By Lynne Dahl - Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990
Bruce Anderson’s Introduction: Late in the afternoon the day of the Redwood Summer Rally in Fort Bragg, 1,500 protesters filled Main Street. The protesters had marched from their rally site north of Fort Bragg’s downtown to the very center of town. Opposite them a mob of four hundred or so yellow-shirted locals hurled insults, curses and threats at the peaceful crowd jamming the intersection in front of Georgia-Pacific headquarters. A barrier of policemen kept the yellow shirts from rushing the protesters. It was tense. For the first time that day the opposing sides, each holding their own demonstrations, were meeting face to face. On a make shift stage, mounted on a flatbed truck, environmentalists tried to convey a conciliatory message that urged cooperation between loggers and people aghast at the radical overcut of the woods underway in Mendocino and Humboldt counties.
The yellow shirts weren’t having it. They continued their obscene denunciations of the protesters. The protesters invited the yellow shirts to share the speaker’s platform and their views. A confused young yellow shirt crossed the police lines to speak from the protesters flatbed…
“You talk about the next generation,” a young, yellow T-shirted man began nervously. “You say, ‘please do not ruin it for the next generation; no trees’ I’ve lived here for years, I work in the lumber business, and I do not believe we are ruining our community. And I think it’s wrong that all these people come here and protest against us, because this is a little peace[ful] community, and it’s a hard working community, and all these thousands of
people come here and ruin our lives. It’s just upsetting our communities. More trees are planted than are cut down! I think a lot of you people are from out of the area …”
At this point the crowd began to jeer, so he asked, “Who lives in Mendocino County?” At least three-quarters of the demonstrators raised their hands; others shouted “Humboldt County,” “Trinity County!” as a huge cheer went up. “Well, where are you going to build your homes? And we need paper for our education…where’s it gonna come from? I am a part of the next generation, and I honestly believe in my heart that this demonstration is wrong! Our community is a good one!”…[1]
“Do you want to live in plastic houses?” he asked irrelevantly. “Please, go home. This is all so bizarre.” He trailed off into incoherence. The next man up was Duane Potter, a native of Fort Bragg. Standing calmly before the microphone with his hands in his pockets Potter’s starkly honest description of his own experiences as both a logger and a fisherman quieted the bellowing yellow shirts. Potter simply but eloquently explained why he could no longer work in the woods.
“Before that, I fished out of the Noyo Harbor. And I saw our fishing destroyed because of what they did to the river. We used to get 125,000 pounds of fish a day…when I quit, we were down to 25,000. So I went into logging. But this winter I got so disgusted, I went on welfare instead, because I had to do what I believed in. Me and my family. Because what they’re doing is destroying the forest, not lumbering. And I want to tell all you guys across the street one thing: Stop smoking pot and getting drunk so you don’t see what’s going on![2]
The assessment afterwards was that Duane Potter’s speech might well be identified many years later as the exact moment the timber corporations, with all their money, kept congressmen, media assistance and paid liars, lost the Northcoast forever.
* * * * *
Lynn Dahl: The day that the Redwood Summer and Worker’s rallies occurred simultaneously in Fort Bragg, what prompted you to get up on the truck parked in the middle of Main Street and talk to both crowds?
Duane Potter: Hearing that logger who spoke before me. I heard that young logger get up before me and tell the crowd to “Go home. We’ve got a good community here, so just go home and leave.” That sprung my trap. I decided that I wanted to say something. I had to say what I felt. At the logger’s rally that day Doug Bosco told folks to go home and clean up their own back yards. What I got there was that he didn’t want any communication. Which is ridiculous because we’re all in this boat together. Maribelle Anderson got up there and took an oath, saying that none of the yellow shirts [supporters of the worker’s rally] were going to talk to any environmentalists…not to get in an argument or a discussion…they don’t want communication. What I want to do is get in here and get some talking going between the owners of the operations and the loggers and get them to listen to their workers and the environmentalists and come to some neutral ground. There’s a lot of ground between Prop 138, that the owners of the mill put together, and Forests Forever (Proposition 130), that is just asking for too much. The only thing that I’m sure of is that the loggers should stop clear-cutting this year. But nothing will take effect if there’s no communication. At this point I’d take the lesser of the two evils and vote for Forests Forever. They can always change the laws and allow more trees to be cut but you can’t take trees that have already been cut and stand them back up.
