Part One: The Warner Creek Free State: The Camp That Lasted a Year and Won

0:02 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that whenever there's bad things happening, there's people trying to do good things. And we come from a long line of people trying to do good things and often succeeding at doing good things. And this week, I am talking with my friend who successfully did good things a good while ago. And so we're going to talk about some movement history, because this week, I'm going to be talking to my friend and a longtime forest defender and organizer, Hazel Robin. Hi, how are you, Hazel?

0:39 Hi, I am pretty good. It's great to be talking to you. I'm really excited to be here.

0:44 Yeah, no, I was excited. So Hazel is, well, a longtime forest defender and organizer and is currently a leadership coach for the Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance, which is an organization that does what it says on the tin. They are a alliance of people in the Pacific Northwest working on forests and climate. It seems like a reasonable way to sum that up.

1:06 Yeah, absolutely.

1:08 And you reached out to me a while ago because this year is the 30th anniversary of the victory at Warner Creek, which is one of the more important forest defense and sort of earth first victories in U.S. history. And you reached out and you said you should do something for the 30th anniversary. And then I said, well, you're an expert on it. What if I interview you?

1:34 And that's what we're doing.

1:35 Yeah.

1:37 All right. But I came up with this format. That's a terrible format. I am going to tell you what I think happened in Warner Creek. And you're going to interrupt me and correct me. And we're going to talk about the storyline and then break into conversation from there.

1:52 Sounds good.

1:53 Okay. So I always get really nervous when I do episodes where like, I know the people who are involved in the struggle and then like, I'm just like, oh yeah, let me, uh, let me just tell this story for something that I wasn't there for. Warner Creek. When I was a baby forest defender was the big thing in the, it was actually the recent past. It was only about six years earlier, but that felt like the ancient past because I was a 19 year old. And so something that had happened in the 20th century was forever ago.

2:25 Right.

2:25 But now, me having joined the movement is genuinely forever ago, and Warner Creek is only a couple years behind that. But when I first joined the movement, there was this mythical, amazing struggle that led to decades of people feeling inspired to take to the forests and block timber sales and protect old growth forests and protect complicated ecosystems and watersheds and just do all of the good work of forest defense.

2:56 And that was Warner Creek. And as I have it, there was the Timber Wars. The Timber Wars was before this. The Timber Wars was the late 80s and the early 90s in the Pacific Northwest and in California. And we've done episodes about them in the past. We did episodes about Judy Berry, who is most famous for getting car bombed, probably by the feds, or at least the feds didn't mind that she got car bombed. But That was in 1991. Oh, God.

3:27 Why don't I remember that? Do you remember that?

3:30 I don't have it written down, but it was sometime around 1991. We could look it up if we want.

3:36 Yeah, or people could go back and listen to my at least two part about Judy Berry.

3:42 Yeah, and there's also a really good documentary as well that I would recommend people listening to.

3:48 Is it called Who Bombed Judy Berry? Yes.

3:49 Yes.

3:50 When I first got involved in the movement, the other person who had been bombed in the same car bombing had just won a lawsuit showing that the government at least didn't bother. What was the lawsuit? It was like the state didn't actually even bother investigating it properly at the very least.

4:09 Yes, definitely.

4:10 It was never proven in court that the feds did it, but it was proven in court that the feds mishandled it dramatically. Yes, absolutely.

4:18 And they won that lawsuit. Daryl Cherney and Judy Berry won that lawsuit.

4:21 Yeah. So you have this big, huge fight called the Timber Wars. And in that, people used the Endangered Species Act, the ESA. And in particular, they use the fact that spotted owls are a type of owl that probably have spots on them that live in forests. And they specifically tend to live in old growth forests. They tend to live in mature forests instead of You spend enough time in the woods and you totally understand there's a massive difference between a forest that's been around for 50 to 10,000 years versus a forest that's been around since they clear cut and put in a 7-Eleven, you know? And the spotted owl like living in there. And so in 1991, a federal judge blocked a whole bunch of timber sales

5:05 in the Pacific Northwest in order to protect the northern spotted owl. And this was one of the main tools by which people defended forests. But even then... sometimes post-fire areas were logged, right? Like if a fire comes through and burns an area, you shouldn't log after a fire, right? Like fire ecology is actually a really important part of the Pacific Northwest ecosystem. And there's like entire species of trees that only propagate after a fire. Oh, I can't remember the name of the kind of pine tree where the pine cone only opens up after the fire comes through.

5:41 Yes.

5:42 And so you shouldn't, log post fire areas, but people were doing it. And then an arsonist who was never caught burned 9,000 acres of an area that gets called Warner Creek in the Corn Patch roadless area. And so it was open for logging and it was the largest timber sale of its era. So a bunch of people were like, we don't like that this is happening. You have the Sierra Club. You have the Oregon Natural Resource Council, who are now called?

6:16 Oregon Wild.

6:17 Oregon Wild.

6:18 Yeah.

