Category: Articles

For the third year in a row, Headwaters Forest supporters are in the woods demonstrating for the preservation of ALL 60,000 acres of Pacific Lumber Company’s (PL) Humboldt County redwood forest holdings. After years of encroaching chainsaw massacres, the last six groves of ancient trees stand tall in a sea of devastation. Caring activists have dedicated years to opposing the insatiable greed of this corporation. Last fall, PL and its Texan parent company Maxxam, entered into negotiations toward a deal for Headwaters that equals nothing but a big fat SELLOUT for the largest unprotected redwood forest on the planet. The resounding consensus is that Clinton’s slick election time dealmaking might leave the Headwaters complex more vulnerable to habitat loss, while saving less than 7500 acres and only two of the six ancient groves as a tree museum.

Earth First! is committed to oppose this pathetic whitewash at every turn. By maintaining high profile nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience throughout September and October, we hope to create political and financial pressure that presents a real crisis to the corporate and governmental powers-that-want to be. We know that true power-staying power– lies with the people united. Over 1500 supporters were arrested last fall, breaking the law for a greater good. This year we want to see those numbers skyrocket, as more and more folks come to the woods, gates and city streets to defy the property lines that serve to silence the will of the people.

The 1986 takeover of PL and the Headwaters Forest by Charles Hurwitz’s Maxxam is a classic robberbaron tale. After being bailed out of debt from his failed Texas Savings and Loan bank, the real estate tycoon bought PL and several other companies, hoping to use their profits to eventually pay off his debt. After 10 years on his chopping block, less than 5000 fragmented acres of the 60,000 remains untouched. The new PL is logging faster than ever before, as Hurwitz races against time to avoid losing out on potential profits. In exchange for the 7500 acres, the Feds are giving him 380 million dollars and other as yet undisclosed state lands. Congress approved the cash in July, but Pete Wilson is having a hard time dealing. Always paving the way for extractive industry, he seems stumped as to how to engineer something so unconventional. Alongside the land sale, PL is supposed to submit a Habitat Conservation Plan for the future management of all their Humboldt Co. forestland. It’s a process under the Endangered Species Act that’s supposed to define how the company or developer will avoid trashing an endangered species’ habitat., U.S. Fish and Wildlife consults, collects date and makes the final decision. What it usually ends up being is a loophole around the law.

On September 15, the endangered marbled murrelet’s nesting season officially ended, and PL can salvage again in all the groves except those in the Deal. Until then, while the parties are negotiating PL’s HCP and waiting for the money to come through, business continues as usual. Besides the six isolated groves of ancient trees in the Headwaters Forest, thousands of acres of residual ancient forest remains. With so much focus on setting the main Grove (3000 acres) aside for the deal, these residual stands are easily overshadowed, but they make up a network of crucial endangered wildlife habitat. EF! plans to give these places the attention they deserve.

Ecologically, the redwood forest is an endangered ecosystem that is found in its native state only in small regions far north and south of the Bay Area. The last viable ancient redwood wilderness is found only in Humboldt County. Outside of the National and State Parks, Headwaters Grove, at 3000 acres, is the very last of its size. Three different endangered species inhabit the old groves, and are quietly receding in numbers as their habitat shrinks. Marbled Murrelet, Spotted Owl and Coho Salmon are all indicator species- they rely on intact and mature forest habitat. The only way to bring their numbers back is to protect ALL of their habitat, and restore the forest that once supported them, and this cannot be done through compromises.

Last fall, huge fallen redwoods of Headwaters Forest suffered a major blow when PL carried out their plans to salvage downed trees by dragging them out of at least two smaller ancient groves with steel cables. EF! locked down to dozers and blocked their gates, but the dirty work was done in the blink of an eye. The salvage permit was issued by The California Department of Forestry (CDF) as an exemption to the Federal and State laws that had kept these groves unmolested for so long. The CDF takes policy orders from the state’s Board of Forestry, a panel of 9 timber pimps appointed by Pete Wilson, which speaks for itself. CDF is seriously on Earth Firsts! shit list.

The clenched fist of corporate greed has consumed every avenue we’ve used to defend this special place. Now is the time for a massive push from the grassroots, backed by the voices of future generations and the ancient ecological wisdom we have learned from this land. A nonviolent revolutionary mass movement for Headwaters Forest is the only thing that will create a serious disruption to business as usual. Either we watch the forest fall to fill the pockets of a corporate eco-terrorist, or we unite for justice, and reclaim the power to hold Hurwitz accountable for his crimes.

