Guilty As Charged, Another Day at the Office, Parking Garage? My Ass!, Mountain? What Mountain?

Guilty As Charged: On June 9, in Longview, a jury found six peaceful protesters guilty on charges of Anarchy and Sabotage, handing down the first felony conviction for nonviolent environmental action in United States history. The verdict stands as a stark warning to all Americans concerned about the erosion of our civil liberties.

Two women and five men boarded the log export ship Super Rubin last October 29, to protest Mitsubishi, the largest corporate entity in the world and the world's largest corporate destroyer of forests.

Mitsubishi has consistently been the largest exporter of raw logs from Washington and Oregon for the past 30 years. Every million board-feet of lumber shipped overseas takes seven direct jobs and 14 more indirect jobs with it.

Although the protesters avoided any damage to property, they were convicted on a 1919 union-busting statute originally intended to punish destructive acts. The defendants plan to appeal the verdict. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 22.

Another Day At The Office: Forest activists from Seattle Earth First!, the Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project, and Olympia Earth First! targeted the Forest Service Research Facility in the U-District June 4 as part of a 24-city protest calling for the end to logging on public lands. Five women were arrested after using kryptonite bicycle locks to affix their necks to an electrical conduit inside the Forest Service office.

June 4 marked 100 years since the passage of the first logging rider, known as the Organic Act. This rider amended the original National Forest Reserve System legislation to allow logging. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) will soon introduce the Nati onal Forest Protection and Restoration Act to end all timber sales on federal lands nationwide.

Parking Garage? My Ass! Eugene, Oregon's police department was out early the morning of May 31, to guard two half-blocks of fenced off parking lot containing 40 trees, some 80 years old, slated for removal to make way for a parking garage. Objector s to the cut, numbering 11 men and women, were already up in the trees with a banner: "Parking Garage? My Ass!"

By about 6:00 AM, two fire trucks and over 20 police had arrived. The first protester, alone in a tree, came down without incident. Three others in the banner tree were next; this time officers in a cherry-picker basket sprayed the tree sitters at near po int blank range. Some of the tree sitters climbed to the ground, but others endured repeated doses of pepper spray at close range, 30 feet in the air, before being apprehended.

As a group of a hundred or so supporters pushed the limits of the yellow tape boundary set up by the police, the police gave a warning, put on their gas masks, and within 15 seconds attacked the group, letting loose tear gas canisters and pepper spray. Af ter removing the last tree-sitter, the final trees were felled before noon.

According to Eugene City Councilor Taylor, police informed her at 8 AM that the pepper spray and tear gas assault was to begin in 10 minutes. As Taylor went to inform protesters, she ended up inhaling fumes from about 20 feet away. Taylor later stated tha t she was bothered by the police actions she witnessed from about a block away. "It seemed like they were out of control," she said.

Critics say the cutting violated Eugene's City Charter, which prohibits the cutting of "heritage trees" that are over 50 years old without a public election. Eugene's mayor and a number of city councilors have since defended the police behavior, the lates t of a number of incidents of alleged police violence, in the wake of massive public protest.

Mountain? What Mountain?: In issue #33 (April 22 97), ETS! described the Crown Jewel Mine, a massive, enormously destructive mine in North Central Washington proposed by the Battle Mountain Gold Company of Houston, Texas. The mine pit will blast 90 0 feet into Buckhorn Mountain. Gold will be extracted through the use of a cyanide leaching process that will use over 13,000 tons of toxic sodium cyanide.

On May 28, conservation and Native American groups filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Portland, Oregon, against the U.S. Forest Service, seeking to prevent the development of Washington state's first large scale open-pit cyanide-leach gold mine. The groups' lawsuit argues that the Forest Service Final Environmental Impact Statement ignored public comments, used faulty and incomplete information, and engaged in arbitrary decision making by approving one of the most damaging mine designs.

Although the Forest Service has refused to revisit its own EIS, Battle Mountain Gold must still obtain more than 30 permits from other state and federal agencies before mine construction can begin. Locally, Okanogan County has rubber stamped a Conditional use permit for everything related to the mine.

Comments can be sent to the following agencies regarding permits for the proposed mine:

Washington State Dept. of Ecology on waste discharge permits should be submitted to Ecology by July 4, to: Wash. State Dept. of Ecology, PO Box 47696, Olympia WA 98504.
Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources on any action to set aside the Class 4 Forest Practices Application, enjoin, review, or otherwise challenge such action on the grounds of the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) should be submitted before June 26.
There will also be a Corp of Engineers 401/404 Clean Water Act water quality/filling of wetland permit application and public hearing on June 25, in the Oroville WA High School, from 3-7 PM.