6:19 And they came in and they sued to stop it. And all of these people came through. There was a big movement. It was a very above ground movement. You know, you have a former wildlands firefighter who came in and helped propose a new plan to use the area to study the ecology of fire and how we can move back towards indigenous land stewardship burns. and do all of the good stuff that we should do with a burn, right? Yeah.

6:44 And that was working a little bit in this version of the story. That was working a little bit. They were starting to make some progress until surprise villain of the pod, the saxophone playing president, Billiam Clinton, signed something called the Salvage Rider in 1995. And the Salvage Rider, it's so evil. This was like such a, awakening of how the political system works for me when I was first learning about politics and activism and things. Because they passed a bill, and a bill isn't called the salvage rider.

7:23 The bill was just a bill to assign disaster relief funds to the Oklahoma City bombing relief, right? But they were like, well, we're not going to pass that unless you stick on this rider. And a rider is a unrelated piece of legislation that they stick onto another piece of legislation as a little parasite to sneak it through Congress.

7:46 And the salvage writers said there would be no environmental reviews of timber sales and burned forests and not just burned forests, but any forest that was considered susceptible to fire or insect damage. And that was really bad.

8:03 Yeah.

8:04 Yeah. And so Warner Creek was all set to be logged. And people tried like one final lawsuit. They were like, actually, the rider sucks. We don't like it. You should find it. Not legit. And they failed. And activists left the courtroom and went into the forest. But they were prepared for this. I think this is something that also comes up. It's like, Every successful campaign that I've ever been a part of or seen has multiple avenues of attack. There's not one strategy.

8:34 There's like multiple complementary strategies where the direct action strategy and the legal strategy are trying to work together to accomplish a thing together in ways that there's tension. There's like tension between the people who are like, I just want to use the lawsuit and other people who are like, I want to put nails into the trees or, you know, which isn't involved in this particular thing. That's more Timber Wars era. But People who are like, no, I'm going to go block construction physically, right? There will be tension between those groups. But overall, if they design their plans to be complementary to each other, you can accomplish a lot.

9:11 So there are already people up in the sale area watching for logging just to be like, hey, are they going to start logging before our lawsuit goes through? So there are already people kind of getting ready. And then a lot of people left the courtroom and immediately went up into the forest. And they set up a blockade like the U.S. has never seen before. But do you know what the U.S. has seen? Do you know what the U.S. has seen a lot of? Do you know what the U.S. is buried under? Do you know what sneaks in like a salvage rider?

9:47 I can guess because I've listened to your podcast before.

9:53 It's Ads, the salvage rider of radical history podcasts that are on corporate networks. Here's ads. We love them. And we're back. So the lawsuit, not working. All that seemed left was direct action. All that seemed left was to physically prevent people from logging. And They set up a blockade that started off in a way that I think some other blockades have started off in the U.S. or had operated in the U.S. But it reached a level and specifically a longevity that has, I think, not been seen before or since in the United States. At the start of it, someone locked himself to a barrel of cement.

10:43 And this is, how do I explain this? You take a barrel in this. I'm not telling people to do anything. But the way you can do this is you look up actual instructions. Earth First has manuals about how to do this kind of thing. They're freely available online. I've, of course, only read the instruction manuals. You take a barrel and you cut holes in the side and you put a piece of PVC pipe through the middle with a piece of rebar in the middle of the PVC pipe, which is something for you to hold onto or rather to lock onto with a carabiner attached to a chain around your wrist. Then you fill the barrel up with cement, not while you're attached to it. Then once the barrel sets, now it is a really heavy object that you can't

11:22 really move without a bunch of people and or Dolly, right? And then people lock themselves to it. This is a basic form of lockdown is the cement barrel. It probably has another name. All of these things have like cool names. You know some of the cool names, don't you? Yeah.

11:40 And actually, I believe, so I wasn't there in the beginning. I showed up about a month in. But my understanding is that the first lockdown was actually something that we called Morrison.

11:54 Oh.

11:55 And so it was actually the cement was not in a barrel. And of course, I would not tell people to do this either. But the cement wasn't in a barrel. The cement was in the ground.

12:06 Which is way more illegal, just for anyone who's curious.

12:11 Assumedly. I don't know if that's the right word. You know, that was dug ahead of time, right?

12:17 Yeah, or it's just a natural formation. It's just cement in the ground with a PVC.

12:20 Or it was just there.

12:21 Yeah, who knows?

12:22 We talked about the roadpeckers. The roadpeckers were this big. Endemic species only only found in this area that dug up the road like and they're not really found anywhere else. But anyway, so I'm sure they're the ones that did it.

12:37 Yeah.

12:38 So that's in the ground that people locked to. But this particular lockdown device also had a very thick metal door on top of it. with a hole cut into the metal door and the metal door came from a local bar. So the person was actually lying down on top of the door that was on top of the lockdown that was buried in the road. The kind of lockdown that's buried in the road is called a sleeping dragon.

