“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…”[1]
Georgia Pacific was no less a legitimate target of Redwood Summer than Louisiana Pacific or Maxxam. In the official Redwood Summer press release announcing the big demonstration in Fort Bragg, the view from Sherwood Road, which traversed the hills east above the coastal town was described as “heartbreaking”. Earth First! activist and rally co-organizer Jennifer Biegel elaborated, “Once there were giant redwoods here…now there’s only rubble left from third growth liquidation logging.”[2] Much of that land, comprising in excess of 6,000 forestland acres on steep slopes, including the Noyo and Pudding Creek watersheds, had been clearcut in the previous six years causing widespread topsoil erosion during the winter rains. Such destruction had not only reduced the productivity of the remaining forests, it had also heavily impacted the once-prosperous local salmon fishing trade, bringing it to a near standstill.[3] By this time, G-P owned about 40% of the industrial forestland in Mendocino County (L-P owned most of the rest of it) and both companies were cutting them down almost three times as fast as they could grow. Since G-P’s takeover of Great Northern Nakoosa (GNN), the former had amassed an $8 billion debt, and like Maxxam, it intended to service this debt through the process of liquidation logging. Rally co-organizer Roanne Withers described the situation vividly:
“In today’s Mendocino County real estate market, it has every incentive to clearcut as fast as possible…At the turn of the century, Mendocino County timberlands yielded 70,000 board feet per acre. Today it’s hardly possible to get 10,000 board feet per acre and that’s expected to drop to 5,000 soon, according to (the) FRRAP…As the forest is eaten up by excessive logging, GP is getting ready to finish off the crumbs and leave the table.”[4]
Despite its huge debt, however, G-P Chief Executive Officer, T. Marshall Hahn proved that he meant it when he said, “Greed is a noble motivator.” As illustrated by IWW member and Earth First!er Tom Cahill:
“The yearly salary of Georgia-Pacific’s chief executive officer, Marshall Hahn, is almost as much as his Fort Bragg millworkers combined. Perhaps as much as $6 million yearly, Hahn’s salary may only be a million short of the combined salaries of the CEO’s of General Electric, General Motors, and IBM. Imagine what a person must do for a salary like that.”[5]
Anna Marie Stenberg, another co-organizer of the rally elaborated further stating, “In its rush to turn the world to desert for short term profits, G-P has no qualms about sacrifice the health and security of local communities.” Kelpie Wilson, yet another co-organizer expounded upon both the environmental and geopolitical motivation for the rally, stating “G-P’s appetite for world forests is voracious…G-P owns millions of acres worldwide. It is the largest importer of tropical hardwoods into the United States and now it wants the great boreal forest of Siberia; to log it will play Russian roulette with the world’s climate.[6]
On the morning of Saturday, July 21, 1990, Redwood Summer organizers, composed mainly of Earth First!ers, members of the IWW, the Earth Action Network, and volunteers from Seeds of Peace, and supporters gathered at the old Holmes Lumberyard at the north end of Fort Bragg at around 10 AM.[7] That particular piece of property was owned by Georgia-Pacific, and G-P spokesman David Odgers complained that the organizers had never received permission from the company to use it. Odgers declared, “We do not wish the property to be used in that manner, and local law enforcement stands behind our desire to protect our property rights.” It was obvious, however, that the GP official was posturing. For one thing, Odgers hinted that the demonstrators would not be arrested when he added, “We want to be careful not to say anything that would inflame the situation. Officers will use their good judgment in handling the situation.” In any case, the demonstration had originally been planned to take place right at the gates of the GP Mill itself, but had been relocated to the Holmes site at the urging of city officials, at the suggestion of Fort Bragg Police Chief Thomas Bickell, in order to avoid a situation where the expected throngs would block California State Highway 1, the main traffic artery through town, thereby impeding access to nearby fire and police departments, causing a dangerous situation if there were a fire, medical, or other emergency. Said rally co-organizer, Anna Marie Stenberg, “The City Council and the Chamber of Commerce agree it’s the safest site and we are acting in the best interests of the community.”[8]
The plan had been for the rally to take place at 10 AM, which was to be followed by a march to the G-P Mill at 1:30 PM where another rally with speakers and music would occur. This would be followed by planned, nonviolent civil disobedience, most likely an organized march across the G-P property line.[9] Two intermediate stops, the first at the local CDF office, the second at the Skunk Train depot, had been eliminated in order to direct the attention of the rally on Georgia Pacific, since the main adversary targeted by Redwood Summer was corporate timber and capitalism rather than its perceived puppets, in this case government officials and the tourist industry. Said Stenberg, “We needed to tighten up because of the yellow ribbon group, and we wanted to stay focuses on our theme, which is to stop the liquidation of the forests—sustained forests equals sustained jobs.”[10] Many Earth First!ers embraced a degree of northern European paganism (even a handful of the practicing Christians), even if their understanding of such things was limited in scope, and since an eclipse of the sun had already taken place that day at 9:36 AM, Redwood Summer was calling for an eclipse of G-P and corporate forestry. Said Withers, “A new day is dawning that will see a return to locally owned forestry that is sustainable and keeps profits in the community.”[11] Although G-P had hastily barricaded the dusty field that marked the rally site, and hung signs reading “WARNING: You Are Trespassing”, demonstrators quickly overwhelmed the futile attempt to keep them out.[12] The organizers were expecting about 2,000 to show up[13], the numbers that finally did make it were well in excess of that. Richard Johnson estimated the crowd in excess of 3,000 at 2 PM[14], which was all the more incredible considering that the population of the town was only 6,000.[15] The rally took place under a coastal fog that never lifted that day.[16]
Roanne Withers recalls how she became one of the five main organizers of the Fort Bragg Redwood Summer rally:
“I was only going to stick my toe into Redwood Summer when Judi was around organizing it. So I contributed money, but I wasn’t going to take an active stance other than supportive. Then Tom Cahill called me to say there was an Earth First! Redwood Summer organizing meeting at Anna Marie’s house, and by the time it was over, I became one of the main organizers of the Fort Bragg rally at the G-P mill.”[17]
However, Withers was a logical choice as a co-organizer, because her history as a labor spokesperson, as Don Nelson’s former counterpart-turned-critic offered the Greens a way to potentially undermine Nelson’s claim to be “the voice of labor” still further. Withers’ stance on the issue reinforced that perspective, as she declared, “The point of this rally is to say that the interests of the working community and the environmental community are one and the same. It’s the same message I’ve been saying over and over, that a sustained forest means sustaining life on this planet and sustaining jobs.”[18]
The media was also present, having shown up in droves. Over 150 press passes had been issued, and those assembled had come from all over California as well as many major media outlets from around the United States. Reporters from as far away as London and Italy even made an appearance.[19] Representatives from most of these major media outlets shuttled back and forth between the Redwood Summer rally and the competing Community Solidarity counter demonstration located two miles distant at the other end of town.[20] Also present were over 400 law enforcement and support personnel, which was believed to be the largest contingent of police ever assembled in Mendocino County.[21] Police had been called in from 35 different departments as far north as Arcata and as far south as Alameda County. These included police officers from the CDF and the National Park service, many outfitted in riot gear. Their presence was the result of several weeks of preparation and training in addition to the coordination of various municipal and county governments under an “incident command” structure established by the state office of emergency services.[22] According to Los Angeles Weekly reporter Greg Goldin:
“It would have been impossible (the previous) night, unless you were blind drunk and awfully ornery, to commit any crime. Every motel in town had at least one police cruiser parked in its lot. By morning, in a reminder of the kind of clout the logging companies still have here along the north coast (the 400 police officers) were summoned to cram Fort Bragg’s tiny Middle School auditorium for the morning briefing. Literally, there was a cop on every corner.”[23]
The vast majority of the police presence was concentrated on the Redwood Summer rally. No explanation was given for such one-sidedness, though it’s obvious that only one of the two rallies, the Green one, represented a possible challenge to the rule of capital. However, the police made no arrests there, even though technically the demonstrators were trespassing, no doubt because Fort Bragg Police Chief Thomas Bickell had suggested that very site for the rally.[24]
The Redwood Summer coalition’s demands of Georgia Pacific were: (1) end liquidation logging; (2) worker-community ownership of GP’s timberlands and mills; and (3) sustainable forests for a sustainable economy and a sustainable earth.[25] Such demands indeed incorporated all of the professed demands of the Community Solidarity coalition, but this didn’t stop the Yellows from directing their animosity towards the Greens. As planned, the counterdemonstration, numbering about 1,600 dressed in a sea of yellow, which began at 12:30 PM, took place almost simultaneously to the Redwood Summer demonstration, two miles distant at the south end of town[26], on public land, in this case the ironically named Green Memorial athletic field[27], used by the local high school for football[28], baseball[29], and other varsity sports.[30] The counterdemonstration was intended to be mainly a cookout “featuring red meat and soda-pop.”[31] No beer or other alcoholic beverages were supposed to have been allowed, but as the day went on, it was obvious that this prohibition was either unenforceable or unenforced.