I want to start with a story. Twenty years ago the anti-nuclear movement was in its infancy. The Clamshell Alliance in New Hampshire was born in 1975. The state had broken ground for Seabrook, a nuke plant in that same state. First they had an action with 18 people planting trees on the site. They were arrested. Then they had a rally that was attended by 1500, and 180 marched to the site and were arrested. Then in May of 1977, they planned a mass occupation. Numbers surpassed their expectations and over 1400 people were arrested and over 1000 did bail solidarity for several days, costing the state $50,000 / day. Then in 1978 they planned another mass occupation, the biggest ever, as the anti-nuke movement was exploding everywhere and the Clamshell Alliance was one of the most together organizations. They got bogged down in discussions over whether cutting the chain link fence to occupy the site was non-violent, discussions over tactics used by police against other anti-nuke demonstrators in Europe like water cannons and tear gas, and discussions with the cops who wanted them to just occupy a part of the site symbolically, have some speeches, declare victory, and go home without any arrests. The group meeting decided that they couldn’t reverse a decision made by a larger group in consensus months earlier, and the occupation would proceed. Pressure continued to mount, and a smaller group ultimately reversed the decision. They held an alternative energy fair on the site, everyone had a wonderful time, no arrests occurred, and the Clamshell Alliance was never the same again.

It is hard to criticize the Headwaters activists that made the decision to cancel the post-rally civil disobedience action on Sept. 14 because they are my friends and comrades and because they were dealing with absolutely impossible logistics and living in a pressure cooker. When the rally site was moved to Stafford, the only opportunities for cd would be to bus people to the Carlotta site we did cd at in September of 1996, and we could assume the cops would not let the buses down Fisher Road, much less let people disembark; or a march to the town of Scotia (PL company town) a couple miles away, only accessible by interstate 101 or by fording a small river. Given the show of force by cops from every county north of the south Bay (I saw a city bus sized prisoner bus from Alameda county), we could assume they would not let a march onto highway 101. Impossible logistics. Question is, would a cd on a freeway onramp be better than no cd at all? Personally, I think so. The support rally would have had terrific acoustics under that overpass and at least the cops would’ve been the ones to smother the cd, not us.

I’ve been invoking a perspective learned from John Trudell in many of my rants about Headwaters of late. That being, that what the corporations and governments think they have is not power at all, it’s authority. The true power lies with the people, but only when we recognize that fact, when we gather it together and use it. We had that power in great numbers and we won’t have it again for quite a while.

The sandbagging action was a great one, and there was nothing symbolic about it at all. I’m amazed at the local people coming out saying, yeah, we want Hurwitz and Maxxam out of our neighborhood, too. But it still feels like a missed opportunity. A big one.

Ian Ray, an early member of Slingshot and a Berkeley activist in the late 1980s, died on August 24. He was 33 years old.

Ian was remarkable both for his commitment to radical political movements and for the way he lived his life. In the late 80s he organized the Berkeley chapter of the Rainforest Action Network. He was arrested repeatedly protesting militarism, injustice and environmental destruction. Ian always pushed toward greater awareness of environmental issues at a time when those issues seemed less prominent.

After moving to Berkeley in 1986 to attend UC Berkeley, he almost immediately moved to the fringes of Southside wingnut culture. Ian had such a creative mind and liberated spirit that the confines of hierarchical, industrial education couldn’t hold him. He turned not only his dorm room, but his entire floor in the uptight dorm, into a musical, pharmacological and artistic experiment.

Ian later moved to Barrington Hall, a large and extremely weird University cooperative in South Berkeley. It is hard to explain to someone who never saw Barrington what it was all about. It was a liberated zone within puritan America. Every surface in Barrington was covered with psychedelic murals and layer upon layer of graffiti. The graffiti wasn’t just tags–it contained long debates about revolution, religion, art, everything. Ian’s handwriting was often visible in the long graffiti debates, which would go on for years.

Most of the people in Barrington were outside of mainstream culture in one way or another. Often, residents were outside the mainstream in almost every way. Ian became part of an informal Nudity Liberation Front at Barrington and would often go entire days without clothes. If you visited him at Barrington, you might find him coming out of the shower. After drying off, he would just walk away and go about his business.

When conservative coop officials campaigned to shut Barrington down in 1989-90, Ian was in the forefront of unsuccessful efforts to save it. Ultimately he was one of the squatters who stayed until police moved in.

Ian was a drummer who loved music. He studied bugs (entomology) at UC Berkeley. He dropped out of school because he loved bugs so much: he had to kill bugs for his classes and after a while, he just couldn’t do it anymore.

