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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1995)
Just ou t ▼ d«c a m b a r 1, 1909 T 37 AMAZON TRAIL TABOR FLORIST Announcing the opening of a second location Crossing the line Environmental and human-rights activists can accomplish great things with a currency called respect ▼ by Lee Lynch ne by one, holding hands, the men, measures. It seems like people who respect life, some in suits, and the women, some respect life in all its forms. And I was not the only white-haired, crossed the line to be gay person there that day. arrested. Three or four hundred pro In this time when so much I hold dear seems to testers broke the stillness of the old be on the line—the right to health care for the old growth forest with applause. I photographed the the right to jobs and housing for gay men and poor, historic crossing through tears. A woman behind and lesbians, the right to clean air and water—I me broke into a searing scream, giving voice to the greeted this informal coalition of human-rights mutilation going on around us. and environmental activists with jubilation. We This was a protest against the timber “sale” need to acknowledge that our bottom-line goals called Sugarloaf. People who love the trees, the are the same, whether we champion salmon, edu earth, and the life that both sustain tried to stop the cation money, a decent minimum wage or freedom greed which was— at that same moment— power from persecution. We can accomplish great things, ing chain saws that severed the trunks of trees so those of us who value all of creation, with a old only wild animals and the ancestors of Native currency called respect. Our power comes from Americans had seen the saplings. honoring the dignity of one another and of the On our way up the Caves Highway in southern planet that supports us. Oregon truck after truck roared past us, most I remember the old woman from the wildlife carrying no more than three logs apiece. These refuge who came to town for help. Laws allow trees dwarfed even logging trucks. At Sugarloaf farmers to use water from the refuge for irrigation. the rent-a-cops were waiting, paid for by the timber It was a drought year. When the pelicans came, as company, Boise Cascade. We stood in a respectful they always do, by the hundreds, to birth and raise circle asking the forest to welcome us. their young, there was no water. The baby pelicans, It was another day of shame for the United forced to march miles to water with their parents, States. The same radicals dropped and died. The who refuse to recognize woman got no help from their common humanity the regulating agencies. with gay people refuse to Alone, she carried some honor nature itself. They of the babies. She ex snuck Sugarloaf and many horted us to write letters, other sales through Con to make phone calls. gress. The courts had held When the pelicans re back the forces of greed turned the next year, there and destruction with the was more water, partly strong arm of the law. The because one woman radicals chopped off that spoke out and reached arm— undid the law. They out. knew legislation to take We do not know the the timber would never extent of our careless pass on its own, so they cruelties, nor can we added a so-called “salvage imagine the breadth of our rider” to an appropriations concerted power. bill. Competitive bidding At the Sugarloaf dem was not required. We tax Lee Lynch at Sugarloaf onstration, the police re payers not only got noth fused to openly arrest ing from the dirty deal, other environmental laws those who had crossed the line into the sale area. including the clean air and clean water acts were The police waited up the hill, around a bend, out of also lifted for these sales. sight of the media. As the morning wore on, 95 Many of the right-wing politicians who gave people crossed the line. A few at a time, they went away Sugarloaf were elected on platforms that the whole distance up the hill and disappeared. included anti-gay provisions. Now that the Oregon We cheered them. We pressed against the rope. Citizens Alliance and its confederates in other I had traveled there with two local environmental states have amassed enormous mailing lists and leaders, level-headed people like me. We came funding through the use of gay-bashing propa with no intention of getting arrested. Yet at one ganda, and have built political clout by demon moment, we looked at one another and nodded in strating that they can influence the vote in Colo unison. If the crowd crossed the line that denied rado, Cincinnati and Queens, N.Y., they are using access to our public lands, so would we. that power to feed corporate greed and irreparably There was some negotiation with the media: damage the quality of life provided by these last The arrests would only be worth the risk with untouched lands. witnesses to bring our action out of the forest. But It’s not just Oregon. The Everglades in Florida if the media went with us, their equipment would are being smothered in concrete. A bill before be confiscated. One reporter went up the hill only Congress would allow a huge coal-mining opera to be tackled by the police. A white-haired woman tion by Anadalex, a Dutch-owned company, on 20 was maced trying to protect him. The moment for million acres of federally owned land in the Red the crowd to surge forward into mass arrests passed. Rock Canyon country of southern Utah (near Bryce Later, another old woman tried to be arrested. The Canyon and Zion national parks). More legislation police wouldn’t take her until she returned with a would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National group of younger women and stood in the shad Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Are there any wetlands ows, where no cameras could reach . They wouldn’t left in your town? Where do all the wild critters go? arrest kids at all. This ecological holocaust goes on and on. The Sugarloaf giants are at the mills. The baby Out in the Sugarloaf woods, everyday people, pelicans are dead. Gay kids are still killing them kids who’d stayed out of school, politicians and selves, and poor people are scared. The old women environmental advocates crossed that line to pro cannot stop the radical right alone. We can’t either. test lawless logging. 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