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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 1: the podcast that does what it says it does. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Margaret Kiljoy with me today is the ever

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Speaker 1: joyful Garrison Davis. Who. Okay, I know, an adjective again,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, Well, what adjective would you pick besides

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Speaker 1: journalist and podcaster of the showcase, those are the two

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Speaker 1: worst adjectives imagineable? So anything besides journalist and podcaster? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, Uh, mysterious Okay, the mysterious Garrison Davis

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Speaker 1: or wait is it more mysterious if it's gare, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: slightly more. I don't know. I know you can do

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Speaker 1: probably neurodivergent. I don't know. There's a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of adjectives that are not journalists

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Speaker 1: or podcaster. I once had a stress dream. I probably

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Speaker 1: have said this on here before. I once had a

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Speaker 1: stress dream where I had to tell a crowd of

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Speaker 1: people what I did for a living podcaster terrified. But

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Speaker 1: you could also say author and authors like that's respectable. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's true. Here's that I have one sibling and he

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Speaker 1: is a motherfucking oncologist. So going to any function where

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Speaker 1: it's like, what are you doing? I'm like, amen, hang

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Speaker 1: haf podcast it's horrifying. Yeah, but what if on College

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Speaker 1: has done for anyone lately? Wait? No, no, I can

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Speaker 1: come up with a bunch of things. Never mind, but

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Speaker 1: they haven't cured cancer. Unlike podcasting. We cured that is.

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Speaker 1: That is my brother's full time job. He is a

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Speaker 1: He's a physician, scientist who's working to cure cancer. So

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Speaker 1: I am a hack. Yeah. Well we're all packs here. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's Sophie that you're listening to our producer, Sophie, how

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Speaker 1: are you doing? Oh I'm great. Garrison's here to roast

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Speaker 1: us all I know. I'm so excited. Ian as our

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Speaker 1: audio engineer on Woman wrote our theme music. So Garrison Davis,

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Speaker 1: the mysterious Garrison Davis. Have you ever heard of forests? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Ever hear of this thing called off forest, the place

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Speaker 1: with a lot of trees. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm mostly familiar.

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Speaker 1: I mean I grew up in the Prairies, so there

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Speaker 1: was not a forest any anywhere near me. But then

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Speaker 1: I moved to Oregon and there's definitely definitely saw a

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Speaker 1: few forests there. You switched colors in your magic The

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Speaker 1: Gathering deck. Sure, I've never played Magic the Gathering, but sure. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: what's your take on forests? Pro? Anti? Cool? Cool? Yeah? Okay, God,

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Speaker 1: this would be a rough one if you were anti,

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Speaker 1: because today we're going to talk about redwood trees and

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about one woman who worked so

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Speaker 1: hard to save them that someone put a bomb in

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Speaker 1: her car. She survives the bombing. Spoiler alert. Okay, that's good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: yeah I was. It's like, are we doomsdaying? Like right

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Speaker 1: up top, magpie? Oh now she survives. Yeah, you can't

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Speaker 1: keep her down. Well, this is all going to tie

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Speaker 1: in terribly at the end. Okay. Today we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about Earth First, Judy Barry, the creation of the

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Speaker 1: Headwaters Forest Reserve in northern California, the fight to save

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Speaker 1: the Red Waters, more more in general, and we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about how nothing scares the government incorporations more

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Speaker 1: than environmentalists discovering class consciousness and feminism. And that's where

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, very very cool, very on topic,

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Speaker 1: very timely. Yeah. Yeah, I had to. I bumped this

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Speaker 1: in the Chico Mendez episode up from my like infinite

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Speaker 1: scroll like list of available topics after Tortuguita died in Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: I was like, you know, it's time to talk about

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Speaker 1: some environmentalists. It's it's kind of interesting. As we're going

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Speaker 1: through like a like a nineties and early two thousands

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Speaker 1: nostalgia cycle, we're also getting the same types of environmentalists

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Speaker 1: like actions and groups as the as the nineties end

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Speaker 1: early two thousands, which means that our next in this

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Speaker 1: tultorcycle will beat the Green Scare. Hey, you've got like

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Speaker 1: fifteen years between what happened in this episode and what

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Speaker 1: the Green Scare. That's good. That's good. Yeah, because this

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Speaker 1: is the stuff that's like right before my time, whereas

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Speaker 1: green Scare is like firmly my time. Sure, sure, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I's talk about the redwoods first, because the redwoods

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Speaker 1: are fucking amazing. They are dropped dead, gorgeous, They are

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Speaker 1: god tier trees. And if you ever want yet another reason,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of these. But if you're like just

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Speaker 1: looking for an extra item on your list of just

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Speaker 1: wanting to feel in your gut, Europeans showing up in

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Speaker 1: North America is one of the worst things that's ever

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Speaker 1: happened in the history of ever. Go walk among the

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Speaker 1: redwoods and then read about how few of them are left.

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Speaker 1: The tallest tree in the world and the tallest living

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Speaker 1: thing in the world, is a redwood named Hyperion, which

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Speaker 1: I don't know what it calls itself, but that's what

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Speaker 1: people call it. It is three hundred and eighty feet tall.

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Speaker 1: You can't go visit it because people trying to visit

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Speaker 1: it are fucking it up and just like fucking up

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem around it. Like even like obviously some people

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Speaker 1: are going and like trashing the place, but even just

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Speaker 1: like the number of people who would want to go

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Speaker 1: visit this trampling the root systems and all of that

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Speaker 1: bad idea. Don't go visit Hyperion. Be happy it's there.

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Speaker 1: It's three and eighty feet tall, It's only got twelve

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Speaker 1: feet of roots because forests are not built from individual trees.

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Speaker 1: There's a metaphor in here somewhere. I'll never be able

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Speaker 1: to come up with it, but I'm sure come up

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Speaker 1: with it on their own, which is actually one of

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Speaker 1: the things that happens a lot and logging as people

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Speaker 1: are like, we didn't clear cut, we left like ten

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Speaker 1: trees in an acre, and then like all the trees

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Speaker 1: are like, hey, I was kind of reliance on an

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Speaker 1: entire interwoven series of trees to block the wind and

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Speaker 1: provide nutrients and do all kinds of stuff, and then

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Speaker 1: they just like fall over. You know, it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's funny you mentioned that because some some of us

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Speaker 1: believe that most of what we call trees aren't actually

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Speaker 1: real trees, and that trees, real trees, are actually our mountains.