13:06 So that's the name for it. Yeah.

13:09 And they're called sleeping dragons because you can hide them, right? Roadpeckers can hide them. The reason that we're talking euphemistically about this whole thing is that Civil disobedience, like locking yourself to heavy objects, is pretty firmly in the violation to misdemeanor category in most situations, right? Obviously, you should talk to lawyers who are part of your movements before you make these kinds of decisions. But overall, that is a reasonably– it's a lower stakes thing to do, whereas to tear up a federal road is– potentially felonious. I'm actually not aware of anyone being charged with that at any point, but it's the reason that we don't know anything about roads that get destroyed even decades later. Is

14:01 that a.

14:01 Yeah. Yeah.

14:03 Yeah.

14:04 I think that makes sense. And also one time I did hear, I don't have the specifics, someone did get charged with stealing a road. Somebody that was locked down.

14:12 Yeah.

14:14 I don't know what exactly that charge would be, but I remember hearing that. So it was like theft to theft charge.

14:21 I think it's like every now and then there's the charge where you're like, look, I don't actually want to deal with court. But like if I were going to, like in New York State or maybe even only New York City, there's a charge called criminal anarchy. And I've always been like, I wouldn't be sad if I, you know, a lot of people get picked up at riots, get criminal anarchy charges. And I'm like, look, if you're going to have a charge on your record, stealing a road is kind of a cool one. Yeah. And the reason we call them sleeping dragons is because they can be awoken at any time, right? Because they can be hidden, unlike a cement barrel, which is a pretty obvious object.

14:56 So that does go into the people were prepared for this, right? Like some of the versions you'll read of this story will be like, and then they went up just spontaneously, no organization. They just went up the road and started a blockade. No, they had They had a plan B in place. You should always have a plan B or C in place. It's as true for birth control as it is for movements.

15:21 Absolutely. And I'm wondering if before we get into the blockade, maybe I should add a few details about that beginning timeline.

15:30 Please do.

15:31 Because that beginning timeline you laid out was really, it was quite accurate, but there's a few details to add in.

15:38 Yep.

15:39 So those spotted avalon junctions that you were talking about, that was a really big deal. It kind of like shut down, you know, logging across the country because it was so broad and it was very controversial. And that was in May and October was when the fire started, when somebody intentionally started the fire.

16:00 Okay.

16:01 And, you know, one thing about fires that a lot of people don't know, forest fires, like most of them are caused by people. I mean, a lot of them are caused by people, but most of the time, like not on purpose. So they never found who did this, but they did. They were able to, you know, prove that it was started on purpose. So people, although nobody knows the motive, people have thought that it could have had something to do with the spotted owl injunctions. Or there's this concept called light it and log it, that if a place is protected, but then it burns, then it can be open to logging. So somebody intentionally lighting it to eventually be able to make some kind of financial gain off of it. So Basically, as soon as

16:48 the smoke cleared from the fire, that protected area became up for grabs. But Willamette Earth First at that time was monitoring all the timber sales in the area. They were really involved.

17:02 Oh, they're left out of every story I've read about this. Yeah.

17:05 And honestly, it's left out of a lot of stories that there was about five years of preparation by Earth Firsters that led up to this campaign.

17:14 Yeah.

17:15 So during that time, and you mentioned him, who was a former wildlands firefighter, he's also now the executive director of a really rad organization called Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology. He was the person that you were mentioning that was on the participatory group to come up with alternatives, which there always needs to be alternatives for when there's a logging plan. So earth firsters were really involved.

17:43 They were taking people on hikes. They were organizing fire ecology field conferences. They were doing road shows for years. And they were bringing tons of people up to Warner Creek. The term that we used was learned from the burn. They were doing rallies. They were getting petitions and signatures.

18:04 This is amazing.

18:05 Yeah. One of the people who we, so we had a 30th anniversary event. One of the people I was on a panel with, Katya, she talked about how, okay, so remember there was fax machines, landlines, things like that. in the mid-90s, they did a thing where they got people to write 26 linear feet of comments and sent it through the fax machine overnight.

18:30 So when the.

18:30 Person showed up, it was just this like giant fax, you know. So people were doing all sorts of work, working on all sorts of levels to try to stop the timber sale and also all the legal people doing the lawsuits. And there were multiple lawsuits. And the first lawsuit actually got a very positive initial opinion in our favor, saying that logging shouldn't proceed until the issue of arson was considered by the Forest Service. So that was really good news. And people kept organizing and things like that.

19:05 But like you said, when the salvage rider came along, the salvage rider suspended 30 years of arson. environmental laws and took away people's right to sue on timber sales for a period of 18 months. So when that came through, another judge, a different judge, threw out the first judge's opinion and opened up Warner Creek for logging. And that's when people took to the road.

19:29 And so you have this thing where it was a campaign that was in progress that seemed like it was winning. When all of a sudden, after years and years of work, the rug was pulled by this just federal action and a judge coming in and being like, I just don't care what y'all did.

