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Since
July 7, "Tre Arrow" has been sitting on a ledge at Forest
Service headquarters on Southwest 2nd Avenue, protesting
the Eagle sale.
Virginia
Salkowski, 26, the woman who was on the platform next to
Murphy-Ellis, is now on a hunger strike.
The
Forest Service has closed the main road leading to Eagle
to everyone but Vanport Manufacturing and its contractors.
At press
time, four people had been arrested for breaking through
the Forest Service blockade, two with the express purpose
of mounting a constitutional legal challenge.
Cascadia
Forest Alliance is holding a noon rally Friday, July 14,
at Forest Service Headquarters on Southwest 2nd Avenue between
Oak and Pine streets to kick off a weekend action camp.
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There is a seemingly
bottomless reserve of idealistic, yet informed, passion to
stop logging at Eagle
At about 4:15 last Friday morning, Donald Fontenot of
Cascadia Forest Alliance got the call he'd been bracing
himself for all summer. As starlight faded in the sky and
all but two lookouts slept, the feds raided the Eagle timber
sale resistance camps, ordering the protesters to leave.
The ground support left peacefully, but four women--two
in suspended pods and two on tree platforms--refused to
budge. There was a standoff coming.
Twelve hours later, it was all over. The gates of Forest
Service roads 4614 and 4615 were wide open. The pods--wood
and web hammocks suspended by ropes--that spanned the two
roads had been lowered to the ground, their contents confiscated
by the Forest Service. The platforms of the tree-sits near
them had been smashed.
As TV crews raced back for evening newscasts, Mill Creek
rushed by one camp, a jar of miso soup and a container of
tofu cooling between the rocks. Nearby were clusters of
other now-unneeded supplies: Organic tomato sauce, granola,
dried rosemary and canisters of American Spirit tobacco
for hand-rolled cigarettes. The Forest Service had created
instant ghost camps.
It was a sad contrast to the weekend before. After a long
winter occupying a tree-sit six miles up 4615, summer weather
brought not only comfort but reinforcements. The camps were
full of life. On Sunday, July 1, both base camps were guarded
by dedicated protesters. Fires were going, food was cooking,
and colorful banners were draped over the locked Forest
Service gates. The two pods and the two tree platforms were
occupied.
"Root," a young woman who had just arrived at the camp,
greeted visitors and marveled that the forest behind the
locked gates had become a de facto roadless area where bobcats
felt free to roam. Fontenot, fresh from a trip to Washington,
D.C., to lobby for the Eagle sales cancellation, discussed
plans for another activist training camp. Brian Schulv was
also there, cocksure, saying it would be impossible for
the Forest Service to dismantle the pods without putting
the life of the occupant at risk.
"No one is getting through here," he bragged.
Schulv was wrong.
As soon as Fontenot, sleeping in his Southeast Portland
house, got the alert, he started dialing. He started with
other activists, then woke up a handful of reporters.
At nearly the same time, the Forest Service was sending
out faxes and calling empty newsrooms around the city.
That was the kickoff for a daylong information dance in
the woods.
During the morning and afternoon news shows, helicopters
delivered dramatic video of activists clinging to their
perches. Radio stations, along with the Associated Press,
cranked out frequent updates. In between, there was a lot
of waiting.
At the junction of Forest Service roads 4614 and 4615,
eight Forest Service flacks, who often outnumbered the reporters,
hunkered down. "We were told to pack a double lunch and
prepare to spend all day out here," said spokesman Rex Holloway.
There were two media staging areas. The first was established
early in the morning, looking toward the lower road. From
this vantage, reporters were unable to witness the interaction
between protesters and negotiators yet afraid to leave in
case something dramatic happened.
After an hour of unsuccessful negotiations, the feds moved
the media circus to the upper road, where reporters had
a clear view of the pod that straddled it. Through binoculars
and high-powered camera lenses, we could see an agitated
protester as she watched an approaching cherry-picker basket,
manned by a negotiator, who activists said called himself
Ted, and two camo-clad Forest Service cops. The pod looked
dangerously flimsy, swaying as the protester stood on the
edge then hid behind a white tarp, like a child who believes
she is invisible under a blanket.
After mounting a video camera on the basket, Ted began
talking. About 20 minutes later, the cops simply picked
up the protester and put her in the basket. She screamed
in frustration. Soon after that, the person on the nearby
tree platform for that road descended.
Back on the lower road, however, Emma Murphy-Ellis, otherwise
known as "Pitch," kept the Forest Service at bay as she
threatened to cut the final rope that supported her pod.
By 2:30 pm, Ted had convinced Murphy-Ellis to give up.
Around 4 pm, the Forest Service let reporters in to witness
the abandoned camps.
Friday was as much an ending as a beginning. The 12-hour
skirmish in the woods created the latest morph of the ongoing
fight over the 1996 Eagle sales. While the road blocks have
received the most attention, there also have been rallies,
letter-writing campaigns, media events and direct appeals
to both Congress and the owner of the timber, Vanport Manufacturing.
Throughout all of it, the Forest Service has not budged
in its contention that the timber must be cut.
While the destroyed camps and startlingly empty pods were
a poignant sight, it is clear this battle isn't close to
being over.
Since being forced from the woods, the protest has moved
downtown, with an "edge-sit," hunger strike and vows of
a legal challenge. There is a seemingly bottomless reserve
of idealistic, yet informed, passion to stop logging at
Eagle. The fact is that because this is a salvage rider
sale, there is no recourse except direct action, no weapon
other than forcing public opinion. Along with Cascadia,
groups like the Sierra Club and the Oregon Natural Resource
Council have maintained continuous pressure on the Forest
Service to reconsider the sale. That passion seems sure
to erupt as this drama plays out over the rest of the summer.
"Leaf," who had been the guard during the Forest Service
raid and was pushed to the ground by law enforcement while
the camp was broken up, talked to a reporter on the phone
late Monday night from Cascadia headquarters. Behind her
voice was the sound of ringing phones and animated conversations.
"This is not over," she said. "They can have their road.
I want the forest."
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