred. What more do you need?
So I filed a criminal complaint against Maxxam/PL, on March 17th, 2005, for homicide, since there's no statute of limitations on murder. The complaint also included former Humboldt County district attorney Terry Farmer, former sheriff Dennis Lewis, and former homicide detective Juan Freeman, for criminal conspiracy to conceal homicide.
I then did interviews on the subject, on local and national radio shows, issued a press release to nationwide media, and posted the complaint on our website, at www.northcoastearthfirst.org.
About a week later, I e-mailed Paul Gallegos with a copy of the press release, and a link to the complaint, just in case the Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept. had failed to forward the complaint to his office. No replies from Paul Gallegos...
On the same day, however, Paul Gallegos sent this lengthy reply to a concerned citizen who e-mailed Paul to find out what was going on with the criminal homicide complaint.
See how Paul denies the very existence of the complaint, and then goes on to deny filing charges against Earth First!
He had already filed the bogus felony assault charges against Phoenix at the time of this writing, which were reduced to misdemeanor charges by Judge Feeney on Friday, by the way (press release soon to come to the listserver).
Ignoring legitimate complaints from people who have real evidence, lying to the public, and pressing felony charges against assaulted and battered activists...the real Paul Gallegos...
This is an e-mail that Gallegos wrote to another concerned Humboldt County citizen...he won't return any of my e-mails...I faxed him a copy of the complaint, stamped by the Humboldt Co. Sheriff's Dept., the very next day. I marked it "urgent" and "please reply" and haven't heard a word...
--- "Gallegos, Paul"
wrote:
> Thank you for your email. While I prefer to answer
> specific questions so I know what I am being asked,
> I will try to respond to your inquiry.
>
> No. Our office has exclusive jurisdiction over
> criminal complaints. No criminal complaint has been
> filed regarding the David Chain.
>
> As I have said publicly many times, on taking office
> I did look into the case involving the death of
> David Chain. After reviewing the information and
> concluding that there was not sufficient information
> to justify filing a criminal charge I made the
> decision that no criminal charge would be filed.
>
> Despite what individuals may want, supporters or
> opponents, I must make decisions based on the facts
> and the law. To do otherwise would be to use the
> authority of this office for persecution not
> prosecution. I will not participate in that.
>
> Regarding the claim that I am making Earth First!
> the sacrificial lamb for my political career, that
> is absurd. For one, that is the exact claim PALCO
> and its advocates makes against me for filing our
> lawsuit against them. For another, nothing has been
> filed against Earth First! How exactly are they a
> sacrificial lamb?
>
> Finally, I hope your belief that I would stand up to
> the waste and tyranny of Maxxam Corp was not the
> only reason you voted for me. For although, I have
> clearly shown that I will stand up to Maxxam Corp.,
> there is much, much more that this Office is about.
>
> This Office has stood up to many, many institutions
> that thought/think they control Humboldt County. The
> People of Humboldt County control Humboldt County.
> It is my commitment to that idea, to the
> enfranchisement of all people, to the protection of
> the rights of citizens, to the improvement of public
> safety and quality of life, as well as many, many
> other things that should justify your vote for me.
>
> I will go one step further: Every citizen, whether
> you like or dislike them, is entitled to the same
> protections of and from our laws. I would rather
> lose your vote and the vote of all people than fail
> to honor that principle both in word and deed. I
> hope this answers your questions. If not and you
> have more questions of me, please feel free to email
> me.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Paul V. Gallegos
>
__________________________________________________
Born just plain Julia on February 18, 1974
Born just plain Julia on February 18, 1974
From disinformation:
julia 'butterfly' hill inc
by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - January 21, 2002
On the left, the whole star-system mentality of some-activists-are-more-equal-than-others must be abandoned.
~~ Flatland Magazine editor Jim Martin.
By the time eco-activist Julia 'Butterfly' Hill's 738 day vigil to protect a 200-foot redwood had ended, she had become the charismatic face of the new global activism.
Hill's reliance on non-violent civil disobedience gained her widespread US media attention. High-profile magazines such as George, Good Housekeeping and People magazines featured her thoughts on environmental issues and optimistic spirituality. Celebrity environmentalists including Joan Baez, Woody Harrelson, Starhawk and Mickey Hart rallied to help save Californian redwood forests. Hill's powerful coming-of-age memoir The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2000) is likely to achieve bestseller status, raising public awareness of controversial forestry practices. PBS ran a much-praised independent documentary, and the Headwaters Action Video Collective is promoting their own Luna documentary. Hill has an intense speaking schedule with the nonprofit Circle of Life Foundation. But for many activists, the icon falls far short of her public relations legacy.
Hill has many supporters amongst the conspiracy community.
In several essays, Konformist editor Robert Sterling has asserted that Hill rejuvenated eco-politics just when it was needed: the movement was still recovering from the tragic loss of fellow Earth First! activist Judi Bari. Militia and Patriot groups were shown that nonviolenct strategies could work. Hill's personal courage offered guidance in the tumultuous post-Cold War period that has been defined for activists by Culture Jamming, anti-globalization protests, and a growing suspicion of trans-national corporations.
However, political pundit Alexander Cockburn, Flatland Magazine editor Jim Martin, and Hill's former media coordinator, Robert Parker, have all offered contrarian views, raising fears that she would be lured by lucrative book contracts and a beckoning Hollywood. Martin has revealed a murky world of Earth First! politics dating back to the late 1980s. Parker has claimed that the real story is yet to be told, and that Hill gained her limelight celebrity status at the expense of many worthy colleagues. Cockburn remains cynical about the "packaging" of rebellious activism in general: the imagery is eventually co-opted by the conservative mainstream.
The specter of Julia "Butterfly" Hill Inc may prove to be a mirage. However, the contentious debate surrounding her status ever since 18 December 1999, when she stepped down from Luna the Stafford Giant, can remind us of three key things.
Firstly, the new global activism requires new alliances of people who have diverse ideologies (and who can transcend bi-polarity, and include aspects of both individual/elitist and communal/collectivistic worldviews when appropriate).
Secondly, these alliances can easily be torn apart - to paraphrase Eric Berne - by the divisive games that activists play (butterfly catcher?), particularly when an individual sins and rises above the group-mind ("selling out"). Thirdly, every icon we deify will ultimately betray our cherished ideals, because they are human, and because even the most innocent impulses become commodified over a long life-span.
No one individual should have to shoulder an entire movement alone. Hopefully, Julia 'Butterfly' Hill's example will awaken your Gaia-consciousness and inspire you to save a Monarch butterfly or two.
The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.
From disinformation:
julia 'butterfly' hill inc
by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - January 21, 2002
On the left, the whole star-system mentality of some-activists-are-more-equal-than-others must be abandoned.
~~ Flatland Magazine editor Jim Martin.
By the time eco-activist Julia 'Butterfly' Hill's 738 day vigil to protect a 200-foot redwood had ended, she had become the charismatic face of the new global activism.
Hill's reliance on non-violent civil disobedience gained her widespread US media attention. High-profile magazines such as George, Good Housekeeping and People magazines featured her thoughts on environmental issues and optimistic spirituality. Celebrity environmentalists including Joan Baez, Woody Harrelson, Starhawk and Mickey Hart rallied to help save Californian redwood forests. Hill's powerful coming-of-age memoir The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2000) is likely to achieve bestseller status, raising public awareness of controversial forestry practices. PBS ran a much-praised independent documentary, and the Headwaters Action Video Collective is promoting their own Luna documentary. Hill has an intense speaking schedule with the nonprofit Circle of Life Foundation. But for many activists, the icon falls far short of her public relations legacy.
Hill has many supporters amongst the conspiracy community.
In several essays, Konformist editor Robert Sterling has asserted that Hill rejuvenated eco-politics just when it was needed: the movement was still recovering from the tragic loss of fellow Earth First! activist Judi Bari. Militia and Patriot groups were shown that nonviolenct strategies could work. Hill's personal courage offered guidance in the tumultuous post-Cold War period that has been defined for activists by Culture Jamming, anti-globalization protests, and a growing suspicion of trans-national corporations.
However, political pundit Alexander Cockburn, Flatland Magazine editor Jim Martin, and Hill's former media coordinator, Robert Parker, have all offered contrarian views, raising fears that she would be lured by lucrative book contracts and a beckoning Hollywood. Martin has revealed a murky world of Earth First! politics dating back to the late 1980s. Parker has claimed that the real story is yet to be told, and that Hill gained her limelight celebrity status at the expense of many worthy colleagues. Cockburn remains cynical about the "packaging" of rebellious activism in general: the imagery is eventually co-opted by the conservative mainstream.
The specter of Julia "Butterfly" Hill Inc may prove to be a mirage. However, the contentious debate surrounding her status ever since 18 December 1999, when she stepped down from Luna the Stafford Giant, can remind us of three key things.
Firstly, the new global activism requires new alliances of people who have diverse ideologies (and who can transcend bi-polarity, and include aspects of both individual/elitist and communal/collectivistic worldviews when appropriate).
Secondly, these alliances can easily be torn apart - to paraphrase Eric Berne - by the divisive games that activists play (butterfly catcher?), particularly when an individual sins and rises above the group-mind ("selling out"). Thirdly, every icon we deify will ultimately betray our cherished ideals, because they are human, and because even the most innocent impulses become commodified over a long life-span.
No one individual should have to shoulder an entire movement alone. Hopefully, Julia 'Butterfly' Hill's example will awaken your Gaia-consciousness and inspire you to save a Monarch butterfly or two.
The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.
"Local Solutions'" True Colors
To:
"North Coast Earth First!"
From:
"Shunka Wakan" Add to Address Book
Date:
Mon, 7 Mar 2005 19:46:24 -0800 (PST)
Subject:
[NCEF!] National Public Radio on Pacific Lumber
For the North Coast wrote:
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 01:31:14 -0500 (EST)
From: For the North Coast
To: shunka_2002 at yahoo.com
Subject: National Public Radio on Pacific Lumber
To: For The North Coast subscribers:
On Monday, February 28th, National Public Radio featured the story of Humboldt County and the challenges we face with Pacific Lumber's request to cut additional Timber Harvest Plans on endangered Freshwater Elk watersheds.
In case you missed this national story, here is a link to NPR's news broadcast:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516875
We are all seeking local solutions - how to save Pacific Lumber and our timber industry from Maxxam's junkbond bankruptcy plans...before it's too late.