About 300 counterdemonstrators outfitted with yellow ribbons, yellow balloons, and yellow T-shirts[32] (many of them adorned with a mock postage stamp depicting a weeping family and the slogan “Timber Families: an Endangered Species” [33]) had initiated the Yellow event by gathering at the Fort Bragg Senior Center at Harold and Pine Streets at 11 AM[34] and holding a short parade down Harold Street to their rally site.[35] The Parade was led by Paul Bunyan and babe the Blue Ox.[36] Ironically foreshadowing the most likely outcome of the status quo, twenty empty logging trucks blaring their air horns punctuated this march.[37] A truck carrying a load of second generation timber workers sported a sign that read, “second growth”. [38] The marchers carried signs that included slogans like, “My Daddy is a Logger”, the ever present “Timber Worker…Not on Welfare!”, and the constantly bludgeoning, “Families First!”[39] 57 year-old trucker Dick Walkley told Goldin, “This is just our way of life, and we want it to stay that way,” as the eerily coincidental lyrics to the (recorded) Eagles song The Best of My Love (“you see it your way / I see it mine / but we both see it slipping away”) wafted forth from the loudspeaker. Walkley continued, “I’d like somebody to ask where they work. Ask Earth First!”[40] One local, a grandmother, holding one copy of a mass produced yellow, “Save Our Timber, Jobs, Families, County, and Community: Vote No on (Proposition) 130” posters declared, “I’ve lived here all my life…I’ve never seen anything like this. We need to show the world what side we’re on!” to which her husband added, “Those Earth First! people don’t have to work for a living, and they bring a lot of college kid hippies up here who don’t work either, and they want to take our jobs away and ruin this place!”[41]
Such all too oft repeated statements were pure corporate logging propaganda and had not one shred of truth to them, and the “outside agitator” comment could just have easily been uttered by a vigilante from the 1910s or 20s who routinely uttered almost exactly the same sort of statements against union organizers, including particularly IWW timber worker organizers. Most of the principle organizers and spokespeople for the Yellows as well as many of the attendees were not rank and file timber workers; they were mostly “small business people—owners of logging trucks and heavy equipment. Members of their families and a number of their employees filled out the crowd,” according to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and they were, “on G-P’s payroll, directly or indirectly, and they (wanted) to look good in the eyes of those who (did) the hiring.”[42] The rank and file workers mostly cannot be blamed for their timidity, because the official union had thrown in their lot with G-P.[43] Naomi Wagner, who had attended the Community Solidarity barbecue on June 16 noted that the workers that were present at both events were there out of a sense of obligation.[44] The organizers of the rally, Mike and Maribelle Anderson, Don Nelson, Tom Loop, and the like, on the other hand were shameless in their hypocrisy and their complicity at spreading corporate propaganda and lies.[45] And as for outside agitators, the Yellows brought in as many as they claimed the Greens had, except that theirs were actually violent terroristic extremists, such as the Sahara Club, who was based in Los Angeles.[46] If these weren’t bad enough, positioned at one of the approximate thirty-yard lines of the field was a literature table staffed by three members of Lyndon LaRouche’s crypto-fascist organization, sporting yellow ribbons, and festooned with signs that read, “Eat Spotted Owls for Dinner”, and “Stop the FBI Cover-up of Eco-fascist terrorism” (and this was no joke, as one of LaRouche’s true believers was actually telling an interested yellow-shirted logger that the FBI had proof that Judi Bari had been knowingly transporting the bomb that nearly killed her, but the FBI was under orders to keep silent—which only proves just how far out to lunch LaRouche and his followers happen to be).[47] To anyone with an ounce of intelligence, it should have been crystal clear that the counterdemonstration was a case of Alice through the proverbial looking glass.
The Yellows’ speakers were no less certain of the righteousness of their cause and that the Greens were a combination of the enemy within as well as some sinister fifth column out to destroy all that was good and wholesome in their world. No reactionary event in the United States of America ever seems complete without appeals to patriotism, fatherland, and (very specific and often fundamentalist interpretations of) God, and this was no exception. The Yellows kicked off their rally with a prayer from local Baptist minister Terry Cole, no doubt to emphasize their commitment to “God and Country”, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, and after that, a singing of the Star Spangled Banner (described as “painful” by the Anderson Valley Advertiser).[48] Maribelle Anderson then admonished the assembled crowd to repeat the following preapproved pledge line-for-line:
"I am a decent, hard-working human being. I will not act undignified. I will not lower myself to argue with misinformed people no matter how hard they try to provoke me…no matter how great the urge speak with them. I will not give them the satisfaction, for I am here to tell the truth, So help me God.”[49]
Although this “pledge” represented an obvious attempt to co-opt the true solidarity offered by the local Earth First! nonviolence pledge—which implicitly favored dialog with timber workers, including those hostile to the environmentalists’ message—the Community Solidarity statement was intended to stifle those who would seek to dialog with their adversaries. The latter much more closely represented a blind loyalty oath than an appeal to dignity and decorum. Anderson then introduced her longtime friend Janie England, and announced, “Twenty years ago on this very football field, we were cheerleaders, and today we’re going to be cheerleaders again.” The two then each actually whipped out pairs of pom-poms and started dancing around the stage, shouting,[50] “Families First! Save Our Jobs! Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who do we appreciate? Loggers, Millworkers, Yay!!!!”[51] This, frankly pathetic, display failed to arouse the partisan crowd, but there were far more equally wooden and yet demagogic speeches and performance to follow.[52]
Teri Susan, the wife of L-P “Registered Professional Forester,” Lee Susan, who only a few days earlier had elected not to lower himself to arguing with protesters at Osprey Grove and had instead skipped straight to assaulting them with rocks and axe handles[53], proceeded to issue forth with a verbal assault of her own:
“Earth First! should protest the consumer. In less radical words, Americans should be heavily encouraged to begin conserving wood materials in their homes and businesses…perhaps Earth First!ers can’t appreciate joblessness because a great many of them are on welfare…The next time an Earth First!er tells you they are trying to protect our jobs, you ask them about the spotted owl…Earth First! criticizes our rivers of not being clean while they wash their clothes in the Mattole River…If Earth First! wants to make a park out of our timberlands, let them buy it. They’ve got money for private investigation. They’ve got money for lawyers. They’ve got $10,000 to bail Darryl Cherney out of jail. They’ve got welfare paying for Judi Bari’s hospital bill.”[54]
Linda Bailey, who was the owner of a timber-related business was more succinct, stating, “We are at risk. We are endangered. We have a family-habitat crisis.”[55] Just about every speaker attempted to hammer the crowd with the message that “jobs mean families; timber jobs are the only decent jobs around here; we’re the environmentalists, not these other guys.” They also found it necessary to frequently utter statements like, “all Earth First!ers are on welfare, but even their checks are made from wood.” [56] The most often repeated statement was “We have to stop the Earth First! ballot initiative in November,” meaning specifically Forests Forever, Proposition 130.[57]
Wayne Miller, the Chairman of the Mendocino County Forest Advisory Committee added his voice to the chorus:
“In a way, we (small timber owners) have done too well, because we’ve carefully developed a fine forest with large trees while at the same time creating homes for endangered species. This Earth First! initiative now tells us we have an ancient forest. I wish I could say we’re thrilled to be so honored, but I really can’t. What they’re telling us is, don’t take too good care of your trees or we may take them away from you. This initiative may well become known as the Forestland Subdivision Act of 1990. Simplistic solutions like this Earth First! initiative will only compound the problems facing us. Burning the house down because termites have been discovered is not the only way to go.”[58]
Miller conveniently omitted that he had been part of the FAC’s minority which had voted against the committee majority’s recommendations that included a provision against forestland conversions to subdivisions. While it’s true that Don Nelson had proposed an alternate set of recommendations that only included this provision and kept the others as recommendations is irrelevant, because the perceived need for small landowners like Miller and their corporate allies to continue squeezing every last dollar of profit out of the ravaged forestlands of Mendocino County evidently exceeded prudent forest protections.[59] Miller was probably also perfectly aware that Earth First! had little if anything to do with the supposed “Earth First! Initiative.”
Craig Blencowe, another RPF and an outspoken opponent of Proposition 130 declared, “I think if the real truth is made to be known, we probably wouldn’t have to educate folks. They’d vote no on 130, and we’d all be back where we started a hundred years ago, logging and having good families and good homes and solid security.”[60] Had Blencowe any actual devotion to the truth he would have immediately retracted this utterly ludicrous statement, as he was no doubt perfectly aware that no logger was going to voluntarily abandon the use of modern technological harvesting equipment, and return to the hand saw logging methods used 100 years previously, let alone the deplorable logging conditions that existed then. The corporations might have desired a return to the deplorable working conditions, since these would no doubt have further aided their bottom line, but by no means would they have rehired all of the workers that had been downsized due to automation.[61]
There were songs against the initiative, including one sung to the tune of “It Takes a Worried Man,” which included the lyrics, “I’m a logger man, here is where I belong / I live here now, but I may not live here long / Voters in L.A., please don’t let us down / Prop 130, vote that sucker down.”[62] This echoed the commonly held misconception that the core of Forests Forever’s support came from stereotypically wealthy and liberal urban dwellers far removed from timber country, echoing the now widely held myth of the “latte drinking liberal elite,” so popular in the so-called “Red State” rural American heartland. One yellow shirted speaker called upon the crowd, stating, “I’m proud of what I do for a living; are we proud?”
“Yes!” the crowd answered back.
“Are we going to stand by and let a group of radical foreigners and one greedy investor tell us how we can make a living?”
“NO!” shouted the crowd in response.[63] Typically, reactionaries in staunch defense of the status quo blame the trouble that exists on outsiders. The notion that the world they hold so dear does not now and never has existed, and the people telling them so are their own friends, neighbors, or even family members is always shouted down. Some things do change with time, however, and made sure at least one native Spanish speaker, Andy Cuevas, addressed the Latin@ attendees in the counter demonstration, urging them, in Spanish, to vote against Proposition 130.[64] Other speakers repeating this same litany of half truths and utter nonsense included Don Nelson, Jerry Philbrick[65], and Barry Keene.[66]
Many of the speakers honestly believed what they were saying, but some of them knew better, choosing instead to base their rhetoric on their bottom lines or their political careers. None of them were more despicable and dishonest than Congressman Doug Bosco. Even before his turn at the mike on stage, Bosco appeared before some of the hundreds of TV, magazine, and newspaper reporters swarming around both rallies, and some of the first words out of the congressman’s mouth included the words “Earth First!, with their pipe bombs and their tree spiking—.” This was too much for Bruce Anderson (who had attended part of the Community Solidarity rally in order to contrast it with the Redwood Summer demonstration), and he immediately confronted Bosco, demanding proof for his allegations. The congressman meekly replied, “I only meant that they’ve introduced these terms into our political language,” as if the corporate press and the timber capitalists hadn’t whipped up at least as much hysteria with their own exaggerations on these matters. Anderson wasn’t about to let Bosco off the hook that easily, so he then queried the elected official whether the latter’s links to Centennial Savings might implicate him in the growing Savings & Loan scandal. The congressman hastily replied, “I’ve been denying that for years,” and then stomped off angrily. One of the “respectable” reporters then proceeded to excoriate Anderson for having interrupted the former’s interview with Bosco, as if the mainstream reporter would have asked any meaningful questions.[67]
The Congressman was the keynote speaker at the Yellow counterdemonstration, but evidently at least half of the crowd was unimpressed and drifted away before his appearance on stage. When he did, however, he nevertheless continued the barrage of corporate timber propaganda.[68] Bosco dismissively referred to the over 3,000 demonstrators across town at the simultaneously occurring Redwood Summer rally as “kids” who should go home and clean up their own environment.[69] That most of the demonstrators were local and spanned all ages was a fact Bosco (like everyone else at the Yellow rally) conveniently ignored.[70] Bosco repeated the unproven assertion that Hal Arbit’s generous donation to the Forests’ Forever campaign was motivated not by altruism, but rather by greed, declaring, “We know he loves redwoods, but does he love them vertical, or does he love them horizontal?” His other comments on Forests Forever could just as easily have been written by T Marshall Hahn, Charles Hurwitz, or Harry A Merlo:
“The people here. know how to harvest timber and yet survive and keep the environment pure. What we resent is people coming from all over the country and trying to save us, and I say, what are you saving us from?…You’re coming to the most beautiful, pristine part of the whole world, and it’s that way because of the people who live here, not in spite of them.