He wrote numerous articles for Slingshot, some under the pen-name Dinsdale Pirranha. He was one of 4 Slingshoters featured naked on the back of issue #28. He loved being silly and he loved life, living things and being alive. He hugged everyone he met. He will be missed and remembered. After years of struggling against illness, Ian took his own life.

Student employees of the Keystone Job Corps Center in Drums, Pennsylvania started an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizing drive on June 9th, 1997. The Job Corps recruits young people aged 16-24 who are interested in job training, getting a GED, or receiving a college diploma. Largely working class, these young people turn to Job Corps in an effort to secure a better future for themselves. But when they arrive at the Job Corps Center, recruits often find that they have been lied to about conditions, are subject to harsh restrictions on leaving the campus or expressing their civil rights, and can even be neglected by the infirmary to the point where their lives are endangered. Keystone Job Corps Center is managed by a private company called Management Training Corporation, but the young people in Job Corps are defined as employees of the federal government in their handbook.

On June 26, 1997, the Keystone Job Center suspended two of the union driveís most vocal supporters, Matt Wilson and Joe Marra, for 10 days pending final termination after an investigation. The reason was clear: Job Corps wants to have total, unchecked control over their wage-earning students. Joe was accused of inciting a riot by management while signing up a fellow worker. Matt was told he was harassing students, although no students had complained about him. Both were told that they were employees of the federal government 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and were not permitted to organize on company time. On the final signed report, the reason for their suspension was Inappropriate behavior that poses a threat to self or others.

The IWW demands that Job Corps immediately reinstate its organizers and calls for a no-tolerance policy in Job Corps for union busting.

Please call the Job Corps at 1-800-762-7288 and demand immediate reinstatement for Matt & Joe and an end to harassment of student employees at the Keystone Job Corps Center:

On August 23, the kind folks at Radio Mutiny, WPPR (West Philly Pirate Radio), came together with the IWW to help us fan the flames of discontent inside of Keystone.

Our mobile transmitter was packed up into a van, and we headed out to Drums, PA from West Philly. Our broadcast started around 9:45 pm. We called in to the dorms at Keystone (had arranged this earlier) and several people on the inside had smuggled in fliers which they quickly distributed. Pretty soon, everybody on the Center had their ear to the radio listening to our broadcast which included us reading from the banned issues of the local paper The Standard-Speaker, testimony from a friend of a young woman almost killed by the infirmary staff, a story from Solidarity Forever, a bit from the Dario Fo play Mistero Buffo, and an excerpt from Matt Wilson’s termination hearing. Plus lots of music: Last Poets, Rage Against the Machine, Utah Phillips, Public Enemy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Cypress Hill, Rhythm Activism, Funkadelic, Nine Inch Nails.

So we get about halfway into our broadcast (had 100 minutes of tape – all our battery can handle) and in pull the cops. Job Corps had sent around their security (Keystone Cops?!?) to find us – we were in our usual spot at the only pay phone in Drums, PA. The cops took a look at our rig and asked us if it was a bomb. They were worried because we were right outside of a post office (geez, if I wanted to take a post office – why the hell waste my time on Drums’ which probably has all of 8 letters inside?). Anyway, after some dithering around, we told them what it was and they didn’t really know what to do with us. They had no jurisdiction and weren’t really sure if it was illegal anyway. Sometime during all of this, a reporter from the Standard Speaker showed up and I did a quick interview. The cops talked to the pizza place, the proprietors of which had no problem with us being there (this is the regular IWW hangout while we wait for our people to be terminated, harassed, or sometimes released into our care.) So, the cops asked us to leave once it closed. They recommended that after pizza place closed that we move to the parking lot of a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts (yes, they really did.) When they found out it was the IWW, they said, Oh! IWW – why didn’t you just say so! because we’ve gained a little reputation out there – I dealt with the one cop before when Matt & Joe first got terminated. So, IWW is notorious in Drums, PA.

We took it mobile when the pizza place closed and circled the Keystone Center a few times. The Keystone Coppers followed us around for most of that stint. Don’t know what they hoped to accomplish by that.

The people on the inside were very happy to hear our broadcast. A few of the residential advisors called up my number to wish us well and tell us how energized it made everyone feel.