We hope you will join us- http://www.localsolutions.org
Michael Twombly
Local Solutions Political Action Committee
129 5th Street, Eureka
(707) 443-3921
--
To unsubscribe from: For the North Coast, just follow this link:
http://www.ourhumboldt.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?
"North Coast Earth First!"
From:
"Shunka Wakan"
Date:
Mon, 7 Mar 2005 19:46:24 -0800 (PST)
Subject:
[NCEF!] National Public Radio on Pacific Lumber
For the North Coast
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 01:31:14 -0500 (EST)
From: For the North Coast
To: shunka_2002 at yahoo.com
Subject: National Public Radio on Pacific Lumber
To: For The North Coast subscribers:
On Monday, February 28th, National Public Radio featured the story of Humboldt County and the challenges we face with Pacific Lumber's request to cut additional Timber Harvest Plans on endangered Freshwater Elk watersheds.
In case you missed this national story, here is a link to NPR's news broadcast:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516875
We are all seeking local solutions - how to save Pacific Lumber and our timber industry from Maxxam's junkbond bankruptcy plans...before it's too late.
We hope you will join us- http://www.localsolutions.org
Michael Twombly
Local Solutions Political Action Committee
129 5th Street, Eureka
(707) 443-3921
--
To unsubscribe from: For the North Coast, just follow this link:
http://www.ourhumboldt.org/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?
Shunka - Tree-Sitter Lawsuits Against Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Multiply
From: Shunka Wakan
Date: Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:06 pm
Subject: Tree-Sitter Lawsuits Against Maxxam/PL Multiply
For immediate release January 17, 2005
Tree-Sitter Lawsuits Against Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Multiply
Eureka, CA - Two more tree-sitters who had been forcibly removed from threatened ancient redwoods in Northern California have filed lawsuits against Maxxam Corporation, Pacific Lumber, and the men hired to seize them high above the ground. Amy Gershman and Jamie Kohler joined fellow tree-sitters Jeny Card, Lindsey Holm, Kristi Sanchez, Scott Petersen and Anna Farnam in filing counter suits January 14, 2005 related to the string of tree-sit evictions that occurred in the forested hills above the tiny hamlet of Freshwater, California in the spring of 2003.
The seven tree-sitters, along with more than twenty other local residents and protestors were slapped with a lawsuit by PL that charged trespass and conspiracy. A SLAPP suit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The activists' counter suits include allegations of assault, battery, negligence, infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and violation of their civil rights.
Unlike most of the other redwood giants formerly occupied by activists to protect them, the trees Gershman and Kohler sat in are still standing. Kohler was the third tree-sitter to be evicted from the ancient redwood known as "Jerry," from which Card (better known as marathon tree-sitter "Remedy") and Sanchez were also removed. Gershman, another long term tree-sitter whose feet didn't touch the ground for seven months, was removed from a giant, double trunk redwood dubbed "Everlasting Life." The two trees are still occupied by tree-sitters on tiny tree-top platforms. Maxxam/PL still intends to cut the trees down.
The SLAPP suit is on hold following a move by attorneys for the PL-hired extractors that disqualified Judge W. Bruce Watson. Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen will rule soon on whether the disqualification was legal, and determine whether he or Judge Watson will take on the case.
##
Date: Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:06 pm
Subject: Tree-Sitter Lawsuits Against Maxxam/PL Multiply
For immediate release January 17, 2005
Tree-Sitter Lawsuits Against Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Multiply
Eureka, CA - Two more tree-sitters who had been forcibly removed from threatened ancient redwoods in Northern California have filed lawsuits against Maxxam Corporation, Pacific Lumber, and the men hired to seize them high above the ground. Amy Gershman and Jamie Kohler joined fellow tree-sitters Jeny Card, Lindsey Holm, Kristi Sanchez, Scott Petersen and Anna Farnam in filing counter suits January 14, 2005 related to the string of tree-sit evictions that occurred in the forested hills above the tiny hamlet of Freshwater, California in the spring of 2003.
The seven tree-sitters, along with more than twenty other local residents and protestors were slapped with a lawsuit by PL that charged trespass and conspiracy. A SLAPP suit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The activists' counter suits include allegations of assault, battery, negligence, infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and violation of their civil rights.
Unlike most of the other redwood giants formerly occupied by activists to protect them, the trees Gershman and Kohler sat in are still standing. Kohler was the third tree-sitter to be evicted from the ancient redwood known as "Jerry," from which Card (better known as marathon tree-sitter "Remedy") and Sanchez were also removed. Gershman, another long term tree-sitter whose feet didn't touch the ground for seven months, was removed from a giant, double trunk redwood dubbed "Everlasting Life." The two trees are still occupied by tree-sitters on tiny tree-top platforms. Maxxam/PL still intends to cut the trees down.
The SLAPP suit is on hold following a move by attorneys for the PL-hired extractors that disqualified Judge W. Bruce Watson. Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen will rule soon on whether the disqualification was legal, and determine whether he or Judge Watson will take on the case.
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2.25.2007
Crying crocodile tears...
---- Mark Lovelace wrote:
February 23, 2007
Free Public Workshop Offered:
Bankruptcy 101:
Understanding the Palco Chapter 11 Case
Friday, March 2nd, 6pm to 8pm
Fortuna River Lodge
A coalition of environmental, labor, and forestry organizations are presenting a free public workshop to help the community understand the Pacific Lumber Company's bankruptcy. The workshop will be held at the Fortuna River Lodge on Friday evening, March 2nd, from 6 to 8 pm. The event is being sponsored by the Humboldt Watershed Council, the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, and other partners.
The purpose of this workshop is to help the public understand what Chapter 11 is, how the reorganization process works, the specifics of the Palco case, and some of the possible outcomes. The event will feature a presentation by Peter Clapp, an attorney with many years' experience in corporate bankruptcy law. Mr. Clapp will explain the details of the process, what's at stake, who the parties are, and some of the significant issues which have emerged so far.
This educational workshop is designed to be useful to anyone with either a financial stake or an interest in the Palco bankruptcy, including workers, retirees, contractors, and community members. The presentation will be followed by a facilitated question-and-answer session to allow attendees to further explore the Chapter 11 process and specific relevant issues.
For more information, please contact:
Mark Lovelace, President
Humboldt Watershed Council
(707) 822-1166
sheds@humboldt1.com
February 23, 2007
Free Public Workshop Offered:
Bankruptcy 101:
Understanding the Palco Chapter 11 Case
Friday, March 2nd, 6pm to 8pm
Fortuna River Lodge
A coalition of environmental, labor, and forestry organizations are presenting a free public workshop to help the community understand the Pacific Lumber Company's bankruptcy. The workshop will be held at the Fortuna River Lodge on Friday evening, March 2nd, from 6 to 8 pm. The event is being sponsored by the Humboldt Watershed Council, the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, and other partners.
The purpose of this workshop is to help the public understand what Chapter 11 is, how the reorganization process works, the specifics of the Palco case, and some of the possible outcomes. The event will feature a presentation by Peter Clapp, an attorney with many years' experience in corporate bankruptcy law. Mr. Clapp will explain the details of the process, what's at stake, who the parties are, and some of the significant issues which have emerged so far.
This educational workshop is designed to be useful to anyone with either a financial stake or an interest in the Palco bankruptcy, including workers, retirees, contractors, and community members. The presentation will be followed by a facilitated question-and-answer session to allow attendees to further explore the Chapter 11 process and specific relevant issues.
For more information, please contact:
Mark Lovelace, President
Humboldt Watershed Council
(707) 822-1166
sheds@humboldt1.com
1.29.2007
Earth First Profile from activistcash.com
HOLY SMOKES!!!!
Earth First!
Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
Phone 520-620-6900 | Fax 4132540057 | Email collective@earthfirstjournal.org
"It could have killed someone," said San Diego fire captain Jeff Carle. Three workers sleeping at a construction site were able to escape after the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to an unfinished, 200-unit condominium development late one night in August, 2003.
A newspaper reported: "Flames leapt 200 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. Grapefruit-sized fireballs landed in courtyards and patios of adjacent buildings, and burning embers swirled in the night." Nearby residents were evacuated and returned home to find their window blinds had melted from the heat. A 500-gallon fuel tank exploded. Damages were estimated at $50 million.
One local resident described the event for San Diego's NBC affiliate: "Smoke was just coming straight at you. The flames were just all over. It was just terror." A construction worker remarked: "I'm out of work now. Thank you, arsonist."
A twelve-foot sign next to the arson site read: "If you build it -- we will burn it -- the E.L.F.'s are mad." The Earth Liberation Front, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken responsibility for more than 600 crimes since 1996, totaling more than $100 million in damages.
The Earth Liberation Front sprung from -- and in many ways is still an arm of -- Earth First!.
Earth First! (EF!) is a "warrior society" that takes a "by any means necessary" approach to "defending mother earth." The group declines to participate in the democratic process, preferring instead to damage, disable, and destroy the property of its ever-growing list of enemies. EF! targets include, but are by no means limited to, loggers, ranchers, and farmers -- especially those who grow genetically modified crops. Earth First!ers' crimes include assault, arson, and untold acts of sabotage.
Before he quit in the late 1980s, the driving force behind EF! was a man named Dave Foreman. His book Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is a how-to for environmental saboteurs. It includes nine chapters of instructions on subjects ranging from tree spiking to destroying roads, from disabling equipment to making smoke bombs. Rodney Coronado, an Earth First! zealot who was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison following a string of arsons, calls the book "our bible."
A "Mainstream" Spin-off?
The legend of EF!'s founding involves five friends hanging out in the desert, drunk and high. They were inspired by Edward Abbey's book The Monkeywrench Gang, which chronicles a gang of environmental zealots who sabotage oil, mining, and farming interests. A different story, one that doesn't get told as often or as gleefully, was outlined by author Ron Arnold in Trashing the Economy:
Defectors from the environmental movement have told us that Earth First! founder Dave Foreman was approached by the Sierra Club and his employer, the Wilderness Society, in 1979 with an offer to fund a new extremist point group for the movement. It would serve the function of making their own demands look more reasonable … Defectors say that Foreman made the deal by himself in a comfortable Wilderness Society office, and accepted the offer on the condition that funding would be steady and adequate, and that his participation was a limited 10-year deal.
