Cascadia Forest Defense

to be falling apart, maybe we could do better. Uh. Speaking of doing better, you know one thing that sometimes helps us do better getting getting in the face of people fucking shut up and being like, hey, that's not that's not cool. Don't be doing that, Garrison, that's your leading. Take it from here. Yeah, Hi, so we I've been I've been trying to keep better a better job of like following ecological defense movements happening both in the States

and in other countries. I know there was there was a big one up in Canada recently. There was a huge one in Germany too, just the other day. Yeah, I know the one, the one in Canada. There's a uh the uh, I forget, I forget what the actual indigenous group is called. Um, maybe maybe someone else So the the um house no sauti um yeah, the people who who who took back their land and blocked the road off and now the to and the wet suit end. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Um there we go, yeah,

basically taking their land back, blocking off the road. And now our samep is getting called in and we'll see how that develops. And in Guatemala there's protests against Canadian mining um in Maya indigenous community that have have have gotten pretty heavily militarized at this point. There's fun, there's

a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. Lot of stuff on the psychological defense side of things, UM include including in you know, the Pacific northwest here with all of with all of the forests and and as such in this area and part of this kind of exploration into into ecological defense, I wanted to talk with some people who are a little a little bit more well versed uh in this type of thing than I am.

So I've there's the two people have agreed to talk with us, um salmon cat, both people who work who work on the kind of thing from like an activism standpoint, U, yeah,

say hi, hello, hey y'all. So very very thankful that they are going to be talking with us today, So I thought we could we could probably just start by kind of discussing what forest defense is and how it kind of has a history specifically in this area, but but kind of more broadly, Like if if people listened to the Earth First episodes, you know, that kind of that covered like anti pipeline stuff, but we didn't really get much into like forest if ends and you know,

like the traditional like tree sits and that kind of thing. Um. So, so yeah, what's what's up with defending the forest? What's what's what's going on with that? Um? Yeah, thanks for that great intro. UM. I mean, forest defense is I think probably the most characteristic um type of direct action in this bioregion. And here we're talking from Cascadia right now.

I actually moved out here from the East Coast ten years ago specifically to get involved with forest defense because this place has an incredibly rich history UM of people basically just throwing down, risking life and limb to stop Jane Saws from taking down some of the oldest and most special forests out here. UM. And so I'd say, you know, for forest defense, direct action is in a lot of ways rooted right here, UM, in this bioregion. And obviously, UM, like all kinds of movements, things have

changed over the course of time. UM back in the eighties. UM, when in seventies, when forest defense was really really kicking up and stopping all growth logging specifically out here, when it was kind of like rampant old growth, UM, clear cutting. Um, it really took the shape of trying to focusing on ecology, focusing on the integrity of these ecosystems, and basically like doing everything possible to stop the chainsaws. And UM. Now

obviously a lot has changed. We have the Northwest Forest Plan and some policies which are doing better to kind of like protect old places and old forests. But at the same time, the same ship is happening. Um. You know, the timber industry is great at using euphemisms to kind of cover up it's clear cutting anyways, and finding policy

loopholes to target some incredible places. And now I think, UM, where we're at with like the direct action movement is we're in the context of climate change, so we're not just defending forests for the stake of these like incredible ecological strongholds, but we're also defending them because we recognize that forest defense is climate defense. This is a like environmental justice issue, it's a human issue, it's a community issue.

And so now direct action, I think is um, you know, happening not just the name of our forests, but in the name of our communities in our future. UM. That it's just as rich um now as it has ever been, and especially right now and especially since which I know we'll get into. People have been throwing down all over

this fire region to protect what's left of our forests. Yeah, and I think it's it's good to get into kind of why how the fires have impacted this because one of the shady things that has been done is we had I think most people in the country are where Oregon had unprecedented wildfires this year, and we had unprecedented wildfires last year, and we're going to have unprecedented wildfires

every year for a while. UM. And whenever these fires run through, they don't like destroy every tree in their wake, but they char them. And logging companies then come in under the guise of like, well, we have to make this area safe so that like the fires don't burn here next year, so we've got to cut down all of these trees uh um and and clear cut this

part of area of public forests. So like, as you're driving around in forests that you used to be able to do stuff, and you'll find areas that are just like blocked off because mining companies are coming or logging companies are coming through and clear cutting all of these trees that could very easily recover from the fire um or that weren't even burned by it. But we're just like in this area that they said, Okay, well we have to clear this out in order to make it safe.

