Speaker 1: Robert doing the grunge so we can start the badcast. Um,
Speaker 1: I think we should just start the podcast with you
Speaker 1: asking Robert, do you want to grunt? So we can
Speaker 1: start the podcast. Um that that seems avant garde. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm on guard means, but this is
Speaker 1: it could happen here, a podcast about how things are
Speaker 1: falling apart and how maybe maybe they don't always need
Speaker 1: to be falling apart, maybe we could do better. Uh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of doing better, you know one thing that sometimes
Speaker 1: helps us do better getting getting in the face of
Speaker 1: people fucking shut up and being like, hey, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not cool. Don't be doing that, Garrison, that's your leading.
Speaker 1: Take it from here. Yeah, Hi, so we I've been
Speaker 1: I've been trying to keep better a better job of
Speaker 1: like following ecological defense movements happening both in the States
Speaker 1: and in other countries. I know there was there was
Speaker 1: a big one up in Canada recently. There was a
Speaker 1: huge one in Germany too, just the other day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the one, the one in Canada. There's a
Speaker 1: uh the uh, I forget, I forget what the actual
Speaker 1: indigenous group is called. Um, maybe maybe someone else So
Speaker 1: the the um house no sauti um yeah, the people
Speaker 1: who who who took back their land and blocked the
Speaker 1: road off and now the to and the wet suit end.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Um there we go, yeah,
Speaker 1: basically taking their land back, blocking off the road. And
Speaker 1: now our samep is getting called in and we'll see
Speaker 1: how that develops. And in Guatemala there's protests against Canadian
Speaker 1: mining um in Maya indigenous community that have have have
Speaker 1: gotten pretty heavily militarized at this point. There's fun, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. Lot
Speaker 1: of stuff on the psychological defense side of things, UM
Speaker 1: include including in you know, the Pacific northwest here with
Speaker 1: all of with all of the forests and and as
Speaker 1: such in this area and part of this kind of
Speaker 1: exploration into into ecological defense, I wanted to talk with
Speaker 1: some people who are a little a little bit more
Speaker 1: well versed uh in this type of thing than I am.
Speaker 1: So I've there's the two people have agreed to talk
Speaker 1: with us, um salmon cat, both people who work who
Speaker 1: work on the kind of thing from like an activism standpoint, U, yeah,
Speaker 1: say hi, hello, hey y'all. So very very thankful that
Speaker 1: they are going to be talking with us today, So
Speaker 1: I thought we could we could probably just start by
Speaker 1: kind of discussing what forest defense is and how it
Speaker 1: kind of has a history specifically in this area, but
Speaker 1: but kind of more broadly, Like if if people listened
Speaker 1: to the Earth First episodes, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: that covered like anti pipeline stuff, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: get much into like forest if ends and you know,
Speaker 1: like the traditional like tree sits and that kind of thing. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what's what's up with defending the forest? What's
Speaker 1: what's what's going on with that? Um? Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: that great intro. UM. I mean, forest defense is I
Speaker 1: think probably the most characteristic um type of direct action
Speaker 1: in this bioregion. And here we're talking from Cascadia right now.
Speaker 1: I actually moved out here from the East Coast ten
Speaker 1: years ago specifically to get involved with forest defense because
Speaker 1: this place has an incredibly rich history UM of people
Speaker 1: basically just throwing down, risking life and limb to stop
Speaker 1: Jane Saws from taking down some of the oldest and
Speaker 1: most special forests out here. UM. And so I'd say,
Speaker 1: you know, for forest defense, direct action is in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways rooted right here, UM, in this bioregion.