“An Indiana Congressman introduced a bill to save the ancient forests. Well, let me tell you some-thing about Indiana. The entire state of Indiana used to be an ancient forest. The Great Plains were covered with trees, and they were cut down for the farmland.
“After we’ve defeated the initiatives, why don’t we all go to Indiana. We can tell the farmer there, ‘Forget your crops. We’re all going to put the trees back again for you.’”[71]
Statements such as these, and the incessant repetition of the lie, manufactured largely by the corporate timber front group, Californians for New Forestry, based in Sacramento, that Forests Forever was “the Earth First! Initiative” did not sit well with the actual authors and supporters of the initiative[72], including Warner Chabot, the Sierra Club’s representative for Proposition 130, who stood at the edge of Green Memorial field and desperately tried to convince the throngs of corporate press agents that Earth First! had nothing to do with it:
“If I was unscrupulous, unethical, campaign manager for the timber industry that is exactly the campaign I would run. The Earth First! folks never wrote it, they aren’t on the committee, they haven’t endorsed it, they are no way involved. It is endorsed entirely by the mainstream environmental organizations.”[73]
The PR lie that Earth First! was responsible for the Proposition 130 was part of the industry’s campaign to defeat it. Chabot was convinced that corporate timber would spend in excess of $10 million in these efforts and such would include every attempt to link the measure with “eco-terrorism”.[74] The sheer irony in this Kabuki was that the stances taken by Earth First!, in northern California and southern Oregon, at least, were actually more supportive of the concerns voiced by timber workers than the Sierra Club which tended to be ignorant of such matters at the time.[75] No doubt much of this was due to the influence of the IWW. Even more to the point, the Sierra Club’s attempts to distance themselves and other mainstream environmentalists from Earth First! played right into the hands of those who would link them with Earth First! in the first place, because it left unaddressed the corporate timber industry lie that the radicals were terrorists, which was clearly not the case.
Bosco’s comments on the Spotted Owl were no less inflammatory and no less designed to play right into the reactionary corporate timber propaganda juggernaut. In a feeble attempt a humor, he declared, “No wonder they’re extinct. They can’t find each other!” [76], and also, “if (the spotted owls) need 6,000 acres to find a mate, they deserve to be extinct.”[77] Ludicrous comments such as these no doubt went a long way towards explaining why at least one of the signs at the counterdemonstrations read, “The spotted owl and marbled murrelet don’t even taste good. How come they are more important than human lives and jobs?”[78] Evidently this yellow shirt wouldn’t be eating spotted owls for breakfast. Indeed, it was sheer demagoguery such as this that explained a lot of the attitudes among the Yellows towards their Green neighbors[79], including such signs as “the only good tree is a stump” [80], “Earth First! can kiss my axe”[81], and the like. At least one elderly counterdemonstrator wore a shirt that read “hippies are parasites” on one side and “Russia has no evil corporations” on the other (evidently oblivious to the notion that the now dying Soviet style “Communism” and Corporate Capitalism were far more alike than different). When queried by a local reporter documenting both rallies for the North Coast News, this man revealed that the statement was in reference to something said by an Earth First!er and conceded that “he was not really for corporations.” The man’s wife, no doubt aware that such statements were still likely, in 1990, to attract McCarthyesque accusations that her husband was a “Communist” hastily added, “(the corporations) pay all our bills,”[82] which demonstrated just how far the Stockholm Syndrome had taken root in the minds of the residents of the area who supported the Yellow coalition.
Meanwhile, across town, at the old Holmes lumberyard, the assembled “Greens” took part in four hours of speeches and acoustic music. The atmosphere was described by one attendee as “peaceful” and “carnival like.”[83] Despite Bosco’s description of the Redwood Summer coalition as mostly college kids from out of town, in fact people of all ages were present. There were just as many families at the Green gathering as there were at the Yellow counter demonstration, though the latter were more apt to use them as political billboards.[84] One grey haired woman held a sign that read, “Respect the aged; Hands off old-growth.” Mendocino County School Board member David Colfax made it quite clear who the actual outsiders were, and it wasn’t the Greens:
“For 50 years, they’ve been carrying money out of the county in bushel baskets. At the same time, we don’t have money for schools; we can’t deliver social services, our roads are deteriorating, and your officials are afraid to stand up here and say this to you.
This is a special bushel basket: it has three handles—one for Doug Bosco, our Congressman; one for Dan Hauser, our so-called representative; and one for the panderer to the worst instincts, a man we thought had a few ethics, Mr. (Barry) Keene…if you don’t have the guts to do what you should be doing, then get the hell out of the way and let the rest of us do it.”[85]
Mendocino County resident, Harriet Bye offered her concerns about the current state of affairs, stating, “I’m an Albion resident concerned about protecting the old-growth. It’s sad to see this polarity in the community, but there will be no jobs without the trees.”[86]
That wasn’t to say that there weren’t wider political issues discussed, because there certainly were. For instance, American Indian Movement Bobby Castillo reminded those present that though their cause was just, they still had a long way to go to be all inclusive, stating, “When you say, ‘Take back the land,’ I wonder…Our people were mowed down like the trees. The butchery (of the trees) came from people who looked a lot like you.” Likewise, Biko Lumumba of the African Peoples’ Socialist Party echoed that sentiment, and admonished everyone to look past mere rural forestry issues:
“We have to start with recognition of whose land this is this land was stolen from the Native people …and built up with the enslavement of African people in this country.
"People always say, ‘Why aren’t there more black people in the environmental movement? How can we get more black people in the environmental movement?
“We’re catching hell in the environment we’re in inside the cities. That’s the environmental movement, we’re in.
“The only solution is revolution. George Herbert Walker Bush is carrying on a legacy handed down by the founding fathers.
“The war on drugs is being used to lock up young African Americans…The White House is the rock house; Uncle Sam is the pusher man. If they really wanted to stop drugs, they would’ve locked up Oliver North and George Herbert Walker Bush. I call on you to overthrow U.S. imperialism.”[87]
Brian Willson reiterated his commitment to nonviolence and compared the violence committed by the US Government in its imperialist adventures to the destruction of nature stating:
“I’ve been most active in trying to stop the U.S. wars in Central America…It’s the same attitude that can cut down 3,000-year-old plants without thinking or feeling anything about it. Eco-imperialism is the same as human imperialism…We have to live in harmony with the planet, otherwise we’re dead…The ‘90s are going to make the ‘60s look like the 1950s.”[88]
Indeed, there were one or two “college kids” present, though one of the most vocal was none other than Lisa Henry who, though she attended college at the University of California in Santa Cruz, had grown up in Mendocino County. Henry defended the presence of youthful activists stating, ““Sometimes your kids are speaking the truth—re-member the Vietnam war. We need to protest in a childish fashion, with song, dance, and humor. It’s time for my generation to stand up; we do have brains.”[89] Lisa Henry also read a statement from her mentor, Judi Bari:
“I am sending this statement to you from a hospital bed. It was written yesterday—Thursday morning—and for that reason it doesn’t specifically address whether the government charged me today with ridiculous but serious crimes, or whether they realized my total innocence and are beginning to seek out the true suspect. This statement is about why I have been targeted, and about how the law enforcement officials have jumped on the bandwagon to attempt to delegitimize me, my work, the work of Earth First!, and the work of movements for social change.
“We are being targeted for infiltration, disruption, destruction, and violence because we are effective organizers. We have begun to speak not just about the destruction of the earth, but about what system is destroying it. As long as we concerned ourselves only with the preservation of wilderness areas, we were not a serious threat. But now we are beyond talking just about trees, though of course that is a central issue, we are talking about corporations.
“The same system that is destroying the Redwoods is destroying people’s lives in Central America. It is exploiting workers. It is suppressing cures for AIDS. It is oppressing Black, Latino, Asian, American Indian, and other people. When we say this, our movement becomes stronger and more dangerous, and they’ll use more repression to try to stop us. We are shaking the core of their power structure.
“I have been singled out and this is why. But don’t view me as an individual. I was attacked as a symbol of the movement. What happened to me was an act of outrageous terrorism. We cannot back down. We have to stand together as a movement, one movement.”[90]
Henry also admonished her mother, Mendocino County District 4 Supervisor Liz Henry, whom the former spotted in the crowd, to denounce the frame up of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. Earlier in the day, the two had discussed the possibility. Liz Henry was reluctant to make such a statement, responding, “I don’t know. It’s politically really tricky for me to do this at this point.”[91]
“Mom, look at all these people…you’d have great support,” responded her daughter.