19:45 Exactly. And that multi-year campaign is really important. important in my opinion, because it's the only reason why things, and like I said, I wasn't there, but the only reason from my understanding, why people could mobilize so quickly to get up onto that road, because there was a full campaign already happening. And like you were saying, people were thinking of plan A, plan B, plan C.

20:13 Yeah.

20:13 And planning ahead.

20:15 No, that's important too. And also even specifically, because again, like I said, the articles that I found about this, you know, tended to leave Earth first out of the story, right? And yet, often when people want to reintroduce the group with the most radical reputation back into the story, it might focus on just the blockades or tree sits or like the The stuff that's illegal, right? The stuff that's like radical. And it's also then important to understand from what you're saying that Earthverse was also involved in bringing people out there and doing public outreach and like, you know, positive action as well, right? And I, again and again, I run across social movements throughout history do so well

21:01 when they pair these two things. When they pair... it can't just be sunshine and rainbows because it's really easy for the state to take sunshine and rainbows away from us. Like you just pointed out, right? Like that just, they came in and just got rid of 30 years of law immediately, right? All this precedent gone, all of this work just pulled out. And that leaves for a moment, at least, only the actual physical defense of that space, right?

21:30 But that doesn't mean that the work building space environmental protections wasn't useful. It was actually incredibly useful. It was incredibly necessary. That was interesting to me. I'm glad I have you on to make this story even cooler than it started off.

21:48 Yeah, and I think, you know, Warner Creek's a bit of a poster child for direct action, but I think part of why it is like a poster child in a good way is because it did combine so many tactics and... I know that that still happens, but I think it was a little more common back in the day. And, you know, sometimes I see people just doing direct action now and not wanting to do the other stuff because it can be distasteful and like just kind of embarrassing to be like, will you sign my petition? You know, like, yeah, I get it. But at the same time, when we don't combine tactics in my experience from what I've seen it, it often doesn't go very well.

22:31 No, that makes sense. I think that another cycle that I see a lot is that the radical edge without the mass support is also ineffective. And that ends up creating a more and more alienated group of people who sort of spiral off from their support, take more and more radical action, and then just get crushed by the state.

22:53 Whereas when people take that kind of action, the example I've been using a lot is the anti-flock stuff that's happening, right? Where right now, There are people going to city council meetings and there's people doing all of this above board work. There's all of these lawsuits working their way up through the court system saying, hey, this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. You know, here's all this precedent, right?

23:14 And there's also people shooting flock cameras with guns. And there's people... spray painting them with expanding foam. And there's people turning them around to face the other way. There's a retiree in Florida who sits there with a sign and blocks them physically with a sign because he's got nothing better to do, right? But the people who are physically blocking those cameras are essential to the movement. And so are the people who are suing. And the movement is doing so well right now because it has both of those things. And specifically, because the large group of people who are doing the above board like lawsuit stuff, have the back of the people who are taking more direct action as well. And that is a like, we

24:01 just need both in movements. Like that's like the lesson I keep seeing over and over again. And I remember when I was a young force defender, I think I can just say this. I worked on a timber sale called the biscuit fire.

24:14 Is that where we met each other? Or do you think we met each other beforehand?

24:18 I think we met each other beforehand, but I think we like got to know each other through that.

24:22 Yeah.

24:23 And I remember being like, I'm like a young, spicy anarchist. I loved learning all the ecological arguments about why we need to defend this burn area and learned all about, you know, the different, just like living in a post-fire area was beautiful. It's like, it sticks with me some of the like half-burned manzanita trees, right? Or manzanita bushes and the like half-burned madrones. And this, you know, you'd have this tree that is like half silver and black and half gold and green. And it's like one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.

24:54 And so it's very easy for me to be like, hey, everyone, I'm going to show you how beautiful this is. Why this needs to be protected for its own sake. But I also had to learn all of the like, this is why not destroying this forest is actually a better economics for this area, right? Like this is why, like learning the economic argument at the time, I didn't care about the economic argument. I was like, fuck you, don't cut down trees, you piece of shit, you know? And then you're like, well, actually both are really important and like reaching people where they're at matters. And I remember I had this really, at the time I was a landscaper, right?

25:36 And I remember we were blocking these loggers. This is totally not what I expected this episode to turn into. I don't know why I didn't expect this to turn into this. We were blocking these loggers at this bridge, right? The green bridge.

25:48 The green bridge.

25:49 Yeah. And a bunch of the loggers just got walked past our blockade and then got picked up by someone from the other side and driven up to go cut down old growth forests. And me and this woman were yelling at them and, you know, don't cut down those trees. And one of the loggers is like, what do you do for work? And I was like, I'm a landscaper.