LD: And the claim that trees have come back just fine from the places they’ve clear-cut?
DP: We have to take into account, back when they did clear-cuts years ago, that they didn’t take any rotten or diseased trees or ones with too many limbs on them. They had cruisers that went in that marked the trees that wouldn’t be cut. The clear-cuts that took place years ago came about with axes, cross-cut saws and the logs were transported with trains. To see them now getting anywhere from 250 loads of logs to 350, today, every day, where they might have gotten a trainload of logs at the end of the week back then; that’s a big difference. When we look at our population now, that’s going to double in 20 years and produce an even larger demand, we have to find alternatives. To think that we’re going to build wooden houses from now until we leave this earth; it’s hard to believe that a person could be that narrow minded. We should be looking at the future and realize there will be people out of work, fishermen, and loggers without jobs and organize workshops for these people who won’t have work rather than putting wedges between folks and obscuring the real problems.
For every tree they fall they say they plant 5. Then consider that 7 trees out of 100 make it. (Because of erosion, deer, disease…) That’s only a 7% recovery and you’re looking at those few trees that survive being 14 to 16 inches on the stump in 60 years; that’s harvestable? The question the individual should ask the logger is, “How big is this tree going to be?” That’s one question that’s not being asked. There have been no answers forthcoming to most of the real questions.
LD: Where did you grow up?
DP: In Fort Bragg, I’ve lived here all my life. I went to the eleventh grade in the local schools.
LD: What were you parents like?
DP: My father had TB so they took one of his lungs which put him real short of air. He cooked and cleaned and took care of us kids while my mother worked. There were three of us, I’m the middle. All through my whole life l was always told what I’d done wrong and if you ever did something good you were never told, it was never brought up, just taken for granted. That really pulled my self esteem real low. My father and mother would say, “Don’t smoke and don’t drink,” but my mother smoked and my father drank. So that was the exact road I went down: I smoked and I drank and then got to the place where people didn’t want to be around me while I was making a donkey of myself.
When it was really bad, four or five years ago, in-stead of coming home, after falling trees, I would go straight to the bar, at 2:00 in the afternoon and drink right up to 9:00 or 10:00 at night. I’d come in the house, dodging the cops so that I wouldn’t get drunk driving, and then blow up on my wife, “Why ain’t the house clean? Why ain’t the dishes done?” to justify my being out all day.
LD: Why were you drinking so much? What were you trying to get away from?
DP: Communication. I was trying to escape from my problems. I couldn’t deal with reality. It was a constant drinking, everyday, to not deal with my problems. Changing a battery in a car was something I couldn’t do. I didn’t have the patience. It goes with the way I was brought up. My father didn’t have patience. Everything was supposed to be done yesterday. I’d get out there to change a battery and skin my knuckles and I’d throw the tools. Just to blow up was so easy. There was another way I had to go. I had to take a change and the change has only been for the good. I’ve quit drinking, smoking pot and cigarettes. I’ve three children I’m raising and I’m determined to make a “Y” in the road so they don’t end up with lives they hate. I want them to be happy.
LD: How long did you work in the woods?
DP: 15 years. I started when I was 18, setting chokers. Started for AJ Grey. After setting chokers there was something in me that wanted to run the equipment. So I broke in on the cat. The next piece of equipment I got on was the skidder. I’ve worked as many as three jobs in one year, different logging companies.
LD: Why so many?
DP: The alcohol was getting in there to where I couldn’t hold a job. After a while I’d get so drunk I couldn’t make it to work that day and get fired. But then I’d get another job within a few days. It would be kind of like a vacation in between. My goal was to fall trees. The last 4 or 5 years, the last years I was working in the woods, that’s what I was doing. You go to work at 5:30 AM, get there at 6:00, start falling trees and you could get off work at 12:00 Noon.