While this story is almost impossible to confirm, there is evidence for its veracity. Dave Foreman did quit EF! after about ten years. And comments from Foreman himself are revealing. Smithsonian magazine writes:
"We thought it would have been useful to have a group to take a tougher position than the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society," Foreman remembers. "It could be sort of secretly controlled by the mainstream and trotted out at hearings to make the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society look moderate."
In his own book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Foreman brags: "A major accomplishment of Earth First! … has been to expand the environmental spectrum to where the Sierra Club and other groups are perceived as moderates." Foreman made the same point to Audubon magazine in 1982: "When I call the Sierra Club 'namby pamby,' that is done consciously to negate what [Secretary of the Interior James] Watt says when he calls them extremists."
In the same Audubon article, long-time Sierra Club executive director and Foreman mentor David Brower argued: "The people that are easily named extreme make the people who were extreme seem suddenly reasonable." Brower told E magazine:
The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We're still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.
The Earth First! Journal
Every industry has its trade rags, and the leading magazine for the environmental fringe is the Earth First! Journal. Unsuspecting magazine browsers in mainstream bookstores might stumble across the Journal, which provides tactical information and motivation to saboteurs -- while singing the praises of Earth First!ers who destroy fishing boats, genetically modified crops, and logging equipment.
The Journal features articles by some of America's most violent eco-terrorists. One issue, for example, included an essay by convicted arsonist Jeffrey Luers about "Why I set a fire at [Eugene, Oregon's] Romania Chevrolet." The same issue included a treatise titled "The Non-violent Use of Gunpowder."
"By every means necessary we will bring this and every other empire down! Mutiny and sabotage in defense of Mother Earth!" screamed another recent article condemning the war in Iraq. Elsewhere in that same issue: "A snitch is no longer entitled to basic expectations of safety. As such, it is righteous to hurt them, burn down their house or do similarly naughty things to them."
In 2000, the 20th Anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal bragged: "The simple idea of putting the earth first had drawn expanding crowds of hippies, anarchists, animal rights activists and all sorts of riffraff." The kind of people who "riff" alphabet songs like this one:
I is incendiary, like burning 'dozers
J is for jail time, and other enclosures
K is for kill, what they'll do if they catch you.
In 2002, the Earth First! Journal published a two-page spread called "Most-Wanted Eco-terrorists: the Biotechnology Industry." Claiming that "everyone at Monsanto is an eco-terrorist," it opened with a line that has become emblematic of green radicals everywhere: "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed by corporations such as the biotechnology industries, and the people who are killing it have names and addresses." The article then went on to list names and addresses.
"The Earth First! Journal Collective" wrote an open letter appearing in the Spring 2003 issue of the rag for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). One of the most violent groups of animal-rights zealots, SHAC has incubated the technique of harassing, threatening, and in some cases physically harming people who happen to work for a company they don't like. The open letter read:
SHAC's tactics and strategies need to be analyzed and implemented by the environmental movement. The results generated by SHAC's actions are awe-inspiring, and the environmental movement needs to start paying attention.
The letter went on to describe how Earth First!ers have begun harassing "an ecoterrorist in our eyes" whose job it is to remove tree sitters safely from their perch:
In recent months, activists haven't waited for Climber Eric to show up in the forest. They have visited his home, business and insurance company. At home, Climber Eric was not the same confident, controlled person that he is in the woods, where he is usually protected by his crew and local police. In fact, he was visibly distraught. For Climber Eric, this is just the beginning.
Several newspapers reported Rodney Coronado boasting that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." What the papers didn't report was that those words were directed at "Climber Eric," and, according to his employer, Coronado continued: "I'm coming to your door. Hey, do you got any food in your house? Don't worry, I'll go to your house and ask your wife."
"Earth First! is a verb, not a noun."
EF! works very hard to convince the public that its activities are not governed by any formal institution. "Earth First! is not an organization, but a movement" is the constant refrain. "There are no members of Earth First!, only Earth First!ers."
There are practical as well as romantic reasons to downplay any organizational structure. According to the Earth First! Journal: "To avoid co-option, we feel it is necessary to avoid the corporate organizational structure so readily embraced by many environmental groups." Of course, most green groups engage in legal activities -- and therefore don't fear "co-option."
While there is no primary EF! office, there are numerous incorporated Earth First! organizations, each with its own specific function. These include Daily Planet Publishing (which publishes the Earth First! Journal), the Fund for Wild Nature (formerly the Earth First! Foundation), the Trees Foundation, and the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
For the benefit of anyone who doubts that these are genuine, legal "organizations," consider that the website of the Fund for Wild Nature once read: "The Fund relies on invididual [sic] contributors like yourself, and your friends. We accept donations of cash, stock or other financial assets." Here is a tax-exempt foundation making a plea for corporate securities, on behalf of a group that claims to exist without any structure.
This non-organization, which preaches "no compromise in defense of mother earth," is very much aware of who pays the bills. The Washington Times reports that Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner, who has personally contributed to radical environmental groups, gets a free pass from EF! militants:
While a timber-cutting operation was under way on one of his [Turner's] ranches in 1998, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! instead protested timber cutting on a nearby ranch owned by Zachary Taylor, said private investigator Barry R. Clausen, who spent a year undercover at EarthFirst.
He asked a protester why the group did not include take on [sic] Mr. Turner, Mr. Clausen said, and was told: "We cannot. That's where our money comes from."
Mr. Clausen, author of "Burning Rage," an investigation of domestic terrorism, said environmental groups' nickname for Mr. Turner is "Daddy Greenbucks."
"Ted Turner has canned hunts where you can shoot a buffalo ... and drilling ... in New Mexico and clear-cutting trees and he never gets protested. And when you ask why, it's because he is one of the biggest contributors to extremist groups," Mr. Clausen said.
Interlocking, Interrelated Radicals
If you want to contribute money to EF! and get a tax break on your donation, send your check to the Fund for Wild Nature (FWN). Formerly named the Earth First! Foundation, FWN serves as a tax-exempt pass-through for money to reach Earth First!ers. It has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to EF! organizations.
FWN has doled out money to the Earth First! Journal, Mendocino Earth First! and North Coast Earth First! (California), Elaho Earth First! (Canada), Wild Rockies Earth First!, Arizona Earth First!, and many others. More often, though, the Fund gives to EF! groups that don't have the words "Earth First!" in their names -- like the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH). BACH's leader is Karen Pickett, whose arrest record hasn't prevented her from holding the purse strings for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
Another FWN beneficiary is the Cascadia Forest Alliance (CFA). According to Bear Deluxe magazine, "Former Earth First! members conceived the CFA as a fresh organization for combating Salvage Rider cutting in Oregon. Since then, hundreds of people -- including Portland's Tre Arrow, who gained local fame when he spent 11 days protesting the sale from a second story ledge at the Forest Service headquarters in Portland -- have occupied the tree-sits at Eagle Creek."
"Tre Arrow," whose real name is Michael Scarpitti, graces the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in October, 2002 for a string of arsons, including the torching of three cement trucks. The government has offered $25,000 for information leading to his arrest. Although Scarpitti is still on the loose, law enforcement officers spotted him in 2003 near Arcadia, California -- accompanied by none other than Rodney Coronado.
Coronado argues that EF! is part of one big happy family, along with the FBI's most feared domestic terrorist groups, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front: "Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front," Coronado wrote in a 2001 essay, "all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent."
FWN provided the initial support for EF! spin-offs like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Ruckus Society, both of which were started by Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle. Indeed, FWN thinks of itself as the venture capitalist of radical environmental groups.
The Fund for Wild Nature is by no means Earth First!'s only source of revenue. For example, the Dogwood Alliance, which claims to believe in "peaceful" tactics, has funneled money to Katuah Earth First! and other groups that work with Earth First!.
Earth First! founders Dave Foreman, Bart Koehler, and Howie Wolke are now board members, officers and/or founders of other environmental organizations. Those include: the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (Wolke); the Ecology Center, Inc. (Wolke); the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (Foreman); the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center (Koehler); and the Wildlands Project, a.k.a. North American Wilderness Recovery, which recently merged with the Cenozoic Society (Foreman).
"Direct Action" on Your Dinner Plate
In 1999 FWN began to bankroll "direct action" against biotech crops (although Earth First!ers began targeting them as early as 1987). The now defunct Bioengineering Action Network (BAN) received FWN money. When it was functioning, BAN served as a press-outreach service for the FBI-certified domestic-terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), another Earth First! spin-off. BAN's website featured a how-to guide for tearing out biotech crops (they call it "nighttime gardening") and instructed saboteurs on how to "research your target."
1999 was also the year that Al H. Jacobson, founder of the avowedly anti-biotech crops organic food line Garden of Eatin', gave FWN $54,500. Jacobson's Naturganic Foundation kicked in $200,000 to FWN for 2000. In those years, Jacobson was by far FWN's biggest donor.
Earth First! makes your dinner more expensive by practicing economic sabotage on cattle ranchers as well as farmers who raise genetically enhanced crops. The EF!-founded and FWN-funded Buffalo Field Campaign, for example, uses "direct action" to block government officials from keeping buffalo in and around Yellowstone Park from passing on the contagious disease brucellosis to nearby cattle. As of December 2002, at least 21 Buffalo Field Campaign activists have been arrested -- quite a rap sheet for a tax-exempt group.
But even EF! draws a line between the kind of illegal activities that can be funded with tax-exempt money, and those that are too violent for the Fund for Wild Nature to touch. Cash for these endeavors comes from the Earth First! Direct Action Fund. Bragging that "thousands of EF!ers have been arrested around the world," the EF! Direct Action Fund's website appeals for donations:
Direct action requires courage, commitment, training and the ability to focus on an urgent issue. Unfortunately, it also requires money. Since 1985, The Earth First! Direct Action Fund (DAF) has assisted in planning, coordinating, and funding activists on the front lines. These people are the backbone, indeed the heart and soul, of the Earth First! movement.
Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle registered the Earth First! Action Fund as a California business in 1990, with the Action Fund's address listed as "C/O Rainforest Action Network," another Roselle creation. He lost control of the checkbook in settling his divorce from fellow Earth First!er Karen Pickett. But that hasn't stopped Rainforest Action Network from supporting Earth First! groups. On one occasion, RAN donated "$10,000 of general support to Luna Media in their work with North Coast Earth First!."
