By Lisa Henry – Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 29, 1990
Dear Bruce, Rob, et al:
I’d like to respond to Rob Anderson’s critique of Anne R. Keye’s article on the Lorax trial as a member of the Lorax Affinity Group. My views are my own, and don’t necessarily represent views held by other Lorax.
First off, the Lorax were not acquitted—we got a hung jury, and Humboldt County is still planning to retry us. The Lorax pursued our legal rights to trial by jury, and now the ball is in the D.A.’s court. The jury has shown that they were in favor of acquitting us (7 to 5 in our favor), and we hoped with such a ruling that the D.A. would find it futile to retry us. We expect a similar verdict in the retrial, yet the D.A. seems to think it is not a bad idea to spend another several thousand dollars dragging us back again. I ask you now: Who is wasting whose money?”
Because of the length of her article, my good friend Anne chose not to give a detailed account of the weeks of mental torture and self-reflection members of the Samoa arrestees jailed for the L-P pulp mill action went through while deciding whether or not to accept the court’s sentence after arraignment—one year probation, $265-$835 in fines, 4 month suspended sentence—or spend a month of valuable time in court.
The decision to go to trial was personally one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I am an activist, and I know damn well that my time in court might have been better spent organizing in the woods. But 1 year probation would have put too many activists out of action for too long, so I chose trial. I respect all the other activists who chose otherwise.
Before you criticize the Lorax’s motives for going to trial, I ask the reader to take themselves back two months ago in Redwood Summer. The Samoa 44 were thrown unprecedented, politically-motivated sentences; the Lorax were being used as guinea pigs to try to scare off other activists willing to risk arrest. Protesting these kinds of sentences was a primary goal in the Lorax trial.
The Lorax did not decide flippantly to “jam up the courts,” as Rob infers. Had the Humboldt County courts offered us a more lenient sentence, or had they heeded our repeated sentence bargaining, the greater number of Lorax, in my opinion, would have opted to take the original sentence. The courts made a decision to jam up our lives, and Lorax individuals made decisions carefully and thoughtfully in response.
I would also forward the argument that using the court system to one’s legal and political advantage is a legitimate form of political protest. Just as activists use “jail solidarity” (refusing to “cite out”, resisting jail harassment, insisting upon equal treatment both during sentencing and bail hearings) to exert political and economic pressure on jails from within, activists can also choose to use similar tactics, after arraignment by requesting court-appointed lawyers, going proper in order to speak more freely and make political speeches, etc., to exert further political and economic pressure on the courts. The decision to go to trial and put pressure on Humboldt County was made collectively and with much reflection by the Lorax. Who in their right mind wants to spend a month in court?
The eight court-appointed attorneys were requested, by the way, both for court solidarity and also in order to construct a legal team capable of constructing a time-consuming defense of necessity, the Lorax’s original defense (before the Penal Code defense was worked out). As Anne outlined in her article, the defense of necessity, and also the penal code defense, are almost always disallowed in political cases, and a huge team of lawyers was needed to construct a successful defense. As the defense became more interesting, the lawyers and the defendants began to enjoy the trial a little, and one lawyer even signed on because he found the case interesting.
Was this utilization of court money and time beneficial to Redwood Summer activists? I would say a definite “yes.” Since the trial, Humboldt County has become more lenient in its sentencing. For example, the “Garlon 6,” arrested in April for protesting against L-P herbicide spraying, were able to plead no contest and receive only one day in jail, time served(!). In Mendocino County, Osprey Grove arrestees were often cited and released without a court day set at all. This is a major shift from the beginning of Redwood Summer, and the stiff sentences thrown at the Samoa 44.
The situation in Humboldt County is similar to the situation at (the) Nevada Test Site, Concord Naval Weapons Base, and Diablo Canyon before mass numbers of protesters began to get arrested on a regular basis. It took may repeated trials at these sites to get to the point where activists were merely cited and released with minimal punishment, or were even taken and dropped off in neighboring towns. It will take a few trials in Humboldt County to achieve the same effect here, and the Lorax is only the first in an attempt to get reasonable sentencing precedents for Redwood Summer activists in Northern California.