Speaker 1: And obviously, UM, like all kinds of movements, things have
Speaker 1: changed over the course of time. UM back in the eighties. UM,
Speaker 1: when in seventies, when forest defense was really really kicking
Speaker 1: up and stopping all growth logging specifically out here, when
Speaker 1: it was kind of like rampant old growth, UM, clear cutting. Um,
Speaker 1: it really took the shape of trying to focusing on ecology,
Speaker 1: focusing on the integrity of these ecosystems, and basically like
Speaker 1: doing everything possible to stop the chainsaws. And UM. Now
Speaker 1: obviously a lot has changed. We have the Northwest Forest
Speaker 1: Plan and some policies which are doing better to kind
Speaker 1: of like protect old places and old forests. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, the same ship is happening. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the timber industry is great at using euphemisms to kind
Speaker 1: of cover up it's clear cutting anyways, and finding policy
Speaker 1: loopholes to target some incredible places. And now I think, UM,
Speaker 1: where we're at with like the direct action movement is
Speaker 1: we're in the context of climate change, so we're not
Speaker 1: just defending forests for the stake of these like incredible
Speaker 1: ecological strongholds, but we're also defending them because we recognize
Speaker 1: that forest defense is climate defense. This is a like
Speaker 1: environmental justice issue, it's a human issue, it's a community issue.
Speaker 1: And so now direct action, I think is um, you know,
Speaker 1: happening not just the name of our forests, but in
Speaker 1: the name of our communities in our future. UM. That
Speaker 1: it's just as rich um now as it has ever been,
Speaker 1: and especially right now and especially since which I know
Speaker 1: we'll get into. People have been throwing down all over
Speaker 1: this fire region to protect what's left of our forests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's good to get into kind
Speaker 1: of why how the fires have impacted this because one
Speaker 1: of the shady things that has been done is we
Speaker 1: had I think most people in the country are where
Speaker 1: Oregon had unprecedented wildfires this year, and we had unprecedented
Speaker 1: wildfires last year, and we're going to have unprecedented wildfires
Speaker 1: every year for a while. UM. And whenever these fires
Speaker 1: run through, they don't like destroy every tree in their wake,
Speaker 1: but they char them. And logging companies then come in
Speaker 1: under the guise of like, well, we have to make
Speaker 1: this area safe so that like the fires don't burn
Speaker 1: here next year, so we've got to cut down all
Speaker 1: of these trees uh um and and clear cut this
Speaker 1: part of area of public forests. So like, as you're
Speaker 1: driving around in forests that you used to be able
Speaker 1: to do stuff, and you'll find areas that are just
Speaker 1: like blocked off because mining companies are coming or logging
Speaker 1: companies are coming through and clear cutting all of these
Speaker 1: trees that could very easily recover from the fire um
Speaker 1: or that weren't even burned by it. But we're just
Speaker 1: like in this area that they said, Okay, well we
Speaker 1: have to clear this out in order to make it safe.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of this way to like back door
Speaker 1: and the guise of fire protection like expand logging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just to add to that to the logging companies
Speaker 1: love to say that the reasons we have increased wildfires
Speaker 1: because there's an overgrowth in the forest because of the
Speaker 1: Northwest Forest plant, because there's more protections for the forest.
Speaker 1: Fires are happening worse because we're not getting there bogging
Speaker 1: the forest and removing all the fuel. M hm. So
Speaker 1: you have like this two part thing that like Kat
Speaker 1: just mentioned, where like on the one hand, companies are like,
Speaker 1: we need to log more to prevent wildfire, which is bullshit,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about why. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: after fire has burned through an area, they're like, we
Speaker 1: need to log because we need to help the forest
Speaker 1: recover ecologically. Also, we need to salvage all of the
Speaker 1: timber before it rots and goes bad, and like all
Speaker 1: of these reasons and so basically it's just like fire
Speaker 1: has become the excuse to just like log preemptively and
Speaker 1: log after the fact. And yeah, it's a total total
Speaker 1: ship show. Yeah, I mean the think this this kind
Speaker 1: of falls into capitalists trying to use climate change is
Speaker 1: just another way to find things to extract and things
Speaker 1: to grow on. Right, it's they're they're going to try
Speaker 1: to find their own way to sneak in when all
Speaker 1: of this you know, ecological disaster is happening to you know,
Speaker 1: sell you whatever green safe product is going to help
Speaker 1: against the collapse, or you know, package things in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it seem like it's solving this you
Speaker 1: know problem, but it's actually it's part of it's part
Speaker 1: of the satan thing from the yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's you see that's in every single industry and
Speaker 1: it's always it's it's going to be like this because
Speaker 1: this is the only way that capitalism knows how to
Speaker 1: address this issue is by just turning it into another
Speaker 1: turning it into another thing to consume and another thing
Speaker 1: to sell in package. Pretty pretty grib Yeah. And there's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's cascading effects too, because they cut down
Speaker 1: these trees under the guise of making it safe for
Speaker 1: the next fire season, but which also makes a big
Speaker 1: chunk of land a lot more vulnerable to like mud
Speaker 1: slides and the torrential raining that we're having right now. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's also going to get more common, because that's
Speaker 1: how fucking climate change works. It's it's just like the
Speaker 1: comprehensive fury comprehensive. And let us be clear too that
Speaker 1: logging doesn't actually work to prevent wildfire, you know, even
Speaker 1: you know, they say that it does, But the kind
Speaker 1: of logging that they do in the name of wildfire
Speaker 1: prevention just looks like clear cuts. And we have a
Speaker 1: pretty robust body of science now showing that those kinds
Speaker 1: of activities actually make fire hazard more severe for local communities.