Yet another Roselle group, the Ecology Center in Montana, is also active in funding Earth First! activities. In the 1990s the Ecology Center poured more than $20,000 into Earth First!'s Cove Mallard anti-logging campaign in Idaho. The Ecology Center also supports the Buffalo Field Campaign, the Earth First! Journal, and the legal defenses of Rodney Coronado and something called the Buffalo Action Project, or BAP!
BAP! appears to be little more than a support system for a woman named Delyla Wilson. Wilson gained fame in 1997 after she dumped a five-gallon bucket of rotting bison innards on a panel of senior government officials who were discussing how best to manage Yellowstone Park's buffalo herd. Her victims included Dan Glickman, then President Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture, Marc Racicot, then Governor of Montana, and Montana Senators Max Baucus and Conrad Burns.
Another Fund for Wild Nature grantee is New West Research, a New Mexico anti-ranching group that produced the "Animal Damage Control Hall of Shame." A more appropriate name would have been the "New Mexico Hit List."
New West Research sued the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the names and addresses of all New Mexicans who had petitioned the Wildlife Service to help control predators on their property. New West proceeded to post this information -- 25 pages in all -- on its website. At the top of this "Hall of Shame" was the familiar line: "The earth is not dying -- it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses."
When criticized for inciting violence against ranchers and farmers, New West responded: "That's the same kind of whining we hear from pedophiles and crack dealers who don't want their identities known to the public."
The Earth First! Octopus
There are several hundred Earth First! organizations in America, and at least 50 in other nations. Most of them use the words "Earth First" in their title, but a cheat-sheet might be helpful for those Earth First! entities that go by other names. Bear in mind that many Earth First! organizations rapidly form around a cause, and then disappear. As a result, a complete list of Earth First! organizations is impossible to compile. However, when you see the following names, think Earth First!
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Coastwatch
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers
Cove Mallard Coalition
Daily Planet Publishing, Inc.
Direct Action Fund
Earth Defense Education Project
End Corporate Dominance
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Friends of the Wolf
League of Wilderness Defenders
Redwood Action Team
Warrior Poets Society
Zero Xtract from Public Lands
The Earth First! Journal includes a section called "EF! Campaigns and Projects." The following organizations have graced that list in recent years:
Bioengineering Action Network
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers Video Project
Earth Liberation Prisoners
EF! Action Update
North American ALF Press Office
ELF Press Office
Earth Liberation Front
North American Earth Liberation Support Network
The Earth First! Journal has listed the following groups as "contacts":
Arizona Wildlands Museum
Autonomous Zone
Biodiversity Liberation Front
Blue Mtns. Biodiversity Project
Boxcar Books and Community Center
The Brokedowns/Elgin Food Not Bombs
Cascadia Forest Alliance
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Church of Deep Ecology
Confluence/St. Louis IMC
Direct Action Network
Environmental Resource Center
Fairfax Action Team
Flagstaff Activist Network
Foghorn
Forest Ecosystems Action Group
Green Vigilance
Lawrence Grassroots Initiative
Liberated Zone Infoshop
Lost Cause Collective
Mass Direct Action
Mountain Eco-Collective
New Mexico Direct Action
Oceandream Media Foundation
Pink Planarians
Popular Power
Project Harmony
Rustic Revolt
Shuksan Direct Action
Slingshot
Solidarity Books
Stone Soup Collective
Tornado Alley Resistance
Unci Maka Uonihanpo (Honor Mother Earth)
Wild Wasatch Front
Wilderness Defense
The following EF!-named groups have been listed by the Earth First! Journal as contacts:
Alachua EF!
Allegheny EF!
Bay Area EF!
Big Bend EF!
Boundary Waters EF!
Buffalo Trace EF!
Croatan EF!
Dallas EF!
East Texas EF!
EF! Austin
French Broad EF!
Gainesville/Ichetucknee EF!
Houston EF!
Kalmiopsis EF!
Katúah EF!/River Faction
Katúah EF!/Tennessee Valley Faction
Katúah Foothills EF!
Kekionga EF!
Lake Erie EF!
Lake Worthless EF!
Loon Antics EF!
Love Canal EF!
Madison EF!
Maine EF!
OFF!
Olympia EF!/Cascadia Defense Network
Peninsular Ranges EF!
Phoenix EF!
Red Gate EF!
San Juan EF!
Santa Cruz EF!/EF! Radio
Seattle EF!
Shawnee EF!
Sonoma County EF!
Teewinot EF!
Tucson EF!
Two Rivers EF!
Uwharrie Earth First!
Wild Rockies EF!/Wild Rockies Review
Yellowstone EF!
Bomb-throwers have a funny way of making even the most radical spokespersons seem reasonable, and one of Earth First!'s main goals is to make green groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth appear mainstream by comparison. Mission accomplished.
EF! also claims some success at its other practical goal: inflicting economic damage on the industries that it opposes. In Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman brags that "ecotage [economic sabotage] in the National Forests alone in the United States is costing industry and government $20-25 million annually." Putting companies out of business through sabotage, Earth First!ers believe, will ultimately protect the earth from human beings.
Which is really the point. Earth First!ers seek to destroy industrial civilization, if not humanity itself. Writing in the May 1987 issue of the Earth First! Journal under the pseudonym "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! theorist Christopher Manes suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS."
The author of an article in the November-December 2001 Earth First! Journal proclaimed that he was jealous of Osama bin Laden, and that the al Queda mastermind "is riding an unstoppable current of history." A speaker at Earth First!'s annual "Rendezvous" meeting once said that the "optimal human population" is zero.
Dave Foreman describes the philosophy that motivates Earth First! in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior:
"An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual Grizzly Bear life. Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic."
"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."
"An antipathy to 'progress' and 'technology.' We can accept the pejoratives of 'Luddite' and 'Neanderthal' with pride."
"There is no hope for reform of industrial empire."
"We humans have become a disease -- the Humanpox."
These are not just Foreman's own idiosyncratic views, but the first principles of the EF! movement. The National Chamber of Commerce quotes John Davis, then editor of the Earth First! Journal, summing it up: "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." And Earth First!ers reportedly sit around a camp fire, chanting, trancelike, for hours: "Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead."
The Washington Post describes the Earth First! approach to earth worship:
In another clearing, a different group sat in a circle seeking other forms of magic. It was an exercise called a Council of All Beings, originated by Australian activist John Seed. At a Council of All Beings, you choose a nonhuman form of life and meditate upon that form -- mouse or tree or stem of grass -- until you seem to be that stem or mouse and then you tell the others in the circle about lawn mowers or traps and how it feels to be oppressed by humans.
The Council of All Beings reminded me of a form of religious worship that had taken place at the [Earth First!] Montana rendezvous I had also visited. There, the worshipers had evoked the presence of Gaia, a name for Earth as a being or a goddess, which is taken from the more scientific theory known as the Gaia hypothesis, in which Earth is described as an organism. The ceremony had been self-consciously pagan. "If you're going to talk about Christianity," a Montana worshiper had said, "please leave."
When I asked Dave Foreman, still in vest and camouflage hat, what the Council of All Beings and Gaia-worship role was in Earth First!, he grinned. "That's the woo-woo stuff," he said. "It's beyond me. But the diversity's good."
Earth First!ers, like their hero Dave Foreman, generally believe that "Mother Earth" is in some sense spiritual, and that monkey-wrenching is (in his words) "very much a sacrament."
Theodore "the Unabomber" Kaczynski is the radical environmental movement's biggest black eye. Conventional wisdom dictates that Kaczynski was merely an intellectual serial-killer, but his connection to Earth First! and the broader eco-terror movement is undeniable.
When FBI agents raided Kaczynski's Montana cabin in April 1996, they found copies of the Earth First! Journal, as well as an Earth First! affiliated publication called Live Wild or Die. This broadsheet, funded by Mike Roselle, included a now-famous "Eco-F*cker Hit List."
At the top of the Hit List was the California Forestry Association. In the middle was a prominent cartoon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Kaczynski sent dozens of mail bombs; three were fatal. He killed an employee of the California Forestry Association, and a Burson-Marsteller PR executive named Thomas Mosser. Kaczynski (mistakenly) believed that Burson-Marsteller was responsible for rehabilitating Exxon's public image after the 1989 Valdez oil spill.
The source of that mistake? An essay in the Earth First! Journal, which the FBI says was one of Kaczynski's "favorite" periodicals. A letter found in Kaczynski's cabin -- titled "Suggestion for Earth First!ers from FC" ["FC" was the Unabomber's pseudonym] -- read in part: "As for the Mosser bombing, our attention was called to Burston-Marsteller [sic] by an article that appeared in the Earth First! Litha." The reference to "Litha" is in keeping with the Journal's habit of naming its issues after (pagan) lunar-calendar months.
According to ABC News and other media outlets, the FBI also believes that Kaczynski attended an Earth First! gathering just one month before murdering Mosser.
Ted Kaczynski did little more than follow what Earth First! openly advocates. The September 1989 Journal included an article instructing:
While Eco defenders are quick to point out that life is sacred and is not a target of Eco-Defense, many doubt that multinational takeover artists who liquidate old growth forests to pay off junk bonds qualify as Life-forms. Such Robotoids, they aver, should be classed with damns, dozers and drillers. A "Hit List" is available upon discreet inquiry.
For Earth First!, this kind of advice is (sadly) not a one-time thing. A cartoon in the 20th Anniversary issue of the Journal noted: "Trees are for hanging. Kill a developer." And the Unabomber could easily have read Dave Foreman's words: "The blood of timber executives is my natural drink, and the wail of dying forest supervisors is music to my ears."
Less Than Lethal, but Still Illegal
Aside from the Unabomber's victims, we know of no one else who has died at the hands of Earth First!ers. But these zealots have come awfully close. The following is from an interview with Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle in the April 1993 issue of Playboy:
When I asked Mike Roselle to tell me about his favorite action, or ecodefense, he didn't hesitate.
A band of desert saboteurs from Earth First! resolved in 1989 to put an end to the desert motorcycle race called the Barstow to Vegas, which ran through the East Mojave scenic area, a prospective national park and habitat of the desert tortoise, kangaroo rat and other creatures.