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Speaker 1: All all rock is actually ancient massive trees, and that

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Speaker 1: the world was covered in these huge trees. All all

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Speaker 1: mountains used to be massive trees that I got shot

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Speaker 1: that utterly just just desivated. So now we're left with

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Speaker 1: these weird stumps which are which are mountains, um, And

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Speaker 1: most of the trees that you see nowadays aren't like

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Speaker 1: actually real trees. Um. So yeah, you know, I actually

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Speaker 1: just recently went through and cut out a bunch of

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Speaker 1: conspiracy shit out of this episode. So thanks for thanks

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Speaker 1: for bringing the conspiracy right back in. Always always happy

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Speaker 1: to help. So it would trees trees are like the

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Speaker 1: moss from in this basically yeah, basically yeah, yeah, So

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Speaker 1: I mean I would love to leave that now. These

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Speaker 1: are already big enough trees, Like I just don't need

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Speaker 1: bigger trees than these. These are fucking huge. No, look,

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Speaker 1: I'll I'll send you a message on signal, like, look

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Speaker 1: at this mountain. This mountain was was obviously a massive tree. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've sent it to you. Oh yeah, this is Devil's

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Speaker 1: whatever the fucking mesa and um southwest, which is actually

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Speaker 1: a tree, clearly a tree yep, uh okay. So Hyperion

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Speaker 1: is just a little baby, an upstart of a redwood,

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Speaker 1: only six hundred, eight hundred years old, not nearly as

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Speaker 1: old as this tree that you sent me a picture

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Speaker 1: of the Devil's Tower. Yeah. Yeah. The largest tree in

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Speaker 1: the world besides the mountains is also a redwood, is

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Speaker 1: a giant sequoia instead of a coastal redwood, just slightly

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Speaker 1: different species that grows in the Sierra Nevadas instead of

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Speaker 1: along the coast. It's been named General Sherman, and I

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Speaker 1: don't know how I feel about that. Yeah. It is

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Speaker 1: thirty six feet in diameter at the base. Bark is

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Speaker 1: about four foot thick to protect it from fire. Whoa, yeah,

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Speaker 1: sixty feet up. It's still fucking seventeen and a half

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Speaker 1: feet in diameter, like pretty big. Yeah, it doesn't bother

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Speaker 1: spitting out branches until it gets thirteen stories into the air.

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Speaker 1: Numbers don't do this tree justice. It's between two thousand,

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Speaker 1: three hundred and two thousand, seven hundred years old, and

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Speaker 1: they found redwoods up to three thousand, two hundred years older.

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Speaker 1: So that's before I was born. Oh really, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: know that a lot of listeners consider me to be

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Speaker 1: very old, but this tree is actually a little bit

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Speaker 1: older than me, even older than my parents. These are

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Speaker 1: not the biggest trees that I've ever existed. These are

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Speaker 1: the biggest trees that are left. I mean, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: just talked about the bountiins. Oh right, yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: besides the fucking goddamn it. You know, I picked this

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Speaker 1: episode just for you, Okay. Anyway, Um, in the mid

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties, a redwood about twenty percent larger than General

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Speaker 1: Sherman was logged. In eighteen ninety seven, a Douglas fir

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Speaker 1: tree and Washington State was felled and it was four

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty six feet tall. They measured it after

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Speaker 1: it fucking felt after they cut it down, and they

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Speaker 1: just turned it into lumber. The tallest fucking living thing

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Speaker 1: that Ah. Oh, that's so grim, I know, not even

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Speaker 1: like if I was to cut down a fucking this

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Speaker 1: is like killing a dragon and then instead of like

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Speaker 1: mounting the dragon like as like cool tax dermy or

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Speaker 1: like putting its skull over your gate. Yeah, it's like

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Speaker 1: grinding it up into dust and selling it as an

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Speaker 1: affordaisy act or something like. You could like you could

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Speaker 1: like fell the tree and like like like like um,

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Speaker 1: like drill it out and like make a series of

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Speaker 1: caves and places like inside the tree. And no you

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Speaker 1: just turned into like into like plywood or something. Yeah, lumber.

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Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, no, some of them get fucking turned

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Speaker 1: into like tepe and toothpicks and ship at various points. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: some of the largest trees in the world weren't even

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Speaker 1: killed by logging, because you know, it's worse than killing

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Speaker 1: a tree by cutting it down and turning it into

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Speaker 1: fucking random two by fours. There was a tree called

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Speaker 1: Mother of the Forest. It was twenty five hundred years old,

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Speaker 1: and in eighteen fifty five people stripped sixty tons of

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Speaker 1: its bark off, shipped it to New York City and

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Speaker 1: set it up as like an empty shell of the

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Speaker 1: tree as a like look how big the trees are

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Speaker 1: out west. What why would you do that? I got nothing.

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Speaker 1: It's like that's like if you like skin somebody and

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Speaker 1: ship their skin across the country, like look at this

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Speaker 1: verse it Yeah, yeah, not the best move that. There's

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Speaker 1: not really a lot of positive moves that the colonize enforce,

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Speaker 1: that is, the United States is perpetrated onto this land.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, especially to trees. I know there are also

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Speaker 1: albino redwoods. Have you ever seen an albino redwood? Oh?

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I have. Let me let me see. Okay,

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Speaker 1: they are white needled who they fucking rule. There's one

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Speaker 1: in a park just north of Santa Cruz that you

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Speaker 1: can visit. They're not like they look like like like

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Speaker 1: elven trees from Middle Earth or something. Yeah, that's what. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they look like you would like find like you would

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Speaker 1: like if you're walking through you would find like gladriol,

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Speaker 1: just like like strolling through these woods. That's wild, so

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Speaker 1: they don't grow tall. They rely on nutrients from the

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Speaker 1: root systems the neighbors. They used to get called parasites

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Speaker 1: because humans are not always very intelligent. Now people realize

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Speaker 1: that actually, like they're useful to the forest. But of

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Speaker 1: course even if they weren't useful. I doubt the other

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Speaker 1: trees or you damn anyway, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're better

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Speaker 1: at absorbing toxic metals than other redwoods, and so they

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Speaker 1: sort of serve as like kind of an organ of

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Speaker 1: the forest, like a liver, kidney or whatever. I don't

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Speaker 1: know anything about the organs in the human body, and

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Speaker 1: it's supported by the others, and it absorbs a bunch

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Speaker 1: of bad stuff from the soil. Anyway, Old growth forest,

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Speaker 1: that is, forest that hasn't been fucking butchered, is really

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Speaker 1: important for biodiversity and for a million different reasons. They

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Speaker 1: store carbon better worldwide. Two as of two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 1: twenty one percent of old growth remains. That number has

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Speaker 1: not gone up. That is an interesting thing to know

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Speaker 1: about remains numbers, is that they can't go up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you'll be shocked to know this. That Europe has wrecked

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Speaker 1: more of its forest than anywhere else. One University of

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Speaker 1: Michigan study says that sixteenth since the year sixteen hundred,

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Speaker 1: ninety percent of the virgin forests in the lower forty

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Speaker 1: eight states have been cleared. There used to be two

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Speaker 1: million acres of coastal redwoods estimates in nineteen ninety two.

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Speaker 1: So like, all my numbers on this shit are like old,

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Speaker 1: so the numbers haven't gotten better. In nineteen ninety two,

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Speaker 1: five percent of that old growth remained. In twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 1: wildfire killed ten to fourteen percent of the remaining redwoods.

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Speaker 1: And it's worth knowing because people are like, oh, that's natural.

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Speaker 1: Well not fire is natural. It's a natural part of

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem. There's a reason that giant sequoias have the

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Speaker 1: really thick bark and all of this. Redwoods are used

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Speaker 1: to a fire ecology, at ecology that is improved by fire.

