By Richard Johnson – Mendocino Country Environmentalist, June 15, 1990
Concerned citizens from around the nation have begun congregating in northern California for a protracted series of nonviolent direct actions called Redwood Summer. Organized by Earth First! and supported by a myriad of other national, state, and local environmental, social justice, and peace groups. Redwood Summer aims to focus national media attention on corporate deforestation, to save old growth redwood groves, and to slow logging in second growth forests down to the level of sustainability.
Only some 2% of the original ancient old-growth redwood forests are standing today in the Pacific Northwest, and except for a limited number of parks and wilderness areas, most of these are slated to be cut for lumber.
As new laws and bureaucratic measures at all levels of government promise to transform logging practices on both public and private lands, timber corporations have gone on a clearcutting binge, hacking down more timber volume this summer than ever before in the hope of liquidating their investments before the new rules take effect.
One of these measures—if approved by California voters on the November ballot—is the Forests Forever Initiative which would immediately halt old growth clearcutting and provide up to $723,000 in state bond funds to buy up ancient forests to preserve them for the sake of wildlife habitat. Another measure—an expected federal listing of the spotted owl as a threatened indicator species for hundreds of other kinds of wildlife dependent on ancient forest habitat—could suspend cutting in vast areas of old growth redwood and fir forests as early as this summer.
And in a dramatic new change in state timber regulations, shelterwood cuts in second-growth forests are now to be carefully regulated to protect genetic diversity and the quality of growing timber
In this context, any delay in cutting or decrease in the rate of deforestation will not only save precious natural ecosystems to continue their thousand-year-old lives, but will also strengthen the sustainability of second growth forest and help to provide a steady supply of timber and jobs into the future.
So Redwood Summer organizers hope that waves of environmentalists from all over the country will now come to northern California to stage mass nonviolent direct actions in the woods, at timber mill gates, and at corporate and bureaucratic offices.
Redwood Summer is also expected to give new hope and inspiration to local activists. Watershed protection groups throughout Mendocino County are now planning nonviolent direct actions in coordination with recruits from throughout the nation to fulfill this mandate.
Bad Start at Arcata
On June 6, in the first Redwood Summer action, nonviolent demonstrators briefly occupied a Pacific Lumber logging site near Arcata. The action got some press coverage, but fell short of meeting other goals due to lack of experience and the small size of the environmentalist contingent. In addition, there was a serious threat of injury, one casualty due to sickness, and a substantial loss of valuable equipment.
The action targeted a 160 acre old growth cut in Tailed Frog Grove on the south fork of Yager Creek some ten miles south of Eureka. EF! hoped to distract the loggers and attract heavy law enforcement presence by running through the woods and undergrowth while yelling and whistling. Organizers were counting on the workers being nonviolent and on Humboldt County sheriffs holding up logging while they chased demonstrators. Neither of these wishes came true.
“It is our hope that loggers will not fall the ancient giants as long as they know that our people are within the site,” Redwood Summer spokesperson Mickey Dulas in Arcata told the press.
As a late spring rain soaked the grove, some 15 activists followed by a KPIX Channel 5 television crew slogged into position on the ridge above the cut. Affinity group members present in the action said that as they moved down the slope, calling out and holding banners, loggers dropped their saws and charged uphill.
“The loggers took down our two movement photographers by tackling them on the run,” activists explained. “Then they hauled them off, took their cameras away and drove them to the company office,” they added. After that, the affinity group retreated to their camp deep in the woods. One of the photographers later said he gave up his camera while bargaining with angry loggers “for my buddy’s life.”
None of the Channel 5 television footage of the action was ever aired.
The following day, one activist had to be carried out due to exposure from the rain. With him went the media and most of the platoon, along with the remaining equipment. But some five activists resumed the demonstration, carrying a banner into the logging site and wrapping it around a single tree.
This time, the loggers ignored them, merely working around the ineffectual protest while sheriffs were summoned. Later in the day, deputies arrived and arrested the Redwood Summer contingent that included several young women.
Instead of booking them, the deputies drove the protestors to a store will a pay phone on a remote road, scores of miles to the north. As the protestors were released, log trucks arrived at the site, and activists report that the male drivers verbally abused the female demonstrators who were forced to remain there for hours while waiting for a ride out.
Most of those national recruit demonstrators involved in the aborted Arcata action have reportedly left the area.
The Laytonville Pact:
On May 30, an historic coalition of northern Mendocino County environmental activists and locally owned timber companies announced a precedent-setting agreement on forest practices as well as nonviolent principles and tactics with regard to Redwood Summer. Signatories to the agreement included empowered spokes from the R&J Timber company, Harwood Products, Pardini Logging, Philbrick Logging, Hiatt Logging, the IWW, Earth First!, the Cahto Wilderness Coalition, Eel River Habitat Conservation Planning, Sherwood Forest Protection Association, Bailey’s Logging Equipment, SW Logging, and the Mendocino Environmental Center.
The agreement amounts to a de facto recognition of the power of Earth First! and Redwood Summer by the most conservative elements of the locally-owned timber industry. It also reduces the possibility of violence in the campaign by eliminating the factor of surprise in direct actions at some logging sites. All signatories to the pact live in Mendocino County. Louisiana Pacific and Georgia Pacific were invited to the negotiating sessions, but refused to attend.
Simultaneous with the announcement, the Harwood Company issued a statement to its workers and a letter to the editors of local papers condemning the bombing of Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari, and calling on its employees to exercise the power of nonviolence in their relations with environmental activists the press; and the public…
The Laytonville pact was negotiated only five days after the tragic bombing in Oakland that could have taken the lives of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. It was the result of discussions initiated by Bari and Cherney with locally owned timber firms in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties…