By staff - Willits News, August 29, 1990
The Sherwood Road watershed Coalition look to the road for an eight-mile bike ride Wednesday in a successful effort to meet with timber operators and forester working on an L-P harvest site.
According to Naomi Wagner, spokesperson for the group, 25 to 30 adults and children rode in the Bicycle Barricade to a haul road about eight miles beyond Third Gate on Sherwood Road. The group hung a banner across Sherwood Road that was to become a catalyst for a chase ending on the south end of Willits.
“We noticed that the banner had been ripped down at about 8 AM,” Wagner said Wednesday. “The banner had an ecology-economy message, something like ‘stop the overcutting.’ By coincidence we saw it on a logging truck with his yellow circle and a slash line through it.”
Wagner said that a few participants in the bike run decided to go after the truck and ask for the banner to be returned. The truck stopped near Vassar’s Pizza in Willits and its driver, who was unidentified, allegedly came out of the truck brandishing a tire iron.
“The people who confronted him put up their hands in a nonviolent position, and people along the highway stopped and, in son of a chorus, said, ‘no violence’ over and over again. The driver got back in his truck and continued down the road, but didn’t return the banner.”
The truck continued down Main Street with the activists still tailing it, wanting the banner returned. Eventually, according to Wagner, the driver stopped on the South Side of town, and he and Mariana River took the banner off.
After the issue appeared to be settled, the log truck driver turned back toward Sherwood Road, when a Willits Police officer pulled him over. According to the Police Department, there were no arrests made.
Wagner said while all this was going on in town, she was well received by licensed limber operator Cecil Matthews at the logging site.
“Our approach is to be very open and out there,” Wagner said. “We did a lot of talking and listening and I think those to whom we talked will talk to others. This is all about communication.”
When the truck driver with the banner returned to the logging site, still somewhat angered, Matthews diffused the situation Wagner said.
“It was obvious he was willing and able to keep the peace,” Wagner said.
The Sherwood group is planning another action for today (Friday) at R & J Timber beginning at 11 AM, which Wagner said is related to Wednesday’s action, and to the supplies in L-P log decks in Mendocino County.
These logs from the Sherwood Valley are headed to an L-P mill in Cloverdale, and so are the logs at R & J Timber, Wagner said.
“The log decks in Ukiah and Willits are full and we want to point that out.”