"The night before the race, we took a trailerload of railroad ties and four-by-eights down to the track," remembers Roselle, a former oil- field roughneck and one of the five men who cooked up the idea for Earth First! on a camping trip to Mexico's Sonora Desert in 1980. "See they had to go under Interstate Fifteen. There was this tunnel about six feet wide, eight feet high and one hundred fifty feet long that was made for water to go through. We built this cube to the size of the culvert, and at night we set it up in the middle of the tunnel."
I want you to picture this," snaps Rick Sieman, senior editor of Dirt Bike magazine and head of the Sahara Club, a race sponsor. "Here are top expert riders going a hundred and ten miles per hour down a sand wash at eleven o'clock, sun directly overhead, coalblack shadows, dust on their goggles, and they're going to dart through this shadow, assumedly, and go to the other side. If our people hadn't spotted that, they would have killed a half-dozen riders."
"Though illegal, this strategic monkeywrenching can be safe, easy, and fun," Foreman quips. Is this what he meant?
In 1987, a 23-year-old mill worker was severely injured when his saw blade shattered after hitting a redwood tree that had been "spiked" with a long steel nail, following the standard Earth First! recipe. In 1990, Earth First!er Lyn Georges Dessaux was convicted of assault after stabbing two men with a ski pole in a save-the-buffaloes protest. Earth First!ers have set fire to a livestock auction. They've also torched logging equipment.
Dave Foreman himself pled guilty in 1991 to conspiring to blow up electrical lines leading to an Arizona nuclear power plant (he wrote a check to pay for 50 grenades). While Foreman somehow got off with probation, his four co-conspirators landed in jail. And hundreds of other Earth First!ers have spent time behind bars.
ALF and ELF
"Earth First! has provided a vehicle for establishing a new generation of environmental leadership in this country," EF! activist Darryl Cherney told interviewer Lori Rizzo. "Many Earth First!ers have actually gone on to start new organizations with much stronger 'no compromise' positions."
The FBI considers the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its sister group the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) to be America's most prolific and dangerous domestic terrorist organizations. And the ELF, it turns out, is just another Earth First! spin-off. The Earth First! Journal notes that "ELF solidified in 1992 at the first UK Earth First! gathering." In 1994, Earth First! activist Judi Bari wrote:
England Earth First! has been taking some necessary steps to separate above ground and clandestine activities. Earth First!, the public group, has a non-violence code and does civil disobedience blockades. Monkeywrenching is done by Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Although Earth First! may sympathize with the activities of ELF, they do not engage in them.
If we are serious about our movement in the US, we will do the same. Earth First! is already an above ground group. We have above-ground publications, public events, and a yearly Rendezvous with open attendance. Civil disobedience and sabotage are both powerful tactics in our movement. For the survival of both, it's time to leave the night work to the elves in the woods.
When longtime Journal editor Jim Flynn was asked by the Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune for his thoughts on ELF claiming credit for a 2001 fire that caused $400,000 in damage, Flynn responded: "I hope they aren't caught. I applaud them for standing up and taking action." Asked if he knew who belongs to ELF, Flynn said "I am clueless. It could be the person sitting next to me." Flynn, it should be noted, is no stranger to criminal behavior. His rap sheet winds from New York to Oregon.
In October 1998, ELF torched a Vail, Colorado ski resort, causing an estimated $12 million in damage. Predictably, the "above ground" counterpart to this arson consisted of an Earth First!-run "Coalition to Stop Vail Expansion."
After the Vail construction was burned to the ground, the London Times reported:
When members of the Earth Liberation Front burnt down $12 million-worth of mountaintop property belonging to the Vail ski resort in Colorado, ["Unabomber" Ted] Kaczynski applauded from prison -- as did Theresa Kintz, the editor of the widely read Earth First! Journal. "It's war," she wrote.
Kintz knows Kaczynski well. As of March she was still the editor of Earth First! but when I tried to contact her the magazine claimed to be unable to reach her. This is unsurprising: like al-Qaeda, America's hardcore environmentalists mistrust the mainstream press and operate in cells to evade detection.
The Journal regularly publishes articles by Earth Liberation Front criminals, and makes common cause with the Animal Liberation Front as well. In 1994 it ran a letter from ALF "spokesman" David Barbarash, who wrote from prison after being denied bail in connection with an "animal liberation" action. Addressed to "fellow Earth First!ers," it read: "Prison sucks, no doubt about it, but you can live through it. The thought of spending time in a pit like this should not deter anyone from taking the action that this planet needs for its survival."
A 1999 Journal article was headlined "Feds Escalate Hunt For ALF." It was written by Rodney Coronado, a convicted ALF/Earth First! criminal who knows a thing or two about being hunted by federal law enforcement. Coronado wrote:
Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front, all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent.
In other words: EF!, ALF and ELF are all part of the same clan of violent vandals.
Rodney Coronado
Committed Earth First!er and Earth First! Journal editor Rodney Coronado has replaced Dave Foreman as the radical environmental and animal-rights movement's most sought-after speaker. A convicted arsonist who has caused millions in damage to fishing ships, farms, and medical research labs, Coronado instructs his listeners on the fine points of firebombing.
Celebrating "the sixty-eighth raid on fur farms since 1995," in the 20th anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal, Coronado wrote: "There have been nearly that many raids on genetically-engineered crops. All the federal agents in the United States will not stop more actions of this sort."
"No tactic that prevents environmental destruction -- without loss of life -- should be ruled out. Be it fire or an action at the homes of a corporate ecoterrorist," Coronado wrote in a September, 2003 article for the Earth First! Journal. "Monkeywrenching is more than a tactic or strategy," another Coronado article reads. "It's the way of warriors. A way of life." Coronado would know about that. He began spiking trees with Earth First! as early as 1987. And Earth First! has held him up as an example ever since.
In Confessions of an Eco Warrior, Dave Foreman praised Coronado's sabotage of the Icelandic whaling fleet as an example of effective property destruction. Paul Watson, who gave the young radical his blessing for the Iceland raid, described in lurid details Coronado's handiwork for the Journal. Coronado himself wrote:
Co-founder Dave Foreman hoisted Icelandic saboteur David Howitt and myself up on stage to salute our [Iceland] raid, welcoming the new generation of eco-warrior, the young anarchistic animal liberationists who also embraced Deep Ecology.
In the spring and early summer of 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made three payments to the Earth First! Journal ($2,616.64 on March 23; $2,970.24 on May 18; and $1,485.12 on June 22). PETA records show no previous or subsequent grants to the Journal. So what piqued PETA's sudden interest in radical environmental journalism?
The Journal itself gave a plausible answer in its May-June 2001 issue:
Those familiar with our movement’s history will know that convicted monkeywrencher Rod Coronado was a catalyst, once released from prison, in getting the Journal moved to Arizona. Within days of his release from federal prison, Coronado became a short-term editor in Oregon, where he spent the spring and summer of 1999 ... Following his return to Arizona, Coronado became active once again with Arizona Earth First!, while also traveling and lecturing about direct action in defense of the Earth and sharing stories of life in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
As recently as the spring of 2003, Coronado was working with Earth First! organizers Darryl Cherney and Karen Pickett to prevent logging in Northern California. The press reported Coronado threatening that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." Around the same time, Coronado was seen in Northern California with Michael Scarpitti, who is on the FBI's most wanted list.
Breakin' the Law
Law enforcement has always kept a careful watch on Earth First! and the violent groups surrounding it. A Department of Homeland Security panel, chaired by former Virginia governor James Gilmore, took special notice of this threat in early 2003. Agence France Presse reported that the "most dangerous" domestic groups mentioned in the report are "Earth First, the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front."
The report notes (page 36):
The loose confederacy created is comprised of coalitions between socialists, environmentalists and anarchists. Earth First! -- the radical environmental group founded by David Broder [sic] -- has been particularly active collaborating with anti-globalists. Similar concerns emanate from other environmentalist special interest groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), who have committed over 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996 ...
Speculating on who vandalized 65 sport-utility vehicles in April 2003, Santa Cruz Police Lieutenant Joe Haebe told the San Francisco Chronicle:
It may have been ELF, but then, I sometimes get them confused with ALF, the Animal Liberation Front. And then there's Earth First! and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There's a lot of cross-pollination between them, and some people here are probably members of two of those groups, or more.
If the Gilmore commission observations seem extreme, and Lt. Haebe sounds uninformed, remember that the Earth First! Journal includes convicted cop-killer Leonard Peltier among its list of prisoners who deserve "support" (they insist he was framed). Until recently, the Journal also included Unabomber Ted Kazcynski on the same list. "They are in there for us," the Journal notes.
On September 6, 2003 the Chronicle quoted Earth First!er Tim Ream saying: "There is every indication that we will see more political violence."
Profile:
Earth First!
Copyright © 2007 Center for Consumer Freedom. All rights reserved.
Earth First!
Earth First! Journal, PO Box 3023, Tucson, AZ 85702
Phone 520-620-6900 | Fax 4132540057 | Email collective@earthfirstjournal.org
"It could have killed someone," said San Diego fire captain Jeff Carle. Three workers sleeping at a construction site were able to escape after the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to an unfinished, 200-unit condominium development late one night in August, 2003.
A newspaper reported: "Flames leapt 200 feet into the air and could be seen for miles. Grapefruit-sized fireballs landed in courtyards and patios of adjacent buildings, and burning embers swirled in the night." Nearby residents were evacuated and returned home to find their window blinds had melted from the heat. A 500-gallon fuel tank exploded. Damages were estimated at $50 million.
One local resident described the event for San Diego's NBC affiliate: "Smoke was just coming straight at you. The flames were just all over. It was just terror." A construction worker remarked: "I'm out of work now. Thank you, arsonist."
A twelve-foot sign next to the arson site read: "If you build it -- we will burn it -- the E.L.F.'s are mad." The Earth Liberation Front, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken responsibility for more than 600 crimes since 1996, totaling more than $100 million in damages.
The Earth Liberation Front sprung from -- and in many ways is still an arm of -- Earth First!.
Earth First! (EF!) is a "warrior society" that takes a "by any means necessary" approach to "defending mother earth." The group declines to participate in the democratic process, preferring instead to damage, disable, and destroy the property of its ever-growing list of enemies. EF! targets include, but are by no means limited to, loggers, ranchers, and farmers -- especially those who grow genetically modified crops. Earth First!ers' crimes include assault, arson, and untold acts of sabotage.