Speaker 1: So that's like one of the things they're doing, and
Speaker 1: we've been calling it just gaslighting, Like they're gaslighting all
Speaker 1: of us by saying, you know, there's nothing to see here,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to see here. We're taking care of you all.
Speaker 1: You know, we're barely logging at all. And then we've
Speaker 1: got community members on the ground, um, despite the closure
Speaker 1: orders who are like, actually, there's a lot to see here,
Speaker 1: and you all are like completely devastating the landscape and
Speaker 1: further harming our communities. Um. So yeah, it's total gaslighting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an Oregon has both in terms of like watching fires
Speaker 1: and watching logging, some like rules that are not in
Speaker 1: place in other areas, especially for like even for for
Speaker 1: press and the like. Like it's it's actually hard to
Speaker 1: get in to look at this stuff, um without you know,
Speaker 1: breaking some sort of law technically, which is not at
Speaker 1: all shady. Um yeah, yeah, I feel like that's another
Speaker 1: important thing. And maybe cat can jump onto is just
Speaker 1: um basically, I mean, I think what people aren't understanding
Speaker 1: is that after the fires, the these federal forest managers
Speaker 1: closed gates and essentially are converting public land into private
Speaker 1: land by you know, using the threat of violence to
Speaker 1: kick people out if they go onto their public land.
Speaker 1: And since and they say until at least, the only
Speaker 1: folks allowed behind these gates are cops and loggers. And
Speaker 1: so this is like literally, um, you know, the enclosure
Speaker 1: of our public lands and like the privatization of our
Speaker 1: public lands so that cops and loggers can do whatever
Speaker 1: the hell they want. Yep. And it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I mean, it's the kind of thing that people
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if the if the Bundy's and
Speaker 1: that group actually meant the stuff they were saying, like
Speaker 1: the rhetoric they were putting out, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing they would be piste off about. Two Because you're right,
Speaker 1: it is the enclosure of public land by the government
Speaker 1: um and corporation without any kind of consent from the
Speaker 1: people who are supposed to be the collective owners of
Speaker 1: that land. It's it's a again, something that a lot
Speaker 1: of people should be angry about, who aren't angry about
Speaker 1: because there's been this huge propaganda campaign in the Northwest
Speaker 1: about timber unity and the like and like supporting the
Speaker 1: timber industry um by destroying like the single greatest gift
Speaker 1: this entire part of the world has. Uh, It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty frustrating, yea. Anyway, I have to we have to
Speaker 1: actually have a quick break so I can go watch
Speaker 1: my soccer game at the Timber Stadium. Uh, completely unrelated.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to drive out to Wheeler, Oregon myself.
Speaker 1: But we all have different things to do during the break, um,
Speaker 1: but also in the break, I guess we can probably
Speaker 1: do an ad break here, because why not? All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody loves ads, and we're backed still talking about force defense.
Speaker 1: I wanted there's something that people should probably know before
Speaker 1: we go further about the way that that Oregon works.
Speaker 1: So for a while, Oregon is a place where you
Speaker 1: can't get elected, um in a lot of parts of
Speaker 1: a lot of populated parts of Oregon if you're a Republican.
Speaker 1: So the Republicans just plain ice um and and pretend
Speaker 1: and like throw out some some social justice a language
Speaker 1: while while still doing all of the extract of stuff
Speaker 1: they were going to do anyway. And that's the story
Speaker 1: with like Ted Wheeler, um in his family. So Ted
Speaker 1: Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, comes from Timber money.
