By Jess Shoup – Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 1, 1990
No one seems to be understanding that there are three groups involved here in this timber issue. There’s the Yellow Ribbons (the loggers), the Green Ribbons (the environmentalists), and the Charcoal Gray (the Corporations).
You loggers don’t have a voice to speak for you. Your union (and pension funds) got taken away and you haven’t yet formed a group. The only time you all get together is at functions where the Grays give you T-shirts and food, do their cheerleader acts up on the stage; and see how much rape and pillage they can do to the forest.
They’re wanting to co-opt your movement (when you don’t even know you have one). Just like the big stores and corporations are trying to co-opt ours.
The longer there are forests, the longer you’ll have jobs.
When we talk about eco-systems being balanced, we mean the economic systems too—and it’s not. They’re cutting your wages and paying themselves $8,000,000 a year: this is not balanced. Balanced is more like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company, where the highest paid people in the company earn only eight times more than the lowest paid people. At Pacific Lumber / Maxxam the ratio is 1,000 times more.
The Charcoal Gray Ribbons buy into our businesses with their junk bond financing and hostile takeovers, strip our most valuable resource from us, treat workers as so much machinery, then declare bankruptcy and leave for parts unknown—ever so much richer. And we taxpayers pay it off—just like, we’re doing for the Savings and Loans! Amazing that we’re sitting still for this shit!
You loggers don’t seem to understand—we’re on your side—it’s us against them—not us against each other.
Most of you understand that their “replanting” scams are just that—thousands and millions of trees planted, and none of them watered. Most of you understand the wisdom of sustainable forestry practices. Most of you are horrified at what’s happening, but you don’t feel you can jeopardize your jobs and speak out. But what are you leaving to your children if you don’t speak out? Get together; let a group speak for you all.
Stop being the Yellow Ribbon Coalition. Be the Yellows.
We’re the Greens. We’re environmentalists and proud of it. I look at things on a planetary scale, see how sick the Earth is, and do what I can to help—I write letters, make phone calls, give to active groups, vote conscientiously, go to endless meetings, and at the age of 48 I’m going to stand in front of my first bulldozer tomorrow morning on Peachland Road.
They’re fouling our oceans with oil, our rivers with poisons, our streams with silt. It’s happening everywhere and it’s happening here. The Grays have forgotten that we humans are a species on this plan-et. Kill off too many animal and plant species or do too much damage to Mother Earth and, we humans will die also—a slow, whimpering death.
Earth First! means we’re all in this together. Register Green. Vote Green & Yellow. We’re the start of a new rainbow.