Before he quit in the late 1980s, the driving force behind EF! was a man named Dave Foreman. His book Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching is a how-to for environmental saboteurs. It includes nine chapters of instructions on subjects ranging from tree spiking to destroying roads, from disabling equipment to making smoke bombs. Rodney Coronado, an Earth First! zealot who was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison following a string of arsons, calls the book "our bible."
A "Mainstream" Spin-off?
The legend of EF!'s founding involves five friends hanging out in the desert, drunk and high. They were inspired by Edward Abbey's book The Monkeywrench Gang, which chronicles a gang of environmental zealots who sabotage oil, mining, and farming interests. A different story, one that doesn't get told as often or as gleefully, was outlined by author Ron Arnold in Trashing the Economy:
Defectors from the environmental movement have told us that Earth First! founder Dave Foreman was approached by the Sierra Club and his employer, the Wilderness Society, in 1979 with an offer to fund a new extremist point group for the movement. It would serve the function of making their own demands look more reasonable … Defectors say that Foreman made the deal by himself in a comfortable Wilderness Society office, and accepted the offer on the condition that funding would be steady and adequate, and that his participation was a limited 10-year deal.
While this story is almost impossible to confirm, there is evidence for its veracity. Dave Foreman did quit EF! after about ten years. And comments from Foreman himself are revealing. Smithsonian magazine writes:
"We thought it would have been useful to have a group to take a tougher position than the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society," Foreman remembers. "It could be sort of secretly controlled by the mainstream and trotted out at hearings to make the Sierra Club or Wilderness Society look moderate."
In his own book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Foreman brags: "A major accomplishment of Earth First! … has been to expand the environmental spectrum to where the Sierra Club and other groups are perceived as moderates." Foreman made the same point to Audubon magazine in 1982: "When I call the Sierra Club 'namby pamby,' that is done consciously to negate what [Secretary of the Interior James] Watt says when he calls them extremists."
In the same Audubon article, long-time Sierra Club executive director and Foreman mentor David Brower argued: "The people that are easily named extreme make the people who were extreme seem suddenly reasonable." Brower told E magazine:
The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We're still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.
The Earth First! Journal
Every industry has its trade rags, and the leading magazine for the environmental fringe is the Earth First! Journal. Unsuspecting magazine browsers in mainstream bookstores might stumble across the Journal, which provides tactical information and motivation to saboteurs -- while singing the praises of Earth First!ers who destroy fishing boats, genetically modified crops, and logging equipment.
The Journal features articles by some of America's most violent eco-terrorists. One issue, for example, included an essay by convicted arsonist Jeffrey Luers about "Why I set a fire at [Eugene, Oregon's] Romania Chevrolet." The same issue included a treatise titled "The Non-violent Use of Gunpowder."
"By every means necessary we will bring this and every other empire down! Mutiny and sabotage in defense of Mother Earth!" screamed another recent article condemning the war in Iraq. Elsewhere in that same issue: "A snitch is no longer entitled to basic expectations of safety. As such, it is righteous to hurt them, burn down their house or do similarly naughty things to them."
In 2000, the 20th Anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal bragged: "The simple idea of putting the earth first had drawn expanding crowds of hippies, anarchists, animal rights activists and all sorts of riffraff." The kind of people who "riff" alphabet songs like this one:
I is incendiary, like burning 'dozers
J is for jail time, and other enclosures
K is for kill, what they'll do if they catch you.
In 2002, the Earth First! Journal published a two-page spread called "Most-Wanted Eco-terrorists: the Biotechnology Industry." Claiming that "everyone at Monsanto is an eco-terrorist," it opened with a line that has become emblematic of green radicals everywhere: "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed by corporations such as the biotechnology industries, and the people who are killing it have names and addresses." The article then went on to list names and addresses.
"The Earth First! Journal Collective" wrote an open letter appearing in the Spring 2003 issue of the rag for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). One of the most violent groups of animal-rights zealots, SHAC has incubated the technique of harassing, threatening, and in some cases physically harming people who happen to work for a company they don't like. The open letter read:
SHAC's tactics and strategies need to be analyzed and implemented by the environmental movement. The results generated by SHAC's actions are awe-inspiring, and the environmental movement needs to start paying attention.
The letter went on to describe how Earth First!ers have begun harassing "an ecoterrorist in our eyes" whose job it is to remove tree sitters safely from their perch:
In recent months, activists haven't waited for Climber Eric to show up in the forest. They have visited his home, business and insurance company. At home, Climber Eric was not the same confident, controlled person that he is in the woods, where he is usually protected by his crew and local police. In fact, he was visibly distraught. For Climber Eric, this is just the beginning.
Several newspapers reported Rodney Coronado boasting that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." What the papers didn't report was that those words were directed at "Climber Eric," and, according to his employer, Coronado continued: "I'm coming to your door. Hey, do you got any food in your house? Don't worry, I'll go to your house and ask your wife."
"Earth First! is a verb, not a noun."
EF! works very hard to convince the public that its activities are not governed by any formal institution. "Earth First! is not an organization, but a movement" is the constant refrain. "There are no members of Earth First!, only Earth First!ers."
There are practical as well as romantic reasons to downplay any organizational structure. According to the Earth First! Journal: "To avoid co-option, we feel it is necessary to avoid the corporate organizational structure so readily embraced by many environmental groups." Of course, most green groups engage in legal activities -- and therefore don't fear "co-option."
While there is no primary EF! office, there are numerous incorporated Earth First! organizations, each with its own specific function. These include Daily Planet Publishing (which publishes the Earth First! Journal), the Fund for Wild Nature (formerly the Earth First! Foundation), the Trees Foundation, and the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
For the benefit of anyone who doubts that these are genuine, legal "organizations," consider that the website of the Fund for Wild Nature once read: "The Fund relies on invididual [sic] contributors like yourself, and your friends. We accept donations of cash, stock or other financial assets." Here is a tax-exempt foundation making a plea for corporate securities, on behalf of a group that claims to exist without any structure.
This non-organization, which preaches "no compromise in defense of mother earth," is very much aware of who pays the bills. The Washington Times reports that Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner, who has personally contributed to radical environmental groups, gets a free pass from EF! militants:
While a timber-cutting operation was under way on one of his [Turner's] ranches in 1998, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! instead protested timber cutting on a nearby ranch owned by Zachary Taylor, said private investigator Barry R. Clausen, who spent a year undercover at EarthFirst.
He asked a protester why the group did not include take on [sic] Mr. Turner, Mr. Clausen said, and was told: "We cannot. That's where our money comes from."
Mr. Clausen, author of "Burning Rage," an investigation of domestic terrorism, said environmental groups' nickname for Mr. Turner is "Daddy Greenbucks."
"Ted Turner has canned hunts where you can shoot a buffalo ... and drilling ... in New Mexico and clear-cutting trees and he never gets protested. And when you ask why, it's because he is one of the biggest contributors to extremist groups," Mr. Clausen said.
Interlocking, Interrelated Radicals
If you want to contribute money to EF! and get a tax break on your donation, send your check to the Fund for Wild Nature (FWN). Formerly named the Earth First! Foundation, FWN serves as a tax-exempt pass-through for money to reach Earth First!ers. It has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to EF! organizations.
FWN has doled out money to the Earth First! Journal, Mendocino Earth First! and North Coast Earth First! (California), Elaho Earth First! (Canada), Wild Rockies Earth First!, Arizona Earth First!, and many others. More often, though, the Fund gives to EF! groups that don't have the words "Earth First!" in their names -- like the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH). BACH's leader is Karen Pickett, whose arrest record hasn't prevented her from holding the purse strings for the Earth First! Direct Action Fund.
Another FWN beneficiary is the Cascadia Forest Alliance (CFA). According to Bear Deluxe magazine, "Former Earth First! members conceived the CFA as a fresh organization for combating Salvage Rider cutting in Oregon. Since then, hundreds of people -- including Portland's Tre Arrow, who gained local fame when he spent 11 days protesting the sale from a second story ledge at the Forest Service headquarters in Portland -- have occupied the tree-sits at Eagle Creek."
"Tre Arrow," whose real name is Michael Scarpitti, graces the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in October, 2002 for a string of arsons, including the torching of three cement trucks. The government has offered $25,000 for information leading to his arrest. Although Scarpitti is still on the loose, law enforcement officers spotted him in 2003 near Arcadia, California -- accompanied by none other than Rodney Coronado.
Coronado argues that EF! is part of one big happy family, along with the FBI's most feared domestic terrorist groups, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front: "Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front," Coronado wrote in a 2001 essay, "all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent."
FWN provided the initial support for EF! spin-offs like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Ruckus Society, both of which were started by Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle. Indeed, FWN thinks of itself as the venture capitalist of radical environmental groups.
The Fund for Wild Nature is by no means Earth First!'s only source of revenue. For example, the Dogwood Alliance, which claims to believe in "peaceful" tactics, has funneled money to Katuah Earth First! and other groups that work with Earth First!.
Earth First! founders Dave Foreman, Bart Koehler, and Howie Wolke are now board members, officers and/or founders of other environmental organizations. Those include: the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (Wolke); the Ecology Center, Inc. (Wolke); the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (Foreman); the Wilderness Society's Wilderness Support Center (Koehler); and the Wildlands Project, a.k.a. North American Wilderness Recovery, which recently merged with the Cenozoic Society (Foreman).
"Direct Action" on Your Dinner Plate
In 1999 FWN began to bankroll "direct action" against biotech crops (although Earth First!ers began targeting them as early as 1987). The now defunct Bioengineering Action Network (BAN) received FWN money. When it was functioning, BAN served as a press-outreach service for the FBI-certified domestic-terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), another Earth First! spin-off. BAN's website featured a how-to guide for tearing out biotech crops (they call it "nighttime gardening") and instructed saboteurs on how to "research your target."
1999 was also the year that Al H. Jacobson, founder of the avowedly anti-biotech crops organic food line Garden of Eatin', gave FWN $54,500. Jacobson's Naturganic Foundation kicked in $200,000 to FWN for 2000. In those years, Jacobson was by far FWN's biggest donor.
Earth First! makes your dinner more expensive by practicing economic sabotage on cattle ranchers as well as farmers who raise genetically enhanced crops. The EF!-founded and FWN-funded Buffalo Field Campaign, for example, uses "direct action" to block government officials from keeping buffalo in and around Yellowstone Park from passing on the contagious disease brucellosis to nearby cattle. As of December 2002, at least 21 Buffalo Field Campaign activists have been arrested -- quite a rap sheet for a tax-exempt group.