So, at the end of her speech, Lisa Henry declared: “Everyone who wants Liz Henry to call for an investigation of the bombing, give a coyote howl,” she called out, which drew an enthusiastic roar of support from the crowd, but the liberal supervisor was still too career minded to risk being ostracized for what she perceived to be too bold a move. When Lisa Henry looked back to where her mother had been standing, the supervisor had disappeared.[92]
Bruce Anderson, one of the Masters of Ceremonies for the Redwood Summer rally (when he wasn’t busy challenging the Yellows across town), read from a list of pejorative descriptions of the Greens he had compiled while at Yellow counter rally, which included, “Eco-terrorists, Jobless-gypsies, Bunny-huggers, Pot smokers, Nature Nazis, Commies, Anarchists, Rent-a-mob, Forest Faggots, Beatnicks, Tree-Huggers, and Liberals.”[93] There may indeed have been a handful of card-carrying “communists” in the crowd, a good number of “anarchists”, and definitely a generous collection of “liberals”, but there were no doubt “liberals” among the Yellows, and probably an equal number of pot smokers, vegetarians, and meat eaters at both rallies.[94] As for the claim that all of the Greens were “unwashed-out-of-town-jobless-hippies-on-drugs”, this was not only far from the truth, it was rendered even more baseless by the fact that the Redwood Summer rally featured no shortage of genuine timber workers itself. For example, millworker Gene Lawhorn repeated his vivid account of how the scabs that had crossed the union picket line during the Roseburg Forest Products strike two years previously had all worn yellow ribbons and how Earth First!ers had marched in solidarity with the striking union workers on that same picket line.[95] Walter Smith told his story about his struggles and his anger towards L-P, declaring (the corporations) say they can do what they want with their forests. I say it’s our forest.” His wife, Karen, emphasized the moral dilemma that Walter had faced when he risked his career to make his stand, stating, “For the last six years, I’ve lived with a man who questions the very fundamentals of his existence.”[96] There were a good number of millworkers, ex millworkers, loggers, ex-loggers, and fishermen among the crowd as well. The “Community Solidarity” message had evidently fallen flat for many of them.[97]
Darlene Cormingore, running on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket to unseat incumbent Doug Bosco summarized the latter’s many betrayals and sellouts to the actual outside agitators, in this case the timber and oil corporations, and led the crowd in a sing-a-long to the tune of Hit the Road Jack, changing the lyrics to, “Hit the road Doug / And don’t you come back / No more, no more, no more, no more / Hit the road Doug / I’m voting for Cormingore.” The candidate paraphrased IWW troubadour, Utah Phillips and declared, “The forest isn’t dying; it’s being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses: Charles Hurwitz, Harry Merlo, and they’re being ably assisted by their congressman, Doug Bosco.”[98]
Alexander Cockburn, who spoke at Samoa, again pontificated before a receptive crowd, about the power of the people’s ability to trump corporate power:
“(The corporations say) never underestimate the power of cash. What are we saying here when we march down the street? We’re saying, ‘You’re wrong. You are overestimating the power of cash. There’s something you’ll never understand, something far more powerful than cash, and that is justice.’”[99]
The message, repeated time and again among the Greens, was that they “were not out to get their jobs,” and that they opposed the corporate timber industry, but not the timber workers themselves.[100]
At 2 PM, after about 4½ hours, the Redwood Summer wrapped up and most of the crowd gathered at the road leading to Highway 1 for the planned march and the civil disobedience that was sure to follow. The march was supposed to traverse eight blocks from the rally site to the G-P office doors at the corner of Redwood and Main Streets. There, selected affinity groups would ritually cross a line that had been painted on the street and risk arrest.[101] The joyous and diverse crowd, about 1500 strong, was led by a flatbed sound truck that carried musicians playing reggae music. Sequoia, bedecked in her spotted owl costume danced in front of the sound truck.[102] As they marched they sang songs about peace and ecology and sometimes changed slogans, such as “Earth First! Profits Last!’ or “Hey-Hey!, Ho-Ho! Export Logging’s Got to Go!” [103] One marcher described his fellow demonstrators as inclusive of, “little kids and weirdly dressed individuals, and tourist yuppies, and some of us coastal people.” There were nearly 2,000 marchers, some carrying signs, some drumming, others carrying coffins and wearing costumes of skeletons, ghosts, and specters (to forebode the death of the forest at the hands of corporate clearcut logging).[104] A handful of stoic and unamused spectators watched from the sidewalks.[105]
The previous day, logger Ed Bettencourt, a Yellow supporter had warned LA Weekly Reporter Greg Goldin that the situation might get ugly in Fort Bragg, adding, “Those men are going to get whiskey drunk, send their wives and kids home, and go over there and make something happen.”[106] As the Yellow Shirt counter demonstration was drawing to a close, about 400 of the attendees, mostly younger, unemployed men, many who had been drinking and several of whom carried beer cans with them headed towards the next destination of the Redwood Summer marchers, in this case, the downtown headquarters of Georgia-Pacific.[107] Many of them carried signs with slogans that read “We Support Our Timber Industry” and “The Only Good Tree is a Stump.”[108] Just after 4 PM, as the latter reached the turn off from Main Street (Highway 1) at Redwood, and prepared to cross the parallel railroad tracks to the planned civil disobedience site, they came almost face-to-face with the drunken mob of counter protesters. Police in riot gear aided by California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, who had been following the Greens had managed to pull ahead of the march and position themselves in between the opposing factions and formed a double line separating the two groups[109], approximately twenty feet apart at their closest point, where a handful of Redwood Summer affinity groups had separated from the main group preparing to engage in the planned civil disobedience.[110] The Yellow shirted mob began jeering, shouting insults at the top of their lungs, making obscene gestures towards, and even hurling beer cans at the Redwood Summer crowd, most of which responded by singing and chanting in as positive and friendly a manner as they could muster under the circumstances.[111]
For almost ninety minutes, the vigilante mob continued their verbal and attempted physical assault upon their adversaries[112], yelling things like, “Get out of our town!”, “Get off of welfare!”, “You deserve a bullet in the head!”, “Darryl, where’s Judi?”[113] The inevitable, “Get a haircut you fuckin’ hippie!”[114], and “Check your mailbox, your welfare check may have arrived!”[115] Others reported also hearing, “Where do you live, in rocks?”, “Where do you get your clothes, Salvation Army?”, “Get a Job!”, and “Get a Life”, to which one dreadlocked demonstrator responded, “Environmentalists work…to save the environment.” A somewhat less levelheaded demonstrator shouted back, “Consume, eat, watch TV, and die!”[116] On a balcony above one corner of the intersection, residents passed whiskey and beer bottles around while giving the finger to the Greens.[117]At one point the Yellows started chanting “Go home!” en masse, to which the Greens struck up a counter-chant of “We are home!” (which was mostly true).[118] Meanwhile, the Redwood Summer organizers did their best to keep the Redwood Summer crowd focused. Darryl Cherney attempted to emcee this second impromptu demonstration.[119] He tried to sing his signature song, Where are We Gonna Work When the Trees are Gone?[120], and Eternity, an African American woman singer tried singing a few songs of her own. This only drove the angry mob into an even deeper fury. The Greens even tried singing the Star Spangled Banner, but this failed too.[121] Gene Parsons tried leading both crowds in singing America the Beautiful.[122] This did silence the angry mob somewhat, and at least some of the yellows (as well as some bystanders) joined in, singing along softly, but this was a temporary moment.[123]
It mattered little to them that the Redwood Summer crowd was far more diverse, and included far more actual timber workers than the Yellow mob was led to believe.[124] It mattered little that the “Community Solidarity” signs were obviously massed produced, and most likely approved by a G-P P.R. representative, whereas the Redwood Summer signs were homemade, colorful, and had both green and yellow ribbons tied to some of them, because by this point for the mob, it mattered little what the message was, because they had nothing but hatred for the messenger.[125] Naomi Wagner went to the microphone on the Redwood Summer sound truck and addressed the counter demonstrators, saying, “You’ve got it all wrong; we are not your enemy. We all live here and should be concerned together about the future of our forests.”[126] The tension still hung heavy in the air and nerves on the Redwood Summer side began to fray. At one point Darryl Cherney (who was thoroughly exhausted from all he had been through) and Mike Roselle quarreled over what to do next.[127] Finally, Pam Davis and Darryl Cherney suggested that representatives from the Yellow side be allowed to speak their mind and take a turn on the microphone.[128]
This finally quieted the counter demonstrators. A youngish looking man in a yellow shirt stepped up to the sound truck and nervously spoke:
“You talk about the next generation…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…”[129]
Many of the Redwood Summer demonstrators, particularly those who had lived their entire lives in the area began to jeer and heckle the young man. So he defensively inquired, “Who lives in Mendocino County?” Almost three-quarters of the demonstrators raised their hands; others shouted “Humboldt County,” “Trinity County!” as the Redwood Summer crowd cheered triumphantly.[130]
Seeing that he had overestimated the power of this greatly overused talking point, he resorted to a scattershot approach, using much of the rest. “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!” he said, even more nervously.[131] Such talking points had already been used to the hilt by corporate timber and their apologists for several years by this time, especially in the form of self righteous letters to the editor written by apologists for corporate timber condemning environmentalists. Such rhetorical questions were based entirely on myth and exaggeration, however, and the overwhelmingly environmental crowd was not swayed by an obvious parroting of corporate propaganda. Desperate, the young man asked, “Do you want to live in plastic houses? Please go home…this is all so bizarre,” before he rambled off incoherently and stepped away from the microphone.[132]
A second speaker from the crowd of yellow shirts stepped forward. Unlike the first he was calm and, with his hands in his pockets, surprisingly spoke from his own experiences rather than from a list of talking points.[133] The man introduced himself; his name was Duane Potter. Potter explained that he used to be a logger, who once believed (as some of the yellow coalition’s signs said) that the only good tree was a stump, but he had recently quit, after fifteen years of working 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 (in the yellow shirts) across the street one thing: Stop smoking pot and getting drunk so you don’t see what’s going on!”[134]
Potter clarified that he had to give up drinking and smoking marijuana before he understood that G-P was abusing both the forest and the workers. He announced that he was going to go into the recycling business to do something for the Earth.[135]
This was simply incredible, and completely unexpected. One might have thought—particularly if they were among the chorus of right wing true believers who constantly fired off letters to the editor of their local newspaper about “hippie-environmentalist-terrorist-communist-jobless-welfare-bums”, many of whom might have in the angry mob across the street—that somehow Earth First! (or the IWW) had scripted this. They hadn’t. In fact, according to Judi Bari, nobody in the Redwood Summer coalition had any knowledge of Duane Potter or had ever spoken to him before.[136] Duane Potter was no plant, nor was his action a publicity stunt. His words came from the heart, and his reasons for acting as he did—which he shared candidly in an interview he gave to Lynne Dahl for the August 15, 1990 edition of the Anderson Valley Advertiser—were perfectly logical in case anyone cared to listen.
