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Doug Fir Defends Doug Firs: the first Earth First! Aerial Blockade opens 1985.
Willamette National Forest.Arriving in the predawn darkness of May 20, 1985, a group of nine blockaders, accompanied by a photographer for the Portland Alliance, drive into the Pyramid Creek timber sale, crossing the federally mandated closure boundary. The Plan: By nonviolently occupying the canopy of a tall tree slated for immediate destruction, the blockaders would prevent its killing as long as possible. Previous blockades in the area organized by the Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group had brought activists to hold sit-ins on logging roads, keeping logging trucks from entering or departing the national forest. But the brevity of the tactic, protecting the forest from industry depredators for no more than an hour or two, coupled with fines and federal court sentences that barred the arrested/convicted activists from entering the national forests for a year, didn't seem cost effective carrying the bodies of freshly killed trees to Willamette Industry mills . ...The van rockets across Pyramid Creek bridge, headlights yawing wildly (13 people aboard the van.) Can't the Freddies see the lights? I feel a cold heard knot of tension in my gut. We're almost at the closure area. What if they chained the road shut? What if we round a turn on this dusty hardscrabble logger's road carved into the lush forests, and come upon a great army of freddies and Willies, spotlights flickering on, drawn guns waving....But the road was open, empty soft blush of false dawn teasing the eastern horizon. We plunge to a halt: Jumpout time! The rear doors swing open into the not-yet-dawn darkness and we tumble out into the swirling dust of our sudden stop. Go! Go! A rush of relief. We've outfoxed the Freddies! Someone flicks on a flashlight, but a chorus of Lights Out! gets the message across and it snaps off. Our driver points the general direction to the spur road down which we must now stumble...this is it...the Forest watches us, solemn in pre-photosynthetic repose. The van rumbles into the distance, tail lights disappear and we're on the offensive....With Doug Fir's trusty climbing gear, we shall blow the minds of the Willies and Freddies, escalating the defense at the very moment they thought we were giving way to irresolution and decline. Ha! Victory already within our grasp, we trudge single file down the spur road to a bivouac point before the final assault.... Blockader Mike Jakubal would use his cliff-climbing mountaineering skills to piton-climb a douglas fir's sheer 70 foot trunk to its canopy, where, immune from efforts by USFS and Willamette Industries personnel to convince him to come down, he would become an immovable barrier, physically preventing the logging of that tree and its close neighbors. The other eight blockaders, who encircled the base of the tree during this first tree action accepted arrest & citation as the price of peaceable resistance. The action began well; by 6:45 am when the first loggers arrived, Mike J aka Doug Fir was well set up 70 feet high in the tree and the other 8 blockaders were sitting backs against the tree. Nonviolence preparation, courtesy of Mike Roselle of Earth First! enabled the blockaders to make their first contact with the tree fellers calm, relaxed, jovial. What began with a shouted curse from a distant incoming logger who'd just espied Mike's Earth First! banners became a oking talk with several of them on climbing techniques. All sides refrained from threats or cutting remarks. The arrival of US Forest Service law enforcement officers Slagowski, Christiansen and Jones several hours later changed the dynamic. . All 8 blockaders on the ground were issued federal citations for violating 36 CFR 261.53E "Being in a closed area". Mike Jakubal, high in the tree, disclosed "Doug Fir" as his name and was not cited at this time: none of the forest service officials would climb the tree to give him a citation! Next came Linn County deputy sheriffs Dave Freeman and Dale Thurman. Freeman asked the blockaders to disperse. All but two, Marcy Willow and another, refused. The deputies then arrested us on charges of 2nd degree criminal trespass. Blockader Mike Roselle declined to walk to the deputy sheriffs' vehicle and was carried, Pasha-like, to it by the officers. The six arrested blockaders were driven out of the forest to Highway 20, ticketed and released. Doug Fir spent the day and early evening in the tree. After a brief halt in operations, Willamette industries offical directed the loggers to cut the stand of trees around the occupied tree, In the early evening, Jakubal quietly lowered himself to the ground to inspect the freshly killed stumpland around his tree. He remained on the ground more than an hour, and was busted around 7:30 pm by forest service law enforcement agent Slagowsky who got between Mike and the tree. which tree was then speedily cut down first thing next morning smashing Jakubals camera and other gear. After being held several hours, Jakubal was released in Sweet Home Oregon. When he reappeared at the EF! Sanctuary Camp around midnight that night, there were cries of disbelief "Go back up, Mike!" and dismay that he'd been dry-gulched by Slagowski. The following morning, despite assurances from the Forest Service, the tree, along with Jakubal's platform full of supplies and equipment, was cut down. But despite the brevity of Mike's first-ever Earth First tree-sit, the tactic of tree climbing to hold sit-ins in the canopies was validated. (So long as one never leaves one's tree human-free; always have a replacement come up the tree before you come down.) |