By Paul Encimer – Country Activist, September 1990
To the editor:
Surprising coverage of the Ft. Bragg demo in Humboldt and Mendocino alternative papers, including, alas, this one—brushing aside the need for nonviolent protest aka civil disobedience.
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.”[1]
Allow me to discount the euphoria produced by the dual rally in downtown Ft. Bragg, where several hundred yellow-shirted Solidarity demonstrators were supposedly integrated into a rally which was otherwise to have ended with a nonviolent confrontation at the headquarters of the ever-vicious Georgia Pacific. I thought (that Gene Lawhorn), from Roseburg, Oregon, made an interesting point in a speech some hours earlier. He noted that when he stood out on strike, he watched the scabs driving in to take his job flying the yellow ribbon. So I ask, what is the point of “dialoguing” with pro-company 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.
The numbers, I’m told, of nonviolent protesters would have been as significant as those at the LP-Samoa demo. The act would have extended the energy of the demo through time. It would have given a local jury a chance to hear the reasons why some conscientious and courageous people were putting themselves on the line against Georgia Pacific and its malignant forest practices. In Eureka, such a trial resulted in a jury hung 7 to 5 for acquittal of the “Lorax Ten”. Instead the civil disobedience was brushed off by the hurried decision of a few heavies who wanted to retain the sweet taste of “dialogue” with the enemy. Thus giving the clear message to the workers who stayed home that day and cursed the company that we environmentalists were just as dumb as they thought we were.
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.
As for “dialogue”, this summer has put that word in the Hall of Lame, along with “Have a nice day” and “Thank you for sharing that with me.” The very word seems a spawn of fear and panic, useful perhaps for getting our backs off the wall and that big face out of ours—as in “Can’t we dialogue about this first—i.e., before you beat the tar out of me.”
Similarly we find a denatured use of the word nonviolence which has too often been twisted to mean being nice to the System, so the System will be nice to you. The System is never nice to any kind of resistance or opposition, I believe, nor does it listen to those it oppresses, though it may craftily allow itself to ‘be engaged in “dialogue.” The System listens to resistance, however, and can be made to change—if we remain intransigent.
Notes:
[1] There is no evidence to support Encimer’s opinion, that Judi Bari was critical of the results of the Fort Bragg demonstration. In fact, all evidence suggests the opposite.