The Earth First! Roadshow emerges from the depths

EF! Roadshow ends with a bang!

[Note from Cascadia Summer and friends]

Dear Friends of the Forest,
On July 6th forest defenders from Cascadia and across the country set up road blockades at the Umpcoos Ridge timber sale to save some of the last native forests in Oregon from clearcutting. The Elliot State Forest is one of the few remaining intact coastal forest ecosystems, and provides critical habit for Spotted Owls, Coho Salmon, and Marbled Murrelets.

Logging has been halted in the forest but the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), the state patrol, and the Douglass County Sheriffs have begun extracting people from the blockades using heavy handed police state tactics. So far over 23 people have been confirmed arrested in police raids on the blockade. There are still 6 people holding it down in the trees and intricate aerial blockades keeping the logging company out of our native forests. All of these people desperately need your support! [The remaining blockaders were arrested this morning, 6/9/09, but the resistance continues!]

We are reaching out to our friends far and wide to try and raise bail and legal support money for those already arrested and those facing charges for defending the forests. You can donate using paypal by going to the website http://www.forestdefensenow.org . You can also call ODF to demand they withdraw, drop all charges and buy back the Umpcoos Ridge and Fishing Cougar timber sales from Roseburg Forest Products:

ODF # 503-945-7200
Roseberg Forest Products # 541-679-3311

Getting Rowdy at the Elliott Free State

Also, read and view photos about the Elliot Free State, Cascadia
Summer and Oregon forests:

Updates from the blockade-
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/07/392582.shtml and
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/07/392548.shtml

Photos from logging on Umpcoos Ridge-
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/07/392605.shtml

Info on Cascadia Summer-
http://www.forestdefensenow.org/

Thanks!

From the Forests,
Cascadia Summer (and friends)

[please post and forward widel

Native forests in the Umpcoos Ridge timber sale, destroyed by Roseburg Forest Products

The past few weeks have been loaded with trainings, old friends, and beautiful landscapes. After leaving the midwest, we headed to Denver, where we led trainings for High Country Earth First!, who is kicking off their campaign against the expansion on I-70. Then we headed to Durango, for the Feral Futures gathering – a coming together of the primitive skills community, the radical environmental movement, and the rainbow family – where we played in the woods for three beautiful days, soaking up all the ponderosa pines and hot mountain springs. Salt Lake City and its surrounding towns hosted us for 5 days of trainings and presentations, including some trainings focused on the work that Peaceful Uprising is doing around SB81, local anti-immigration legislation, climate change, and fossil fuel extraction. From there, onward onto Reno and the Bay area.

Arriving on the west coast has given us a chance to reconnect with folks who have been doing Earth First! work for decades and we’ve been doing a lot of sharing stories and songs around the campfire. We stopped in Humbolt County for a few days of skillshares with the folks who are involved in the full-time direct action campaign just outside of Arcata, protecting second-growth redwoods from being cut by Green Diamond.
We’ve been overwhelmed with all the learning and adventures! We can’t wait to see you all at the rondy!

Join the Earth First! Roadshow and others in front of the Peruvian Consulate in San Francisco, Tuesday, June 16, 2009, at 9:00 AM

Peruvian Consulate
870 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 362-5185 … give ‘em a call!

What’s going on? ~~~~~~~~~~~
Dozens of people are estimated to have been killed in clashes between police and indigenous activists protesting oil and mining projects in the northern Peruvian Amazonian province of Bagua. Peruvian authorities have declared a military curfew, and troops are patrolling towns in the Amazon jungle. Authorities say up to twenty-two policemen have been killed, and two remain missing. The indigenous community says at least forty people, including three children, were killed by the police this weekend.

Earth First Roadshow dams Home Depot in Lawrence, Kansas

-EF! Roadshow crew (the one’s left on the outside)

[PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG!]
————————————-

Hey, all you ‘angry Home Depot customers’ and friends of the Earth
First! Roadshow would you mind callin’ 1-800-553-3199 (press extension # 5), Or you can also, send an email to them direct from this link: DAM HOME DEPOT

Tell Home Depot to drop the charges against our friends in Arapahoe
County Jail, Colorado.. and to get the hell out of wild Patagonia!

——————————————————–
For Immediate Release: May, 27, 2009

Home Depot has Earth First! activists arrested for action against dams in Patagonia

Denver, CO– Two Earth First! activists were arrested at a Home Depot
this morning in Glendale. The arrests followed a banner being hung off
the roof of a Home Depot store reading “Dam Home Depot, NOT
Patagonia!” Supporters of the arrested activists demand that Home
Depot cut all ties and voice their opposition to this project at
tomorrows corporate shareholders meeting tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia.

The banner-drop action was intended to remind both the public and the company: “We’ve fought The Home Depot before and won.” Almost ten years ago, Earth First! groups around the country joined with Rainforest Action Network and others forced Home Depot to adopt wood product policies that removed old growth from their shelves. But their ongoing economic involvement with the Chilean interests that are proposing to dam wild rivers with the HidroAysen project in Patagonia shows their commitments to ‘green business’ practices to be merely empty Public Relations maneuvering.

