By Sid Dominitz – EcoNews, September 1990
With a Labor Day finale on the doorstep of arch opponent Pacific Lumber, Redwood Summer organizers concluded a season of protests that focused national attention on the over-cutting of the region’s old-growth forests.
Born in fire, with a still-unsolved bomb blast aimed at protest organizers, Redwood Summer involved thousands of demonstrators at scores of actions. Hundreds were arrested for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Even its official ending was controversial, as local authorities tried to bar protestors from holding a three-day rally, outdoor forum and musical event called “Redwoodstock” on the Eel River, which was to culminate in a Labor Day march to the PL mill in Fortuna.
Organizers had to go to court, several times, and the American Civil Liberties Union had to intercede, to protect constitutional rights of assembly.
Pledge Of Allegiance
The march was intended to pay tribute “to the Earth on which we depend for. survival and to the working people whose labor provides our food, clothing and shelter.”
It was as much the hearts and minds of working people as it was the rapidly dwindling ancient forests that were being contested in the war of words and television images between the demonstrators and the big timber corporations.
While protestors took pledges of nonviolence, authorities did not.
Demonstrators all over the North Coast complained frequently about excessive force. Moreover, the absence of any objections or calls for inquiry on the part of public officials seemed to foster a climate of further repression, they said.
Allegations of harassment included assaults on staff at the Mendocino Environmental Center, deputizing of loggers during logging protests, allowing a bulldozer to slam against a tree occupied by a demonstrator, the kidnapping and beating of an activist in Garberville and the painting of swastikas on an environmental center in Fort Bragg.
No one has been arrested for any of these incidents. In the most publicized and disputed episode, PL President John Campbell drove away hurriedly from a raucous scene at a meeting hall at Simpson’s Korbel mill, even though a protestor was on the hood of his car.
Demonstrators wanted Campbell charged with assault, but the only one arrested was the man on the hood.
Harassment by police also was alleged, ranging from keeping prisoners from getting legal advice to the torturing of a protestor in Humboldt County jail when he went limp after not being allowed to make a phone call.
The forced shaving of the heads of male prisoners—unique among all the jails in northwestern California—received the most notoriety.
The grand jury was alerted about the torture allegations, and an ACLU suit was being filed over the forced shaving.
All of this took place against a background of continuing boycotts, anonymous death threats and the lackadaisical investigation of the car bombing in June of activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney.
The latest threat being circulated, dated August 28, was from the self-styled Logger’s Pride Counter-Terrorist Vigil, which vowed to “cut down five old-growth Douglas fir which will be left to rot” within five days of any “tree-spiking or other environmental terrorist act.”
“We will not spare old-growth timber in popular spotted owl sanctuaries…We don’t care if it means destroying thousands of trees,” said the handbill, circulated first in Oregon.
Angry and anonymous, the authors of the handbill ignored the fact that Earth First!” and other protestors have forsworn spiking as a tactic—and that no instance of such spiking has ever been proven.
On the eve of the Labor Day weekend, police arrested a man said to be from the counter-revolutionary group called Sahara (Club). He had delivered what might have been a bomb to the Arcata Action Center, a Redwood Summer headquarters, but the package contained no explosive.
Ballot Next
The summer of protests will give way to an autumn of campaigning, with three timber-related initiatives set for statewide vote in November that could have far-reaching effects on the future of the industry and communities dependent upon it.
In a legal triumph, especially considering the local climate of hostility to “outside agitators,” the trial of 10 defendants arrested at the summer’s kickoff demonstration in Samoa in June ended in a jury deadlock and mistrial last month.
The judge in the trial of the so-called “Lorax 10,” named after the Dr. Seuss children’s book character who “speaks for the trees,” accepted the defense argument that blocking a Louisiana-Pacific logging truck was necessary to prevent the more serious crimes of L-P-such as continued violation of pollution laws.
“L-P is so dirty, it was like shooting fish in a barrel,” defense attorney Ken Collins said.
District attorney Terry Farmer justified the trial expense—$3,500 a day-because it helped everyone “come to grips with the issue.”
“We as a community feel squeezed between environmental interests and the timber industry,” he added.
The industry now will be spending millions on the November ballot initiatives.
In the meantime, the state Board of Forestry planned meetings September 6-7 at Redwood Acres in Eureka, largely about the spotted owl.
The BOF sets rules for the California Department of Forestry, whose chairman, HSU Professor Carlton Yee, was beset by 20 women demonstrators in his classroom on the first day of school August 28. They demanded that he teach students that the earth is a living being.