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Speaker 1: But these fires are particularly hot and bad because of

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Speaker 1: two things, both of which are the fault of colonization. First,

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Speaker 1: fire management procedures that suppress all fires cause a build

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Speaker 1: up of debris that causes incredibly hot fires. And second,

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Speaker 1: global fucking warming. And then a third climate change impact

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Speaker 1: on the redwoods that I had no idea about until

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Speaker 1: I started doing this research. A lot of that other

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Speaker 1: stuff about fire ecology, I knew they're able to grow

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Speaker 1: that tall because of fog. At the tops of mountains.

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Speaker 1: Redwoods don't grow was tall down in the valleys. They

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Speaker 1: grow taller because it's hard for them to get water

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Speaker 1: up to the top of the trees because they're so

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Speaker 1: fucking massive, So they absorb water through. Yeah, they absorb

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Speaker 1: water through their bark in the form of fog. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's super interesting. Yeah, they're magical. Like drinking through

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Speaker 1: fog is such a such an intriguing little process. Yeah, yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I you know, I it was when I went out

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Speaker 1: to the West Coast I started doing forest defense and

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Speaker 1: things like that. It took me a while to appreciate

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Speaker 1: the beauty of the East Coast after hanging out on

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Speaker 1: the West Coast for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, now

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Speaker 1: they're they're very very different forests. That was like the

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Speaker 1: first time, first time I traveled to the East Coast

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Speaker 1: and was walking through the forest in Georgia. It's very

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Speaker 1: very different feeling than than the ones out out on

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Speaker 1: the West coast. Yeah, it's worth finding. There are tiny

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Speaker 1: scraps of old growth on the East coast. Um they're

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Speaker 1: much harder to come by. Their there's a grove kind

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Speaker 1: of near Asheville, like forty five minutes or maybe an

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Speaker 1: hour or two, I can't remember. Away from Asheville, North Carolina,

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Speaker 1: there's some like old growth swamps, like deep in the

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Speaker 1: swamps in eastern North Carolina. It's worth seeing that stuff

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Speaker 1: because it's worth seeing. It's not these like towering giants,

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Speaker 1: but there are these like beautiful old trees, and seeing

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Speaker 1: a like fully developed a climax ecosystem is worth doing.

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Speaker 1: Anyone who's listening, it's worth seeing a climax ecosystem. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the people who fought against

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Speaker 1: logging of redwoods, and specifically, let's talk about Judy Berry.

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Speaker 1: Have you heard of Judy Berry? The name doesn't ring

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Speaker 1: a bell. Okay, well, I'm excited to tell you about

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Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks have been like Moral Complexity

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Speaker 1: weeks here on whatever the show I'm on talking on

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Speaker 1: People Did Cool Stuff? Hosted by One Market Kildroy. Yeah okay,

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Speaker 1: wait wait yeah? Is it? Is it cool people that

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Speaker 1: did cool stuff? Or or cool who did cool stuff? Who? Okay? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just checking on the auto video Goo is on today.

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Speaker 1: I forget what version of it. The title was mentioned,

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Speaker 1: but it was not what it was like cool stuff

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Speaker 1: that people did buy things things? Yeah, yeah, that's it,

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Well, this is not Moral Complexity week.

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Speaker 1: I mean I know, I know, I was like kept

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Speaker 1: waiting for the other shoot at Trump whenever I'm reading

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Speaker 1: biographies these days, just like waiting for the like and

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Speaker 1: then as a hobby they kicked their dog or whatever,

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Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think the rule that we

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Speaker 1: have now is that if it's a man, you just

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Speaker 1: go to the very end to make sure. Yeah, totally,

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Speaker 1: like you're not going to find that like last week.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but we're now back in ontologically good territory. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I feel on complex. I mean, okay, no one is

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Speaker 1: fucking pert. And there were a lot of people that

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Speaker 1: Judy Berry rubbed the wrong way. I mean, obviously there's

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Speaker 1: some people that Judy Barry rubbed the wrong way intentionally

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Speaker 1: because she was an activist. Yeah, but no, no hidden demons.

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Speaker 1: Judith Beatrice Barry Judy Berry. She was born on November seventh,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, in Silver Spring, Maryland, into a middle class,

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Speaker 1: progressive family in the suburbs. Her mother, Ruth Arenson Barry,

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Speaker 1: was a Jewish mathematician, the first woman to get a

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Speaker 1: PhD from in mathematics from John Hopkins University, and she's

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Speaker 1: famous enough for contributions to the field that she has

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Speaker 1: a Wikipedia page, not for being the first woman to graduate,

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Speaker 1: but just like literally for the shit that she did

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Speaker 1: for math. Cool. Judy was closer to her father, an

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Speaker 1: Italian jeweler. She once said, I'm my father's son. This

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Speaker 1: is not me making a statement about Judy's gender. It's

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Speaker 1: just that's saying, like, hey, people have always been okay

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Speaker 1: with being a little bit flexible and how they talk

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Speaker 1: about themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was the nineteen forties,

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Speaker 1: her parents were apparently seen a sort of a mixed

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Speaker 1: race couple, Italian and Jewish. She was one of three daughters.

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Speaker 1: She grew up. She went to the University of Maryland

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Speaker 1: at the peak of the Vietnam War, and she spent

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Speaker 1: five years there without graduating, which is close to my

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Speaker 1: own heart as a college dropout. In her bio on

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Speaker 1: one of her books, she says that while she was

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Speaker 1: in college, she majored in anti Vietnam War rioting. Yeah. Based, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Eventually she dropped out. She started working at a grocery store.

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Speaker 1: Soon enough, she organized a union there and got a

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Speaker 1: black belt in karate off on the side. Wait really, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was like like the sixties, Yeah, probably early seventies.

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Speaker 1: At this point in the seventies. Still still, that's kind

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Speaker 1: of like before the big karate wave hit the United States.

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Speaker 1: I believe that to be the case. I don't know

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Speaker 1: as much about when it hit. I was thinking karate

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Speaker 1: is a little bit like old school compared to I

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Speaker 1: guess so now nowadays like taekwondo or yeah, Brazilian jiu jitsu,

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Speaker 1: and well, Brazilian jiu jitsu is actually cool though. Oh.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think martial arts are cool and a

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Speaker 1: good way to study how to handle your body and things.

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Speaker 1: But I guess I don't know as much about It's fine,

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Speaker 1: It's fine. Yeah. I studied BJJ for a little while

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Speaker 1: and then I, um was blood choked out. And then

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Speaker 1: I was like, you know, this is a shitty hobby.

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Speaker 1: This is a hobby where I go unconscious. I'm good,

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Speaker 1: I'm out. I also got like, um, kickboxing can do

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Speaker 1: that without having to pay. Yeah, And like I was

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Speaker 1: like sparring during kickboxing and like got knocked unconscious with

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Speaker 1: like a fucking I remember it was a kick or

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Speaker 1: a punch. I was knocked unconscious and I was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this isn't this isn't my things. Other people can do

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Speaker 1: this I tried to get. I was doing Mui Tai

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Speaker 1: last year, and I would have continued longer, but I

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Speaker 1: just found the bus route that takes me from my

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Speaker 1: house to the muay Thai place was always like fifteen

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Speaker 1: minutes late, so I could I could never shop on time.

