was a mighty fine rally, lots of music and spirit, about 300 people at the max, and a great windswept ridge setting with a grand view of all the Redwoods spreading out for miles before us, Headwaters Forest to the left, Luna far over many miles to the right, everything made all the more poignant with the patchwork clearcuts in the background, and Scotia + the PL mill down below us..
We were at the Monument Gate, which is the main way that logging trucks go into the Mattole watershed, and which has seen lots of blockades and pepper-spray and conflict the last few weeks, but it was still 12 miles away from the site of the actual logging (EF! activists hike in there using a shorter route).
Snow videotaped much of it, and we'll get a copy of that later, too, for our archives.
-----------------------------------------------------
anyway, here's the practical upshot:
1. If there are any Ratties that are looking for a summer activity or trip, for any part of the time, consider going up to the Mattole to do some support action.
2. Around Oct, we will have a big trip to Sacto to talk to our assemblypeople/state senators, after talking with EPIC and figuring out exactly what we should be talking about and asking them for.
3. Also in Oct, we will have a trip to the Fed. Courthouse in Oakland, when the Bari/Cherney case against the FBI begins.
--------------------------------------------
If you want to know more: (this has various abbreviations, if you are interested and don't know the background to this, let me know and i can write it out in more detail) -
1. The outlook for the Mattole right now is pretty grim, when it comes down to it. Because of Maxxam's HCP/SYP as part of the Headwaters Deal, EPIC and others have little recourse to sue them on specific THP's in the court. So they're trying to take on the HCP as a whole, which is an incredibly difficult proposition.
EPIC has won many great cases in the past, even taking a couple all the way to the US Supreme Court, but this one doesn't look good.
This means that despite NCEF's 6 months of holding off Maxxam with major resistance, and some 50-odd arrests, and major injuries inflicted by Lewis Logging/ Maxxam/ Humboldt County sheriffs etc., they have been mostly cleared out now and the clearcut logging has begun in *earnest* and will continue all through the summer. All Douglas Fir old-growth will likely be cut and gone within a few years, at the rate they are cutting now.
2. I talked with:
- Paul Mason, head of EPIC: said we'd call them in Oct, figure out what we should talk with lawmakers about.
- Duff (they're back from their trip all around the West showing the movie), and then Taun, HAVC bookkeeper, clearing things up.
- Josh Brown, who invites any and all RATS to go on up there and take a look and/or help anytime.
- Alicia L., she was very psyched about RATS' support.
- Dazzle and Ali, who work at the Mattole Restoration Council (the original "MRC"!) they're trying to get Gov Davis and the State to buy the 2000 acres of old-growth where Maxxam is logging right now.
- Cecilia Lanman, former head of EPIC,
- Danny Dellinger, who wrote the "Ghost of a Chance" song.
Others i saw or talked to: Soma, Darryl C., Jungle, Tofu, Shunka, Felony...
cambium and chloroplasts-
M