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BOF proposal Pitchfork Demands Pitchfork WOPR |
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The Pitchfork Rebellion is an Uprising of Forest Dwellers who are tired of being abused by Big Timber and Big Pesticide – i.e. ‘Big Agriculture’ – and who believe, as documented in our ongoing Investigation of the Influence of Big Business on State and Federal Agencies, that the government agencies charged with protecting the environment and the public health have been effectively co-opted by private industry to the profound detriment of the environment and the public health. Our movement began with a very unusual protest rally! On February 11, 2005, about 70 forest-dwellers from the heavily clear-cut, heavily pesticide-sprayed Triangle Lake area gathered in Greenleaf, Oregon, carrying – you guessed it! – PITCHFORKS! We called this demonstration The Pitchfork Rebellion in order to make the following point: We are country folk, not your usual big-city environmental protesters! Besides the pitchforks, we carried lambs, goats, chickens, baskets of produce, and other farm-related items. The location in Greenleaf was the sight of yet another mudslide caused by a clear-cut, this one had damaged a house and shut down Highway 36. That highway is the only route into or out of our community – our only way to get groceries, gas, or get to work – and was shut down TWELVE TIMES that Winter due to clear-cut related mudslides. But mudslides were one of our small concerns! The main reason we held this protest rally – which, by the way, was the largest rally of any kind in the history of tiny Greenleaf! – was to protest the ongoing pesticide aerial assault by Timber Industry helicopters on our community, an assault that has sent children to the hospital and resulted in many cancers and other illnesses, and to protest against the State and Federal government agencies that permit this assault and call it legal. (We call it ‘Eco-Terrorism’!) That demonstration, the beginning of the forest dweller uprising called The Pitchfork Rebellion, was documented in the March 16, 2006, issue of Eugene Weekly. There we read: “Drive west along Oregon’s Highway 36, past Triangle Lake… and you’ll find yourself in coastal mountain country…. It should be pretty. But the clear-cut hills that rise steeply from the highway are an eyesore…. Families own the lowlands, but city-based timber companies hold deeds to most of the hilltops. They manage them for short-term profit, clear-cutting … then dousing the naked slopes with herbicides…. You’ll likely pass more logging trucks than cars on Highway 36. The sound of helicopters is as regular as birdsong. Its been that way for decades…. But something snapped in Greenleaf recently, and it wasn’t just a tree under the weight of a mudslide. You could see it on the side of Highway 36 on Feb. 11, at the base of a particularly homely clear-cut…. folks in jeans and baseball hats held hand-printed signs saying ‘No Spray’ and ‘Health is Wealth’. They took turns at a microphone, lambasting big timber and pesticide companies for poisoning them for profit, politicians for failing to pass substantive laws to protect their families, and the media for not noticing…. This was the beginning of The Pitchfork Rebellion.” The demonstration was filmed by a public access television show in Eugene and shown many times on television. That film was turned into a DVD and widely distributed. As word spread of The Pitchfork Rebellion and our crusade against the aerial pesticide assault of forest dwellers by the Timber Industry, our ranks swelled. We are now most likely the largest movement of forest dwellers organized for any issue in the State of Oregon. Two years after that first Eugene Weekly cover-story, we again found ourselves on the front cover. The issue (dated February 28, 2008) pictures our Triangle Lake School surrounded by a fifty-five acre clear-cut that is being doused with herbicide and is titled: TRIANGLE LAKE SCHOOL UNDER PESTICIDE ASSAULT. The article interviews members of our community who have been made sick by herbicide spray drift and asks the question: WHY IS THERE A BUFFER ZONE TO PROTECT FISH BUT NO BUFFER ZONE AROUND SCHOOLS OR HOMES? Currently, there is no legal buffer zone to prevent a Timber Industry helicopter from spraying right up to your property line, even if your child’s bedroom window is a few feet away, and the sprays can drift more than a mile! |
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