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Speaker 1: Even if I even if I planned beforehand to like compensate,

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Speaker 1: it would still result to me being late. So I

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Speaker 1: just like, whatever this is, this is obviously not meant

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Speaker 1: to be. I will do muy tie at another place

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Speaker 1: at another time. It's fine. Yeah, totally. All the while,

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Speaker 1: she's also playing fiddle she has since elementary. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: she's just great. Um. She probably started off calling at

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Speaker 1: violin um because she learned in school, but yeah, she's

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Speaker 1: a fiddle player, yes, absolutely. And then she decided she

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Speaker 1: was going to work in the bulk mail facility at

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Speaker 1: the post office. As far as I can tell, it

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Speaker 1: went a little something like this. They were like, you

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Speaker 1: can't do that, you're a lady, and she was like, hey,

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Speaker 1: why not, and they were like, well, you have to

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Speaker 1: move seventy pound bags all day, and so she was

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Speaker 1: like test me, and so she just proved she could

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Speaker 1: shoulder seventy pound bags all day. Well, I think that

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Speaker 1: that is cool, but this does actually reach our first

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Speaker 1: mortal complexity, the fact that she's a FED So I

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Speaker 1: don't know, No, a Kevin glits all postal workers. It

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Speaker 1: does not. Anyway, she's working at a male facility. Maybe

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Speaker 1: this will redeem her, but maybe it won't from your

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Speaker 1: point of view, right because as a postal union the

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Speaker 1: same as a copy union, she moves seventy pound bags

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Speaker 1: all day. I'm not a small person, and earlier this

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Speaker 1: week I had to move to seventy pound boxes full

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Speaker 1: of shelves and I couldn't move my head for like

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Speaker 1: a day afterwards. Yeah. No, that's like, that's like half

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Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, that would not be fun. Yeah. While

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Speaker 1: she's there, she starts a worker's newspaper for the employees,

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Speaker 1: and then she leads a wildcat strike for better working

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Speaker 1: conditions and wins nice Somewhere along the way, I think

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Speaker 1: at an activist conference, she meets a nice boy named

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Speaker 1: Mike Sweeney, who was probably part of an urban guerrilla

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Speaker 1: maoist movement called vince Ramos, and the two of them

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Speaker 1: moved to Sonoma County, California, just north of the Bay.

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Speaker 1: They get married they have two daughters, and she gets

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Speaker 1: involved in organizing opposition to US involvement in Central America.

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Speaker 1: But then by nineteen eighty eight, her and Mike, her husband,

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Speaker 1: they have an amicable divorce. And yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people like to argue about how this divorce went, because

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Speaker 1: people like to argue about the personal lives of women.

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Speaker 1: But they stay co parents, they stay for a long

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Speaker 1: time living on the same land project, and they're just

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Speaker 1: not dating anymore. And she starts working as a carpenter,

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Speaker 1: and so early at this point, she's kind of like

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Speaker 1: living the hippie dream. She's moved to California, she's stayed radical,

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Speaker 1: she's living in nature. But her work as a carpenter

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Speaker 1: gets her questioning what's going on because she's building houses

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Speaker 1: for rich people out of ancient redwood trees. H yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So nineteen eighty eight, she starts working with a little

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Speaker 1: group called Earth First. And the most important thing to

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Speaker 1: know about Earth First is that it's really funny to

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Speaker 1: type because the exclamation mark is part of the name.

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Speaker 1: They insist every yes, yeah, and and it fucks up

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Speaker 1: anything you write about them because your computer is going

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Speaker 1: to auto capitalize the next letter yes it makes it

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Speaker 1: makes writing sentences impossible. This this was something I first

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Speaker 1: dealt with when I was writing my Earth First episodes

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Speaker 1: back in like twenty twenty one. Yeah, yeah, very very

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Speaker 1: challenging to write Earth First. It is, and I think

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Speaker 1: it want they want us to say earth First every

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Speaker 1: time we say their name. Yes, um, so let's talk

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Speaker 1: about Earth First. Love. You could change it to my

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Speaker 1: Earth First T shirt. Yeah. Earth First is a decentralized

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Speaker 1: direct action environmentalist movement that's been around since nineteen eighty,

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Speaker 1: so it is forty three years old at this point,

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Speaker 1: which is a very long time for a direct action

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Speaker 1: group just fucking staying in it. It's sort of a

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Speaker 1: non group. It has some formal and mostly informal structure.

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Speaker 1: Its motto is no compromising defense of the Earth. And

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Speaker 1: I've done a lot of work with or as Earth

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Speaker 1: First over the years. So I'm going to be more

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Speaker 1: biased in this episode than usual. I'm always biased, but

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Speaker 1: listener beware, I'm going to do my best to be

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Speaker 1: aware of my own biases and work around them as always,

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Speaker 1: and as always I will fail. For decades, environmentalists have

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Speaker 1: been tending towards policies of compromise, basically, okay, fine, you

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Speaker 1: can blow up these three mountains as long as you

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Speaker 1: let these two mountains not get blown up, and or

423
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: as you would call them, trees tree stops. Yeah, I

424
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,639
Speaker 1: mean it is a very large tree stumps to preserve

425
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:06,360
Speaker 1: the last of the great trees that we have on Earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

426
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: And there's a couple problems with this policy. One it

427
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 1: buys into a conspiracy. But let's pretend that parts not

428
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 1: part of it. There's a couple of problems. One, it

429
00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: means you're letting people blow up mountains when you say

430
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: it's okay if you blow up these three as long

431
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: as you save these two, or you can blow up

432
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: one as long as you save four, whatever, fucking however

433
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: you math it, you're letting people blow up mountains. That's

434
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: a little bit awkward. I know most of this episode

435
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:30,479
Speaker 1: is about trees, but I live in the Appalachian Mountains

436
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:34,400
Speaker 1: that Earth first fights against people literally blowing up the mountains. Well,

437
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 1: and we've already discussed they're the same things, right, right, exactly, Yeah,

438
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:42,520
Speaker 1: it's just a different um vernacular tree mountain whatever. They're older. Like,

439
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: have you ever gotten like petrified tree bark? You know,

440
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: like tree bark, that's like is so old that it's

441
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: that it is basically turned into rock. That is that

442
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:58,880
Speaker 1: that is mountains. That mountains are giant petrified tree stumps. Yeah,

443
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: and so does that mean that Sandy beaches are disintegrated

444
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: mountain sorry trees. Oh wow, that does make going to

445
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: the beach much much darker. Yeah, yeah, that's okay. So compromise,

446
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:15,119
Speaker 1: you're letting people blow up mountains. And second of all,

447
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: it's a losing game. We can't make old growth forests,

448
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:22,000
Speaker 1: we can't make mountains. Every victory we have is temporary,

449
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: every loss we have is final. So compromise methodology is

450
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 1: a losing one from an environmentalist point of view. Even

451
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:31,119
Speaker 1: let them blow up three mountains out of five. Ten

452
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: years later they want to blow up the last two,

453
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: so you compromise again, they only blow up one. Pretty

454
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:38,199
Speaker 1: soon you don't have any mountains. And that's what the

455
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,199
Speaker 1: founders of Earth First We're looking to counter compromise. But

456
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: you know it is a compromise. Garrison selling your soul

457
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 1: to the products and services that support this podcast. That's right,

458
00:26:51,440 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: here's some advertisers. Well, the fact that we have us

459
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: a little bit of our dignity on that one AD

460
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:05,359
Speaker 1: break means that we can continue doing the show now,

461
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: So we're fine until the next AD break. So we

462
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: will deal. We'll deal with the next one when it comes.

