Earth to Earth First!

While it is charming to watch the struggle for consensus, and to read detailed accounts of meetings without portfolio, and to keep up to date on which wing respects the other, etc., it's becoming difficult to sort out where and when the anarchists plan on actually making the necessary link to the worker which has for some time now been that avowed goal of the non organization Earth First!

Earth First! has an image problem. The ungrammatical logo, while appealingly rebellious, is but an irritating trifle. The long hair, wild clothes and conjured hordes do little to reassure the workers of Fortuna, Fort Bragg, Eureka, McKinleyville, etc. and in many cases undoubtedly work against the noble aims of the movement. Vocabulary has superceded labor. What's needed is less debate, less bellyaching, less self interested whining over the sexual orientation of the frigging undefinable nebula of progress, and some actual work. I know it's a foreign concept to many in the movement, but work (sweat, slivers, backache, ill humor and etc.) is what EF! needs to concentrate on.

It sounds like real fun to jump around in the highway and make fun of the people who build the roads we all use to travel from one momentous event to the other, and no one would relish sitting in a tree singing folk songs more than myself, but the time has come to act out the fantasy of alternative logging. The documentary films made last summer show clearly how it's done.

Some of the folks who insist loggers ought to start working on stream rehabilitation, reforestation, putting roads to bed and the myriad chores of the future ought to have their parents buy them some tools, axes, shovels, come alongs, and rope are good things to start with. You might want a pair of boots.

The loggers don't believe you are serious. I don't believe it half the time either. If you are, prove it. Quit disrupting and lead by example.

Proposition 130 was an ill fated, doomed piece of law from the minute it was written. The commercials were stupid. The Arbit millions backfired. It's time to forget about it and get real.

If workers, who are far from unanimous in the best of times, see real work being done by preservationists, a significant fraction will abandon the doomed corporations and willingly enliven the opposition.

Demonstrations do little but embarrass everyone involved. Holistic forestry already provides living wages for preservation minded, realistic, forward looking people. Workers, not loaders, have a chance of convincing other workers that there can be another way.

A good friend of mine in Crescent City is working full time at a mill in Brookings and devotes his spare time to developing a holistic operation. He wonders why so many people run around spouting half truths and misunderstanding when they could be working. So do I.

If the aim of the demo's is to save timber, they don't work. If they are meant to create media celebrities, fine, keep at it. Are we to believe Harry Merlo and the distinguished gentlemen at GP and Simpson are going to give in and call it a day because a protester at the front gate gets on the evening news? Public opinion is against disruption in every instance, when we look at the bottom line. I would think the recent elections proved that quite handily.

Workers in many cases resent being force fed ideas by the companies and (corrupt) unions, but they feel little choice. They are not, now or ever, going to drop their tools and start running about with a lot of outrageous people who refuse to be defined and seem to have no firm ideas about what to do next. There is ecological devastation on a grand scale in the woods, and many willingly admit it, although a sizable minority don't and probably never will. There are people who would cut the last tree on earth even if they lived on the apples. People are just like that, and it's a damn shame. The spotted owl is the butt of jokes from Stanford to the bloody Yukon, mainly because folks would rather laugh than cry. It is far from certain, but an optimist has to feel that the majority of people will make the necessary sacrifices at the necessary time. But people prefer opportunity to desperation.

I've wasted too much breath over the last few years trying to explain to workers how it is that Earth First! has their interest at heart, or anywhere close to it. Provide yourselves with some rhetorical ammunition. Split some firewood, unplug some ditches, dig some oiled gravel out of a stream and haul it to Merlo's hottub. Do something constructive. I was going to say "use your imagination" but we see the good that has done. Record harvests, vacant watersheds, dry creeks, acres of stumps.

Last summer's frenzied logging, including the wreck of "Osprey Grove" was a direct consequence of the hysteria and paranoia brought on by threats to the status quo. It's like trying to fall a tree by insulting the bark. Won't work, ever, and it looks like shit.

There are plenty of disgruntled loggers and millhands running around, but you're not likely to see them at the mystical retreats in the high country where the grand concepts of Earth First! are entertained. Try the Milano, or the Golden West, around quitting time. And put on some decent clothes.