A shorter work-week in Ecotopia

Dear Slingshot:

With regard to a critique of my recently published articles, (see letters, issue #58) Jan Lundberg is to be commended for understanding that a saner society of the future would not work as many hours as we do at present. In spite of being on the right track in that regard, Lundberg claimed that I ‘believe in work, productivity, and everyone having plenty of stuff’, but the extent of my belief about productivity is that it is constantly increasing. The only condition under which I could be tempted to become a religious believer in productivity would be if constant gains were automatically compensated by instant reductions in the amount of time that we work, precisely in order to prevent over-exploitation of natural resources and the environment, exacerbation of class differences, explosive population growth, and to enable workers’ control and increasing freedom for producers of useful commodities and services.

In spite of my written record on these issues, I was amazed to find myself accused of ‘nudging people in a dangerous direction’, as though proceeding in the direction of less work, which we both believe in, were not good enough a reason for us to collaborate.

Fixing our problems with a new economic system to be known as ‘bioregional-based subsistence’ sounded wonderful to me, but, if the new economic system will be at all based upon changing property relations, there may be a hard row to hoe. If it took a Civil War to abolish as unpopular a form of property ownership as slavery, then enlisting the services of everyone whom Lundberg knows, or would like to know, may not suffice to change ownership of much else, so precious are the principles and privileges of private property to ‘the man on the street’.

Though exploiters would certainly like to see work-time maximized, the amount that we allow one another to work is not as absolute a principle as is property ownership. Until we adopt the philosophy that ‘too much work for me means too little work for my brothers and sisters’, we will remain in the grips of a dog-eat-dog philosophy of cutthroat competition that may have enabled societies of the past to prosper and triumph, but has since been superannuated by unprecedented levels of productivity, the result of which goes mainly to the rich. 98% of new wealth accrues to the upper 20%, while the lower 80% mindlessly ‘race each other to the bottom’ for bits of their measly 2% class share.

Billions of people all over the world feel as if no one gives a damn about anyone but themselves, because everyone is allowed to compete for scarce jobs. Remove this state of desolation by adopting reasonable measures to cut down on wasteful competition for jobs, and people will begin to give a damn, not only about themselves, but about everything else on the planet as well.

–Ken Ellis

What would Freud have to say?

What’s happening Slingshot collective:

Whenever I whip out my 1997 Slingshot Organizer, I get looks of envy from passersby. Sooo, to rid myself from wanton glaring and lecherous leers, except when I want to impress my coworkers with obvious (I pull out my 1997 Slingshot) organization capabilities, I want as many of those dang handy organizers as you can send.

Keep on lovin’

Martin Johnston

Refuse the California Police State

Dear Slingshot:

I just moved here. I went to the DMV to try to transfer my license from New York State to the Police State. First I was told that I needed a birth certificate. I called up my Dad and asked him to go to the town hall in Massachusetts (where he still lives) and get a copy of the record. He asked why, and I told him that I needed it to transfer my drivers license. Strange eh? So we both thought.

A week later I got the certified copy of the record of my distinguished birth. Sure enough, my birthday really was October 7. I then drove to the DMV (mind you, I’ve never had an accident or speeding ticket, or even parking ticket in my 15 years as a licensed driver). I jumped through the appropriate hoops, and got to the next to the last window, right before they are to take your photograph. Here is the sign Fingerprinting Mandatory. What the fuck?

I saw a whole line of dutiful citizens voluntarily lining up for their thumb printing. I took my completed application and told the woman at the desk I found it offensive they first wanted my birth certificate (to prove I was a citizen), but I sure as hell wasn’t giving them my finger prints. She was surprised to hear me, a non-threatening white female tell her I found this policy offensive. I said I’d have to think about it before I finished the process.

I asked the flip question how long before you start taking people’s blood? Don’t laugh, she said we might just start doing it. That made it very easy for me to make up my mind. I took my old trusty NY drivers license from the counter, and all my records and left the premises. I almost thought someone was going to prevent me from illegally leaving the building or something.

REFUSE to succumb to the Police State. I’ve been in CA for less than one month, and have had to refuse finger printing twice already, once at the DMV, once at my teaching job which also asked me to sign a loyalty oath. Pay attention to when your personal freedoms get slowly taken away. Soon you might forget you ever deserved them.

–Donna

Radio Free Allson Rocks Boston

Dear Slingshot

I’ve been a subscriber to Slingshot for about 5 years, I think, and it’s been well worth it. I am sending in my renewal soon (as soon as I get paid)….

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about our pirate/community radio station here in Boston. It’s called Radio Free Allston, and we broadcast four days a week, from 5 pm to 1 am at 106.1 fm. Our antenna should give us 20 watts, but mostly we get only 10, which gives us a broadcast radius of about 5 miles. We have news, public affairs, and music programming in five languages.

