Lochiel Part 2: The End of the Tree Sit

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After spending a few days in L'Aquile, I decided to one-shot my journey home, driving just over 500 miles across the southwestern tip of the United States. From the forests of the Patagonia Mountains across the Sonoran Desert, through the sand dunes in Ossetia and past the weird centre of the earth building in Felicity, up into the Peninsular Range and down again into San Diego. For the whole time, over my left shoulder, sometimes visible and sometimes not, was the border wall. The border that was once a line on a map is now a line in the sand, and what were once unbroken watersheds, migration routes and vistas are now forever scarred with the ugly monument to grift and hatred. A few days after I returned, things changed

dramatically in L'Aquille. The day I got back, I started to get messages saying the Bureau of Land Management had posted notices on the Roosevelt Reservation announcing it was closed. This came after the United States Forest Service announced a forest closure in areas of the Coronado National Forest near the border.

One of the days I was in L'Aquille, U.S.

Forest Service law enforcement rangers rolled past slowly, very obviously recording the camp with cell phones. I grabbed my recorder and started describing what I saw in case they were about to try something.

But they didn't that day. So like one, two, and an unmarked truck.

Two Forest Service LE Rangers just like slow roll past recording on their phones. Followed by a black unmarked truck. They're riding on the border easement road. But like I don't know if that was just an intimidation pass or what's going on. But we're not on Forest Service land. We're on private land.

I think most people probably didn't realize that the land management agencies you might associate with Smokey the Bear and Interpretive Nature Walks actually contain within them a significant capacity for state violence. Forest Service LE Rangers, for example, are trained at a federal law enforcement training center, just like ICE agents or other feds. There are also forest protection officers who can enforce misdemeanors, but they're not full-time cops.

Despite the cuts to federal land management agencies that happened when Elon Musk, the world's most online man, Strip these agencies of much of their funding, they have retained significant law enforcement capacity. Indeed, in Washington state, over Labor Day weekend, Forest Service LE Rangers approached a campsite and took IDs from people who they said were littering. Shortly thereafter, the LE Rangers returned with ICE to detain five men in the group. In a press comment, ICE called this, quote, a joint operation with the United States Forest Service in the.

Mount Baker-Snoqualmead National Forest.

While the agency struggled to contain wildfires, a make-up for the almost 6,000 personnel it had laid off under Doge, it still found time to tear families apart while they were enjoying what's supposed to be all of our land. So yes, I'm sorry to inform you that ACAB includes Smokey the Bear. While we're on the subject of that bear, I'd also like to remind you that it's not only you who can stop forest fires. Corporate polluters, climate change, rapacious capitalism, and settler colonialism are responsible for the fire regime as it is today. and they could stop fires getting out of control and destroying people's homes. Or they can invest in a cartoon black bear to try and persuade you that this is all your fault. Sure, you

can stop some ignitions, but you cannot individually stop climate change, invasive species, the suppression of traditional fire regimes, and the logging of our old growth forests, whatever that bear tells you. It's worth reminding people at this point that there is no such thing as government land in the United States, at least outside of military bases and federal buildings. The forests, parks, and refuges are all native land, as is this whole country.

But in a legal sense, they're public land. And the people who are supposed to protect this land for the public are instead spending their time enforcing policies which are far from popular with the public, closing huge amounts of it to the public to suppress protests against the destruction of that land, and tearing families apart while they seek solace in nature. The BLM too has law enforcement capacity.

and that is presumably who was tasked with posting notices closing the 60-foot strip of federalised land along the border known as the Roosevelt Reservation. This was, presumably, an attempt to find a way to charge people in L'Aquille who were otherwise just camped on private land. The closure notices were also backdated, which probably shouldn't give pretext for trespassing claims if the trespassing occurred before the notices were posted, but who knows what that was about. In the end, though, it wasn't the land management cops who came for the camp in L'Aquille. It was Border Patrol. Border Patrol and ICE had become the de facto goon squad of choice in the second Trump administration. And on the morning of