LD: How much were you making when you were falling?
DP: It’s contract You get paid by how much you put on the ground. I made anywhere from $130 to $230 a day, depending on the amount and the size of the trees. In falling you’re always scouting for the best job, where the best trees are. If a better job comes up that pays more then you quit the job you’re on and go to work for the higher one, when there’s an opening.
LD: How does the size of trees you’re falling effect your wages?
DP: You’re paid by the thousand. If you get down to where it’s just like hair, the real small stuff, you’ve got to do a lot of running around falling 40 to 50 trees a day to make your day’s wages. But in the good second growth, you might fall 15 to 25 trees a day. To get into the old growth, you might fall one or two a day and still make your same money.
LD: What was the optimum situation for you?
DP: I liked falling the big trees because they gave me a sense of power; a sense of conquering, of killing something that’s been here for so long. It’s a high just to fall it. After the tree hits the ground then the work starts, then all the adrenaline is gone. To watch this tree cracking and popping as it’s going over, and you’re there killing it; that’s a sense of power. Then you’d go down after work that day and go to the bar with most of the people you work with, bumping elbows with you at the end of the day, bragging what you had done that day.
LD: So no one’s looking long range.
DP: Exactly, neither the loggers nor the companies. They want so much out of you, in the woods, to work as hard as you can possibly work, they want you out there every day and to get as many logs as you can to the landing where they can get them to the mill. And in doing this you’re putting your life in jeopardy, a lot of times during the course of the day. People that generally hold this job, I mean 50-60%, are alcoholics, because they’re doing things an ordinary person wouldn’t do.
LD: Is alcohol the source of a lot of accidents in the woods?
DP: There are accidents out there, but this goes along with the job. This macho trip: I’m a logger, and I’m good at what I do. You’re taking chances that you ordinarily wouldn’t take. Alcohol is the main stimulator. The truck drivers will bring out beer, to give to the crew after work for giving them a good load of logs that day. The boss will bring beer out to the shop or maybe at the site at the end of the week, to drink up for good work; it’s kind of an encouragement If you come to work with a bit of a hangover, that’s all right. There are folks out there who don’t drink, they’ve the better jobs, running cat or the yarder. But for the choker setters or the landing men or like the fallers, there’s a lot of drinking. The person who ain’t drinking out there usually is in control over his job. So when they say something like, “The forests are there, forever renewable.” They’ve got cloudy thoughts, they ain’t thinking with a clear mind. They’re not looking down the road or really seeing what’s happening around them. If you ask the individual logger if the logging is being done right, the ones I’ve asked, none of them agree with the way they’re logging. Still, they’re intimidated to stand up for their rights. Everybody knows that is happening out there, it’s just the they don’t want to think about it or chance losing their jobs.
LD: You went to the first Worker’s Solidarity Rally (in) June, why?
DP: I think most folks went for the free food. I figured it was a good time to take the family out.
LD: How do you think people responded to the speeches made that day by Mike Anderson, Barry Keene, Maribelle A Anderson and the others?
DP: All the speeches were leaned to one side. A few mill workers, the foresters, the owners and the supportive politicians. It was primarily the owners of the operations doing the talking. If I got anywhere from $400,000 to $800,000 worth of equipment in my back yard, then I’m going to talk, I’m going to talk one way, and it’s going to be to keep my equipment going. This is what is happening out there. To think that the trees are still out there and that we’ve got lots of them, and that we can go back in 60 years and log; that’s ridiculous.
LD: Were the workers believing the scenarios put out by the speakers that day?
DP: I think what they were trying to do is get the lower-down folks, the mill workers and the woods workers by throwing a wedge between them and the environmentalists. They want us fighting with one another so that we won’t be looking at the real issues. They’re throwing smoke screens…
LD: Do you think it’s working?
DP: No. It don’t work. And I’m one of those who doesn’t believe them and knows the truth and am going to do something about it.