26:08 And the woman next to me was like, I'm a logger. And they were like, wait, what? And like, you could see it confuse their brain that the angry hippies was like, I cut down trees for work. I mostly cut bushes for work. And she cut down trees for work. And there's a difference. There's a difference between clear cutting forests and like, you know, making your lawn look nice, or finding ways to sustainably get trees out of an area.

26:38 That was a complete tangent. I'm sorry.

26:41 Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's an important tangent. And I also think your example of flock is a really good example. And yeah, there's so much more to be said about what you were saying about talking with the loggers. And I think rural organizing is really important. And, you know, this is kind of getting ahead of ourselves.

27:03 But I do think something that we could have done better in the 90s was thinking more about a just transition. And for people who don't know what a just transition is, it's like when we have to make these changes, like people talk most about a just transition with climate change. That if people have to move on from jobs because they're destroying the climate, that part of what should go along with it is opportunities for them to have good, for people to have good future jobs that they can feel good about, you know. And I think we could have done a better job with that in the 90s and still today because I still do forced defense now and I think we could do a better job.

27:46 Well, do you know what kind of transition I'm really good at? It's not gender transition. I'm honestly not very good at that. But ad transitions. I'm really good at ad transitions. Like that one. And we're back. No, that makes so much sense to me, and it's the kind of thing, the kind of person who might be drawn to go put directly their body on the line to go try and do these things is going to be stubborn, risk-tolerant, And kind of self-righteous, right? I'm just kind of trying to describe myself at 20.

28:24 Yeah.

28:25 And for better or worse, we need that, right? Because you need to really believe in what you're doing to go... Lockdowns are about making yourself vulnerable to people that you distrust, right?

28:42 Yeah.

28:43 It is about locking yourself to an object, being like, the only way out of here is to break my arm. And you're like, you know that that guy doesn't mind breaking your arm. You know, like we've all seen footage of what the police are capable of, you know? And so it takes a certain mindset to go do these things.

29:01 And unfortunately, that mindset does not lend itself to better understanding where different people are at. But I do love when I see, and I do think rural organizing does this fairly well sometimes, intentionally bringing in Yeah, pointing out just transition stuff, you know, being like, hey, we really don't think that we should be digging up more coal.

29:25 Here's like everything we understand about windmills, you know, just use West Virginia as an example. You know, like here's everything we understand about the sustainability of this type of job, including not just environmental sustainability, but economic sustainability. for the people engaged in that kind of work, you know?

29:43 Yeah. And I will say that there have been examples of direct action campaigns that did do like a very good job with rural organizing and building bridges and There was a campaign in Washington called Watch Mountain that was a tree set where there were lots of connections with the people that lived there and loggers and unions and just finding a lot of common ground. Because a lot of times, you know, when you can get past some of the division, there are multiple people on all sides that are opposed to the company division. or opposed to what the company is doing, or would rather be doing more sustainable logging, things like that, you know? Yeah.

30:27 And like, at the end of the day, like logger is, I believe, consistently the most dangerous job in the country.

30:33 Yeah.

30:34 And at the end of the day, like people do it because they think they need to and might genuinely need to in order to feed themselves and their families. But you're like, you are talking about people who like being in the woods.

30:45 Yeah.

30:46 And it seems counterintuitive on some level, you know? But that is a structural problem. That is a problem with the way that timber is harvested, not the concept of harvesting timber, you know?

30:59 Right. And it's a problem with capitalism. Yeah. I mean, that's the underlying problem. And I think that's part of why forest defense can be hard, because in my opinion, it both needs to happen, trying to protect individual areas, but you know, the bigger problem is capitalism, especially the current form of capitalism and an extractive industry. And we do a lot better on so many fronts by getting at the root causes, but it can be hard to do a campaign on the root causes.

31:33 Yeah. Although we are seeing a, like, you know, the youth, a normal center of the media and youth today probably hates capitalism. Like, there is a, like, You know, versus in the 90s. I mean, I remember the first time I started hearing people outside of, like, specifically anarchists and anti-capitalists critiquing capitalism and being kind of blown away. Like, because I, you know, I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, but, like, I was alive during some of the Cold War. And just the idea of Americans being like, oh, the problem is capitalism. We were, like, the only people saying that for a while. I know.

32:14 And now it's much more common and much more mainstream.

32:18 And one of the places that I think people got together and thought about a lot of this stuff was for 343 days under eight feet of snow the entire time. That part's not true. But the eight feet of snow, I believe, is true, but only not the entire time.

32:35 A few months.

32:36 Yeah. Okay, I was thinking it was going to be like three days. Yeah, no, eight feet of snow for months. They had what they called, what you all called, the Cascadia Free State. And most importantly, to my Tolkien-loving ass, there was a fort. There was a goddamn timber castle wall with a moat blocking the road. And there... One of the things that's actually always appealed to me about Earth First is above ground illegalism, is the idea that it's illegal to sit in the middle of the road, just in general, right? It's also illegal to dig up the road. And no one was like, hey, I dug up the road, right? But you're sitting where someone clearly dug up the road and you've built a fort and you just are like, Yeah, we're here. This is what

33:29 we're doing. We believe in this. We're going to do it in daylight, maybe masked, right? Like it's not about trying to get caught, you know, but it's this like, like most of the time when I talk to tree sitters, they don't hide the fact that they've sat in trees when they're talking to people, even though most tree sits are illegal. I guess I'm on private, but we'll get into this in a minute when we tie into the modern world about private property tree sits and things like that.