Potter was a native of Fort Bragg; he had lived there his entire life. He had worked in the woods since he was eighteen years old as a choker setter for A.J. Grey, one of the local gyppos. Like many other loggers employed by gyppo firms, as many as 60% by Potters’ count, he had become an alcoholic, partly as a result of the strenuous working conditions of his trade, but also partly due to his upbringing:
“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 (an ass) of myself.
“When it was really bad, four or five years ago, instead 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.” [137]
As for the work environment, beer drinking was common among the crews. Both the truckers and the gyppo owners encouraged its consumption for a good day’s work, which in their case meant a good haul of logs. For one such as Potter, who recognized that he was prone to alcoholism, this only enabled bad habits. In his case, he recognized that the problem had grown to the point where he couldn’t hold a steady job. It was only the fierce competition between the various gyppos that kept him employed for as long as he was.[138]
Potter may have been blind to his own vices, but he was very observant of the failures of his employers and the consequences of their actions. For example, he was very disdainful of the industry’s claim that they practiced sustainable logging by planting more trees than they harvested (as the first speaker had repeated):
“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.”[139]
Another factor that led him to quit logging was his perceived inability to change the system from within, at least without the support of his fellow workers:
“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.”[140]
Though, like Walter Smith, Potter was one of the few loggers (or ex-loggers) with the courage to speak out about such matters, he was not alone in his convictions:
“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 that they don’t want to think about it or chance losing their jobs.”[141]
Potter, like many of his fellow workers, had attended the “Community Solidarity” barbecue on June 16, and many had gone to the counter demonstration earlier that day, though many had gone, “for the free food”, according to the repentant ex-logger. Potter had already been disenchanted by what he had heard at the Yellow event, noting that all of the speeches were “leaned to one side”, namely the pro-corporate side. Furthermore, he confirmed that the speakers represented management, rather than the rank and file workers:
“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…
“…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…”[142]
Potter had not originally planned to get up on the sound truck and speak, but after hearing the first speaker, he decided he could be silent no longer, especially because the first man had echoed the sentiment in the statement, read by Maribelle Anderson, that there was to be no communication with the environmentalists. Potter believed that in order to resolve the issue, more communication between the “Green” and “Yellow” factions was needed, not less:
“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.”[143]
Potter’s decision, to speak out, was more than the Redwood Summer organizers could have ever possibly hoped for. In less than five minutes, it quieted the angry Yellow mob; it punctured a hole in the corporate propaganda balloon; it challenged the cynicism of Earth First!ers skeptical of tree spiking renunciations and nonviolence codes by showing that (at least some) timber workers not only were willing to dialog with environmentalists, they had a fairly extensive knowledge of the issue. Judi Bari had been vindicated in a dramatic fashion. As Mike Roselle, who at this point was watching from the periphery of the crowd articulated the situation to reporter Larry Bensky:
“We’ve seen the same thing over and over again,” he said. “You have these demonstrations and rallies, the media screws up the reporting to make it look like a hippie orgy, the other side comes across like Mr. and Mrs. Apple Pie America. And then a year or two later you come back, and you talk to the locals, and they say, ‘You know all those things you said about the timber companies and the redwoods ... you were right!’”[144]
Duane Potter was certainly not alone among those who had attended the “Community Solidarity” event in thinking that the pledge “not to talk to environmentalists” was the wrong approach. Rob Prosolino, an independent logging operator from Manchester had, earlier that day, declared, “This parade is fine, but we all need to sit down and get solutions.”[145]
Sensing that the moment was right to end the demonstration, one of the Redwood Summer spokespeople[146] stepped up to the microphone and, with the consent of most of the assembled “Greens” that since their demonstration had been a huge success, that “we’ve decided not to have a civil disobedience action at the (G-P) gate.”[147] With some regrets on the part of the affinity groups slated to participate in the civil disobedience, they agreed to the decision.[148] The marchers, instead, symbolically “deeded” the mill to the People of Fort Bragg—coincidentally reaffirming that labor produces all wealth—and insisted that G-P eliminate, as opposed to merely reducing, its emissions of dioxins and other deadly toxics.[149] People from both camps started to drift away, with little dialog between the two sides, but also with very little hostility.[150] Despite most people’s worst fears, there was no violence and only five[151] (or six, by some accounts[152]) arrests, and all of those were on the “Yellow” side.[153] One of the MCs for the Redwood Summer coalition congratulated the police for actually maintaining peace between both sides (though the Greens were peaceful anyway) and their restraint.[154]
So ended the largest rally of Redwood Summer[155], which was also the largest demonstration organized by the IWW (in whole or in part) in years, and the largest rally ever organized by Earth First! (in whole or in part). It was by almost all accounts, a very successful rally. Although both sides declared themselves winners, clearly it was the Greens who had distinguished themselves most.[156] Said co-organizer Anna Marie Stenberg:
“This rally was an overwhelming 100% success. The Redwood Wall has been cracked, and we have established an honest, peaceful dialog with the workers that has never been allowed before.
“The Yellow Shirts told them not to talk to us, and we talked openly anyway. Now we can establish a community forum in which everyone’s grievances against the company can get addressed.
“The jobs and the prosperity don’t come from the company, they come from the forest. We are looking for G-P to get out of town and let the people who live here determine their own destiny in an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation.”[157]
Stenberg’s assessment was echoed by several of the rally attendees, particularly those who were only nominally involved in the summer of direct actions and demonstrations, including local homesteader Jynx Houston, who said, “The feeling at Saturday’s Redwood Summer demonstration was the most open-hearted and actively peaceful of any large political gathering I’ve ever been part of. Thanks go to everyone—especially those responsible for actually putting it together.”[158] Her sentiments were shared by Dale Glaser, who wrote:
“My experience was that the timber workers, as well as police, assumed this would be your typical confrontation, where both sides hide behind epithets, heckling and angry self-righteousness, and eventually someone starts punching. But what happened was that the Redwood Summer group effectively and nonviolently broke down the ‘us against them’ barrier. I trust some consciousness was raised.”[159]
As was the case in Samoa, not everyone in support of Redwood Summer was equally satisfied with the outcome, however. For example, Paul Encimer was extremely distraught that the organizers had called off the planned civil disobedience in favor of what he dismissed as mere “symbolic” protest. According to Encimer:
“In its final moments, the Ft. Bragg demo went beyond Judi Bari’s expressed fears that Redwood Summer might become captive to the addiction to ‘dialogue’. She had once metaphorically envisioned the parallel Mississippi Summer event stopping after the death of the three civil rights workers, and saying, ‘Hey, let’s not register Negroes, let’s interview them.’ The last message of the Ft. Bragg demo was sort of ‘Hey, let’s not register Negroes, let’s interview the Klan…’
“I ask, what is the point of ‘dialoguing’ with procompany workers? start there last. The people that need to be ‘dialogued’ with are the workers who opted out of showing solidarity with the company—the ones who aren’t fooled by Yellow Ribbons and who weren’t in the streets of Ft. Bragg that afternoon. And one way to ‘dialogue’ with these workers is to show them we share their deep opposition to the company and the company union. We could have done that—at this stage in the game—by encouraging and supporting and participating in the civil disobedience focused specifically at G-P for that day…
“You don’t begin ‘dialogue’ with the workers at GP by starting with self-deluded company serfs in Yellow Shirts, no more than you would support a strike by helpfully providing car pools to get scabs to the job site…”[160]
The debate over tactics, as well as the debate over the strategic effectiveness of nonviolence, represents a matter that has plagued various segments of the political left in the United States for at least two generations, and the debate continues even now. Encimer might have wanted to ask Judi Bari her opinion before quoting her out of context, because the latter considered the day’s worth of events to be successful.[161] Sylvia Yoneda, another Redwood Summer supporter rebutted Encimer’s pessimistic summary of what unfolded:
“Encimer dismisses the possibility of communication occurring among divergent sectors of a community, preferring civil disobedience which would have resulted in a political ‘show’ trial. To what end? His ability to inform the public about the high ideals which brought him (and about 80 others) to the Fort Bragg July 21st rally to commit civil disobedience (CD) and be arrested. If CD had been the chosen action on the 21st, there could have been blood in the streets. The Yellow Shirts were prepared to physically attack any action they perceived as ‘hippie’ or ‘radical’ in content. Dialogue turned the tables on them, ‘put the ball in their court,’ creating cracks in the previously solid front of so-called ‘Solidarity’. The Yellow Shirts’ vulgar behavior—especially when viewed on local TV’s that evening—shocked previous Yellow Shirts who spoke out on local call-in talk shows, in clubs and in public against those who embarrassed their own community with their excessive behavior. Upon inquiry, it was learned that the most obscene participants in the Yellow Shirt display at Redwood and Main Streets were not loggers at all. Although some of their fathers are loggers, most of them were drinking, and unemployed. At least one of them is known as a local drug dealer. They saw an opportunity to act out their own social alienation toward others whom they thought it ‘acceptable’ to treat as social lepers. Local police described them as ‘troublemakers’.
