Eugene weekly., July 21, 2011, Page 10, Image 10

PROTEST
RULES
Cascadians protest Big Oil in Montana
T
he last night of the Earth First!
2011 Round River Rendezvous
was one of the quietest nights of
the almost weeklong gathering.
EF!ers, members of Rising Tide
and other environmental activists
slept at their campsites in the Lolo
National Forest, awaiting a 5 am wake-up
call for an action against Big Oil that would
use chants, signs and “sleeping dragons.”
Where, when and what that action
would be was known to only some of the
action’s organizers that morning. In the end,
Johannes Pedersen of Eugene was one of the
six protesters to lock himself in front of the
Montana governor’s offi ce in Helena, and he
was one of fi ve arrested during the protest.
The Rendezvous, aka the Rondy, took
place in Montana but drew about 250
people from Oregon and across the U.S.,
and from as far away as Spain and Australia.
The 20 or so Cascadians — activists from
the Pacifi c Northwest bioregion — were a
strong presence at the gathering.
Climate change and destructive fossil
fuel extraction, along with logging, don’t
affect just one state. “The tar sands are a
county, state, regional, countrywide and
international issue,” said Emma Bea of
Rising Ride North America.
10 JULY 21, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
“The Silvertip Pipeline spill is a precursor
of what is to come,” said Northern Rockies
Rising Tide’s Max Granger of the dangers
of new oil pipelines and massive loads of oil
extraction equipment coming to Montana.
After days of workshops and training
sessions, participants knew the action
would target the tar sands route and Big
Oil. They knew about fossil fuel extraction
from fracking to coal. They knew their
legal rights and how to practice civil
disobedience and direct action as safely
and ethically as possible.
The last day of the Rendezvous was spent
in training for some, and for others in making
signs and banners and laying out strategy.
“Good things come out of the Rondy,” said
Bea. “It brings us all together, and it’s a place
where a lot of strategizing happens.”
Pedersen said, “A well-done action has
hours and hours spent in meetings planning
it.” It’s much harder, he said, to be an
organizer than it is to simply be the person
locking down. Pedersen was the man being
arrested on the cover of EW May 12, having
locked himself by the neck to a car in
protest of the Seneca biomass plant and that
company’s logging of old-growth forests.
An hours-long direct action training
session at the camp focused not only on
Erica Dossa of Bozeman, MT,
Peter Dolan of Great Falls, MT
and an unnamed activist locked
together with three others to
protest Big Oil at the governor’s
offi ce on July 12
PHOTO BY MURPHY WOODHOUSE
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
the nuts and bolts of civil disobedience
— tricks cops use to get you to admit guilt
(even if you’re not guilty), how to make
your body heavy as the police drag you
away, how to lock your body to others
using only arms and legs in order to prevent
loggers from cutting down a tree with sitters
in it — but also on how to talk to police,
passersby or workers who may be affected
by the action, and how to use body language
that is friendly and nonconfrontational.
“I would like to remain silent, uh huh,
uh huh. I would like to see my lawyer,
oh yeah,” went a chant for remembering
how to deal with police offi cers who
have detained you. The leader of the legal
training session pointed out that it doesn’t
hurt to defuse a situation with humor, so go
ahead and sing.
Earth First! has been portrayed in the
media as a group of dangerous hippies bent
on destruction. But EF! and Rising Tide, a
grassroots network dedicated to stopping
climate change, are careful, organized
groups that do not “compromise in defense
of Mother Earth,” because they want to
stop environmental destruction before it’s
too late.
Cascadian Mick Garvin, a veteran
of the 1995-96 Warner Creek blockade
outside Eugene, said when you look at
EF! and Rising Tide dancing on tables
and banging on drums, “Think about the
political theater of the ‘60s.”
He adds, “An optimist sees the glass
half full, a pessimist sees it half empty, an
Earth First!er sees the crack in the bottom
and all the good stuff fl owing out across the
table, and so they’ll do whatever it takes to
wake us up to that.”
The EF!ers camped in the forest just off
the route being used by Canada’s Imperial
Oil for its megaloads of oil extraction
equipment — learning, partying and
leaving as little impact as possible. The
same cannot be said of the megaloads,
pipelines and spills Big Oil brings to the
mountains and rivers of the West.
The megaloads carry machines barged
up the Columbia River to Idaho. They are
placed on the rigs that haul them through
wild and scenic as well as populated areas
of Montana and Idaho to the tar sands of
Canada where the machines will turn a
boreal forest into a moonscape the size
of Florida and poison nearby indigenous
tribes, according Granger.
The National Wildlife Federation, Sierra
Club and others are celebrating a victory
against the megaloads — the Montana
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