463
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 1: We have this this small, small victory here. Yeah exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

464
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,160
Speaker 1: Um if every time we cut to an AD break,

465
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like literally pulled a piece of

466
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 1: my soul out, then that I can never recover. I

467
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: mean I would have a different attitude about I mean,

468
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 1: Margaret that that is kind of what we do away. Yeah, okay,

469
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: but Earth First there's always there's no yeah. Sorry. Earth

470
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: First has always been into using or support supporting a

471
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 1: diversity of tactics, or, as it gets phrased in the movement,

472
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,879
Speaker 1: every tool in the toolbox. In the beginning, they combine

473
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 1: civil disobedience, publicity stunts, legal work, and sabotage. Later this

474
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: is my interpretation of these of this. But later they

475
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,160
Speaker 1: realize that strong surely but not ethically sabotage didn't really

476
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:06,199
Speaker 1: fit within their framework, so they stopped doing sabotage. As

477
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:09,719
Speaker 1: Earth First, a lot of sabotage just sort of happened

478
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: around them. Yeah, and they tended to think it was

479
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: cool because it tended to be pretty cool. It makes

480
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: sense civil disobedience is also illegal, or it isn't disobedience.

481
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: If you go to a civil disobedience and it's not illegal,

482
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: you're not going to a civil disobedience, but it's the

483
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: kind that you're expecting to get caught for, so you

484
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:30,640
Speaker 1: can do it openly and you can talk about it. Sabotage.

485
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: You tend not to want to get caught. There's exceptions.

486
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the Catholic workers some other time. The

487
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: other important thing about Earth first, that's I'm not going

488
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: to do that every time. That set it apart was

489
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 1: a belief in deep ecology, which there are arguments that

490
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 1: can be had about deep ecology, but I'm going to

491
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: sum it up as the idea that nature has value

492
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: for its own sake, not just from what it offers

493
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: to humanity. You can also call this sort of similar

494
00:28:55,960 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: concept biocentrism, and you'll find people emphasizing different words. Basically,

495
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: wilderness deserves to exist because it's wilderness, not just because

496
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: wilderness is better for humans than clear cuts, although that's

497
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: true too, Earth versus decentralized. Each group is autonomous from

498
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: the others, but there's still a recognizable, vibrant earth First culture,

499
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:22,160
Speaker 1: complete with music and gatherings and camaraderie. And there's a

500
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 1: way that Earth First in the eighties gets talked about.

501
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 1: And I talked with some movement elders before I recorded

502
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: this episode. I actually don't usually necessarily talk to sort

503
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: of primary sources or whatever, because I usually try to

504
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: stick to topics about the nineteenth century, where everyone's been

505
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: dead for a hundred years, so I don't have to

506
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: get to like, I mean, Margaret, if you ever want

507
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: to talk to someone from the nineteenth century, you can

508
00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: just call me. We we can do a say okay,

509
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: it's like that is that is totally possible. Okay, So

510
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: just as as if for future notice yeah no, I

511
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: now I have ideas for getting you to come on

512
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: one of my other podcasts in order to do an

513
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: interview with someone who's been dead for a while. Great. Yeah, yep.

514
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:05,560
Speaker 1: So earth First start in the eighties, it had a

515
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: slightly different culture than it ended up developing into. It

516
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: was founded by a group of men, but pretty much

517
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: right away it became more than that. There's this media

518
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: conception of earth First from the eighties of like swaggering

519
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 1: macho white guys with cowboy hats, but there are women

520
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: at all levels of the organization pretty much right away.

521
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: One person I talked too, Yeah, Like, I talked to

522
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 1: this person who joined in nineteen eighty three, and she

523
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: joined because basically, like here, finally in an environmentalist group,

524
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: they're women in positions of power. And she was just

525
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: blown away by the work that women were doing and

526
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: the like degree to which that will let her actually

527
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: fucking have power. And why did they have power? Because one,

528
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: because strong women had paved the way, but also because

529
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: from the very beginning structurally, Earth First was more open

530
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: to women in other organizations because it was non hierarchical.

531
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 1: You don't have to prove yourself and put in like

532
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: years of bullshit in order to like move up a

533
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: ladder or whatever. Non hierarchy is cool. Here's where my

534
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: bias comes in. But this is the best I can

535
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: understand if they're literally reading about movements every week for

536
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: fucking past year and a little bit longer than that.

537
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: In the late eighties or the early around nineteen ninety,

538
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: there was an evolution in Earth First and some of

539
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,960
Speaker 1: the founders left and they did their own thing. The

540
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 1: sort of like classic complaint of a leaving person would

541
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: be the tofu eating anarchists or you ruining the movement

542
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 1: or whatever, which is just funny because nineteen ninety is

543
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: like way the fuck before most people who imagine Tofu

544
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: eating anarchists, But we've always been here. The first tofu

545
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: factory in the Western world was started by a Japanese anarchist.

546
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 1: And I can't remember his name, And I'm just drilling

547
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:55,959
Speaker 1: that fact. I'm dropping that fact and leaving it there

548
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: because I don't remember more than that off the top

549
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,719
Speaker 1: of my head. That is still in fact that I

550
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: was completely unaware of. Yeah, I can't remember exactly. It

551
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: was nineteenth century a guy, early twentieth century. I don't

552
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: remember the details at all because this is not in

553
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: my script. It's the kind of thing I was planning

554
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: a cover one day. It's in my little Meat anecdotes

555
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 1: for later category. Okay, Earth first, it is evolving. It's

556
00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: not like a revolution. It's not fundamentally changing the organization. Yeah,

557
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: there's like it becomes slightly more anarchistic. They move away

558
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 1: from using an American flag as a logo, but it

559
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: had been non hierarchical from the start. A lot of

560
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 1: their ideological you know, Founders had been involved in anarchisms

561
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 1: some degree or another, and they have this evolution and

562
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: they you know, kind of started off as like sort

563
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: of rednecks for wilderness. But it's like, I don't know

564
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 1: if they would have identified rednecks. But these are still

565
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: hural people with rural values. And I would contend that

566
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: real tree is popular with city queers because of the

567
00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: rural queers from Earth First. That is mine. That is

568
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: a hill I will die on, unless someone presents me

569
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: with evidence contrary, which means it is not a hill

570
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: I will die on. But it is something that I

571
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 1: believe in is to my experience. And while we're at it,

572
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: there is a not small chance that the phrase woo

573
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 1: woo comes into English from Earth First from the eighties,

574
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 1: woo woo like magical thinking. Yeah huh, really yeah, it

575
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: is believed within Earth First circles that this comes from

576
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: Earth First. And I've tall that story in a second.