Speaker 1: His father was a major Republican donor. Not that the
Speaker 1: Democrats don't have a lot of extractive history behind them,
Speaker 1: but like it's it's very obvious what's happening with the
Speaker 1: Wheelers where um, they were huge Republican donors and huge
Speaker 1: backers of the right, and then Oregon had this kind
Speaker 1: of switch politically, um, and so Ted Wheeler just started
Speaker 1: throwing out nice social justicey language. But the whole you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's I'm sure going to make a run for
Speaker 1: governor at some point in the near future. And you've
Speaker 1: got this like this dressed up very extractive logging industry
Speaker 1: and politicians that always find a way to kind of
Speaker 1: make it seem palatable to the liberal majority. Um. And
Speaker 1: they've gotten pretty good at that because it doesn't I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think maybe we're coming to the end
Speaker 1: of this period, but like I haven't, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: up until this last year a lot of widespread kind
Speaker 1: of outrage about the clear cutting UM. And they also
Speaker 1: hide it pretty well. Like if you're driving through these
Speaker 1: beautiful public forests in Oregon, the areas that are right
Speaker 1: along the road will generally be pristine and you'll see
Speaker 1: old growth and everything. But sometimes you can see, as
Speaker 1: you like turn a corner or something that like, oh,
Speaker 1: that old growth only goes back a couple of a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen yards and then it's a clear cut
Speaker 1: UM and they'll they'll they'll hide it so that it's
Speaker 1: it's not as obvious because they know what upset people.
Speaker 1: So there's this, there's this kind of surprisingly, um surprisingly
Speaker 1: thorough campaign to do as much of this as possible
Speaker 1: without upsetting people, um, which which means there's a potential
Speaker 1: to upset people, which means there's a potential to actually
Speaker 1: stop this if enough people get upset. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're going against folks who have thought a
Speaker 1: lot about how to do this in a way that
Speaker 1: isn't going to upset the apple cart. So how do
Speaker 1: you upset the apple cart? I guess that is what
Speaker 1: I'm asking. Well, I think one way that we upset
Speaker 1: the apple cart is by bringing people out to these places.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the action that happened on Tuesday
Speaker 1: that looked like disrupting and disobeying a federal closure order
Speaker 1: in order to bring people out to these places, um,
Speaker 1: you know, basically metaphorically walking behind what you were describing
Speaker 1: the beauty strip along the highway and seeing what's behind it. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, as we were saying earlier, unfortunately because
Speaker 1: of all these federal closure orders after the fire, that
Speaker 1: looks like risking um, you know, repercussion, state repression, arrest
Speaker 1: even um, in order to just lay eyes on it.
Speaker 1: But that is the way that we chipped the apple cart.
Speaker 1: We get people to see these places so that it
Speaker 1: cuts through the gas lighting that the industry is doing
Speaker 1: and people can literally viscerally feel and see the damage. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's no way to convince them that that's okay
Speaker 1: once they see it. And how do you do go
Speaker 1: about like finding people to bring into this, convincing people
Speaker 1: to come Like, what does kind of that effort look like?
Speaker 1: You want to answer this one cat, You did a
Speaker 1: ton of recruitment, Yeah, totally. UM. I think a big
Speaker 1: part of it is getting them while they're young. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that like young people right now are already
Speaker 1: pretty radicalized, um, compared to ten years or so, probably
Speaker 1: because of I think George Floyd and Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: and social the use of social media and those movements. UM.
Speaker 1: So I am a college student and we're seeing like
Speaker 1: so many people coming in and ready to throw down,
Speaker 1: like they just cannot wait to get involved, and we'll
Speaker 1: kind of just show up to anything. UM. So I
Speaker 1: think that that's like a major tactic for sure. UM.