LD: What would you propose to be a positive step at this point?
DP: I would like debate with some loggers, we can both have our media there. Let the book be open, no heavy arguing, just ask questions and answer to the best of your knowledge.
LD: When did you decide to quit logging?
DP: I worked in the woods for the first 2½ months at the start of the logging season. What really got me disgusted was the way a person can go through and log the ground and then instead of rerunning the logging line straight and do a clean job of logging, let laziness come in at the end and tag into another block that’s over 300 feet and run three sections of hay wire down the road and wait for the line to come through your block and tag into it and then when you have the lines hooked up then side wash all these trees down to the ground, whether it be oak trees or redwood.
LD: You mean all the trees get needlessly wiped out from one tree you’re taking down to the nest?
DP: Yes. And it’s not necessary to go that route. You could run a new straight road and do it right. To see this and then bring it up the boss that there might be another way, a better way and for him to come with the response, “Well, if I wanted you to tell me how to run my business I would have hired you for that job.” Well, it’s sickening. He’s not open to suggestions or to even hear the thought. I was coming home and bringing the problems to my wife, telling her I didn’t like the way they were doing things. To see the yarder just pouring oil out and not even start to fix the leak, just let her run and putting five gallons of oil on the ground, dripping, in the matter of one day. To crawl under your crummies and your trucks you bring to work and pop the plug on the oil pan and let it run all over the ground and take your oil filter and throw it over the bluff. To see things like this going on, I had to ask myself what I was doing out there. To be out there participating in this, I couldn’t do it anymore. So I quit my job.
I wanted to do something but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. I was more or less intimi-dated. If I did anything I feared what everyone was going to think.
LD: What’s been the reaction of your fellow workers since you spoke out at the rally?
DP: Mostly I’ve had encouraging calls. One call did come from the Tip Top Bar, a woman propositioning me.[3] How I looked at it was she tried to get my wife to think I was fooling around. But my wife understood what was happening, that I’m not running around. Then I had another call that I was really blowing it and that I should read books on what the logging is really about before I start making wisecracks like that. Who I would call an expert is the guy out there doing the job. No book is going to tell me what I see with my own eyes. So I kind of laughed about that one. This same man called another of his workers to spread his views of what he saw on TV channel 3, that being me speaking. The worker probably told him he agreed with me because ½ hour later I got a call back saying he let his mouth run off too quick. It’s just awareness; of letting the community know what really is happening. When you’ve got a clear picture, it’s easy to make your decision about which way to go.
LD: You spoke of plans to create a recycling outside the Casper dump…
DP: The loggers say that if they lose their jobs, that that is the only job they’ve ever done and that they don’t know how to do any other job. Well that’s the same old job I was in for 18 years. I quit my job and what I’m going into is helping the earth instead of destroying it. To do a total flip-flop and recycle; get out at the Caspar landfill and recycle 100%. That would be from starting from the clippings that come from people’s yards and putting them into a compost pile, and let whoever needs come in and take this good soil after it’s broke down. The lumber that’s torn out of these buildings and torn up and thrown into these transport bins that the dump has, to salvage every piece you could and to put it in a pile and maybe resell it or whatever, and cut up the rest into firewood for the needy people who can’t get firewood themselves. Smash the tin cans. Collect the appliances, the washing machines, the stoves all of that would be run over and flattened so I could put it on trailers and take it to the city where I could sell it. Paper is $5 a ton; that’s all they’re giving at this point. So if you took 20 tons of paper down with car bodies (that are worth a lot), smashed down, that would make it worth it to take only $125 worth of paper. If they’d let me go through with this, I’d do it free of charge. My proposal would be for the people to come to me first before they pay to go into the gate. The people could have all their recyclable items bagged up or whatever and then I could take it off their trucks so they’d have less fees at the gate, because you’d be hauling less garbage in. If they’d let me have my trailer in there and let me haul all the recyclables out then I believe I could help the community by banging the dump fees down to where they weren’t so high and what the dump would be getting out of this would be to extend the life span of the dump. They give the present situation about 2 years, they’re even figuring out a new place to dump. I could make the life span on the present dump go forever. The present management is saying that if they have to do recycling themselves then they are going to charge every customer who brings garbage an extra $1.50. Well I’m willing to take that same possibility and charge the community nothing, if the City Council and Board of Supervisors would allow me to do it.