577
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: And if you try looking up the etymology of it,

578
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 1: people are like unknown eighties and so here's a group

579
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: of people who I know, and you can look at

580
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: old letters where they're using it in the Earth First

581
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: Journal in the late eighties early nineties. I didn't like

582
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 1: specifically scour the archives, but I found a specific letter

583
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: from ninety one and specifically okay, so woo woo meaning

584
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: like people who believe in new agy magic and shit. Yeah,

585
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: earth versus have been using it since the eighties. Is

586
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: part of a sort of internal cultural conflict, with people

587
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:57,959
Speaker 1: attacking each other as like woo woo or identifying as

588
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: woo woo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And one

589
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: version from a friend who was in Earth First in

590
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,560
Speaker 1: the eighties was that someone decided that they declared themselves

591
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:11,400
Speaker 1: a guru, named themselves shamon Wu, and people started making

592
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 1: fun of them by calling them woo woo, and it's

593
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: stuck ha. I am not certain if that is the

594
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: specific etymology, but I don't have a counter argument, and

595
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:25,879
Speaker 1: I do know that they used it a lot to

596
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 1: talk shit on each other. And the first places I

597
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: always ran into it was in the woods. Interesting, and

598
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: so those are the two contributions of Earth First. That's

599
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:42,279
Speaker 1: what I First has done well, fantastic, that's that's great

600
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: that they also had the first published interviews of a

601
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: mathematician who decided to send some bombs in the mail

602
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: so that's cool. Yeah, weird times that doing Moral complexity

603
00:34:55,080 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: week yet about Judy Barry. Okay. Earth First is not

604
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: a quote anarchist organization, but it is anarchistic. It is

605
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 1: radically democratic and autonomous. It is increasingly committed to intersectional values.

606
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: It has had many of those values since the start.

607
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: By the early aughts, when I got involved, there were

608
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: all women action camps and tree sets, and they were

609
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: from the very beginning trans inclusive. I wasn't out yet,

610
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:25,720
Speaker 1: but one day I was visiting one of these camps.

611
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: Boys were allowed to visit during the day, and I've

612
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: always gone along better with women than men, so I

613
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: would always go over there and hang out during the

614
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 1: day for some weird reason. And one of the strongest

615
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: memories I have in all of this, and actually one

616
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: of the things that later kind of helped give me

617
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,280
Speaker 1: the courage to come out, was a trans woman sitting

618
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: in a circle in the all women's action camp and

619
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 1: she's just crying with joy, and it was the first

620
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: time in her life she'd been accepted into a community

621
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 1: of women, and the other women in the circle were

622
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:56,319
Speaker 1: crying too. So Earth First not without its issues, but

623
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say it is fucking cool and has

624
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: done a bunch of really fucking cool shit. And Judy

625
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: Berry was a part of all of this change, but

626
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: also just a part of the evolution of it. Later

627
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,960
Speaker 1: people are like, she's the one who feminized earth First,

628
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:15,959
Speaker 1: But she was one of the people who did that work,

629
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: and she was also one of the people who brought

630
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: class consciousness into it. And we're gonna be talking about that,

631
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:22,839
Speaker 1: And so I'm not trying to take anything away from her,

632
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:24,840
Speaker 1: but instead understand her as part of a community in

633
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: a movement of equals. Let's talk about her. The year

634
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 1: is nineteen eighty eight. Margaret Kiljoy is five years old.

635
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: Most of her listeners haven't been born. The Worldwide Web

636
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 1: is being considered as a thing that could be made.

637
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: An Internet link was made between the US and Europe.

638
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union is starting to consider not existing. And

639
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: Judy Berry joined Earth First. How do you like that

640
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 1: dramatic transition? I worked really hard on that. That's good.

641
00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, really set in the scene here. Yeah.

642
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: As Judy puts it, quote, I was attracted to Earth

643
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 1: First because they were the only ones willing to put

644
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: their bodies in front of the bulldozers and chainsaws to

645
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: save the trees. They were also funny, irreverent, and they

646
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: played music, But it was the philosophy of Earth First

647
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: that ultimately won me over. This philosophy, known as biocentrism

648
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,160
Speaker 1: or deep ecology, states that the earth is not just

649
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 1: here for human consumption. All species have a right to

650
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: exist for their own sake, and humans must learn to

651
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: live in balance with the needs of nature instead of

652
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: trying to mold nature to fit the wants of humans.

653
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: And so they formed North Coast earth First to protect

654
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:37,839
Speaker 1: the redwoods. They often called themselves, I think informally Ecotopia

655
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,399
Speaker 1: earth First, named after an utopian book called Ecotopia that's

656
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:43,799
Speaker 1: sort of what if the Pacific Northwest is seated and

657
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: made a hippie utopia? Yeah, Like they kind kind of

658
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:52,839
Speaker 1: carries over on to the Cascadia concept. Yea. They form

659
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: a chapter of the organization, and they also are consciously,

660
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 1: at least as Judie writes about it, they're conscious going

661
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: to try and make it more feminine, at least their chapter.

662
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: There's a lot a lot to be said in a

663
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 1: lot of directions about how hippies and how people in

664
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: general discuss like feminine versus masculine values. But for her

665
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: this means that she wants she wants the group to

666
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: be more collective. She describes it earth First at that

667
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:19,839
Speaker 1: point was mostly I'm not quoting, but I'm paraphrasing. Earth

668
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:21,799
Speaker 1: First at that point was mostly actions done by like

669
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: small affinity groups of five to ten people who would

670
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: plan and do an action and then like you know,

671
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 1: chain themselves to shit, sit in a tree, hang a banner,

672
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,680
Speaker 1: spikes some trees. We'll talk more about that later, but

673
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: North Coast earth First envisioned itself as building a mass movement.

674
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:39,319
Speaker 1: As she put it, there's no way that a few

675
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: isolated individuals, no matter how brave, can bring about the

676
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: massive social change necessary to save the planet. And I

677
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: agree with this. And the first thing she helped with

678
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 1: was blockading logging on public land near Kato Park, helping

679
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: save thousands of acres of forest which get added to

680
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: the nearby wilderness area. And even though this is an

681
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: episode about the timber Wars, we're not actually going to

682
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: talk as much about the blow by blow about like

683
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:03,920
Speaker 1: the different the different campaigns and the different places that

684
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:06,840
Speaker 1: they save and stuff like that, because there's so much

685
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: happening in this story, and we only have so long

686
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 1: to tell it. Most of the time tree sitting in

687
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 1: blockades and ship. The strategy isn't they'll never get past us,

688
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: We're going to blockade this forever, right, But instead the

689
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 1: tactic is we're going to slow them down while we

690
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: sue them in court, like while we prevent their ability

691
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: to do this at all. Because time and time again,

692
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,959
Speaker 1: what would what would happen is a timber companies we'd

693
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: get sued. They'd be like doing some illegal logging or whatever,

694
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: and people would sue, but while it's all caught up

695
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:43,239
Speaker 1: in court, they would just keep logging. Yeah, So then

696
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: at the end they're like, oh, well, I guess we

697
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:47,959
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have done that, but it wasn't illegal until

698
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: we lost and we already did it, and okay, and

699
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: there's only a lot of shit. Like some of the

700
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 1: campaigns that I worked on, they would just like go

701
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 1: and they would like cut down an old growth tree

702
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:00,360
Speaker 1: that they weren't supposed to cut because is like not

703
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,799
Speaker 1: technically a clear cut or whatever, and they'd sell the

704
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:05,879
Speaker 1: tree for like I'm making these numbers up, they'd sell

705
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: the tree for a thousand dollars and they'd get like

706
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: a two hundred dollars fine for having cut the tree,

707
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:11,920
Speaker 1: So it was just like actually financially worth it for

708
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: them to break the law in these ways. That's what

709
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: blockading and tree sitting were largely doing during this time,

710
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: and I don't know that's how I've seen it often

711
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: be The most effective is when it's part of a

712
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: larger campaign, whether it's a legal campaign or a public

713
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 1: campaign like the Atlanta Forest. I believe it's like not absolutely,

714
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:31,440
Speaker 1: we are going to tree sit forever, it's we're also

715
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 1: working on this campaign to make them have to stop. Yeah. No,

716
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: there's there's one tactic is not going to win the

717
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: entire battle. It's you need to you need to have

718
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 1: you need to have more than one weapon in your arsenal,

719
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:45,040
Speaker 1: and stuff like tree sitting and putting your body on

720
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 1: the line putting up barricades is just one one specific thing.