But even EF! draws a line between the kind of illegal activities that can be funded with tax-exempt money, and those that are too violent for the Fund for Wild Nature to touch. Cash for these endeavors comes from the Earth First! Direct Action Fund. Bragging that "thousands of EF!ers have been arrested around the world," the EF! Direct Action Fund's website appeals for donations:
Direct action requires courage, commitment, training and the ability to focus on an urgent issue. Unfortunately, it also requires money. Since 1985, The Earth First! Direct Action Fund (DAF) has assisted in planning, coordinating, and funding activists on the front lines. These people are the backbone, indeed the heart and soul, of the Earth First! movement.
Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle registered the Earth First! Action Fund as a California business in 1990, with the Action Fund's address listed as "C/O Rainforest Action Network," another Roselle creation. He lost control of the checkbook in settling his divorce from fellow Earth First!er Karen Pickett. But that hasn't stopped Rainforest Action Network from supporting Earth First! groups. On one occasion, RAN donated "$10,000 of general support to Luna Media in their work with North Coast Earth First!."
Yet another Roselle group, the Ecology Center in Montana, is also active in funding Earth First! activities. In the 1990s the Ecology Center poured more than $20,000 into Earth First!'s Cove Mallard anti-logging campaign in Idaho. The Ecology Center also supports the Buffalo Field Campaign, the Earth First! Journal, and the legal defenses of Rodney Coronado and something called the Buffalo Action Project, or BAP!
BAP! appears to be little more than a support system for a woman named Delyla Wilson. Wilson gained fame in 1997 after she dumped a five-gallon bucket of rotting bison innards on a panel of senior government officials who were discussing how best to manage Yellowstone Park's buffalo herd. Her victims included Dan Glickman, then President Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture, Marc Racicot, then Governor of Montana, and Montana Senators Max Baucus and Conrad Burns.
Another Fund for Wild Nature grantee is New West Research, a New Mexico anti-ranching group that produced the "Animal Damage Control Hall of Shame." A more appropriate name would have been the "New Mexico Hit List."
New West Research sued the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the names and addresses of all New Mexicans who had petitioned the Wildlife Service to help control predators on their property. New West proceeded to post this information -- 25 pages in all -- on its website. At the top of this "Hall of Shame" was the familiar line: "The earth is not dying -- it is being killed. And the people killing it have names and addresses."
When criticized for inciting violence against ranchers and farmers, New West responded: "That's the same kind of whining we hear from pedophiles and crack dealers who don't want their identities known to the public."
The Earth First! Octopus
There are several hundred Earth First! organizations in America, and at least 50 in other nations. Most of them use the words "Earth First" in their title, but a cheat-sheet might be helpful for those Earth First! entities that go by other names. Bear in mind that many Earth First! organizations rapidly form around a cause, and then disappear. As a result, a complete list of Earth First! organizations is impossible to compile. However, when you see the following names, think Earth First!
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Coastwatch
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers
Cove Mallard Coalition
Daily Planet Publishing, Inc.
Direct Action Fund
Earth Defense Education Project
End Corporate Dominance
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Friends of the Wolf
League of Wilderness Defenders
Redwood Action Team
Warrior Poets Society
Zero Xtract from Public Lands
The Earth First! Journal includes a section called "EF! Campaigns and Projects." The following organizations have graced that list in recent years:
Bioengineering Action Network
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers Video Project
Earth Liberation Prisoners
EF! Action Update
North American ALF Press Office
ELF Press Office
Earth Liberation Front
North American Earth Liberation Support Network
The Earth First! Journal has listed the following groups as "contacts":
Arizona Wildlands Museum
Autonomous Zone
Biodiversity Liberation Front
Blue Mtns. Biodiversity Project
Boxcar Books and Community Center
The Brokedowns/Elgin Food Not Bombs
Cascadia Forest Alliance
Cascadia Forest Defenders
Church of Deep Ecology
Confluence/St. Louis IMC
Direct Action Network
Environmental Resource Center
Fairfax Action Team
Flagstaff Activist Network
Foghorn
Forest Ecosystems Action Group
Green Vigilance
Lawrence Grassroots Initiative
Liberated Zone Infoshop
Lost Cause Collective
Mass Direct Action
Mountain Eco-Collective
New Mexico Direct Action
Oceandream Media Foundation
Pink Planarians
Popular Power
Project Harmony
Rustic Revolt
Shuksan Direct Action
Slingshot
Solidarity Books
Stone Soup Collective
Tornado Alley Resistance
Unci Maka Uonihanpo (Honor Mother Earth)
Wild Wasatch Front
Wilderness Defense
The following EF!-named groups have been listed by the Earth First! Journal as contacts:
Alachua EF!
Allegheny EF!
Bay Area EF!
Big Bend EF!
Boundary Waters EF!
Buffalo Trace EF!
Croatan EF!
Dallas EF!
East Texas EF!
EF! Austin
French Broad EF!
Gainesville/Ichetucknee EF!
Houston EF!
Kalmiopsis EF!
Katúah EF!/River Faction
Katúah EF!/Tennessee Valley Faction
Katúah Foothills EF!
Kekionga EF!
Lake Erie EF!
Lake Worthless EF!
Loon Antics EF!
Love Canal EF!
Madison EF!
Maine EF!
OFF!
Olympia EF!/Cascadia Defense Network
Peninsular Ranges EF!
Phoenix EF!
Red Gate EF!
San Juan EF!
Santa Cruz EF!/EF! Radio
Seattle EF!
Shawnee EF!
Sonoma County EF!
Teewinot EF!
Tucson EF!
Two Rivers EF!
Uwharrie Earth First!
Wild Rockies EF!/Wild Rockies Review
Yellowstone EF!
Bomb-throwers have a funny way of making even the most radical spokespersons seem reasonable, and one of Earth First!'s main goals is to make green groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth appear mainstream by comparison. Mission accomplished.
EF! also claims some success at its other practical goal: inflicting economic damage on the industries that it opposes. In Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman brags that "ecotage [economic sabotage] in the National Forests alone in the United States is costing industry and government $20-25 million annually." Putting companies out of business through sabotage, Earth First!ers believe, will ultimately protect the earth from human beings.
Which is really the point. Earth First!ers seek to destroy industrial civilization, if not humanity itself. Writing in the May 1987 issue of the Earth First! Journal under the pseudonym "Miss Ann Thropy," Earth First! theorist Christopher Manes suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS."
The author of an article in the November-December 2001 Earth First! Journal proclaimed that he was jealous of Osama bin Laden, and that the al Queda mastermind "is riding an unstoppable current of history." A speaker at Earth First!'s annual "Rendezvous" meeting once said that the "optimal human population" is zero.
Dave Foreman describes the philosophy that motivates Earth First! in Confessions of an Eco-Warrior:
"An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual Grizzly Bear life. Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic."
"Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."
"An antipathy to 'progress' and 'technology.' We can accept the pejoratives of 'Luddite' and 'Neanderthal' with pride."
"There is no hope for reform of industrial empire."
"We humans have become a disease -- the Humanpox."
These are not just Foreman's own idiosyncratic views, but the first principles of the EF! movement. The National Chamber of Commerce quotes John Davis, then editor of the Earth First! Journal, summing it up: "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." And Earth First!ers reportedly sit around a camp fire, chanting, trancelike, for hours: "Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead. Billions are living that should be dead."
The Washington Post describes the Earth First! approach to earth worship:
In another clearing, a different group sat in a circle seeking other forms of magic. It was an exercise called a Council of All Beings, originated by Australian activist John Seed. At a Council of All Beings, you choose a nonhuman form of life and meditate upon that form -- mouse or tree or stem of grass -- until you seem to be that stem or mouse and then you tell the others in the circle about lawn mowers or traps and how it feels to be oppressed by humans.
The Council of All Beings reminded me of a form of religious worship that had taken place at the [Earth First!] Montana rendezvous I had also visited. There, the worshipers had evoked the presence of Gaia, a name for Earth as a being or a goddess, which is taken from the more scientific theory known as the Gaia hypothesis, in which Earth is described as an organism. The ceremony had been self-consciously pagan. "If you're going to talk about Christianity," a Montana worshiper had said, "please leave."
When I asked Dave Foreman, still in vest and camouflage hat, what the Council of All Beings and Gaia-worship role was in Earth First!, he grinned. "That's the woo-woo stuff," he said. "It's beyond me. But the diversity's good."
Earth First!ers, like their hero Dave Foreman, generally believe that "Mother Earth" is in some sense spiritual, and that monkey-wrenching is (in his words) "very much a sacrament."
Theodore "the Unabomber" Kaczynski is the radical environmental movement's biggest black eye. Conventional wisdom dictates that Kaczynski was merely an intellectual serial-killer, but his connection to Earth First! and the broader eco-terror movement is undeniable.
When FBI agents raided Kaczynski's Montana cabin in April 1996, they found copies of the Earth First! Journal, as well as an Earth First! affiliated publication called Live Wild or Die. This broadsheet, funded by Mike Roselle, included a now-famous "Eco-F*cker Hit List."
At the top of the Hit List was the California Forestry Association. In the middle was a prominent cartoon about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Kaczynski sent dozens of mail bombs; three were fatal. He killed an employee of the California Forestry Association, and a Burson-Marsteller PR executive named Thomas Mosser. Kaczynski (mistakenly) believed that Burson-Marsteller was responsible for rehabilitating Exxon's public image after the 1989 Valdez oil spill.
The source of that mistake? An essay in the Earth First! Journal, which the FBI says was one of Kaczynski's "favorite" periodicals. A letter found in Kaczynski's cabin -- titled "Suggestion for Earth First!ers from FC" ["FC" was the Unabomber's pseudonym] -- read in part: "As for the Mosser bombing, our attention was called to Burston-Marsteller [sic] by an article that appeared in the Earth First! Litha." The reference to "Litha" is in keeping with the Journal's habit of naming its issues after (pagan) lunar-calendar months.
According to ABC News and other media outlets, the FBI also believes that Kaczynski attended an Earth First! gathering just one month before murdering Mosser.