LD: What’s holding them up from granting you permission?
DP: Neither the city or the county want to be the ones to say, “Yeah, I really like what Duane’s got to offer here,” and take a step forward. I’ve been to two meetings where I’ve had absolutely no progress. The only encouraging thing was to hear a woman named Pam say, “We had better hurry up before these people with the good ideas take their marbles out of the ring.” They see me as a liability because I would be on their property. To make this work we’d have to work together. We’d both benefit They’d have the lifespan of their dump extended and I’d be doing something good for the earth and making my own living. We’re really too late, we should have done this years ago and they still want to drag their feet.
LD: There was an attempt at recycling years ago led by two men, Skip Taube and Karl…why did that fail?
DP: Karl was at one those meetings I attended and I spoke to him. He said why it shut down was because he shut it down. He said there were six or seven who went out to recycle and it went real fine for the first few months, then it got down to two people and then it got down to where he did all the work. Karl said he just got tired of going in the hole financially and spinning his wheels because he had no one helping him. He said it got to where he had to spend his own money, so he had to back out and let it go.
LD: Did that discourage you?
DP: No. One of the good things that’s happened in my life is that rather than talking all the time I’ve learned it’s good to listen. I let him talk long enough to where he told me exactly what the answer was. What I heard was that his employees abandoned him and left him holding the whole thing afloat. It was lack of good management. planning and help. So it doesn’t give me anything but more encouragement to get it going again. I let him talk long enough until he answered his own question.
LD: How are you going to organize it so that it doesn’t end up on your shoulders like it did with Karl?
DP: I’m going to get people who think the same way as I think and who want to do it to help the earth not for the almighty dollar. Well set a limit as to how much we’ll try to make a month and then set anything we make above that in a trust fund to put back into the business for maybe getting our own glass melder. We could make our own glass bricks and have a product to sell. Let’s try to create jobs that help others, support ourselves but not try to make a bundle. A job should be something that we really want to do, it doesn’t need to be a chore, and shouldn’t be hateful. If we put our minds to it we could create the perfect job for ourselves. All the people out on the earth here are like one cell. If we all work together we could work just like one body.
If you’re doing what you really want to do and I’m doing what I really want to do, then you’re going to be happier, you ain’t going to be bringing problems back to your family about how bad your day went. You’ll be bringing home good thoughts about how good your day went and this will change the whole reality, the whole picture, the world will just be a happier place. These are goals that are way out beyond…I ain’t going to say that they’re impossible, but them are my goals that I have in my heart that I want to accomplish If I can just bring my children up to where they can make their own choices, wise choices, and not be on drugs or alcohol and not stealing, but have happy lives then my life has been a success. I’ve put the “Y” in the road that I wanted to put.
I want to help people out in any way I can. I’m writing a book and if my story can help someone, if they can see themselves in my story, well that would be just great.
I will take you through my life from a dysfunctional family, to smoking cigarettes, to an alcoholic, a woman hater, to using drugs, to going to jail, to being a spiritual person, to what I would call now a liberal person, with lots of love in my heart to give to whoever I can help. My name is Duane Potter…
Epilogue
In 1997, I, That Green Union Guy, met Duane Potter. Darryl Cherney introduced him to me as they, along with several dozen other activists, and myself, were hiking up a hillside, near Stafford, California, in southern Humboldt County, to deliver supplies to Julia Butterfly Hill, as she was in the middle of her two-year tree-sit in the Redwood known as "Luna". Potter was still dedicated to the cause.
Notes:
[1] Excerpted from “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[2] Ibid.
[3] It’s not certain who this was, but Darryl Cherney noted in a letter to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, that this person may have been or may have been put up to this act by Candace Boak.