721
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: There's lots of other other avenues to resist, whether it's

722
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 1: like talking with neighbors around the forest, or it's blocking

723
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: stuff up in the courts, trying to make the trying

724
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: to make it harder to process the destruction permits, trying

725
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: to trying to lobby people in the county that may

726
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: be sympathetic to the cause. Is all of a big,

727
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: big collection of things beyond just all right. Now, I'm

728
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 1: going to go climb this tree. Yeah, and you know

729
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: what else tactic is often left out of the toolbox,

730
00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: participating in consumer culture and purchasing the goods and services

731
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: that support this No, I can't do it. Well, yes,

732
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 1: that's right, buy more things to save the forest. Okay. Wait,

733
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 1: Or the tactic of pressing the forward fifteen button, second

734
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: button instead of bothering us about what adds you here next? No,

735
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: no direct action is too big or too small, And

736
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: that includes pressing the skip fifteen seconds forward buttet and

737
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: we're back. And during all this, she's also still involved

738
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: in a bunch of other stuff. Specifically, she helps defend

739
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 1: an abortion clinic against anti choice folks plant paranoid I believe,

740
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 1: which draws her a new kind of hater, one quite

741
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: familiar to the modern audience. But then in nineteen eighty nine,

742
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: she hits upon the thing that she's most famous for,

743
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: besides surviving an assassination attempt. Wait what, oh, yeah, you

744
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 1: already mentioned it at the start of the episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.

745
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 1: But the other things she's famous for is she starts

746
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: organizing loggers. The biggest employer in the area. The main

747
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 1: logging company is called Pacific Lumber, So we're gonna talk

748
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: about them real quick. Pacific Lumber Company, whose abbreviation is

749
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: PALCO because everything has to sound like acme weird stuff. Yeah,

750
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: it was founded in eighteen sixty three. And this is

751
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:00,359
Speaker 1: the most surprising part of this story for me, as

752
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: someone who was very cynical and started researching this topic

753
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: for more than a hundred years. They were pretty chill,

754
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: like they were a family owned business. They were a

755
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: major employer in the area, and they didn't go all

756
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: evil company storetown. It was a good place to work.

757
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: There was a full pension, free health insurance for employees.

758
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 1: Company housing was affordable. You weren't like getting into debt

759
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 1: with your employer. By the sixties or so, children of

760
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: employees were eligible for scholarships. It was the kind of

761
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: job that your dad and your granddad had and they

762
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: were like proud of their work with Palco. And then

763
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: like and they also didn't clear cut. They worked with

764
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: a conservation society to save the Redwoods League. Anyone who's

765
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: at their bingo can now say weird old timey activists

766
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:58,240
Speaker 1: who use league in their name square. Yeah, you haven't

767
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,399
Speaker 1: heard league in a while. I know, I know people

768
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: have been sitting on that one. They be like, funk,

769
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,160
Speaker 1: I got a shitty card. We got a lot of

770
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 1: we got a lot of fronts, we got a lot

771
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: of like, uh, I don't know what what's the other

772
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 1: what's the other terms that that people like using. Well,

773
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 1: fronts came about in like the sixties, right, Um, yeah,

774
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 1: huh Now I've I've heard of a few brigades, a

775
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: few fronts. Yeah, a lot of just just like just

776
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: like just like collectives and just kind of more like

777
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 1: like basic basic language. I think we should bring back league.

778
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: Uh League League League is kind of fun. You get

779
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: to wear costumes. It's it's implied in the name. Someone

780
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: there has to have a cape. Yeah, I actually don't

781
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 1: think you're allowed in the door. I think they have

782
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,720
Speaker 1: like loner capes at the door in case you forget yours.

783
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: You know. Um, someone had to push for that because

784
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 1: they realized they were turning a lot of people away

785
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,959
Speaker 1: and it just wasn't a good place to work. It's

786
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: like here's here's your complimentary COVID mask. Here is your kate, Yeah, totally,

787
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: both are required. Here, carry this tomb, don't open it.

788
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: Just walk around with this tomb for a while. And

789
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: this is your direct action utility belt. All right. That

790
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,439
Speaker 1: would actually be pretty cool, that one would That would

791
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: be pretty sad, all right. So the Earth League needs

792
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 1: to start. So Pacific Lumber Palco. They they are involved

793
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:31,359
Speaker 1: in helping create the California park system that's still around today. Sorry,

794
00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:33,359
Speaker 1: they save the Redwoods League, who they're working with, are

795
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 1: involved in creating the California park system, and they Save

796
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 1: the red Woods League is still around today. And then

797
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: even though in the forties and the I think post

798
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: World War two, but I'm not entirely certain, the government

799
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 1: started offering tax breaks to clearcutters because they are the

800
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 1: government and suck. Pacific Lumber continued its policy of selective

801
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:55,399
Speaker 1: cuts that they might have always been doing. They worked

802
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: towards sustainable yields. They would like, look at the forest

803
00:45:58,120 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 1: and say how much wood can we take out of

804
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: this and have it still be a forest? Which is

805
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: what you should do. I was really surprised by this.

806
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: I was not expecting to find the good guy Lumber

807
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 1: company in this story. Yeah, that is interesting, and this

808
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: is like not just because I first ran this. I

809
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: read this on like articles and should on the internet

810
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: that are from the point of view of Pacific Lumber

811
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:23,880
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then I also talked to the activists

812
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,239
Speaker 1: who were involved, an activist who was involved during this time,

813
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: and Pacific Lumber wasn't a bad place. They weren't fucking perfect, right,

814
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: They weren't unionized. They were logging like you know, the redwoods,

815
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 1: but they were trying to do as sustainably as possible.

816
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: They were comparatively low profit, they were debt free, they

817
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: were happy, and they were still family owned and they

818
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: had no aspirations of becoming a big multinational. They were

819
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:54,879
Speaker 1: a huge company. They owned two hundred thousand acres of timberlands.

820
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: It owned ten percent of the total redwood stands that

821
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: have ever existed, credit work credits due They weren't so bad.

822
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: But then they listed themselves on the New York Stock

823
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,879
Speaker 1: Exchange in nineteen seventy five. Well there, yeah, uh huh.