Ted Kaczynski did little more than follow what Earth First! openly advocates. The September 1989 Journal included an article instructing:
While Eco defenders are quick to point out that life is sacred and is not a target of Eco-Defense, many doubt that multinational takeover artists who liquidate old growth forests to pay off junk bonds qualify as Life-forms. Such Robotoids, they aver, should be classed with damns, dozers and drillers. A "Hit List" is available upon discreet inquiry.
For Earth First!, this kind of advice is (sadly) not a one-time thing. A cartoon in the 20th Anniversary issue of the Journal noted: "Trees are for hanging. Kill a developer." And the Unabomber could easily have read Dave Foreman's words: "The blood of timber executives is my natural drink, and the wail of dying forest supervisors is music to my ears."
Less Than Lethal, but Still Illegal
Aside from the Unabomber's victims, we know of no one else who has died at the hands of Earth First!ers. But these zealots have come awfully close. The following is from an interview with Earth First! co-founder Mike Roselle in the April 1993 issue of Playboy:
When I asked Mike Roselle to tell me about his favorite action, or ecodefense, he didn't hesitate.
A band of desert saboteurs from Earth First! resolved in 1989 to put an end to the desert motorcycle race called the Barstow to Vegas, which ran through the East Mojave scenic area, a prospective national park and habitat of the desert tortoise, kangaroo rat and other creatures.
"The night before the race, we took a trailerload of railroad ties and four-by-eights down to the track," remembers Roselle, a former oil- field roughneck and one of the five men who cooked up the idea for Earth First! on a camping trip to Mexico's Sonora Desert in 1980. "See they had to go under Interstate Fifteen. There was this tunnel about six feet wide, eight feet high and one hundred fifty feet long that was made for water to go through. We built this cube to the size of the culvert, and at night we set it up in the middle of the tunnel."
I want you to picture this," snaps Rick Sieman, senior editor of Dirt Bike magazine and head of the Sahara Club, a race sponsor. "Here are top expert riders going a hundred and ten miles per hour down a sand wash at eleven o'clock, sun directly overhead, coalblack shadows, dust on their goggles, and they're going to dart through this shadow, assumedly, and go to the other side. If our people hadn't spotted that, they would have killed a half-dozen riders."
"Though illegal, this strategic monkeywrenching can be safe, easy, and fun," Foreman quips. Is this what he meant?
In 1987, a 23-year-old mill worker was severely injured when his saw blade shattered after hitting a redwood tree that had been "spiked" with a long steel nail, following the standard Earth First! recipe. In 1990, Earth First!er Lyn Georges Dessaux was convicted of assault after stabbing two men with a ski pole in a save-the-buffaloes protest. Earth First!ers have set fire to a livestock auction. They've also torched logging equipment.
Dave Foreman himself pled guilty in 1991 to conspiring to blow up electrical lines leading to an Arizona nuclear power plant (he wrote a check to pay for 50 grenades). While Foreman somehow got off with probation, his four co-conspirators landed in jail. And hundreds of other Earth First!ers have spent time behind bars.
ALF and ELF
"Earth First! has provided a vehicle for establishing a new generation of environmental leadership in this country," EF! activist Darryl Cherney told interviewer Lori Rizzo. "Many Earth First!ers have actually gone on to start new organizations with much stronger 'no compromise' positions."
The FBI considers the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its sister group the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) to be America's most prolific and dangerous domestic terrorist organizations. And the ELF, it turns out, is just another Earth First! spin-off. The Earth First! Journal notes that "ELF solidified in 1992 at the first UK Earth First! gathering." In 1994, Earth First! activist Judi Bari wrote:
England Earth First! has been taking some necessary steps to separate above ground and clandestine activities. Earth First!, the public group, has a non-violence code and does civil disobedience blockades. Monkeywrenching is done by Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Although Earth First! may sympathize with the activities of ELF, they do not engage in them.
If we are serious about our movement in the US, we will do the same. Earth First! is already an above ground group. We have above-ground publications, public events, and a yearly Rendezvous with open attendance. Civil disobedience and sabotage are both powerful tactics in our movement. For the survival of both, it's time to leave the night work to the elves in the woods.
When longtime Journal editor Jim Flynn was asked by the Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune for his thoughts on ELF claiming credit for a 2001 fire that caused $400,000 in damage, Flynn responded: "I hope they aren't caught. I applaud them for standing up and taking action." Asked if he knew who belongs to ELF, Flynn said "I am clueless. It could be the person sitting next to me." Flynn, it should be noted, is no stranger to criminal behavior. His rap sheet winds from New York to Oregon.
In October 1998, ELF torched a Vail, Colorado ski resort, causing an estimated $12 million in damage. Predictably, the "above ground" counterpart to this arson consisted of an Earth First!-run "Coalition to Stop Vail Expansion."
After the Vail construction was burned to the ground, the London Times reported:
When members of the Earth Liberation Front burnt down $12 million-worth of mountaintop property belonging to the Vail ski resort in Colorado, ["Unabomber" Ted] Kaczynski applauded from prison -- as did Theresa Kintz, the editor of the widely read Earth First! Journal. "It's war," she wrote.
Kintz knows Kaczynski well. As of March she was still the editor of Earth First! but when I tried to contact her the magazine claimed to be unable to reach her. This is unsurprising: like al-Qaeda, America's hardcore environmentalists mistrust the mainstream press and operate in cells to evade detection.
The Journal regularly publishes articles by Earth Liberation Front criminals, and makes common cause with the Animal Liberation Front as well. In 1994 it ran a letter from ALF "spokesman" David Barbarash, who wrote from prison after being denied bail in connection with an "animal liberation" action. Addressed to "fellow Earth First!ers," it read: "Prison sucks, no doubt about it, but you can live through it. The thought of spending time in a pit like this should not deter anyone from taking the action that this planet needs for its survival."
A 1999 Journal article was headlined "Feds Escalate Hunt For ALF." It was written by Rodney Coronado, a convicted ALF/Earth First! criminal who knows a thing or two about being hunted by federal law enforcement. Coronado wrote:
Whether a member of a Headwaters nonviolent affinity group, Cascadia Forest Defenders or the Earth Liberation Front, all Earth First!ers should recognize the positive value of each other's contributions and exploit the leverage they create against our common opponent.
In other words: EF!, ALF and ELF are all part of the same clan of violent vandals.
Rodney Coronado
Committed Earth First!er and Earth First! Journal editor Rodney Coronado has replaced Dave Foreman as the radical environmental and animal-rights movement's most sought-after speaker. A convicted arsonist who has caused millions in damage to fishing ships, farms, and medical research labs, Coronado instructs his listeners on the fine points of firebombing.
Celebrating "the sixty-eighth raid on fur farms since 1995," in the 20th anniversary issue of the Earth First! Journal, Coronado wrote: "There have been nearly that many raids on genetically-engineered crops. All the federal agents in the United States will not stop more actions of this sort."
"No tactic that prevents environmental destruction -- without loss of life -- should be ruled out. Be it fire or an action at the homes of a corporate ecoterrorist," Coronado wrote in a September, 2003 article for the Earth First! Journal. "Monkeywrenching is more than a tactic or strategy," another Coronado article reads. "It's the way of warriors. A way of life." Coronado would know about that. He began spiking trees with Earth First! as early as 1987. And Earth First! has held him up as an example ever since.
In Confessions of an Eco Warrior, Dave Foreman praised Coronado's sabotage of the Icelandic whaling fleet as an example of effective property destruction. Paul Watson, who gave the young radical his blessing for the Iceland raid, described in lurid details Coronado's handiwork for the Journal. Coronado himself wrote:
Co-founder Dave Foreman hoisted Icelandic saboteur David Howitt and myself up on stage to salute our [Iceland] raid, welcoming the new generation of eco-warrior, the young anarchistic animal liberationists who also embraced Deep Ecology.
In the spring and early summer of 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made three payments to the Earth First! Journal ($2,616.64 on March 23; $2,970.24 on May 18; and $1,485.12 on June 22). PETA records show no previous or subsequent grants to the Journal. So what piqued PETA's sudden interest in radical environmental journalism?
The Journal itself gave a plausible answer in its May-June 2001 issue:
Those familiar with our movement’s history will know that convicted monkeywrencher Rod Coronado was a catalyst, once released from prison, in getting the Journal moved to Arizona. Within days of his release from federal prison, Coronado became a short-term editor in Oregon, where he spent the spring and summer of 1999 ... Following his return to Arizona, Coronado became active once again with Arizona Earth First!, while also traveling and lecturing about direct action in defense of the Earth and sharing stories of life in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
As recently as the spring of 2003, Coronado was working with Earth First! organizers Darryl Cherney and Karen Pickett to prevent logging in Northern California. The press reported Coronado threatening that he "was no pacifist hippie, my actions speak louder than my words." Around the same time, Coronado was seen in Northern California with Michael Scarpitti, who is on the FBI's most wanted list.
Breakin' the Law
Law enforcement has always kept a careful watch on Earth First! and the violent groups surrounding it. A Department of Homeland Security panel, chaired by former Virginia governor James Gilmore, took special notice of this threat in early 2003. Agence France Presse reported that the "most dangerous" domestic groups mentioned in the report are "Earth First, the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front."
The report notes (page 36):
The loose confederacy created is comprised of coalitions between socialists, environmentalists and anarchists. Earth First! -- the radical environmental group founded by David Broder [sic] -- has been particularly active collaborating with anti-globalists. Similar concerns emanate from other environmentalist special interest groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), who have committed over 600 criminal acts in the United States since 1996 ...
Speculating on who vandalized 65 sport-utility vehicles in April 2003, Santa Cruz Police Lieutenant Joe Haebe told the San Francisco Chronicle:
It may have been ELF, but then, I sometimes get them confused with ALF, the Animal Liberation Front. And then there's Earth First! and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There's a lot of cross-pollination between them, and some people here are probably members of two of those groups, or more.
If the Gilmore commission observations seem extreme, and Lt. Haebe sounds uninformed, remember that the Earth First! Journal includes convicted cop-killer Leonard Peltier among its list of prisoners who deserve "support" (they insist he was framed). Until recently, the Journal also included Unabomber Ted Kazcynski on the same list. "They are in there for us," the Journal notes.
On September 6, 2003 the Chronicle quoted Earth First!er Tim Ream saying: "There is every indication that we will see more political violence."
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