33:53 So there was a fort, a timber castle wall. The numbers, according to what I saw, ranged from seven to 60 campers at any given time. Meanwhile, two folks started a juice-only hunger strike in front of the federal building in Eugene to try and kind of tie in what's happening out of the public eye, although they are consciously bringing up whole groups of tourists, as far as I can tell, like literal tourists, to come up and see the free state. Yeah. But- to make sure that it's in people's view in right in downtown, I was about to call it the capital of Oregon, but that's not true. Salem is the capital of Oregon. I do remember this. Okay. In front of the federal building.

34:35 In Eugene.

34:36 Yes, in Eugene, not in Salem. In Eugene, in front of the federal building, two folks started a juice-only hunger strike. One guy made it 18 days. The other made it 75 days. And he only broke after he went to D.C., where he tried to petition Congress about this. And then when he came back, he was like, oh, I'm like too weak to fucking do anything. I should probably stop doing this. And the idea spread even while this was happening.

35:05 And other blockades, other free states started cropping up at timber sales. I want to say everywhere, but I think it was mostly in the Pacific Northwest and other states. I remember about one in Idaho. I actually don't remember where the other ones were off the top of my head.

35:18 Well, actually, Tim and Shannon doing the hunger strike.

35:22 Different Tim.

35:23 Different Tim.

35:24 Yes. It's important to keep track of. It's actually why I didn't put names in here is because there's three different Tims in this story.

35:29 Yes.

35:30 But you can add the names. It's just why I didn't put them in the script. Yep.

35:34 So a different Tim and Shannon doing the hunger strike on the federal building. That's how I found out about Warner Creek. It's kind of a random story because I'd come to the West Coast to work at a summer camp. And I met a friend there who knew about Earth First. And then my other friend came and joined us. We did this.

35:53 Are you like a teenager in the story? Are you like 74? No, I'm like 24.

35:56 Okay.

35:56 Okay.

35:59 So we did this epic road trip from California, from the Bay Area up to Oregon. And one of my friends' boyfriends lived in Bend. And we were going to try out living in Bend. Me and the friend that I met at the camp I was working at, we really didn't like Bend that much.

36:17 Famously not where youth like it, honestly. Yeah.

36:21 We went to Eugene, to the Eugene Saturday Market, just for like a weekend trip. And we wandered off and we, you know, within a few blocks, we ran into Tim and Shannon doing the hunger strike. And that's how we found out about Warner Creek. And we were just immediately like, we're staying. We went back and we told our friends, we're not going back to Bend with you. And they were like, what are you talking about? We're going to go live on this logging road. I mean, it didn't happen that fast, but yeah, that was pretty much how it happened. So also when I think about that, you know, one, it's like life can be really random, but two, it's really important to do these big visual things in more of an urban center, like you were saying. Yeah. Then

37:08 like when you're doing something that's land based and kind of in the middle of nowhere, because how is anyone going to see it if you're not doing something very visible and more populated areas and if you're not doing media or things like that? So I think that's really important.

37:26 Well, it's funny, too, because, right, you're like, oh, one person only made it 18 days. I couldn't tell you I could do 18 days on just juice. That is an amazing feat. Three days. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Three days, no food. That would get to me.

37:38 Yeah.

37:39 And when I went to go work on the biscuit fire, I was already involved in stuff on some level. I went to my boss. I was a landscaper. I went to my boss and was like, I just had the job for like a week. And I was like, hey, you mind if I leave indefinitely to go block roads in Southern Oregon? Yeah. And he's like, yeah, I guess.

38:01 And I was like, can I have my job when I come back? And he was like, yeah, I guess. And then when I came back, I got my job back and he called me one morning. He was like, Magpie, you don't have to come into work today. We're going to take down a tree. And I was like, no, that's fine. That's not my, it's not like I'm like vegan for trees, you know? But I love that that's how you got involved in it was just like, yeah, just, Having there be a public presence that was like, this is what we're doing. Come be involved. And I love open invitation like that, right? It's so complicated because it's complicated to break the law with people you don't know. Yeah.

38:46 You know? But, like, that's the thing that's nice about this level of civil disobedience where it's not– the kind of thing where if you get caught doing, it's going to be the end of decades of your life, you know?

39:02 Yeah. And something I wanted to say is also, you know, there's complications on all sides with a lot of these campaigns that we're talking about are on Forest Service land. Sometimes they're on BLM land, Bureau of Land Management, but they're all public lands. Technically, We all own public lands. I feel like public lands are tricky to talk about because I also really want to acknowledge that they're also stolen lands, Right. You know, they were taken from Native people by force, broken treaties, no treaties at all. You know, but technically now their designation is public lands and people are allowed to camp on them for 14 days. They're allowed to be there. So, for example, with the tree sit...