“What was the point of the dialogue? To exchange points of view, to break through the ‘redwood wall’ which has been erected by those whose interests are served by preventing the environmentalists and loggers from recognizing their shared concerns (probably 80%) and acting on them. Anyone who would insist that this is impossible, does not believe in democracy. Having your ‘day in court’ is another aspect of our democratic system which should also be guarded and utilized judiciously. But why would anyone insist on symbolic action when it is possible to achieve real substantive results—even if outsiders cannot see them immediately? That is why the organizers were locals, and why such a decision as to whether or not to go forward with symbolic actions should never be imposed by others from the outside who do not know the inside story…so what was the point? What was actually accomplished? Symbolic action is a start, but is no substitute for reality.”[162]
Lisa Henry likened the situation to that of a dysfunctional family, and no doubt this sense was enhanced by the tension between her and her mother. She recalled:
“People from outside the area didn’t understand what our town was going through that day. At the end of the march, there were Bay Area people who told me it was boring! They didn’t realize that this was a radical moment in Fort Bragg history and the icebreaker for further political demonstration. They didn’t understand that the people who were wearing the yellow t-shirts yelling at us across the police blockade were school mates, neighbors, people we knew by name.
“I was feeling that the struggle going on in my family was a metaphor for the struggle going on in Fort Bragg. It’s not like a war between two distant countries…
“[T]here was also dysfunction within the environmental movement. I pointed out that there were only a couple women speakers coming up, and that was a pretty skewed thing for us to do, that we weren’t working healthfully…
“Everything seemed unhealthy. I felt as a community, we were going around with this small town “Main Street” facade of everything being okay, whereas everything was really, truly screwed up—the yellow ribbon people and the green shirts fighting with each other was just a symptom…
"I thought of me and my brother, where often we would repeat patterns that we’d just seen everywhere else. So we would fight because our parents were fighting, or our friends’ parents were fighting and that was just the way it was done. And I just called for an end to that. I didn’t want us to be complicit anymore. I said, “Let’s not you and me fight. Let’s turn and fight the corporations instead.”[163]
Henry knew her mother was very upset about being admonished to speak out against the framing of Bari and Cherney, and she didn’t go home after the rally, and stayed away for some time. When she did finally come home, both Liz and Norm Henry were livid, and excoriated their daughter for embarrassing them. They were even more angry about the fact that Lisa Henry had chosen to live with Judi Bari:
“They feared for my safety, but they also thought (radical activism) was a non-viable way of doing politics. They thought I should work through the System more.
“My dad was disgusted with Redwood Summer; my mom just didn’t want me to do it, thinking that I was going to ruin her career. That was the big thing—‘You’re going to ruin my career’—and that’s a lot of pressure to put on your kid.”[164]
In time, however both the parents and their daughter came to respect each other more:
“I was putting (my mother) in a spot, and I’ve actually grown over the summer to respect her politics and understand that she is taking stands on issues. She has told me that she is moving as far as she can within the constraints of her office—and her beliefs. We’ve kind of moved dynamically through the summer. We went through phases.
“First they didn’t want me to talk about timber politics at all. We’d get into these big fights, and at one point, my dad walked out of the room. He didn’t want to hear what I was saying and he removed himself. That’s how he dealt with it.
“It got better. We started talking about Redwood Summer, the logging situation, politics—as if these were normal subjects, just a household thing. I tried to restrain myself and not get into heated arguments with my folks. Because I was used to these dynamic arguments within the Movement and I found them fun. They didn’t. And they didn’t want that. They wanted a calm house life.
“My father works for CDF, and I grew up believing that CDF was as benevolent as the church is supposed to be, that they’re doing the right thing in the right way.
“It was a shock to me to find out—through Judi Bari that there was this ecological destruction going on, which I had grown up thinking was normal. I’d been taught not to notice it. So that meant that I had to reevaluate my father’s role in the timber wars.
“That has meant looking at my father as a worker and trying to figure out what his value systems are and still be able to live in the family—not drive myself out of the family. It’s hard having somebody in your family who you want to ask hard questions of, but you are afraid to know the answers. Both your folks and you want to wear the white hat. You both want to be the good guys.”[165]
Lisa Henry had also been unaware of the fact that her mother had received much flak for even taking liberal positions as the Fourth District Supervisor. As a woman in a rural county in 1990 this was difficult enough, and many considered her a radical. Lisa Henry had even received death threats, not unlike those issued to Bari and other women associated with Redwood Summer. In time the two realized that their clashes actually represented an ongoing process:
“(W)e have gone through a dynamic relationship, my mom and I, where she will be okay with it, and then I will push it, then she will become not okay with it, and it will go back and forth.
“And as she becomes more accepting, then I will do something else (maybe unconsciously, maybe consciously) that pushes my politics further.”[166]
The mainstream media’s coverage of the event was, at best, incomplete, and in most cases it was atrocious. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat covered both the “Green” and “Yellow” events as well as the confrontation that took place at the G-P Mill, but neither publication described the dialog at all, let alone Duane Potter’s insightful comments.[167] The Ukiah Daily Journal’s coverage was equally inadequate.[168] The Eureka Times-Standard didn’t even report on the event at all, choosing instead to simply reprint a brief UPI wire release on the event.[169]
The Press Democrat saw fit, two days later, to publish an article about windows that had been broken at the rally site (most likely by counterdemonstrators, though this was by no means implied by the headline), but still refused to publish Duane Potter’s speech.[170]
This was no doubt linked to the Redwood Empire’s “paper of record”—which had been recently purchased by the New York Times, being steadfastly invested in perpetuating the stereotype of the divide in Fort Bragg being one of “ a close encounter between long-haired vegetarians in VW vans and closely shorn meat-eaters in pickup trucks,” which was grossly inaccurate.[171] Still, the stereotypes perpetuated the desire by the employing class to blur the class lines that existed between the working class and the employing class, and the corporate press was clearly not on the side of the workers.[172] Numerous Redwood Summer supporters felt compelled to point this out, excoriating the Press Democrat for perpetuating the “jobless hippies from out of town” versus “regular working folks” myth.[173] Rohnert Park resident Marie E. McConnell wrote:
“I was there along with many of my friends; none of us fits (the description of ‘long haired vegetarians driving VW Vans’).
“There was no mention of the senior citizens and lifelong residents of Fort Bragg who are distressed to see their environment being destroyed, the veterans of both the Vietnam and Second World War, the many employed families (many of whom even are lucky enough to have mortgages), and the timber workers who joined us from the other rally to show unity.
“Instead we hear about the length of a fireman’s hair and people’s choice of what to eat. The real issue here was completely overlooked and that is the fact that our forests are being destroyed at an unequaled rate.
“In addition, those present at the timber workers’ rally were depicted as the ‘American family’, however from what I observed along the parade route—namely many people who were very drunk men and women who were screaming profanities, 9- and 10- year old boys spitting wads of chewing tobacco at us and imitating their parents—if this is the ‘American family’, then these are truly scary times.”[174]
Kris Hill, of Petaluma in nearby Sonoma County, wrote, “(The) group I carpooled with to Fort Bragg included an accountant, a teacher, a computer programmer, an interior designer, a social worker, and a nurse. All of us have jobs, and Georgia-Pacific employees have no monopoly on ‘mortgages, children, and bills’, as you think.”[175] Mendocino resident Robert Jamgochian noted that the Press Democrat had failed to report on the wider issues the Greens had been raising, including the $8 million MaxxamCEO Charles Hurwitz had paid himself the previous year; the 300% overcut by G-P and L-P in Mendocino County; the clearcut, liquidation logging practices by timber corporations in general; that only 5% of the nation’s old growth forests remained; and that log exports over the previous decade had transported the equivalent of a 600,000 acre forest offshore.[176] Constance Best of Yorkville critiqued the daily for uncritically referring to Forests Forever as “the Earth First! Initiative”.[177]Another writer challenged the notion that only the “Yellows” have families.[178]
Earth First! artist Thomas Yeates described the dialog, including Duane Potter’s speech that the periodical had so blatantly omitted.[179] That this was done was not especially surprising. Bruce Anderson lamented the fact that the mainstream press was much more quick to quote the likes of Mike and Maribelle Anderson, Don Nelson, Shep Tucker, Jack Sweeley, or Wayne Miller—none of whom were actual timber workers—than they were likely to interview someone like Walter Smith, or even Jerry Philbrick, who—though he was aligned with the Community Solidarity side—at least had some actual, real logging experience and was less likely to simply parrot the company line.[180]
Naturally, the Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance buried the story about the rallies as deep as they could within the dozen or so pages that comprised their publication, even though it promoted the “Yellow” perspective quite decisively, no doubt because it was not possible to put lipstick on the proverbial pig.[181] By all accounts, the “Community Solidarity” side acted disgracefully, and there was little positive spin that could be conjured from their epic failure. This didn’t stop one letter writer to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat for blaming the “Greens” for nastiness that she received at the hands of the “Yellows”! She evidently believed that the latter would have gone about minding their own business had the Redwood Summer demonstrators (whom she pegged as all being from out of the area, contrary to the evidence proving otherwise) not pointed out that business as usual was unsustainable. She blamed the “Greens” for holding the town hostage, because, evidently, she had no concept of (or no problem with) Georgia-Pacific holding the town hostage economically.[182] One might have wondered what her reaction would have been if the Press Democrat had covered the events more thoroughly or accurately.
That’s not to suggest that there wasn’t also frustration towards the “Yellows” expressed by some of the “Greens”. Barry Wood in particular excoriated rank and file timber workers who parroted the company line:
“As to the timber industry employees and their concerns about their families, their jobs and their future, the issue never gets to the environment. We don’t have to go that far. The issue is an economic one. It is “cut and run.” Have loggers become such corporate dupes that they believe outfits like Maxxam care a whit about the workers and future job security?...