October the 5th, dozens, maybe hundreds of agents surrounded the camp. They were joined by a Turning Point USA influencer, who unsurprisingly went on to make up a bunch of shit about a border autonomous zone and misstate the size of the camp. The agents, carrying pepperball guns, chemical irritants, and batons, Push shoved and detained people on private land, bullied their way through people's tents towards a tree. This close to the border, within 25 miles, Border Patrol can enter private land without a warrant. They can't enter a dwelling. And I asked a lawyer what that might mean in the context of tents. Predictably, the answer was, it depends. Border Patrol didn't seem concerned with legal uncertainties and pushed their

way across the meadow toward the tree. They created a barrier around Grandmother Tree and approached the platform with a cherry picker. The person in the tree sent a photo as the cherry picker menacingly loomed beneath them, and workers began chopping limbs from the tree. Minutes after they had pulled out from the tree, a huge excavator pushed it to the ground. With a screen from the people watching and a groan from her roots, they tried to grasp the soil for just a second longer. Grandma the tree fell into the field, where not so long ago people had gathered to protect her. 10 people were arrested during the raid and then cited and released. So far, everyone that I'm aware of who was released hasn't been charged

or their charges have been dropped, although it does seem that initially some people were charged with or threatened with charges of violating the Interior Department's closure of the border easement in the Roosevelt Reservation. Some people still have upcoming court dates, which of course I'll update you on. As soon as word got out about the raid, people in Tucson and Sonoyta began gathering outside the jails to do jail support and show solidarity for the people who had stood for so long against the might of the border regime.

But as the sun went down, the camp itself was still there, and border patrols seemingly still felt somewhat restrained by the law in their efforts to remove it. East of the tree, construction crews began working through the night, doubtless hoping to make up for lost time and lost overtime. By the time the sun rose the next day, however, their work had once again stopped. Someone had ascended the one remaining cottonwood, which people called the Abuela tree, and was occupying a platform previously used by a tree sitter from the southern side of the border. Once again, construction was paused, and clearly this was not the schedule for the day that Border Patrol and Fisher Sand and Gravel had planned. So they began to wield the ball on

the north side of the Roosevelt Reservation, cutting off the.

Camp from the remaining tree.

As construction continued, a land defender moved to lock themselves to a construction vehicle, locking down a lockbox and preventing work from continuing.

There is somebody who is locked down to this vehicle and they are moving it.

This is incredibly dangerous. Border patrol is being incredibly violent. Using pepper balls.

Tear gas. We're on private property.

They are endangering somebody's life.

Soon after the land defender locked down, a space bracket was placed between them and the people still in the cabin. And the truck they were locked to was intermittently turned on. Obviously, this creates a hazard as the blanket could trap the person in a de facto chamber with exhaust gases.

Alarmed, people at the.

Camp called EMS. But Patagonia Fire was turned away by Border Patrol. When called again, they said that they wouldn't be responding. In a statement later, they explained that if a scene isn't cleared as safe, they're not supposed to access it. In this case, Border Patrol didn't seem to think the scene was safe. Meanwhile, Border Patrol stood on the easement, sending chemical irritants into the camp and pulling people through a barbed wire fence on the edge of the property to arrest them.

Here we are at Camp OSHAD. We have a comrade who has locked down to a piece of machinery. Border Patrol has already tried to use pain compliance in order to get them to unlock, but they are standing strong.

They are brave.

They've enacted violence against camp once again, but our comrade managed to lock to this machinery, and now construction in this area is halted.

Once again.

To paraphrase an Edward Abbey aphorism in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, which was published after his death, we live in a society where the destruction of something made by man is called vandalism, but the destruction of something made by God is called progress. By the beginning of the 8th of October, people had begun to come to Likil.