The difference between us and other pirates is that we are doing our best to involve everyone in the neighborhood, and we are broadcasting from right out in the open, figuratively and literally. Our regular home is in a gallery space in the Allston Mall, which is a collection of interesting small businesses – a vintage clothes shop, a movie store, (formerly a cool record store), a body piercing shop, and now us.

Every once in a while, we take the show on the road. We’ve done mobile broadcasts from a Homes Not Jails building takeover, a fundraising bike ride for a youth mentoring program, and a festival called Wake Up the Earth. At each one of these, we broadcast from a van with a huge Radio Free Allston banner on it, for maximum visibility. We have been written up in all the large and small newspapers in the area, and we were just featured on the evening news here in Boston. We have benefits for the station in the local clubs and our flyers are in all the record stores.

From what I’ve read of the stories of pirates who try to hide from the cops and the FCC, I like our strategy much better, although I probably wouldn’t be so brave if I were in it all by myself. At least this way, when the FCC comes knocking (heads), we will all be in the fight together, along with the people of the community.

I hope this info is useful to potential pirates, and I am very excited about all the micropower stations popping up all over the country. They’re starting so fast, no one can keep a complete list of them! Here’s a commercial for my show: I am known on-air as Tasty Aileen the Beauty Queen, and I host the Grrrly Show, which is by, about, and for the women who rock Boston. If anyone wants to write to me, or send me stuff to play, my address is: P.O. Box 2061, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130. I am also the new webmaster of our old site, which is here: http://www.tiac.net/users/error/radiofreeallston/ although it may be moving, so you might have to
search for it again.

Also, there is a fight going on in Cambridge, where they are trying to tear down a whole block of small businesses, including the Lucy Parsons Bookstore, and build, of all things, a hugeapartment building and a GAP! Please read about this effort and support it in any way you can – their website is here: http://www.worldmedia. com/madness/directtest/hnj4.htm or you can call the Save Central Square committee organizers John Bekken at (617) 783-4328 or George Salzman at (617) 547-5033.

Peace, Stacey.

p.s. Do you have any of those Slingshot organizers left? Here it is July, and I could really use one.

Inevitability of freedom

Greetings comrades of Long Haul,

I hope you are well and a continued spirit of struggle. As for me, I am well and confident of the inevitability of our freedom and our nation’s independence. Next year, July 25, 1898 will mark the 100th Anniversery of the imposition of U.S. colonial domination (of Puerto Rico). It is a time for action and concrete steps of international solidarity.

I would like to continue receiving your newspaper as well as news on our struggle.

In Struggle,

Edwin Cortés P.O.W.

Oregon Recriminalizes Marijuana

In mid-July, Oregon governor John Kitzhaber, an allegedly liberal Democrat, signed House Bill 3643, which shifts possession of less than an ounce of marijuana from a non-criminal violation to a class C misdemeanor punishable by 30 days in jail, a $1000 fine and loss of driving privileges for six months.

In 1974, Oregon was the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize marijuana by limiting punishment for possession of small amounts of marijuana to a small fine. Previously, simple marijuana possession had been a felony crime across the U.S. In Texas and Rhode Island, simple possession could be punished with a life sentence. In 1970, California arrested 220,000 people on felony drug charges, mandating years in prison, for simple marijuana possession. Even with the felony laws, marijuana use increased, leading state after state after Oregon to decriminalize simple possession.

Eventually, 9 states, including California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina and Ohio, passed decriminalization laws and every state in the union decreased penalties for simple possession. In 1975, the California legislature made possession of less than an ounce of pot punishable by a maximum $100 fine, and prohibited cops from taking offenders to jail. (Offenders are given a citation like a traffic ticket.)

Drug law liberalization, which appeared to be moving toward legalization, lost steam in 1980 with the election of President Reagan. Now, in the wake of the passage of Prop 215 and Prop. 200 in California and Arizona, respectively, drug law reform is again on the agenda, and further liberalization or even legalization may be in the works. But Oregon is moving against the tide.

The Republican controlled legislature passed the recriminalization bill claiming that the decriminalization law was sending the wrong message to kids. So far, the recriminalization idea seems to be limited to Oregon.