And it's kind of this way to like back door and the guise of fire protection like expand logging. Yeah, and just to add to that to the logging companies love to say that the reasons we have increased wildfires because there's an overgrowth in the forest because of the Northwest Forest plant, because there's more protections for the forest. Fires are happening worse because we're not getting there bogging

the forest and removing all the fuel. M hm. So you have like this two part thing that like Kat just mentioned, where like on the one hand, companies are like, we need to log more to prevent wildfire, which is bullshit, and we can talk about why. On the other hand, after fire has burned through an area, they're like, we need to log because we need to help the forest

recover ecologically. Also, we need to salvage all of the timber before it rots and goes bad, and like all of these reasons and so basically it's just like fire has become the excuse to just like log preemptively and log after the fact. And yeah, it's a total total ship show. Yeah, I mean the think this this kind of falls into capitalists trying to use climate change is just another way to find things to extract and things

to grow on. Right, it's they're they're going to try to find their own way to sneak in when all of this you know, ecological disaster is happening to you know, sell you whatever green safe product is going to help against the collapse, or you know, package things in a way that makes it seem like it's solving this you know problem, but it's actually it's part of it's part of the satan thing from the yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it's it's you see that's in every single industry and

it's always it's it's going to be like this because this is the only way that capitalism knows how to address this issue is by just turning it into another turning it into another thing to consume and another thing to sell in package. Pretty pretty grib Yeah. And there's I mean, there's cascading effects too, because they cut down these trees under the guise of making it safe for the next fire season, but which also makes a big chunk of land a lot more vulnerable to like mud

slides and the torrential raining that we're having right now. Um, and it's also going to get more common, because that's how fucking climate change works. It's it's just like the comprehensive fury comprehensive. And let us be clear too that logging doesn't actually work to prevent wildfire, you know, even you know, they say that it does, But the kind of logging that they do in the name of wildfire

prevention just looks like clear cuts. And we have a pretty robust body of science now showing that those kinds of activities actually make fire hazard more severe for local communities. So that's like one of the things they're doing, and we've been calling it just gaslighting, Like they're gaslighting all of us by saying, you know, there's nothing to see here, there's nothing to see here. We're taking care of you all.

You know, we're barely logging at all. And then we've got community members on the ground, um, despite the closure orders who are like, actually, there's a lot to see here, and you all are like completely devastating the landscape and further harming our communities. Um. So yeah, it's total gaslighting. Yeah, an Oregon has both in terms of like watching fires and watching logging, some like rules that are not in place in other areas, especially for like even for for

press and the like. Like it's it's actually hard to get in to look at this stuff, um without you know, breaking some sort of law technically, which is not at all shady. Um yeah, yeah, I feel like that's another

important thing. And maybe cat can jump onto is just um basically, I mean, I think what people aren't understanding is that after the fires, the these federal forest managers closed gates and essentially are converting public land into private land by you know, using the threat of violence to kick people out if they go onto their public land. And since and they say until at least, the only

folks allowed behind these gates are cops and loggers. And so this is like literally, um, you know, the enclosure of our public lands and like the privatization of our public lands so that cops and loggers can do whatever the hell they want. Yep. And it's the kind of thing I mean, it's the kind of thing that people if you're if you're if the if the Bundy's and that group actually meant the stuff they were saying, like the rhetoric they were putting out, it's the kind of

thing they would be piste off about. Two Because you're right, it is the enclosure of public land by the government um and corporation without any kind of consent from the people who are supposed to be the collective owners of

