By Judi Bari – Industrial Worker, August 1989 and Earth First! Journal, Mabon (September 23), 1989[1]
It’s sure been a week to remember. The Earth First! national tree-sit was a huge success, with twelve tree-sits taking place in seven states. Sitters went up in Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, and Massachusetts. We got loads of national media, and brought the issue of deforestation into the living rooms of the American public. Even Time Magazine has photos of a Mendocino county tree sitter and a trashed out tree-cut.
In California, we had three sits and nine actions last week. These included two treesits in Mendocino County, one on an all women tree-sit at Georgia-Pacific clearcut near Fort Bragg and one on Highway 128, the main tourist road to the coast. The other treesit was in Assemblyman Dan Hauser’s front yard where twenty people occupied a large tree to protest Hauser’s sell-out of environmental issues and blatant toadyism for the timber industry.
We also went on a virtual rampage of actions last week. On Monday people demonstrated at the Pacific Lumber Sales [office] in Marin County to protest Maxxam’s takeover of that company and its liquidation of the ancient redwoods. Wednesday over 100 people showed up at the US Forest Service office in San Francisco to protest that agency’s complicity with the timber companies. Also, on Wednesday we picketed a crude and destructive Gyppo in Whitethorn, and ended up in a brawl with the loggers, who shot a gun and threatened to kill us, brandished clubs and logger tools, smashed one of our cameras and punched a fifty year old Earth First!ers in the face, breaking her nose.
Thursday’s action was in Los Angeles where people demonstrated at Maxxam’s corporate headquarters. We also moved the Mendocino county tree-sit to Highway 128 Thursday and stretched banners across the road reading “Clearcutting is Eco-terrorism” and “Stop redwood slaughter”. Friday morning, the new Albion Earth-First! group sponsored its first blockade of a Louisiana-Pacific logging road. We built a slash barricade and leafleted people driving by, and we turned back our first LP log truck by pushing an old car in front of it. A human size owl danced on the car while Earth First! musicians played “You can’t clearcut your way to heaven.” …
We concluded tree-sit week in Mendocino County with a blockade at the Fort Bragg Georgia Pacific mill. Georgia Pacific closed the mill down two hours before the demo, handing us another victory, and the people at the demo marched down the main street of Fort Bragg, briefly blocking the road until the police made us move.
On the way to that final demo in Fort Bragg, a car carrying Earth First! organizers Darryl Cherney, Judi Bari and Pam Davis was rear ended by a logging truck on Highway 128. It was a tremendous impact and totally destroyed Judi’s car, but by some miracle the Earth First!ers and their four children sustained only minor injuries. We are convinced that this accident was not intentional, although it certainly brought out the issues of logging employees being forced to work weekends, barreling down our public roads trying to keep up with timber industry’s speed up as they strip the last of our forest before we can get regulations passed to slow them down.
All in all, we feel good about national tree-sit week. It was a tribute to EF! decentralization, coming from the grassroots of EF! without any direction at all from the supposed national leaders. Locally, it also came from the grassroots and involved many people besides Earth First!ers. It raised people’s awareness and helped pave the way for the upcoming state-wide initiative to ban clear-cutting and preserve old growth…
Footnotes:
[1] This article was credited to Judi Bari in the Earth First! Journal, but was not similarly credited in the Industrial Worker.