Speaker 1: And then also making sure that when you have like
Speaker 1: a an action that you're recruiting people for that it's
Speaker 1: I'm very easy to plug in. It's like very accessible,
Speaker 1: um and kind of just like having it organized very
Speaker 1: well so it's not daunting to come in. Do you
Speaker 1: want to add to that, sam, Well, just to like
Speaker 1: share a little more about like how we did that
Speaker 1: with this particular action that happened on Tuesday. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know, we it was a Tuesday, brainy, freezing middle
Speaker 1: of the forest planning this action, did not think and
Speaker 1: behind a federal closure order, so everyone on site risking
Speaker 1: arrest um and planning this action, it felt like we
Speaker 1: would be lucky as ship if we got ten people
Speaker 1: out there. UM. But I will say, um, it was
Speaker 1: easy as ship to get fifty people out there. And
Speaker 1: that's because people care. UM. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: we did. In terms of organizing strategy, we used the
Speaker 1: affinity group model, and so we had a core you know,
Speaker 1: there was a core group of organizers, and those organizers
Speaker 1: recruited through affinity groups and their affinity groups and UM
Speaker 1: that helped to keep kind of information secure and um,
Speaker 1: you know, everything tightly organized. But UM, people want people
Speaker 1: were really desiring to get together and do something, especially
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years of COVID, people are
Speaker 1: just like eager to do something. UM. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, we we promised that this isn't
Speaker 1: just an opportunity to potentially get arrested, but this is
Speaker 1: an educational opportunity and a movement building opportunities. So while
Speaker 1: the road was blocked with a slash pile and a
Speaker 1: fire truck, there were workshops going on. There were hikes
Speaker 1: going on in the forest that's supposed to be cut. UM.
Speaker 1: There was discussions about know your rights trainings and affinity groups.
Speaker 1: We had um a band um playing on top of
Speaker 1: a fire truck, and there was a dance party and basically,
Speaker 1: you know, we're like building community and solidarity UM in
Speaker 1: a positive way while sucking shut up. I think that's
Speaker 1: the key. And I mean, where do you uh, how
Speaker 1: do how do you have like what is the let
Speaker 1: me think of a way to phrase this. What is
Speaker 1: kind of the next step here because they haven't started
Speaker 1: logging this area yet, but they're kind of doing like
Speaker 1: the pre prep work. Um, what do you what do
Speaker 1: you think actually can be done to to halt it?
Speaker 1: Like is it? Is it a problem? Like because it
Speaker 1: seems to me that it's there's got to be like
Speaker 1: a mix of tactics there to actually get them to stop.
Speaker 1: And you're dealing with a number of different um threats,
Speaker 1: including not just at the state level, but these federal
Speaker 1: closure orders. Like what is I don't know what what
Speaker 1: does the path forward look like to you? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's a preliminary injunction being forth by some nonprofits and
Speaker 1: so this is a really good example of different tactics
Speaker 1: coming in and so um, the preliminary injunction is basically
Speaker 1: to state that what they're doing before services doing is illegal. Um.
Speaker 1: But before that that can be passed, they can come
Speaker 1: in at any point and log the area. And so
Speaker 1: that's where direct action comes in to slow them down
Speaker 1: and halp them as much as possible until the courts
Speaker 1: can process that injunction. And that feels really huge to
Speaker 1: Like what Kat just said is like where is the
Speaker 1: place of direct action in forest defense? This is like
Speaker 1: the golden moment for direct action while there's like an
Speaker 1: open legal case that we're waiting on a judge to settle,
Speaker 1: and the timber industry is like coming in ready to
Speaker 1: moot out the case by logging before it can even
Speaker 1: be decided. And like to just add a little bit
Speaker 1: more backstory to on. Like another reason why people are
Speaker 1: so pissed about this, um is that you know, this
Speaker 1: watershed has been I think like beloved and also embattled
Speaker 1: since the eighties. Like the infamous Eastern Massacre logging event
Speaker 1: happened in the same watershed. Where could you explain, Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: totally um item. A timber company was planning to clear
Speaker 1: cut log old growth forest out there and started moving
Speaker 1: on it on Easter um in the snow, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of bad US direct action activists set up a
Speaker 1: five tiered blockade on a logging road to hold off
Speaker 1: the logging and successfully did for um days and days
Speaker 1: until a bunch of them I think over a dozen
Speaker 1: folks got arrested, thrown in jail, and the forest was
Speaker 1: clear cut. Um. So hence you know the Eastern massacre
Speaker 1: name um. But a ton of folks who you know
Speaker 1: still work in forest defense in the spy A region.