that land. It's it's a again, something that a lot of people should be angry about, who aren't angry about because there's been this huge propaganda campaign in the Northwest about timber unity and the like and like supporting the timber industry um by destroying like the single greatest gift this entire part of the world has. Uh, It's it's pretty frustrating, yea. Anyway, I have to we have to actually have a quick break so I can go watch

my soccer game at the Timber Stadium. Uh, completely unrelated. So I'm going to drive out to Wheeler, Oregon myself. But we all have different things to do during the break, um, but also in the break, I guess we can probably do an ad break here, because why not? All right, Yeah, everybody loves ads, and we're backed still talking about force defense. I wanted there's something that people should probably know before we go further about the way that that Oregon works.

So for a while, Oregon is a place where you can't get elected, um in a lot of parts of a lot of populated parts of Oregon if you're a Republican. So the Republicans just plain ice um and and pretend and like throw out some some social justice a language while while still doing all of the extract of stuff they were going to do anyway. And that's the story with like Ted Wheeler, um in his family. So Ted Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, comes from Timber money.

His father was a major Republican donor. Not that the Democrats don't have a lot of extractive history behind them, but like it's it's very obvious what's happening with the Wheelers where um, they were huge Republican donors and huge backers of the right, and then Oregon had this kind of switch politically, um, and so Ted Wheeler just started throwing out nice social justicey language. But the whole you know, he's he's I'm sure going to make a run for

governor at some point in the near future. And you've got this like this dressed up very extractive logging industry and politicians that always find a way to kind of make it seem palatable to the liberal majority. Um. And they've gotten pretty good at that because it doesn't I don't know. I think maybe we're coming to the end of this period, but like I haven't, I haven't seen up until this last year a lot of widespread kind of outrage about the clear cutting UM. And they also

hide it pretty well. Like if you're driving through these beautiful public forests in Oregon, the areas that are right along the road will generally be pristine and you'll see old growth and everything. But sometimes you can see, as you like turn a corner or something that like, oh, that old growth only goes back a couple of a couple of dozen yards and then it's a clear cut UM and they'll they'll they'll hide it so that it's it's not as obvious because they know what upset people.

So there's this, there's this kind of surprisingly, um surprisingly thorough campaign to do as much of this as possible without upsetting people, um, which which means there's a potential to upset people, which means there's a potential to actually stop this if enough people get upset. But it's you know, you're you're you're going against folks who have thought a lot about how to do this in a way that isn't going to upset the apple cart. So how do you upset the apple cart? I guess that is what

I'm asking. Well, I think one way that we upset the apple cart is by bringing people out to these places. And you know, in the action that happened on Tuesday that looked like disrupting and disobeying a federal closure order in order to bring people out to these places, um, you know, basically metaphorically walking behind what you were describing

the beauty strip along the highway and seeing what's behind it. Um. And you know, as we were saying earlier, unfortunately because of all these federal closure orders after the fire, that looks like risking um, you know, repercussion, state repression, arrest even um, in order to just lay eyes on it. But that is the way that we chipped the apple cart. We get people to see these places so that it cuts through the gas lighting that the industry is doing

and people can literally viscerally feel and see the damage. Um. And there's no way to convince them that that's okay once they see it. And how do you do go about like finding people to bring into this, convincing people to come Like, what does kind of that effort look like? You want to answer this one cat, You did a ton of recruitment, Yeah, totally. UM. I think a big

part of it is getting them while they're young. UM. I think that like young people right now are already pretty radicalized, um, compared to ten years or so, probably because of I think George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and social the use of social media and those movements. UM. So I am a college student and we're seeing like so many people coming in and ready to throw down, like they just cannot wait to get involved, and we'll kind of just show up to anything. UM. So I

think that that's like a major tactic for sure. UM. And then also making sure that when you have like a an action that you're recruiting people for that it's I'm very easy to plug in. It's like very accessible, um and kind of just like having it organized very well so it's not daunting to come in. Do you want to add to that, sam, Well, just to like share a little more about like how we did that

