wombat18
09 Mar 2005, 10:01 AM
The State of Oregon vs. Environmental Protest (http://www.counterpunch.org/roselle03022005.html)
"When it comes to civil liberties, most people will remember 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
But if you are a treehugger, you will probably remember when the federal government, and some states, started taking the gloves off back in the mid-eighties. The commencement was a series of laws passed to target a perceived eco-terrorist threat, following the widely publicized sawmill accident in Sonoma County where a young mill worker was injured. A spike in a tree caused a saw blade to snap and hit the worker. It was no matter that the spike was placed by an enraged local landowner and not by any of the activists trying to protect the last old-growth Redwoods on the Pacific Coast. The national news media cranked up the story that eco-terrorists were everywhere planning violence and a series of new laws were passed to deter them from wreaking havoc on the beleaguered timber industry.
Most of these new laws didn't distinguish much between property destruction, peaceful protest and acts of civil disobedience".
"When it comes to civil liberties, most people will remember 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
But if you are a treehugger, you will probably remember when the federal government, and some states, started taking the gloves off back in the mid-eighties. The commencement was a series of laws passed to target a perceived eco-terrorist threat, following the widely publicized sawmill accident in Sonoma County where a young mill worker was injured. A spike in a tree caused a saw blade to snap and hit the worker. It was no matter that the spike was placed by an enraged local landowner and not by any of the activists trying to protect the last old-growth Redwoods on the Pacific Coast. The national news media cranked up the story that eco-terrorists were everywhere planning violence and a series of new laws were passed to deter them from wreaking havoc on the beleaguered timber industry.
Most of these new laws didn't distinguish much between property destruction, peaceful protest and acts of civil disobedience".