Speaker 1: We're there and remember that story, and we're with us
Speaker 1: UM when we were out there this week telling that story.
Speaker 1: And you know since then, between and now, people have
Speaker 1: been showing up again and again and again in this
Speaker 1: watershed as it is so special to try and fight
Speaker 1: off logging. And myself and Cat have been a part
Speaker 1: of efforts over the past handful of years to um
Speaker 1: fight off a number of logging projects out there. We
Speaker 1: were successful in doing that. We actually like snacked the
Speaker 1: Forest Services grubby hands off of a bunch of oil
Speaker 1: growth because our scrappy friends spent days exploring this watershed
Speaker 1: and documenting, doing like site specific science citizen science documentation
Speaker 1: and giving it to the Forest Service. And we fought
Speaker 1: them and one and protected a bunch of the forest.
Speaker 1: And then the fires came through and they closed the
Speaker 1: gates and they secretly changed all of these contracts to
Speaker 1: include clear cut logging. And so that is why there
Speaker 1: is an open lawsuit because we believe it's illegal what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It's sketchy and illegal, yeah, but it does
Speaker 1: it does illustrate like kind of the depth of the
Speaker 1: fight necessary, not just in forest defense but at all
Speaker 1: efforts of kind of resisting the extract of industries that
Speaker 1: are driving a lot of climate change. It's it's not enough.
Speaker 1: It's never enough to win the first victory. They're going
Speaker 1: to find some way to to to swoop around to
Speaker 1: the flanks and try to take it away from you
Speaker 1: like they're doing right now. Um, which is exhausting. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems exhausting, but it doesn't mean it. You can
Speaker 1: ignore it. It's fucking exhausting. Yeah. I always say it's
Speaker 1: like our forests, our federal management agencies, they suffer from
Speaker 1: this powerful amnesia where they just like keep coming back
Speaker 1: with the same bullshit proposals. But like our movement does
Speaker 1: not suffer from that, and we are just like building
Speaker 1: power and getting stronger and getting more successful. So like
Speaker 1: when people left on Tuesday, um, there was a promise
Speaker 1: that people will be back if logging happens, and we're
Speaker 1: very sure that that would be the case. And if
Speaker 1: if people are in the Cascadian bioregion and are like,
Speaker 1: well this sounds pretty sweet. I wanna, I wanna, I
Speaker 1: wanna keep keep some trees where they are as opposed
Speaker 1: to putting them on the back of a truck to
Speaker 1: drive somewhere else. How could they get involved, where where
Speaker 1: might they reach out to? Well, there's a few different
Speaker 1: groups who were a part of this UM definitely UM,
Speaker 1: the Portland Rising Tide, Cascadia Forest Defenders, UM, CAT can
Speaker 1: talk about Climate Justice League and UM maybe the action
Speaker 1: that you all put on yesterday as a follow up
Speaker 1: and like how folks can get involved with that UM
Speaker 1: but basically, yeah, you can follow us on Twitter, UM
Speaker 1: and Instagram and and please UM, you know, keep a
Speaker 1: lookout because we will be we'll be getting it out
Speaker 1: far and wide if there's a call for folks to
Speaker 1: get out there again. Yeah, and Climate Justice League is
Speaker 1: an organ UM at the University of Oregon and people
Speaker 1: are free to just join the organization. Community members are
Speaker 1: also involved. UM. But we did put on an event
Speaker 1: yesterday where Tyler Ferres of Ferris Logging or First Timber UM,
Speaker 1: who is actually the company that bought the rights to
Speaker 1: Brighton Bush, which was the area where we did UM
Speaker 1: the action on Tuesday, he was giving a speech at
Speaker 1: the University of Oregon UM to talk about post firelogging,
Speaker 1: which was just like crazy timing. They kind of just
Speaker 1: like put it in our lap and so we recruited
Speaker 1: from that action or like let's just drop the hell
Speaker 1: out of this UM talk, and so we like showed
Speaker 1: up and kind of tried to sneak in. They were
Speaker 1: having zoom issues, which like luckily distracted them from the
Speaker 1: fact that there was like forty or fifty like pretty punk,
Speaker 1: anarchy looking kids in the room. Um. But we like
Speaker 1: let him go on for a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: we started to ask him questions that he obviously didn't