with this particular action that happened on Tuesday. Um. Basically, you know, we it was a Tuesday, brainy, freezing middle of the forest planning this action, did not think and behind a federal closure order, so everyone on site risking arrest um and planning this action, it felt like we would be lucky as ship if we got ten people out there. UM. But I will say, um, it was easy as ship to get fifty people out there. And that's because people care. UM. And you know, I think

we did. In terms of organizing strategy, we used the affinity group model, and so we had a core you know, there was a core group of organizers, and those organizers recruited through affinity groups and their affinity groups and UM that helped to keep kind of information secure and um, you know, everything tightly organized. But UM, people want people were really desiring to get together and do something, especially in the past couple of years of COVID, people are

just like eager to do something. UM. And on top of that, you know, we we promised that this isn't just an opportunity to potentially get arrested, but this is an educational opportunity and a movement building opportunities. So while the road was blocked with a slash pile and a fire truck, there were workshops going on. There were hikes going on in the forest that's supposed to be cut. UM. There was discussions about know your rights trainings and affinity groups.

We had um a band um playing on top of a fire truck, and there was a dance party and basically, you know, we're like building community and solidarity UM in a positive way while sucking shut up. I think that's the key. And I mean, where do you uh, how do how do you have like what is the let me think of a way to phrase this. What is kind of the next step here because they haven't started logging this area yet, but they're kind of doing like

the pre prep work. Um, what do you what do you think actually can be done to to halt it? Like is it? Is it a problem? Like because it seems to me that it's there's got to be like a mix of tactics there to actually get them to stop. And you're dealing with a number of different um threats, including not just at the state level, but these federal closure orders. Like what is I don't know what what

does the path forward look like to you? Yeah, So there's a preliminary injunction being forth by some nonprofits and so this is a really good example of different tactics coming in and so um, the preliminary injunction is basically to state that what they're doing before services doing is illegal. Um. But before that that can be passed, they can come in at any point and log the area. And so that's where direct action comes in to slow them down and halp them as much as possible until the courts

can process that injunction. And that feels really huge to Like what Kat just said is like where is the place of direct action in forest defense? This is like the golden moment for direct action while there's like an open legal case that we're waiting on a judge to settle, and the timber industry is like coming in ready to moot out the case by logging before it can even be decided. And like to just add a little bit

more backstory to on. Like another reason why people are so pissed about this, um is that you know, this watershed has been I think like beloved and also embattled since the eighties. Like the infamous Eastern Massacre logging event happened in the same watershed. Where could you explain, Yeah, yeah, no,

totally um item. A timber company was planning to clear cut log old growth forest out there and started moving on it on Easter um in the snow, and a bunch of bad US direct action activists set up a five tiered blockade on a logging road to hold off the logging and successfully did for um days and days until a bunch of them I think over a dozen folks got arrested, thrown in jail, and the forest was clear cut. Um. So hence you know the Eastern massacre

name um. But a ton of folks who you know still work in forest defense in the spy A region. We're there and remember that story, and we're with us UM when we were out there this week telling that story. And you know since then, between and now, people have been showing up again and again and again in this watershed as it is so special to try and fight off logging. And myself and Cat have been a part of efforts over the past handful of years to um

fight off a number of logging projects out there. We were successful in doing that. We actually like snacked the Forest Services grubby hands off of a bunch of oil growth because our scrappy friends spent days exploring this watershed and documenting, doing like site specific science citizen science documentation and giving it to the Forest Service. And we fought them and one and protected a bunch of the forest.

And then the fires came through and they closed the gates and they secretly changed all of these contracts to include clear cut logging. And so that is why there is an open lawsuit because we believe it's illegal what they're doing. It's sketchy and illegal, yeah, but it does it does illustrate like kind of the depth of the fight necessary, not just in forest defense but at all efforts of kind of resisting the extract of industries that are driving a lot of climate change. It's it's not enough.

