🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark Shippey wrote:
> 
> catherine yronwode (cat@luckymojo.com) wrote:
> : This is OLD old news. Judi Bari and Earth First repudiated the use 
> : of violence YEARS ago. In fact, it was Judi's honest and outspoken
> : change-of-heart on this issue won her a lot of non-fanatical 
> : supporters, including many loggers...and me. I personally have never 
> : attended any rallies sponsored by groups that advocate violence.  
> : Judi's sincere and very public admission that advocating violence 
> : had been wrong and that only non-violence would win the cause, was 
> : what swayed me to attend my first Earth First rally.
> :
> : Yes, Judi and her friends started out with a hot-headed attitude, 
> : but they gave that stupid posture up in favour of legislative 
> : protest anddirect non-violent action. And since that change, non-
> : violence training has been an essential part of the preparation for 
> : every demonstration they hold.
> :
> : Earth First has been completely committed to non-violence for so 
> : many years that it seems more than high time for folks to stop name-
> : calling based on an abandoned policy. I myself, by the way, am NOT a 
> : member of Earth First, so don't take my word for it -- call them up 
> : and ask them how long it has been since they became a non-violent 
> : group. I know i was still married to my ex-husband when they made 
> : the change, so it's got to have been many a year!
> :
> : Cordially,
> :
> : catherine yronwode
> 
>   Well, how nice. They are no longer violent. 

Thanks for recognizing the truth of what i wrote.

> Big of them. Of course,
> only a handful of them ever served any time for all the lost money
> and working hours when they "monkey wrenched" the equipment used
> by innconent people merely doing their job. Too bad about that.

You are implying that there are warrants out for their arrest -- but i
have a strong feeling, a hunch if you will, that you are just making
that up. 

>   I admire their new attitude of common decency. How nice.

Read what i wrote again. It is NOT a "new attitude." It goes back a long
way -- years and years. Just because you haven't known about it until
today, you can't say it's "new." 

>   I wonder how many of the monkeys went back to compensate a
> business owner in any way for damaged logging or construction
> equipment? Maybe just a card saying, "I'm sorry I cost you
> thousands of dollars" or something.

"Monkeys"? Name-calling like that is so useless. And again i am not sure
what "damaged equipment" you are talking about. But actually, Judi Bari
did apologize for having advocated violence.  

>    And, I wonder it you have seen any of the posts from those
> sympathetic to EF! who still believe that such violence is
> justified and that monkey wrenching a valid technique of protest?

Sure, but seeing posts is something that ALL of us do -- and seeing
posts doesn't always make us sympathetic to the posters. I see plenty of
posts from facsists, religious nuts, UFOlogists, and Satanists on the
net too. Maybe some of them are "sympathic to EF!" too. So what???? You
were talking about the group iteself, not some nameless make-believe
wackos who are "sympathetic" to it. 

>    And what about the factions that spun off from EF! that are
> currently promoting and practicing such sabotage?

I have never heard about such "factions" and again i strongly suspect
that you are fantasy-mongering here. However, if a group splits off from
another group, it is no longer a "faction" of the first group. If there
are violent environmentalists, it's a sure thing that they are not part
of Earth First. In fact, i just got the Bay Area Coalition for
Headwaters (BACH) newsletter and there was a whole calender of events
listing many non-violence training classes for folks who want to go to
the protest in Carlotta, California on September 14th. They really are
serious about non-violence. 

>    Nice of y'all to stop promoting illegal violence against
> innocent business owners and workers though.

"Y'all"???? Mike, please take a moment to reread what i wrote. Give me a
break -- and give yourself some credit for brains, too. I very clearly
said that i have never advocated or condoned violence as a political
tactic (and, for the record, i am 50 years old and have been involved in
political actions since 1961). 

"Stop promoting"???? I also said, right out front, that i never went to
any Earth First-sponsored demonstration until after they firmly
renounced violence. So how could i "stop promoting violence" if i never
promoted it in the first place. 

I think you are very angry, but anger is no excuse to write such dumb
stuff, especially not in usenet, where anything we say can be clipped
and quoted verbatim and is thus not able to be twisted and distorted. 

Okay, now in another piece of news, that logger i mentioned earlier
whose amateur footage of illegal logging appears in the Headwaters video
is Stan Chandler, and according to the BACH newsletter, he has also
blown the whistle on the new and unsafe policies Pacific Lumber has
instituted since going under the control of Charles Hurwitz, the
corporate raider. These policies not only include logging land without a
proper harvest plan as documented in the video, but also breaking up
teams of loggers and making fallers work alone, work longer hours, and
cut the trees closer to the ground, all of which are very dangerous
practices. 

Mike, the issue here is not "us angainst them" -- it is how loggers and
environmentalists are working together to save the remaining PL land
from a ruthless corporate raider who has stolen the wrkers' pension
funds and forced them into unsafe job conditions while also logging some
of the most ecologically sensitive areas in Northern California. The
enemy here is not me, a simple Sonoma County liberal who goes north once
a year to march for the trees. The enemy is Charles Hurwitz, a
despicable man who has ruined the lives of many people, and who will
incidentally be back in court on savings and loan fraud charges in late
Septmeber, about a week after the rally for Headwaters. 

Is there anything i could do, Mike, to get you to let go of your blind
anger against environmentalists and encourage you to take a long, hard
look at the forest and labour issues involved in this situation? If i
send you a copy of the Headwaters video would you watch it? Seriously, i
want to get this debate off of personality-slagging (after all, Judi
Bari, no matter what her faults or virtues were, is dead) and into the
realm of discussion of forestry issues.

Are you willing to try that?  

catherine yronwode