DA Won’t Prosecute

On August 27, the Sacramento County District Attorney announced that it would not prosecute AIDS activist and patient Ryan Landers for smoking pot in public at a Sacramento Mall. Landers was cited by police on August 7 for lighting a joint while dining at an outdoor restaurant. He carried a letter from a doctor and a San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club ID. Patrick Marlette, an assistant DA, said the DA’s office concluded that Landers’ use of medical marijuana was not illegal under Prop 215. However, the city of Sacramento is considering a law that would prohibit pot smoking in public places. Landers, who says he needs to smoke marijuana several times per day, argues that prohibiting him from smoking in public would trap him in his house.

California Bill

SB 535, which would authorize $3 million for a three year UC study on the safety and effectiveness of medical marijuana, is gaining speed in the California legislature. After the Senate passed the bill with broad, bipartisan support, Devil-child Dan Lungren announced his support for the study on August 27. The irony of the announcement is high since during the Prop. 215 campaign, Lungren wrote that there were more than 10,000 studies available documenting the harmful physical and psychological effects of smoking marijuana. I guess Lungren’s short term memory is going as he starts his run for governor . . . .

Tony Serra Goes Public

Tony Serra, renowned criminal defense attorney, issued a press release on August 4 urging other lawyers and professionals to seek prescriptions for medical marijuana to treat stress. Earlier in the summer, Serra met with his doctor for three hours going over the medical indications for a pot prescription. Serra says that he has smoked three joints per night for the last 30 years to treat himself for his high-stress lifestyle. The doctor concluded that Serra was in a high-stress category and issued the prescription. Serra is now a member of the SF Cannabis Cultivators Club.

Stockbrokers, bankers, real estate marketers, politicians, doctors and lawyers should all seek a doctor’s recommendation to avoid the psychological and physiological consequences of stress. It is time to come off the booze and get on the cannabis wrote Serra. Hey, how about mothers, truck drivers, and college students! Serra denied that his daily medicine impairs him as a trial lawyer: You can’t practice law stoned so I don’t smoke during the day. But I work 60-80 hours a week, I’m a workaholic, and pot has never affected my ability to concentrate. I want other people to know that.

Club Founder Running for Governor

Dennis Peron, founder of the San Francisco Cannabis Cultivators Club, which was raided by heavily armed state police last year, announced that he plans to run for Governor of California in the Republican primary against Dan Lungren. Lungren, California’s Attorney General, ordered the raid on the Club and is currently attempting to have Peron sent to prison on drug charges arising out of the raid. Peron has argued in Court that the police raid, which came only months before the election which passed Prop. 215, was a political stunt by Lungren aimed at defeating Prop. 215 and boosting Lungren’s own political power.

Proposition 215 got more votes than Lungren did in the last election according to John Entwistle, a Peron aid. Dennis is a business owner, and he has a natural Republican constituency out there — highly educated, upper income people who don’t appreciate unwarranted government intrusion.

Some Buyers Clubs

C.B.C.B.Berkeley (510)486-1025

Oakland CBC (510)832-5346

C.H.A.M.P.San Francisco (415)861-1040

Flower Therapy, SF (415)255-6305

S.F. Growers Co-Op, SF (415)621-3986

Sweetleaf Collective, SF (415)273-4663

San Jose CBC (408)847-7008

Bulldog, Sacramento (916)556-3722

Los Angeles CBC (213)874-0811

Orange County CBC (714)543-5123

San Luis Obispo (805)239-9200

Ukiah CBC (707)462-7913

I just met two women who were recently married, a new option that the LesBiGay community is fighting for. Even a good straight liberal can agree with the gay agenda on this one, equal rights to such benefits as tax breaks, medical insurance, pensions, hospital visitation, medical power of attorney, immunity from testifying against a spouse in a court of law, automatic transfers of housing leases, right to sue for wrongful death, and the billion other things that heterosexual married couples are entitled to.

The landmark 1996 case Baeher v. Mike in Hawaii opened the door, so to speak, to legal civil registration of marriage between same-sex couples. This marks the beginning of the end to sex discrimination in civil marriage in America, setting many states into motion trying to justify the discrimination they have perpetrated.

Of course gay marriage should exist as a choice. The open closet door couples could put their nuptials in the local newspapers and have very public weddings if they chose. These weddings could take the same range of possibilities as heterosexual weddings, anywhere from the religious to secular, elaborate to simple. Couples who remain in the closet could still benefit from a legal union and keep their marital status secret if they felt the need to protect their privacy. Of course, some couples would still choose not to enter into a legal civil marriage, just like their heterosexual counterparts who prefer to live together without the legal sanctions and benefits of marriage.