Speaker 1: know the answer to. Um. We kept like asking questions about,
Speaker 1: you know, the science says this, but you're stating this
Speaker 1: where you getting your science from? And he kept saying
Speaker 1: things like, well, that's more of a political question and
Speaker 1: the statistics don't really back up what you're saying. Um.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, we just chanted and made him really nervous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a heads up, if you're if you're looking
Speaker 1: to win an argument on a zoom call, you can
Speaker 1: just say, uh, the statistics don't back you up without
Speaker 1: citing statistics. It's it's it's really the easiest way to
Speaker 1: do that. M I guess I am kind of curious
Speaker 1: for like you guys said, you've you've prevented you know,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff in the past by doing stuff
Speaker 1: like documentation. Um, and you know when when when that
Speaker 1: kind of thing becomes not enough. You know that this
Speaker 1: this area does have a rich history of kind of
Speaker 1: direct action stuff to protect forests with a get also
Speaker 1: like a mixed success like by note means does direct
Speaker 1: action always always work to do anything? Right now, we
Speaker 1: still have the line three pipeline, We still have all
Speaker 1: of these things that direct action has tried to prevent.
Speaker 1: But it turns out a lot of the kind of
Speaker 1: direct action that's associated with these types of like ecological
Speaker 1: things is is kind of more performative than anything else,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it is kind of like a tree
Speaker 1: set is about gaining media media like publicity, because they're
Speaker 1: gonna get you down right like eventually, and it's and
Speaker 1: it's and it's gonna be painful because like you're not
Speaker 1: going to be sitting up there for years to to
Speaker 1: to to to to prevent the treat from being logged.
Speaker 1: So how close do you think we are into to
Speaker 1: like reaching that kind of territory like it was in
Speaker 1: like the nineties and eighties where it is like a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of people like blocking off roads
Speaker 1: and doing and and doing that kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: more like you know what what it crosses into that
Speaker 1: it's more like autonomous. It's not it's not like led
Speaker 1: by a single organization by any means. See, it's more
Speaker 1: it's more decentralized. But did you see that kind of
Speaker 1: happening soon? And you know, how, how how do you
Speaker 1: think we can balance out direct action with like other
Speaker 1: like thoughtful means of trying to draw attention to these
Speaker 1: things and maybe actually and and other things like actually
Speaker 1: physically physically preventing the logging of certain areas. That's such
Speaker 1: a good question. And um, I'm really thankful that we're
Speaker 1: talking about strategy because um, kind of, like I mentioned,
Speaker 1: I moved out here like ten years ago to do
Speaker 1: force defense work and have seen so many instances in
Speaker 1: where people are trying to do direct action in a
Speaker 1: in a time and space where it doesn't make sense. Um,
Speaker 1: where it's like basically slated too. It's going to lose
Speaker 1: because um, it's just impossible too, as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: hold this blockade for weeks and weeks and weeks and
Speaker 1: the snow um indefinitely, you know, as we you know,
Speaker 1: as they continue to try to log in definitely. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely a sweet spot for where um, the sort
Speaker 1: of kind of the sort of direct action that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, like blockading, where that is most useful, and
Speaker 1: that sweet spot is definitely when there is another decisive move,
Speaker 1: like another like legal victory that's waiting in the wings
Speaker 1: or um, you know, we won one in Washington without
Speaker 1: a legal victory because we shamed the ship out of
Speaker 1: the Department of Natural Resources in the Seattle Times and
Speaker 1: they were like, WHOA, We're sorry, um, And so direct
Speaker 1: action held off something until we were able to sufficiently
Speaker 1: shame them and deter them. But typically they don't shame well, um,
Speaker 1: and so typically, um, you know, we need illegal there
Speaker 1: needs to be a legal element UM backing it up.