824
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen eighty five they had a hostile takeover.

825
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: And I had like, like I grew up in the

826
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:21,760
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties and people talk about like hostile takeovers,

827
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 1: and they never like really understand it's just like some

828
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: weird corporate yuppie shit. But this this inevitably results in

829
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: them being a much, a much worse corporation. Oh yes,

830
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's there's a name only right. They

831
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: get hostily taken over. The new owner is like Charles Hurwitz.

832
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: He's still alive. He's in his early eighties. Wait, let

833
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: me find his address and i'll read it live on er. Well,

834
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get okay anyway, Um, there'll be a good

835
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: spot for that. Charles Hurwitz is the yuppies yuppy. He

836
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,480
Speaker 1: ran a hedge fund was partly or maybe solely responsible

837
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: for a savings and loans crisis in the eighties that

838
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: cost taxpayers one point six billion dollars. He was known

839
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 1: as a corporate raider, known for his hostile takeovers. He

840
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: avoids publicity. He doesn't give interviews, but one of his

841
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: quotes is that he once said the golden rule was

842
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: quote he who has the gold makes the rules. Unrelated

843
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: to all of that, there's this quote I like by

844
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:26,760
Speaker 1: anarchist folk singer Utah Phillips. That quote is the earth

845
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 1: isn't dying, it is being killed, and those who are

846
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 1: killing it have names and addresses. So true, I think

847
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 1: people are going to have to do their own research.

848
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, yeah, I'm still looking through my thing. And

849
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: oh I just got a call from the iHeart. Snipers

850
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: are aimed at my PC right now, and if I

851
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: say anymore, they will ruin this computer and that will

852
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: be quite quite the inconvenience for me. Yeah. So there's

853
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: a whole Internet available to everyone. So due to some fuckery.

854
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: Charles Hurwitz and is holding company maxim Inc. Which basically

855
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:05,399
Speaker 1: a spot you're just you're you're something like a super

856
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: villaid shit like maxim ink. Come on, oh man. Like

857
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: one of the things that's funny is about Earth First.

858
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm gonna remember this guy's name all the

859
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: top my head. But when I was working against mountaintop

860
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 1: removal stuff, one of the guys who was like one

861
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: of the main evil people literally lived on a mountain

862
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: above a town he had poisoned twenty years earlier, and

863
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,440
Speaker 1: the mounta you had to get on and off by helicopter,

864
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:30,719
Speaker 1: and he was most famous for like punching reporters. It's

865
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: just like their cartoon villains. It's the Earth League to

866
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: take on maxim Inc. Yeah. In the next issue of

867
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: the Earth First Journals comic book. Yeah, they bought Pacific

868
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,560
Speaker 1: Lumber even though Pacific Lumber tried not to sell to them.

869
00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: And that's the problem with listing your ship on the

870
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange. One hundred and twenty year old

871
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 1: family company that had focused on not fucking up the

872
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 1: forests while still logging was suddenly owned by someone who

873
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: could not give a single shit about anything other than profit.

874
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: So they start clear cutting, and they start clear cutting

875
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 1: like it's going out of style, and they are just

876
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: ripping through acres, getting every fucking dollar they can, and

877
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: not even in a like then we'll grow new trees

878
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: and cut them later way, which is never intelligent, because

879
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:21,680
Speaker 1: any given forest can only survive being clear cut so

880
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: many times before it doesn't regrow because you've taken out

881
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:28,239
Speaker 1: all of the biomass. But they're not going to bother

882
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: with that. They cut them down, mell them up, sell them,

883
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: and then turn everything into fucking subdivisions. To an outside observer,

884
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: this is really bad. It's really bad, not just for

885
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: the Earth, but it's bad for the communities that live there.

886
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: The classic Earth first slogan around this time is no

887
00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:47,799
Speaker 1: jobs on a dead planet. You can't log a clear cut, right,

888
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 1: you cut down all the trees, and then you're not

889
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: a logger anymore because there's nothing to fucking cut down.

890
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:55,359
Speaker 1: And those of us who like rural life, well, there

891
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,720
Speaker 1: ain't no rural life when you clear cut the forest

892
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:02,719
Speaker 1: and build subdivisions. But for desperate loggers, it was the

893
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 1: only job they knew and it was the only job

894
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 1: on offer. So most of them, not all of them,

895
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:11,479
Speaker 1: most of them kept cutting. And we'll talk more about

896
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: how she organized loggers on Wednesday. And this is not

897
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: my strongest cliffhanger I've ever done, but don't worry. There's

898
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: a bomb in the next episode. It's a bad bomb though.

899
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: Thanks Sophie Ga. Do you have anything you'd like to plug? Well,

900
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: I suppose if you want to hear about a story

901
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 1: of modern forest defense. I just wrapped up a four

902
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 1: part series on It could happen here about Stoptop City.

903
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: It's kind of a follow up to a whole Wich

904
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 1: episodes that I made back in twenty twenty two. But yeah,

905
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:46,200
Speaker 1: that is that is current in just a few days

906
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,320
Speaker 1: as of type of recording. I am, I'm heading heading

907
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: back to Atlanta for a week of action and well

908
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: we'll see, we'll see what comes of that. But this

909
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:57,400
Speaker 1: is very much an ongoing, an ongoing fight. This this

910
00:51:57,440 --> 00:51:59,480
Speaker 1: isn't this isn't just stuff in like the eighties and nineties.

911
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:06,800
Speaker 1: This stuff continues continues today. Yeah, and while when this drops, um,

912
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 1: that week of action will be happening, and you should

913
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: pay attention to fantast happening. Yeah, so I for anything

914
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,359
Speaker 1: you want to plug the music in the series that

915
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 1: Gard did on A could Happen here was incredible. That

916
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:24,399
Speaker 1: was there was really amazing. Uh. Rendition of Bella Chow

917
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 1: by the Narcissist Cookbook there was also a song by

918
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 1: Propaganda called Forest To check both those out and support

919
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:37,399
Speaker 1: both those artists. Yeah you can. You can get the

920
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:40,280
Speaker 1: copy of Belli Chow is available on the Narcissistic Cookbook

921
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,360
Speaker 1: band camp if you want to download that for free,

922
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:47,920
Speaker 1: and the artist suggests donating to a number of causes,

923
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 1: including the Atlanta solid Already fund and the go fund

924
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: me for Tortiquita's family. But yes, you can. You can

925
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 1: use that version of Bella Chow which is now now available.

926
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of quests to

927
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,720
Speaker 1: have the copy of the song and we were able

928
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:05,760
Speaker 1: to do able to do that in a reasonable amount

929
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:10,280
Speaker 1: of time. And I want to plug. You can still

930
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: get old bumper stickers from Earth First that have that

931
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: are like so like yeah, they're so like nineties and shit,

932
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: and I think I actually don't know that this started

933
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: off as an Earth First bumper sticker or people making

934
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 1: fun of Earth First bumper sticker, but it's really funny.

935
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 1: There's a bumper sticker. This is Earth First. We'll log

936
00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 1: the other planets later and on that note, we'll see

937
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: you on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is

938
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on

939
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:46,880
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com,

940
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

941
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:52,080
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.