But is this normalization of the gay community something we really want? Doesn’t it make perfect sense that we all, regardless of our marital status, deserve medical insurance? Shouldn’t everyone be able to decide who they count as family? Shouldn’t we all bevalued as individuals, rather than as part of a couple–regardless of our sexuality? What will become of the lesbian and gay communities that we have worked so hard to develop once we are married off, living isolated lives in suburbia?

At this point in time, we have a real opportunity to escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage and the state that enforces it. But this requires that we create and maintain communities supportive of a wide variety of relationships–relationships that are not based on ownership and domination. Is our future as bleak as the heterosexual world’s, in which possessive marriages and the subsequent alienation of divorce is the norm? There’s a postcard going around now – Gay Marriage? May as well be straight! All I ask is that after you finish opening the new toaster ovens and silverware, please come back out and continue helping us change the world.

…In San Francisco’s July 25 Critical Mass bike ride, more than 5,000 bicyclists ignored a ludicrous agreement between SF Mayor Willie Brown’s stooge, Supervisor Michael Yaki, and servile SF Bicycle Coalition members and disrupted automobile urbanism in the Financial District. It was a defeat for Brown, for sell-out bike-liberals, for the cops, and for the business interests who control them all. Our action also exposed the police function of the corporate news media; bourgeois journalists’ sham of objectivity evaporated in a torrent of lies, all deploring the fiasco and mess we caused for yuppies whose race to get their sport-utility vehicles stuck in normal freeway traffic was delayed for 30 minutes…

…What subservient souls decry about Critical Mass are its most vital features; its confrontational character and its highly effective anarchistic form, without leaders or representative figures to be co-opted by capital and the state. An absence of formal organization is not always a good thing, but here spontaneity functions well. Several thousand people took direct collective action against oppressive social relations without voting or groveling to bureaucrats. On that beautiful Friday evening we experienced solidarity and real community, unlike the atomization and defeat imposed by wage slavery and the market economy.

Since I have no respect for law or morality of any kind, I don’t see this issue in moral terms; it’s not a question of virtuous hippies on bikes versus evil car drivers. I don’t exaggerate the significance of bikes. Working class and poor people in particular have had automobile use forced on them by social engineering imposed by business interests; it has become hard to exist in this society without a car. But I feel nothing but contempt for people who identify with their role as car owners and whine about their supposed persecution by Critical Mass.

The automobile is the most murderous technological construct in history, not an imaginary problem or a disaster in the future, but as J.G. Ballard wrote in the introduction to his novel Crash, a pandemic cataclysm institutionalized in all industrial societies that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year and injures millions. Cars are causing unprecedented damage to the Earth’s atmosphere. Major wars are fought over their fuel sources. Car culture has deformed the face of the planet and the character of human beings’ relationships with one another. The automobile is the key commodity of a society where everything is a commodity, and as such is a legitimate target for attack.

Any mass collective action outside of and against the corporate order enrages our rulers–and can become a lightning rod for the discontents of a repressive alienating system. The cops are walking around with bruises on their butts. They’re running scared–how could they ticket or arrest thousands of combative bicyclists? Willie Brown better get Harrison Ford and Batman to help him out. We’ve proven we can take the streets–and there’s nothing he can do about it.

For full text contact: The Poor, the Bad and the Angry, POB 3305, Oakland, CA 94609.

On the morning after Thanksgiving, November 29, 1996, Sonoma County, California was rocked again by domestic violence homicide. Mina Arevalo, 40 years old and the mother of two young teenagers, was shot nine times by her husband Nick, who then committed suicide. Mina’s 13 year-old daughter discovered her parent’s bodies.

The homicide shocked a community still reeling from the murder of Teresa Macias, a Sonoma woman tracked down and shot to death by her estranged husband, Avelino, just seven months before. Avelino then shot and wounded Teresa’s mother, Sara, before turning the gun on himself. Law enforcement apathy and misconduct was so striking in the Macias case, it sparked a $15 million lawsuit against Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde.

Like the murder of Teresa Macias, Mina Arevalo’s death is an indictment of law enforcement’s response to domestic violence. And as with Macias, official records and interviews with friends and family show police had been called many times before.

Just six weeks before the murder, on October 12th, Rhonert Park police records show a domestic violence call to the Arevalo house. Their report says Mina was uninjured and didn’t want her husband arrested.

But when Mina later confided to a friend about the dark bruises on her arms, chest and neck, she said police, took a cursory peek in bad light and walked out. When she told them she at least wanted Nick to leave for the night, she said the officer told her, ëIt’s his house’.