It's never enough to win the first victory. They're going to find some way to to to swoop around to the flanks and try to take it away from you like they're doing right now. Um, which is exhausting. Um, it seems exhausting, but it doesn't mean it. You can ignore it. It's fucking exhausting. Yeah. I always say it's like our forests, our federal management agencies, they suffer from this powerful amnesia where they just like keep coming back

with the same bullshit proposals. But like our movement does not suffer from that, and we are just like building power and getting stronger and getting more successful. So like when people left on Tuesday, um, there was a promise that people will be back if logging happens, and we're very sure that that would be the case. And if if people are in the Cascadian bioregion and are like,

well this sounds pretty sweet. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna keep keep some trees where they are as opposed to putting them on the back of a truck to drive somewhere else. How could they get involved, where where

might they reach out to? Well, there's a few different groups who were a part of this UM definitely UM, the Portland Rising Tide, Cascadia Forest Defenders, UM, CAT can talk about Climate Justice League and UM maybe the action that you all put on yesterday as a follow up and like how folks can get involved with that UM but basically, yeah, you can follow us on Twitter, UM and Instagram and and please UM, you know, keep a lookout because we will be we'll be getting it out

far and wide if there's a call for folks to get out there again. Yeah, and Climate Justice League is an organ UM at the University of Oregon and people are free to just join the organization. Community members are

also involved. UM. But we did put on an event yesterday where Tyler Ferres of Ferris Logging or First Timber UM, who is actually the company that bought the rights to Brighton Bush, which was the area where we did UM the action on Tuesday, he was giving a speech at the University of Oregon UM to talk about post firelogging,

which was just like crazy timing. They kind of just like put it in our lap and so we recruited from that action or like let's just drop the hell out of this UM talk, and so we like showed up and kind of tried to sneak in. They were having zoom issues, which like luckily distracted them from the fact that there was like forty or fifty like pretty punk,

anarchy looking kids in the room. Um. But we like let him go on for a little bit, and then we started to ask him questions that he obviously didn't know the answer to. Um. We kept like asking questions about, you know, the science says this, but you're stating this where you getting your science from? And he kept saying things like, well, that's more of a political question and the statistics don't really back up what you're saying. Um.

And then yeah, we just chanted and made him really nervous. Yeah. And as a heads up, if you're if you're looking to win an argument on a zoom call, you can just say, uh, the statistics don't back you up without citing statistics. It's it's it's really the easiest way to do that. M I guess I am kind of curious for like you guys said, you've you've prevented you know, some of the stuff in the past by doing stuff like documentation. Um, and you know when when when that

kind of thing becomes not enough. You know that this this area does have a rich history of kind of direct action stuff to protect forests with a get also like a mixed success like by note means does direct action always always work to do anything? Right now, we still have the line three pipeline, We still have all of these things that direct action has tried to prevent.

But it turns out a lot of the kind of direct action that's associated with these types of like ecological things is is kind of more performative than anything else, you know, Like it is kind of like a tree set is about gaining media media like publicity, because they're gonna get you down right like eventually, and it's and it's and it's gonna be painful because like you're not going to be sitting up there for years to to to to to to prevent the treat from being logged.

So how close do you think we are into to like reaching that kind of territory like it was in like the nineties and eighties where it is like a lot of a lot of people like blocking off roads and doing and and doing that kind of thing. You know, more like you know what what it crosses into that it's more like autonomous. It's not it's not like led by a single organization by any means. See, it's more it's more decentralized. But did you see that kind of

happening soon? And you know, how, how how do you think we can balance out direct action with like other like thoughtful means of trying to draw attention to these things and maybe actually and and other things like actually physically physically preventing the logging of certain areas. That's such

a good question. And um, I'm really thankful that we're talking about strategy because um, kind of, like I mentioned, I moved out here like ten years ago to do force defense work and have seen so many instances in where people are trying to do direct action in a in a time and space where it doesn't make sense. Um,