Also, nowhere in Anne’s article did the Lorax claim to be the first to “enlighten the public” of Humboldt County as to L-P’s water pollution violations. Anne stated clearly that many Humboldt County activists were actively working on the problem both in and out of court, filing civil suits against L-P’s flakeboard plant and other plants (see sidebar). Potential jurors themselves almost always claimed to be aware of pollution problems in Humboldt County when they were questioned in court. The Lorax merely brought to light yet another public offense, this time water pollution, in court and the media, and we are proud to join the long list of activists working on these problems. We will use any reasonable method or forum to bring L-P to justice.
Continuing on the topic of “elitism” and ‘‘arrogance,’’, the Lorax did not “dismiss” the lawyers suggestions that we dress “appropriately” (e.g., not wear long shorts to court), just as the lawyers did not dismiss our environmental concerns. Rather, we often had serious yet humorous conversations on the subjects, and had fun playing around with the generation gap. I repeat: We all like each other. But who wouldn’t get punchy after a month of trial?
Finally, the quote at the beginning of Anne’s article was a bit out of context, and therefore is confusing if you didn’t hang out in Arcata for a month. “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. Take direct action against corporate greed,” are lines taken from Dr. Seuss and warped by us, and appear (on) a T-shirt showing the Lorax creature standing on a stump in a clearcut, warning the onlooker. There was group debate over whether or not people could represent trees or not, and most of the Lorax agrees it would be pretty stupid for a human to claim to do so. So, we had the Lorax himself tell people on a T-shirt. The Lorax affinity Group, I would say; are tree advocates, if you want to get picky.
Again, the Lorax AG almost always discussed our intentions before we made political and legal decisions, and did so carefully and thoughtfully, whether or not this comes through in Anne’s article. We may crow a little, but under the circumstances—a truly exhausting and often desperate trial—I think we should be cut a little slack.
—In anarchy arid struggle toward justice,
Lisa Henry (resident pain in the ass)
Rob Anderson’s reply: Ms. Henry’s letter gives us what the Keye’s article should have provided some indication of the political logic behind the Lorax’s decision to go to trial. As I said in my critique last week, Keye’s account of the theory and practice of Affinity Groups is interesting, but a detailed discussion of the politics of the trial would have been more useful All that Anderson Valley Advertiser readers and I had to go on was the Keye article (“Learning From the Lorax Trial,” Evelyn (sic) Keye, Anderson Valley Advertiser, August 15), and “the length of her article” was mostly concerned with, in my opinion, less important matters. I’m glad to learn that a decision to jam up the courts wasn’t made lightly, but this is what Keye wrote in her article:
The Lorax Affinity Group wanted to reach both the jury arid the public with the L-P issues, as well as to jam up the courts.
On the necessity of the Lorax having eight attorneys, Henry tell us:
The eight court-appointed attorneys were requested, by the way, both for court solidarity and also in order to construct a legal team capable of constructing a time-consuming defense of necessity
Henry doesn’t tell us what “court solidarity” is, and it’s still not clear why one or two competent attorneys couldn’t have handled the defense.
Henry writes:
…nowhere in Anne’s article did the Lorax Claim to be the first to “enlighten the public” of Humboldt County as to L-P’s water pollution violations.
Keye wrote:
Whether Humboldt County residents follow through with what the Lorax helped start remains to be seen. Several Lorax have moved to Arcata, in part to help locals…
I wrote:
The implication [of the above passage] seems to be that Humboldt County was languishing in political darkness until the Lorax came along to turn on the lights.
Based strictly on what Keye wrote, my criticism still seems justified, but I’m glad to learn that the attitude of the Lorax group is, in fact, different.
More importantly, Henry has provided us with the essential political context of the Lorax trial. This is the sort of content that Keye’s article was missing.
My purpose is not to merely score debating points but to emphasize that we should make our politics as clear as possible, since—the timber corporations and their allies charge—that Redwood Summer is lacking in political seriousness. We play into the hands of our political opponents if we fail to make our political purposes clear, which brings up the question of the meaning of Ms. Henry’s “In anarchy and struggle toward justice” salutation. Does it mean that Henry is an anarchist? Anarchism is a perfectly respectable political tradition in my mind, but obviously it’s the sort of thing that can be easily misunderstood and/or used against Redwood Summer politically.