It was probably this same incident Mina later described, saying police had laughed in her face. She said she asked for a Spanish-speaking officer and they told her, ëWe’re not her just to please you’, a friend states. Mina told her friend that Nick left the house that night, but returned as soon as police left. Enraged, he told her she was a fool for calling the police, and began to beat her again. Mina called the police again. They told her that if she didn’t quit calling they’d arrest her. They never came. Terrified, Mina slept in her van that night.

Tellingly, the original police report sent up to the district attorney on this incident shows a corroborating witness He said he saw the entire incident, the report states. That alone should have been enough to alert the police supervisor and district attorney there was enough evidence to press charges. The report should have been sent back to police for further investigation, instead the DA simply dumped the case for lack of corroboration. It wasn’t until December 4th, five days after the murder, that Officer Polik (in a move with no purpose but to cover his ass) wrote a supplemental report detailing the eyewitness’s statement. Yet again, law enforcement apathy literally kills.

But this was not the first police knew of Nick Arevalo’s violence. Neighbors repeatedly called to complain of his late-night shooting sprees. And police dispatch records show six calls to the Arevalo house in little more than a year, including one coded domestic dispute in August, 1995. The other 911 calls look harmless on their face — vehicle abatement and animal complaint, for example — but read on.

Friends and family confirm at least four times Mina called police to report the beatings. One call corresponds by date to one of the barking dog calls recorded by police dispatchers. On November 4th — less than a month before the murder and just two weeks after the last domestic violence call — Mina fled to a friend’s house after being beaten. She said she’d called police, but they never came.

So here we are, one year after Teresa Macias’ murder — one internal sheriff’s department investigation later, one State Attorney General investigation later, one Blue Ribbon Committee report later, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in domestic violence grants later, and what do we get? Another dead woman.

Another dead woman, and another report of police laughing in her face as they crack jokes with her batterer; threatening to arrest her and not him; failing to write an Emergency Protective Order; using her children as translators; leaving her in worse danger than when they arrived.

There’s no doubt that over the past six years, we’ve been able to wrestle some real change out of local law enforcement: more emphasis on prosecuting crimes against women, better police policies and special units, and enough training to bring most police agencies into this century. But at every turn we see that those changes extend about an inch deep, and then we run dead-on into the hard rock of unchanged police attitudes.

The backlash against every gain women make is still shocking. For example, we finally get a policy that makes the cops have to start arresting batterers, and immediately the number of women arrested on domestic violence charges skyrockets. (In Sonoma County, 1 out of 5 people arrested last year for domestic violence was a woman. This is despite national statistics showing that fully 95% of batterers are men.)

Clearly all the new policies, all the training programs, all the victim counselors in the world won’t change anything as long as the same people are in charge, and the makeup of our police forces continues to be overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male.

A key step in the right direction would be to hire women officers. After the 1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the Christopher Commission studied the LAPD and police violence. One of their findings was this; of the 120 officers with the most excessive-use-of-force reports, not one was a woman — despite the fact that 13% of LAPD sworn officers were women. At the same time, the study showed women officers weren’t reluctant to use force when necessary.

In fact the research shows that female police officers respond more effectively to crimes against women, have better communication skills, are better at defusing potentially violent confrontations, and use force less often than male cops.

Aren’t these exactly the qualities that were needed on March 24th in Rohnert Park?

Unfortunately, the odds are slim that a woman cop will respond to any given police call in Sonoma County. While women make up about 10% of police forces nationally, Sonoma County law enforcement is barely 5% women. Clearly those negotiation/defusing-violent-situation skills are just not what’s being valued.

In fact, the local sheriff’s department is actually going backwards. There are fewer female sworn deputies today than there were two years ago, while four women deputies currently have sex discrimination charges against the department — almost one out of two. Obviously they’ve got some real problems when it comes to women’s right to equal justice, in or out of the workplace.

With the current wave of killings by police, widespread public attention is finally being focused on police conduct. Demonstrations are frequent, a new group called COPA (Coalition Organizing for Police Accountability) has formed, and initial meetings have been called to form a citizen’s police review commission. This is a moment when many voices demanding real changes in law enforcement.

Women have to play key roles in this process to make sure we end up with a police review commission that investigates not just incidents of police brutality and violence, but also incidents of police neglect.

For more info about ‘Women defending women’ against police abuse in Sonoma county, contact the Purple Berets: (707) 528-9043, berets@wco.com.

After 19 years in prison, Native American lesbian political prisoner Norma Jean Croy is free! She made her first public appearance on International Women’s Day for an evening in solidarity with women political prisoners. Croy now resides in Oakland where she works as an auto mechanic.