39:46 tree setting itself is like not actually illegal. It's a violation because you're not supposed to build a structure on public land, but you are allowed to be there for 14 days. So that's part of why it becomes difficult to kind of move people out just like immediately. Of course, if people are blocking a road, you're not supposed to block a road, but you are allowed to camp.

40:11 So, you know. No, that makes sense. Yeah. And using that kind of complicated legal gray area, which I feel like now that the government is a little bit more fascistic, it's a little bit more like, yeah, we actually don't care what our own laws say. We're just going to do stuff. But do you want to, because we're going to talk about how this ties into modern things, but I was thinking maybe we could end today's episode just by talking about something that happened today as we record this, which is a week ago, probably as you're listening, if you listen when it comes out, about a tree-sit happening down at the border. Do you have some thoughts about talking about that?

40:51 Yeah, well, I was just really, really saddened to wake up this morning and I checked my messages. And like the first thing that I saw was they're busting the low keel tree set. And for anyone who doesn't know, the low-keel tree set has been going on for over two months, and it is on the Arizona-Mexico border near the town of Low Keel. And it's been blocking border wall construction on the border. And the tree set is on private land of people who are opposed to the border wall and don't want it to go through their land.

41:34 And people have been up until this morning sitting in a giant, beautiful tree. And it's such an amazing campaign because it's very intersectional, too, which I think is really important because it's drawing attention to, you know, not only is the border wall, you know, obviously a horrendous thing for the communities that live there. A lot of indigenous communities on the border, rural communities on the border and immigrants.

42:05 But it's also important. very problematic for animals and for trees. And all of these are wildlife corridors where, you know, jaguars don't understand what a border is and their habitats on both sides. So it's just an amazing campaign. And, you know, I've heard that the raid today was very violent. They did cut down the giant cottonwood that people were sitting in, which just feels devastating.

42:37 Yeah.

42:38 And it's still a really crucial campaign. Like the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most militarized places in the Americas. I think that's fair to say. And people have been stopping border wall construction for over two months. So it's still a really amazing feat. Yeah.

42:59 I was shocked by how long that sit lasted. Yeah.

43:03 Yeah.

43:04 When I first saw it, I was like, that's amazing. And I've been, unfortunately, kind of waiting for this day the whole time. But so were the people doing it, right? And I knew what they were getting into. And I'm certain that a week from now, the campaign is still ongoing in some form or another. And it's been really inspiring to see that. It's been really inspiring. And even how...

43:33 taking something like a tree sit and it's, it's like fundamentally really intersectional, as you're saying, in that it is taking a, a forest defense campaign strategy and applying it to something that is land defense, but it's also ties not just ties into so much more than that, you know, like ties into the, trying to stop the fascism of the United States and trying to protect the free migration of people and, and like, I don't know. Nature hates a wall, just a long wall. That's not what nature wants.

44:12 And there's a Ursula Le Guin quote that's been on my mind all day, which is those who build walls are their own prisoners. Because whenever people, Americans are like, we want a strong wall. And you're like, man, that keeps you into like the free migration of people includes like I'm people. I like free migration.

44:33 Totally.

44:34 Like when someone's like, don't let anyone come in here. You're just being like, I don't want a world where I could do stuff and go where I want. And you're like, that seems counterintuitive to your own freedom, my man. Like, fuck. I just, I don't know.

44:50 Totally.

44:51 It's heartbreaking.

44:52 It is heartbreaking. And, you know, I do know that everyone at the tree set is equally committed to migrant justice as well as ecological justice and I've been reading online that they are planning to continue the campaign. And this is one aspect of the campaign. And, you know, this area is on Tohono O'odham land, which is one of the indigenous peoples in the area. They've been doing a lot. And a lot of it is people working together along with the Teresa, but also separate campaigns. And I was reading that they have taken cuttings from all the trees that have been destroyed and they're planning on planting them. And then also just a little bit of good news that I'm not sure that if you know about,

45:40 but just, I think it was yesterday or may, or no, it must've been Friday. There was a big lawsuit that was won in the Big Bend National Park in the Big Bend area of the border wall. But it's, it's a very, it's a large area. I'm not sure how many miles it is. And border wall construction has been stopped by an injunction. on that section of the border. So, you know, I think it's how it goes that like, again, like we were talking about, we have to have multi-pronged strategies.

46:13 We have to have plan A, plan B, plan C. And, you know, the thing that I think is interesting about the border wall that I've been thinking of in the first Trump administration, he was talking so much about building the wall and everybody was opposed to it. Remember, there was signs everywhere, no wall. And now the border wall construction is actually happening. And a lot of people don't know about it. And people aren't as up in arms.