Speaker 1: So direct action is a time buyer. But that said,
Speaker 1: like obviously, blockading things is not the only type of
Speaker 1: direct action, and part of the rich history of forest
Speaker 1: offense in this buyer region is other kinds of more
Speaker 1: um necessarily you know, discrete kinds of direct action that
Speaker 1: obviously you know, I'm um not a part of speaking
Speaker 1: on this radio show, but UM would would publicly, um,
Speaker 1: you know, say like those things probably need to happen,
Speaker 1: and I hope they fucking had what what what what
Speaker 1: I could say is that I've I've seen these things
Speaker 1: happening in other places, like in like in the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Defending Forest movement. Right now, I have I I have
Speaker 1: seen evidence that individuals not associated with any group are
Speaker 1: putting spikes and trees, and that is that is, that
Speaker 1: is something that is happening, right, And all that takes
Speaker 1: is one person, right, It's that's not like a group
Speaker 1: of twenty people going into the four risk to do that.
Speaker 1: That's the one person in an afternoon, right. So those
Speaker 1: are the types of like single person direct actions, which again, yeah,
Speaker 1: any type of direct action is going to be scary, right,
Speaker 1: You're you're once you start doing that, that is you
Speaker 1: know that introduced to certain things that will is kind
Speaker 1: of is kind of more frightening to you as a person. Um.
Speaker 1: But but it's it is something that is happening in
Speaker 1: other places. Um. And it has showed to at the
Speaker 1: very least upset the people who are wanting logging to happen. Generally,
Speaker 1: they're not thrilled when they when they find when they
Speaker 1: find these things. Um yeah, yeah, because like it's like
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I think like when it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, it's like about knowing what your goal is
Speaker 1: with this tactic like on you know, in in the
Speaker 1: action that happened this past week, there was an understanding
Speaker 1: that the goal was to you know, shine a light
Speaker 1: on this thing that's happening in secrecy, shame the Forest Service,
Speaker 1: and build movement, movement building so that we're ready u
Speaker 1: when people need to throw down for real and and
Speaker 1: that might happen soon. We weren't trying to hold the
Speaker 1: space for weeks and weeks and weeks um. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the goal. So like going in being like what kind
Speaker 1: of an action are we trying to do? What are
Speaker 1: we trying to complish? Are we trying to be decisive?
Speaker 1: Are we trying to like shape the conditions necessary for
Speaker 1: success and like culture build, or we trying like what
Speaker 1: are we actually trying to do? And then like coming
Speaker 1: away with that, having having that clear having a clear
Speaker 1: sense of that beforehand, I think really really is crucial
Speaker 1: because I've definitely observed direct actions where that is not
Speaker 1: the case and people have not thought those things through
Speaker 1: and it becomes the kind of unfun version of chaos
Speaker 1: um where you know, things things don't really get done
Speaker 1: and you're just kind of sitting around and everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of slightly miserable because again, you're in a freezing forest, um,
Speaker 1: and no one really knows what the hell they're doing. UM.
Speaker 1: So definitely having those kind of things thought through beforehand
Speaker 1: is extremely useful when you're deciding to trudge your way
Speaker 1: into some cold, dark woods. Now we're going for chaotic good,
Speaker 1: not chaotic evil. Yeah, well a little bit of chaotic, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends, it depends what. It depends what we mean
Speaker 1: by evil evil evil to some people, we we yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: and any other kind of historical notes on forest defense
Speaker 1: or any other kind of random random tidbits like to
Speaker 1: mention before before we close out. The one thing that
Speaker 1: I feel like it's super important to say to people
Speaker 1: is that forest defense is not just about protecting forests.
Speaker 1: It's about protecting all of us. We know now like
Speaker 1: forest defenses, climate defense. Our forests are our best natural
Speaker 1: tool for fighting climate change. And also like we need
Speaker 1: them here. Most of Oregonian get their drinking water from
Speaker 1: forests and watersheds, like they literally are sustaining all of us.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we hope folks join like not just
Speaker 1: for the sake of like being you know, hippie tree huggers.
Speaker 1: Even though you know some of us are, but also
Speaker 1: because like we need to survive as a people and
Speaker 1: as a planet and um or sorry. Best way to
Speaker 1: do that it's it's the cheapest most advanced form of
Speaker 1: carbon capture we have yet. So yeah, it seems seems
Speaker 1: kind of asinine to chop that all down to build
Speaker 1: some shitty sheds. Mm hmm, all right, well that's a sad.
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