where it's like basically slated too. It's going to lose because um, it's just impossible too, as you said, you know, hold this blockade for weeks and weeks and weeks and the snow um indefinitely, you know, as we you know,

as they continue to try to log in definitely. So there's definitely a sweet spot for where um, the sort of kind of the sort of direct action that we're talking about, like blockading, where that is most useful, and that sweet spot is definitely when there is another decisive move, like another like legal victory that's waiting in the wings or um, you know, we won one in Washington without a legal victory because we shamed the ship out of

the Department of Natural Resources in the Seattle Times and they were like, WHOA, We're sorry, um, And so direct action held off something until we were able to sufficiently shame them and deter them. But typically they don't shame well, um, and so typically, um, you know, we need illegal there needs to be a legal element UM backing it up.

So direct action is a time buyer. But that said, like obviously, blockading things is not the only type of direct action, and part of the rich history of forest offense in this buyer region is other kinds of more um necessarily you know, discrete kinds of direct action that obviously you know, I'm um not a part of speaking on this radio show, but UM would would publicly, um, you know, say like those things probably need to happen, and I hope they fucking had what what what what

I could say is that I've I've seen these things happening in other places, like in like in the Atlanta Defending Forest movement. Right now, I have I I have seen evidence that individuals not associated with any group are putting spikes and trees, and that is that is, that is something that is happening, right, And all that takes is one person, right, It's that's not like a group of twenty people going into the four risk to do that.

That's the one person in an afternoon, right. So those are the types of like single person direct actions, which again, yeah, any type of direct action is going to be scary, right, You're you're once you start doing that, that is you know that introduced to certain things that will is kind of is kind of more frightening to you as a person. Um. But but it's it is something that is happening in other places. Um. And it has showed to at the

very least upset the people who are wanting logging to happen. Generally, they're not thrilled when they when they find when they

find these things. Um yeah, yeah, because like it's like it's I mean, I think like when it comes down to it, it's like about knowing what your goal is with this tactic like on you know, in in the action that happened this past week, there was an understanding that the goal was to you know, shine a light on this thing that's happening in secrecy, shame the Forest Service, and build movement, movement building so that we're ready u when people need to throw down for real and and

that might happen soon. We weren't trying to hold the space for weeks and weeks and weeks um. That wasn't the goal. So like going in being like what kind of an action are we trying to do? What are we trying to complish? Are we trying to be decisive? Are we trying to like shape the conditions necessary for success and like culture build, or we trying like what

are we actually trying to do? And then like coming away with that, having having that clear having a clear sense of that beforehand, I think really really is crucial because I've definitely observed direct actions where that is not the case and people have not thought those things through and it becomes the kind of unfun version of chaos um where you know, things things don't really get done and you're just kind of sitting around and everyone's kind

of slightly miserable because again, you're in a freezing forest, um, and no one really knows what the hell they're doing. UM. So definitely having those kind of things thought through beforehand is extremely useful when you're deciding to trudge your way into some cold, dark woods. Now we're going for chaotic good, not chaotic evil. Yeah, well a little bit of chaotic, Well,

it depends, it depends what. It depends what we mean by evil evil evil to some people, we we yeah, anyway, and any other kind of historical notes on forest defense or any other kind of random random tidbits like to mention before before we close out. The one thing that I feel like it's super important to say to people is that forest defense is not just about protecting forests. It's about protecting all of us. We know now like forest defenses, climate defense. Our forests are our best natural

tool for fighting climate change. And also like we need them here. Most of Oregonian get their drinking water from forests and watersheds, like they literally are sustaining all of us. And so yeah, we hope folks join like not just for the sake of like being you know, hippie tree huggers. Even though you know some of us are, but also because like we need to survive as a people and as a planet and um or sorry. Best way to do that it's it's the cheapest most advanced form of

carbon capture we have yet. So yeah, it seems seems kind of asinine to chop that all down to build some shitty sheds. Mm hmm, all right, well that's a sad. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com

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