46:40 So I think people need to be more up in arms about it. And I know that they are calling for more people to come down to be part of those campaigns. There's lots of different ways to get involved. And, you know, people can follow it at rally.forthevalley on Instagram. And there's also tiaralibre underscore no borders. So... Yeah, there's lots of ways for people to get involved still. And it's a campaign that's going to continue.

47:10 Margaret from the future here. I have many updates since we recorded this. I'm now recording this update on October 11th to 2026. And we recorded the initial episode on Monday, you know, six days ago. This comes out tomorrow. And a lot has happened in the Locule community. and I encourage everyone to go check it out. Basically, one sit was evicted, another sit went up. I am under the impression that that sit has also been evicted at this point, but there has been an incredible amount of resistance. And I believe as of I record this, they are still calling for people to come out and join them and support them. And I encourage everyone to look into how they feel about that kind of thing and make their

47:57 own decisions. And if you want a more complete update about the Low-Keel Sit, I interviewed somebody. I interviewed my co-host of the show, Live Like the World is Dying, about this on last Friday's episode, basically just with the most recent updates from that last week. And I encourage everyone to check that out. Again, that's last Friday's episode of Live Like the World is Dying. Okay, back to the show. Just this morning, I saw a reasonably vouched fundraiser and I will put that in the show notes under the source list. And you know me, if you listen to the show a lot, that I don't promote fundraisers that I can't vouch. So I will be extra certain and put some of my own money towards it.

48:42 So that is a thing that people can do. Although obviously being involved more directly is also what people are asking for. And as we talked about that, would it be fair to say that the Warner Creek encampment changed your life, like changed the course of your life?

49:02 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, 110%.

49:07 I have told people for years when I talk to my friends who are kind of caught in malaise and don't quite know what to do and they just work at a coffee shop and they're unhappy, go join a forest defense camp. Go get involved with a group of people that is open. Some encampments are open to people and some of them aren't. And the ones that are open to people are looking for people. And when you're involved, you are a part of a larger thing, but you're not a cog in a machine. You are an essential part.

49:39 of a large and complicated organic organism of resistance. So I'm not telling any of you, dear listener, what to do. Read about it before you would make any kind of decision like that. And it is not, I get really nervous when I think about my role as like the voice in people's heads. I never want to tell people what to do. You really got to do your own research and talk to people. Don't just listen to me, please, God.

50:09 But We're now at the end of part one of our two-parter on Warner Creek. And when we come back on Wednesday, we're going to talk about what happened at the end. I mean, they won. It's an established historical thing. But we'll keep talking about how they won and how all that went down and what successful movements can look like and what they do and don't cement into the future and why we keep struggling. It seems like you didn't just do this and then be like, cool, I won.

50:38 I now have this place and everything's fine.

50:41 Yeah.

50:42 But you have anything you want to plug? Like places you work that do, I don't know, climate forest alliance-y stuff?

50:50 Yeah. Well, I mean, I definitely want to plug the low-key altresa, which I just did.

50:55 Which is L-O-C-H-I-E-L, unless I have the I and the E in the wrong order.

51:01 I think that's right. People can find out a lot about what's going on at a website that's forestsoverfascists.org. That's fascist with an S. That word is always still hard to say.

51:16 You know, racist has like no S in it and fascist does. Yeah.

51:21 And then there's also a lot of great information on the website for the group I work for, which is forestclimatealliance.org. And people can follow us at PNWFCalliance.org. And yeah, I also think it's checking out FUSE.org, F-U-S-E-E.org and at FUSE Fire, which is the group that I was talking about that's Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology. And also people can check out the Earth First Journal website. So there's still an Earth First Journal and an Earth First Journal website and Yeah. So those are all great things, I think, for people to check out. There's so much more too, but that's just a couple ideas if people want to learn more because, you know, obviously I'm just sharing one

52:11 perspective among many. There were thousands of people involved at Warner Creek and you would get thousands of different perspectives if you were going to interview all those people.

52:21 Which I wish that I had more time per topic because it would be really easy to spend three years and... write a whole book on really important fight that really, one of the reasons I like doing a history show is that you can see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. And, you know, Warner Creek is one of the corner pieces that you can use to find so much of else of what's happening in terms of, well, we'll get to it, but like, you know, modern protest tactics and all kinds of stuff. All right. That's what we're going to talk about on Wednesday. In the meantime, I have a new zine available for pre-order. It's called The Folk Tales of the Lowlands of Sakan. Sakan is C-E-K-O-N.

53:09 It is set in the world of the sapling cage, but it's fairy tales. So you don't have to have read the sapling cage in order to read it. And it is published by the anarchist publisher that I work with, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. So if you go to tangledwilderness.org, it is available for pre-order there. And it is the prettiest zine that has ever been made of my work.

53:27 It has all of this art. It's like done like fancy printing by another worker owned offset press. And it's just beautiful. And I'm really excited about it. So you can go preorder it there.

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