Central valley Earth First! Press Release – Earth First! Journal, Lughnasadh / August 1, 1990
As the policemen caressed their riot sticks and the media folks salivated, Joseph “madman” Malki ran amok with a grotesque cardboard chainsaw, on which were painted the evil letters “Maxxam,” slaying costumed human trees, causing them to topple across the railroad tracks, groaning as they were felled. So concluded a successful demonstration against log exports at the Port of Sacramento, California, on June 7, the first action organized by the newly formed Central Valley Earth First!
We gathered that morning at the Harbor Boulevard overpass in West Sacramento, 300 yards from where more logs are exported to Japan, Korea, and China than from anywhere else in California. Over 40 million board feet of timber plus a vast amount of wood chips are lost to foreign destinations from the Port of Sacramento each year. We hoisted banners reading “Stop Log Exports” and “Exporting Logs is Exporting Jobs” above the guard rails, visible from the freeway below. Some folks were dressed as trees and passed out literature. Others wore urban camouflage: a suit and tie. (Even yuppies dislike log exports!)
Response from the freeway was tremendous. Many passing truck drivers honked in approval; a few flipped us off. Some people exited the freeway and joined us, including an irate woman who had seen too many log trucks drive by her place of work, en route to the dock. We were even given 20 bucks to pass on to Darryl Cherney.
By mid morning, our festive demonstration had swelled to nearly 100 participants. We were matched pretty evenly by law enforcement personnel from 3 cities, a SWAT team, a bomb disposal squad (supposedly the export dock had received a bomb threat that morning), and a helicopter. One officer harassed us by sticking a video camera in our faces. Their overwhelming presence made it seem as if expressing our first amendment rights is a crime.
The place was also swarming with media people. When we marched down to the Port and regrouped in front of a large stack of logs, the timber presented an ideal backdrop for the media to capture on film. After staging guerilla theater, including a chorus line of human trees singing “I don’t want to go to Japan!,” we went home peacefully, leaving the police and the media, who apparently expected something violent, shaking their heads.
We received extensive local TV and national newspaper coverage. Our mission of exposing log exports was a success. Many people hadn’t realized that those enormous stacks of logs are being shipped overseas, unmilled. Since our action, and several Redwood Summer actions, log exports have been the subject of local newspaper editorials.
People need to continue to be informed of the truth about log exports. Port officials used timber industry propaganda and contradicted our researched statistics, claiming that only 15 million board feet is exported, and that these logs are only “excess low grade white fir, which wouldn’t be milled here in the US anyway.” Our surveillance indicates that Ponderosa Pine logs, some with over 200 years of growth rings, are present in the log yard as well. We must make them realize that “excess, low grade” White Fir makes beautiful forests when kept vertical![1]
Notes:
[1] Corporate Press coverage of this event includes: “Export of U.S. Logs Attacked in Kickoff Protest”, by John D. Cox, Sacramento Bee, June 8, 1990; “‘Redwood Summer’ Protests Log Exports”, by Ann Bancroft, San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 1990; “‘Summer’ in Sacramento: ‘Mainstream’ Demonstrators Protest Logging”, AP Wire, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 8, 1990; “Protesters Decry Logging Practices”, AP Wire, Ukiah Daily Journal, June 8, 1990; and “American Jobs”, letter to the editor by H. M. Eichstaedt, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, June 26, 1990 (the writer is dumbfounded by the thought that EF! cares about economic issues and saving jobs, but, continuing to cling to stereotypes accuses them of being hypocrites because sometimes they drive (used) cars not made in the US, such as Subarus (possibly in reference to Judi Bari’s quickly acquired replacement car which was blown up by the bomb).