“Earth First! and the environmentalists are only a Band-Aid on the cancerous policies that are destroying the economy of the North Coast. It’s going to take major surgery at the polls to cut out the disease and start the road to recovery.”[183]
Iris Hill noted that the only “solidarity” she saw was for the bosses and that she could no more see the workers striking for better wages or working conditions than the man in the moon, “If they have any solidarity at all it is against so called Earth First!er’s. In that sense those in the Earth First! movement are giving them their solidarity and should be thanked for it.”[184] These sentiments were reinforced by Mark Nadylal who expressed similar anger and frustrations:
“I resent the fact that people who have a different philosophy of the wisest uses of Mendocino county’s forest resources are often portrayed by you as degenerate scumballs, hippie welfare bums, naïve lesbian tree huggers, eco-terrorist forest faggots, or any number of other derogatory labels you can think of. I know many people who don’t agree with you and only a couple of them are degenerate scumballs, etc., etc…
“There’s plenty of room for divergent philosophies in the great forestry debate of the 1990s. Petty tactics such as name calling and indiscriminate use of meaningless buzz words only serve to further divide people. I expect such petty tactics from politicians but their use by working people I find very distressing.
“In the name of community solidarity, please try to understand why some of your neighbors are upset about current forestry practices. Understanding other people’s concerns will do more to insure future economic and ecological well-being than angry words ever will.”[185]
Sylvia Yoneda later observed that most of the people she observed sporting yellow ribbons on their car antennae were simply too young to be loggers or mill workers, and that they were in general very rude and obnoxious.[186]
While the corporate press may have lamented the fact that no violence and few arrests took place on July 21, 1990 in Fort Bragg, the North Coast Chambers of Commerce was elated and even publically thanked both the Redwood Summer and Community Solidarity forces, stating, “Concerns before and during the Redwood Summer demonstration in Fort Bragg on July 21 have dissolved. Both Earth First! and Community Solidarity groups marched and rallied without incident.” Surprised, Darryl Cherney responded, “No other town in the United States would have been as gracious as Fort Bragg, California.”[187] The Estimated total cost of police protection and coordination of the local government response was $125,000.[188]
As hard as it was for Earth First! to get fair coverage, it was at least as hard for the IWW to get any coverage at all, let alone fair. IWW members present at the rally attempted to distribute leaflets to rank and file workers among the “Yellows” inviting them to experience True Community Solidarity and attend a meeting of IWW Local #1 one month later at Anna Marie Stenberg’s house (where many IWW Local #1 meetings took place in those days). The statements on the leaflet included the following:
“Georgia-Pacific Corporation in Fort Braqgg (along with their counterparts Louisiana-pacific and Maxxam / Pacific Lumber) plan to extract as much timber and invaluable resources from our region as possible, exploit the labor of the local population, then leave our community devastated in their wake. They’ll laugh all the way to the bank about how skillfully they were able to play us off against each other, and we’ll have no recourse, unless we pull together in a true “Community Solidarity Coalition” NOW.
“In less than a year of work in the community, IWW Local 1 has confronted this company-town mentality by fighting for workers who have been contaminated by toxic PCBs at the mill and discriminated against in hiring by the city, only to be abandoned by bureaucrats in their own “unions”. We have steadfastly stood against the impending disaster on both the economic and ecological fronts, by building alliances between local working people concerned with maintaining their livelihood and local environmentalists concerned with maintaining the natural biosphere that supports all life. And we have not failed to call the hypocrisy of those who—while pretending to “represent” workers in the lumber industry—presided over a 25% wage cut and completed the elimination of Georgia-Pacific’s Woods Division, and then tried three times to raise dues by seven dollars a month, while the companies continue to clearcut our children’s future.
“We will continue to fight until we force both the parasitical companies and their company-union collaborators to stop the layoffs, stop the destruction, and pay back our community for their callous, self-serving policies.”[189]
Although not specifically named in the leaflet, this was no doubt a clear condemnation of IWA Local #3-469 and Don Nelson in particular, and truer words were almost never spoken about them. Still, Nelson had his enablers within the union, and one of these, Cheryl Carpenter defended Nelson and dismissed the IWW as uninformed because the membership voted to accept the G-P contract the previous year.[190] Carpenter neglected to mention that this had only happened because of pressure from the international and several re-votes.[191] To call that democracy was to make a mockery of the world, but such despicable practices are all too common in business unions. In any case, most of the rank and file of IWA Local #3-469 disagreed with Carpenter, because she had also omitted reference to the recent 258 to 139 vote by the membership to reject the dues increase sought by Nelson a third straight time.[192] Besides, the Yellow Ribbon coalition routinely admonished rank and file workers to take a pledge not to talk to either Earth First!ers or IWW members, or risk being fired, and in some cases the employers made good on such threats.[193]
As for Duane Potter, his speech was covered on local television (Channel 3), and he reported that he had received mostly encouraging calls from various people (including a few former coworkers). One woman called Potter, allegedly from the Tip Top Bar in Ukiah, propositioning him, which the ex logger immediately took as an attempt to sow divisions between him and his wife.[194] Potter was unsure of who the woman was, though given the fact that Candace Boak had a history of such subterfuge, she is a likely candidate.[195] Potter noted that he received another call from a man (most likely a gyppo operator) who said that potter was “really blowing it and that (Potter) should read books on what logging is really about before (he) start making wisecracks like that.” This same man called one of his workers who evidently responded by saying that he agreed with Potter. The first man called Potter back thirty minutes later to apologize for his hot-headedness.[196]
The forces of reaction, however, were not conceding defeat yet. No doubt still embittered over the combined efforts of Anna Marie Stenberg, Lisa Henry, and Zack Stenz in exposing Jack Azevado’s crypto fascist tendencies in the District 4 supervisors’ election two years hence, and suspecting that some families would be in fear of losing their jobs if they were suspected of associated with the Redwood Summer forces, Azevedo organized a retaliatory boycott against Stenberg’s daycare services in Fort Bragg.[197] At the beginning of Redwood Summer, Stenberg had eleven timber dependent families whose children were enrolled in her daycare center, and the threat to their livelihoods by the rapacious greed of their employers was one of her motivations for involving herself in Redwood Summer in the first place. Right after the bombing, two families pulled their children out of the center. Stenberg was saddened by this decision, but she understood the motivation:
“I care about my community. And throughout the summer, we tried to make it crystal clear, what our focus was: concern for the workers and the forest, but think about the fact that at the worker’s Solidarity Rally, the workers and their families had to take an oath not to talk to us. You can imagine the pressure the people who brought their children to my daycare felt from their employers.”[198]
Less than two weeks following the rally, three sets of parents denounced her as “an eco-terrorist” and pulled their children out of Stenberg’s daycare center, although in all likelihood, they were only repeating what they had been told to say.[199] By the following week, the total had grown to nine, and in some cases the later withdrawals resulted from pressure by G-P.[200] Stenberg elaborated:
“What bothers me is not that they did it, but that they couldn’t be honest. Only one person who worked for the timber industry was honest with me as to why they had to quit. He said that the timber companies have been able to get away with what they have for the last 100 years because they really are violent. They don’t just threaten it, they do it. Look at the forest, the worker—look at Judi Bari’s body. He said he was scared for his son and scared for me. I thanked him for being honest with me. He asked me if he could bring his child back when things died down and that made me feel wonderful. It was the people who couldn’t tell me the truth, who just dropped out; that’s what hurt. I really honestly miss the children. You’re talking about babies, some of whom I took care of 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. I don’t usually lose my children until they go to school full time…
“One woman came over and said that she had to pull out because she was afraid of the bombing. I said, ‘The bombing happened 2½ months ago and you’ve been bringing your daughter here every day. Why are you scared of it now?’
“And I saw her start to fall apart. She shrugged her shoulders and I didn’t push anymore. I understood she was already under tremendous pressure. Once you step over the line and take a stand in one area, it’s a domino effect. You don’t just take a stand in one area, you take a stand in all aspects of your life: against injustice, or refusing to be blackmailed, or pushed around. If she could have said that she wasn’t going to knuckle under to this threat or simply told me the truth, it would have changed her life…
“If they could trust me with their children, why couldn’t they trust me with the truth? If they had said that they felt scared, that their husbands would lose their jobs, I could have understood. I wouldn’t ask them to be more courageous than they could be. I would never use my children to make a point.”[201]
Two weeks later, however, four new sets of parents enrolled their children in Stenberg’s daycare facility. G-P’s continuing attempts to run Fort Bragg as their own personal fiefdom were finally beginning experience opposition.[202] Said Stenberg, “The timber companies knew that the only way they could get me was through my business. And they tried. And they failed.”[203]
Notes:
[1] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[2] “Stop Liquidation Logging!”, by Roanne Withers, Betty Ball, Kelpie Wilson, Anna Marie Stenberg, and Jennifer Biegel, Industrial Worker, September 1990.
[3] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[4] “Stop Liquidation Logging!”, by Roanne Withers, Betty Ball, Kelpie Wilson, Anna Marie Stenberg, and Jennifer Biegel, Industrial Worker, September 1990.
[5] “Fact or Fiction, You be the Judge”, by Tom Cahill, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 4, 1990; and Mendocino Commentary, July 12, 1990.
[6] “Stop Liquidation Logging!”, by Roanne Withers, Betty Ball, Kelpie Wilson, Anna Marie Stenberg, and Jennifer Biegel, Industrial Worker, September 1990.
[7] “Two Thousand Rally at Fort Bragg”, Earth First! Journal, Lugnasadh / August 1, 1990.
[8] “Redwood Protest to Proceed on GP Turf: More Arrests Predicted Here Than at Samoa”, by Judy Nichols, North Coast News, July 19, 1990.
[9] “California’s ‘Timber War’ Heats Up”, by Chuck Idelson and Tara Kramer, People’s Daily World, July 21, 1990.
[10] “Redwood Protest to Proceed on GP Turf: More Arrests Predicted Here Than at Samoa”, by Judy Nichols, North Coast News, July 19, 1990.
[11] “Stop Liquidation Logging!”, by Roanne Withers, Betty Ball, Kelpie Wilson, Anna Marie Stenberg, and Jennifer Biegel, Industrial Worker, September 1990.
[12] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[13] “California’s ‘Timber War’ Heats Up”, by Chuck Idelson and Tara Kramer, People’s Daily World, July 21, 1990.
[14] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[15] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[16] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[17] “Editor’s Afterword”, by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, Issue #51, August 1990.
[18] “Editor’s Afterword”, by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, Issue #51, August 1990.