International Rivers, an organization working to protect rivers and
defend the rights of communities that depend on them, explains that:

“The HidroAysen project involves 3 dams on the Pascua River and 2 dams on the Baker River that would flood globally rare forest ecosystems and some of the most productive agricultural land in the Aysen region. Electricity from these dams would be sent thousands of kilometers north to serve Chile’s biggest cities and its mammoth copper industry. More than 1,500 miles of transmission lines would require one of the world’s longest clearcuts–much of it through untouched temperate rainforests found nowhere else on the planet. US retailer The Home Depot is the largest buyer of timber products from the main Chilean interest promoting the dams. The Home Depot has been asked by thousands of people, including socially responsible investors, to stop buying timber from suppliers that plan to destroy the rivers and forests of Patagonia.”

According to Ron DeFeo of Home Depot (from a blog post this morning): “we don’t think it’s our place to weigh in on an issue that we have no expertise or influence over.” While DeFeo denies the company’s involvement and refuses to accept the research of International Rivers, his blog post admits that “the president of our supplier’s parent company owns shares, along with his family, in one of the companies that would work on the project.”

Earth First!, which is more of a movement than an organization, has
autonomous groups around the world who target corporations that are
responsible for devastating the planet. The movement currently has a
national Roadshow crossing the country to mobilize people to take
action against companies like Home Depot, which is currently featured
on their website www.earthfirstroadshow.wordpress.com

More information about this campaign at:
http://internationalrivers.org/patagonia

xxx

Tripods take over! (Athens, Ohio)

The Heartland
Our time in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois brought lots of new friends out to our presentations and trainings and also gave us the chance to connect with some of the old movers and shakers of the radical eco and animal rights movements. A shout-out to Roger, one of those old friends, and all he’s building at Lakevillage Homestead in Kalamazoo, a beautiful farm project that left us cold-lake refreshed and with bellies full of goat milk.

The Northwoods
Traveling to the north, we witnessed spring unfurling its first tendrils and caught folks’ enthusiasm to finally be seeing the sun. We led trainings for folks in Wisconsin who are fighting to keep the developers out of their community land project, Drumlin Farm, took a cold dip in lake Superior, and shook our booties at a show in Minneapolis.

The Plains
Just when we think it can’t get any better, we meet more people working on more inspirational projects. In Iowa we met up with some of the folks in the Wild Rose Rebellion, visited The Solidarity Center in Lawrence, Kansas, and were treated incredibly well by McFoster’s Cafe in Omaha, a place run by some long-time eco-rebels. Even where things are spread out, the prairies are all but destroyed, and sprawl is an ever-growing threat, we’re finding large communities of resistance.

Every time we start to wonder if we’ve packed our schedule too full or if we’re crazy for even attempting such a journey, we’re reminded why it is we’re doing this: to get to sing songs and share stories of inspiration around the country and remember that we’re in this together — a whole shit ton of us. Thanks to everyone for all the life-blood and inspiration!

...we've been hard at work to keep you informed of Roadshow happenings amidst the crumbling of civilization.

As we make our way through what’s left of the once-vast hardwood forests of the midwest, the beauty of dogwoods and redbuds along the roadside to keep us company, it occurred to us that some of you who have attended or are anticipating the Roadshow (and those we didn’t get to cross paths with) may be interested in hearing a bit about the trail behind us, and the one to come.

Hope you enjoy checking out what we’ve been up to. There is a fuller assessment and analysis of our efforts that is on the way, looking at where we have succeeded and where we have fallen short.

Please help us spread the word by adding us as a links to other sites. Thanks.

Stay in trouble, take risks,
-EF! Roadshow Crew

P.S. Got plans to get out to Cascadia this summer yet?!…
http://www.2009rrr.org/
P.S.S. Still haven’t subscribed to the EF! Journal yet? Now’s your
chance! www.earthfirstjournal.org

Back to New York
We completed our northeast tour loop in the Hudson Valley with a stop in Albany (where Emma’s Revolution played) and headed west, on to Ithaca, a stronghold of the opposition to drilling the Marcellus Shale for gas extraction and on to Rochester. Although our tour was dealt a disorienting blow by the arrests of friends in Indiana (for their opposition to I-69), leaving the Roadshow crew smaller than ever as one of us left to assist with jail support, we left the Empire state buzzing from the great music, good discussions and successful blockades workshops knowing that the State’s repression only feeds our resistance.

Into the ‘Heartwood’
Some thoughts on the region from our friends with Heartwood: “This region was once blanketed with a majestic hardwood forest containing more than 70 species of hardwood trees. Unfortunately, much of this forest has been cleared and what remains is mostly isolated fragments of public land that nonetheless play a critical role in providing habitat for wildlife, purifying the air and water, moderating global climate change, and offering places of beauty and enjoyment..Today, [Heartwood's] efforts remain rooted in the heart of the central hardwood region, with an emphasis on our “core states” of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri.”
Thus far we have made stops in Cleveland, Athens, Cincinnati, (Ohio), offering presentations, tri-pod and climbing training, and more.

As we post this update, we are about out the door to the “Community Forum on Repression of Eco-Activists” here in Bloomington, Indiana.

Take risks, stay in trouble… See you all on the road!