[19] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[20] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[21] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[22] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[23] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[24] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[25] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[26] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990. It’s not entirely clear who the “AVA News Service” is, though in all likelihood it includes editor Bruce Anderson, his brother Robert, and perhaps the publications other then frequent contributors Lynne Dahl and Crawdad Nelson among others, plus various eyewitness reports from other unnamed sources.
[27] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[28] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[29] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[30] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[31] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[32] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[33] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[34] “Redwood Protest to Proceed on GP Turf: More Arrests Predicted Here Than at Samoa”, by Judy Nichols, North Coast News, July 19, 1990.
[35] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990; and
[36] “Redwood Protest to Proceed on GP Turf: More Arrests Predicted Here Than at Samoa”, by Judy Nichols, North Coast News, July 19, 1990.
[37] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[38] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[39] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[40] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990. The choice of the Eagles song is especially ironic given the fact that songwriter Don Henley is a staunch environmentalist and would, six years later, perform live at a rally for Headwaters Forest organized by a coalition led by Earth First!. The author, who was present at the rally and planned civil disobedience that followed—where 1033 were arrested, setting a record for mass civil disobedience in the cause of forest preservation—thought he’d recognized the musician and said to a fellow IWW member, “hey, don’t they look like the Eagles?”, not knowing that at least one member of the band, Don Henley, was indeed one of the musicians.
[41] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[42] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[43] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[44] “The Reinhabitant’s Perspective: Naomi Wagner”, interview by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, #51, August 1990.
[45] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[46] “Who Bought Steve Talbot?”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, May 29, 1991.
[47] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[48] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[49] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[50] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[51] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990; and “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[52] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[53] “A Boy Named Sue”, from “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[54] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[55] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[56] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[57] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[58] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[59] “Forest Panel Urges Harvest Reductions: Emergency Measures Prepared for Supervisors”, by Kevin Murphy, North Coast News, May 17, 1990.
[60] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[61] “Jobs, Automation and Exports”, by Eric Swanson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, July 22, 1992.
[62] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[63] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[64] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[65] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[66] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[67] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[68] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[69] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[70] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[71] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[72] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[73] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[74] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[75] “The Sierra Club Surrender”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, March 20, 1991.
[76] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[77] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[78] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[79] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[80] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[81] Pictured in a photograph taken by Sylvia Yoneda at the rally featured in the Redwood Summer Handbook, 2nd edition, by Russel Bartley and Sylvia Yoneda, ca. Fall 1990.
[82] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[83] “Healing the Earth”, letter to the editor by Forest Featherwalker, Mendocino Commentary, July 26, 1990.
[84] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[85] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[86] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[87] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[88] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[89] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[90] Press Statement of Judi Bari, August 21, 1990.
[91] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[92] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[93] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[94] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[95] “Beyond Dialog”, letter to the editor by Paul Encimer, Country Activist, September 1990.
[96] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[97] “Healing the Earth”, letter to the editor by Forest Featherwalker, Mendocino Commentary, July 26, 1990.
[98] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[99] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[100] “Healing the Earth”, letter to the editor by Forest Featherwalker, Mendocino Commentary, July 26, 1990.
[101] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[102] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[103] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[104] “We Didn’t Hold No Parade”, letter to the editor, by William Bradd, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[105] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[106] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[107] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[108] “Eyewitness in Fort Bragg”, by Sabrina Ellis, Country Activist, August 1990.
[109] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[110] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[111] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[112] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[113] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[114] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[115] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[116] “Lost in the Woods”, by Greg Goldin, Los Angeles Weekly, September 7, 1990.
[117] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[118] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[119] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[120] “1990: A Year in the Life of Earth First!”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, January 2, 1991.
[121] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[122] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[123] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[124] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[125] “Eyewitness in Fort Bragg”, by Sabrina Ellis, Country Activist, August 1990.
[126] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[127] Personal interview with Darryl Cherney, October 2009.
[128] “1990: A Year in the Life of Earth First!”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, January 2, 1991.
[129] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[130] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[131] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[132] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[133] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[134] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[135] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[136] “1990: A Year in the Life of Earth First!”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, January 2, 1991.
[137] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990. Potter was by this time a pious and religious man, and would not allow himself to cuss, even remotely. His actual words were “making a donkey of myself.” Some readers might not understand the context, so I have inferred his intended metaphor.
[138] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[139] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[140] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[141] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[142] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[143] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[144] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[145] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[146] WHO?!?
[147] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[148] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[149] “Two Thousand Rally at Fort Bragg”, Earth First! Journal, Lugnasadh / August 1, 1990.
[150] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[151] Whose?!?
[152] “Two Thousand Rally at Fort Bragg”, Earth First! Journal, Lugnasadh / August 1, 1990.
[153] “Eyewitness in Fort Bragg”, by Sabrina Ellis, Country Activist, August 1990.
[154] “Eyewitness in Fort Bragg”, by Sabrina Ellis, Country Activist, August 1990.
[155] “Redwood Summer Arrives”, by Judy Nichols and Gayle Caldwell, North Coast News, August 2, 1990.
[156] “Protesters at Loggerheads: Opposing Forces Fill Fort Bragg”, by Mike Geniella, Bleys W. Rose, and Tobias Young, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 22, 1990.
[157] “Triumph for the Redwoods: Powerful, Nonviolent Forest Rally”, by Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, August 1, 1990.
[158] “Peace and Love”, letter to the editor, by Jynx Houston, Mendocino Commentary, July 26, 1990.
[159] “Redwood Summer: Fort Bragg”, by Dale Glaser, Mendocino Environmental Center Newsletter, Summer & Fall 1990.
[160] “Beyond Dialog”, letter to the editor by Paul Encimer, Country Activist, September 1990.
[161] “1990: A Year in the Life of Earth First!”, by Judi Bari, Anderson Valley Advertiser, January 2, 1991.
[162] “Response to Paul Encimer”, by Sylvia Yoneda, Country Activist, October 1990. Emphasis in the original.
[163] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[164] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[165] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[166] “Lisa Henry on her 22nd Birthday”, Lisa Henry interviewed by Beth Bosk, New Settler Interview, January 1991.
[167] “Timber Rally Draws 3,000 at Fort Bragg; Opposites Share Views”, UPI wire, Eureka Times-Standard, July 22, 1990; “Protesters at Loggerheads”: (A) “Opposing Forces Fill Fort Bragg”, by Mike Geniella, Bleys W. Rose, and Tobias Young, and (B) “Cultures Clash, But Hearts Rally”, by Chris Smith, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 22, 1990.
[168] “Rival Rallies Meet on County’s Coast”, by Chris Calder, with some AP reports, “FB Marches Peaceful”, by Chris Calder, and “Reporters Have Varying Insights on Protest”, by Will Behr, Ukiah Daily Journal, July 22, 1990.
[169] “Timber rally Draws 3,000 at Fort Bragg: Opposites Share Views”, UPI Wire, Eureka Times-Standard, July 22, 1990.
[170] “Windows Broken at Protest Site”, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 23, 1990.
[171] “Checking in on Redwood Summer”, by Larry Bensky, East Bay Express, July 27, 1990.
[172] “Bosco Addresses LaRouche Rally”, by AVA News Service, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[173] Five different letters to the editor, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990.
[174] “Slanted Perspective”, letter to the editor by Maria E. McConnell, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990.
[175] “Not Outsiders”, letter to the editor by Kris Hill, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990.
[176] “Report the Truth”, letter to the editor by Robert Jamgochian, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990.
[177] “PD Parrots Timber’s Line”, letter to the editor by Constance Best, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990.
[178] “Loggers Hiding Behind Families”, letter to the editor by Tonya O’Claire, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 27, 1990.
[179] “Moving Moments”, letter to the editor by Thomas Yeates, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 29, 1990.
[180] “Here and There in Fort Bragg”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990.
[181] “Face-Off in Fort Bragg”, Humboldt Beacon and Fortuna Advance, July 26, 1990.
[182] “Town Held Captive”, letter to the editor, by Joan Whitman, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 11, 1990.
[183] Letter to the editor by Barry Wood, various publications, including Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 25, 1990 (“Major Surgery Required”), and Santa Rosa Press Democrat, July 26, 1990 (“Ironic Stories”).
[184] “Pretty Color”, letter to the editor by Iris Hill, Willits News, August 8, 1990.
[185] “Open Letter”, letter to the editor by Mark Nadylal, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[186] “Yellow Ribbons”, letter to editor by Sylvia Yoneda, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 27, 1990.
[187] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[188] “Redwood Summer Timeline”, by Karen Pickett, Earth First! Journal, Samhain / November 1, 1990; and Richard Johnson, Mendocino Country Environmentalist, various issues from June 1, 1990 – October 1. 1990.
[189] Excerpts of an IWW Local #1 leaflet, published July 1990.
[190] “Get Facts Right”, letter to the editor by Cheryl Carpenter, Mendocino Beacon, August 23, 1990.
[191] “Timber Wars”, by Judi Bari, Industrial Worker, October 1989.
[192] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, By Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 8, 1990.
[193] “An Interview with IWW & Earth First! Organizer, Judi Bari”, by Troy L. Garner, Ecology Center Newsletter, September 1990.
[194] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[195] “No on Boak and Boakism”, letter to the editor by Darryl Cherney, Anderson Valley Advertiser, December 19, 1990
[196] “One Worker Speaks Out: an Interview With Duane Potter”, by Lynne Dahl, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15, 1990.
[197] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 1, 1990.
[198] “Hot Tubbin at Harry’s: Anna Marie Stenberg”, interview by Lynne Dahl, New Settler Interview, issue #54, December 1990.
[199] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, by Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 1, 1990.
[200] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, By Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 8, 1990.
[201] “Hot Tubbin at Harry’s: Anna Marie Stenberg”, interview by Lynne Dahl, New Settler Interview, issue #54, December 1990.
[202] “Here and There in Mendocino County”, By Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 22, 1990.
[203] “Hot Tubbin at Harry’s: Anna Marie Stenberg”, interview by Lynne Dahl, New Settler Interview, issue #54, December 1990.