And despite the tremendous display of violence, support for the camp, for the rights of the land and the people on it, and the plants and animals that call it home was only growing. Someone tried to lock down to rebar in a trench the Fisher Centre gravel employees were digging to build the northern wall between people and the one remaining cottonwood.

Hey, hey!

Hey!

Hey, get off of her! Get off of her!

You're choking her!

Get off of her!

You're gonna fucking hurt her!

Get the fuck off of her!

Get off of her, bitch!

Don't fucking hurt her!

We love you so much!

Fuck you!

Fuck you! Fuck you!

Get the fuck out of here!

This is an illegal fucking order!

Another fucking order!

Throughout the day, Border Patrol agents pushed back and more people arrived. But around 10pm, Mexican law enforcement and firefighters approached the one remaining tree with a cherry picker. It seems like this came from the construction contractors on the wall, but they were definitely approaching from the southern side.

We're not sure if they're going back up or not.

So unless they go back up.

My safety net is pulled on my harness.

I don't know where the safety is. I have no supplies. My heart is good. I love all.

Next time you come up, please bring some water. Since you took all of my supplies.

Eventually, they destroyed the platform, provisions, and most of the safety points the person was using to anchor into the tree. At this point, they remained into the tree, anchored to one remaining point, and unsure if they even had enough rope.

Left to descend. I asked people there to explain how this felt.

The cherry picker arrived after the north wall was fully between the tree and the meadow, who flowers from all of the groundwater flowing from the north, which I'm told had surface water before the nearby mine. That water is why the riparian trees, the grandmother cotton ones, and the diversity of flowers and other people live there. I wonder how the concrete feet of the wall disrupt the ground's flow.

So the cherry picker arrived, the people on it approaching up into the tree and taking out a knife. Not encouraging behavior after being treated by border patrol with strobe lights, tear gas, Yankee country safety harness, and pointed guns. They began cutting ropes, seemingly without checking what they are. They didn't go hide or check what they were anchored to, but cut buckets of supplies off the platform and cut the platform down. The person in the tree already hadn't drank water that whole day and drank less than eight ounces each day before that. The state's police tugged on a rope, seemingly to experiment and discover what it is, which yanked on the harness of the person in the tree.

They cut down the safety rigging, supposed to keep the person safe from falling, but did not reach one of the backups. After the rope used to get down and get water was found to be cut so that it no longer reached the ground, they said, Nobody is against you. Tree said, I'm not against anybody. I respect you all and love you all regardless of what you do. They said, It's dangerous up here and we're here to help you.

There's only one way you can protect this tree.

On the ground, scared for their friend's life, people offered to negotiate with Border Patrol. who supplied only very limited water and electrolytes to the person in the tree, until they came down of their own volition eventually. I asked one of them how they related to all this violence and hatred.

Borders aren't real. None of them are. All life is part of the same thing. Every living thing's on the same team, whether we know it or live like it or not. And we must practice relating to them in a good way. That means noticing when a beetle is crossing the path and caring to not step on them, And that means seeing Border Patrol, who put up so many walls to be able to do their evil work and making humanity unignorable to them. I do that by saying I love you. Many do it by screaming and telling them the truth of the evil they do. Both are the same song to make life louder to them.

Others were less understanding.

This particularly extreme incidence of state violence resulted in local sheriff, David Hathaway, falling afoul of the Arizona Sheriff's Association, Hathaway told the Patagonia Regional Times that the Sheriff's Office and 911 dispatchers receive calls every day from the Kiel that, quote, 90% are very disingenuous calls from the Border Patrol and Fisher Sand and Gravel. Quote, they will invent things that have buzzwords attached to them that they think will get us to respond and do something. They will say their people have been kidnapped, that their vehicles have been stolen, that the protesters are trespassing. And it's all very disingenuous because the protesters are on private land. So I've instructed the

Sheriff's Office not to respond. They just kind of want us to take on the responsibility of going against the protesters, which we're not going.

To do, end quote.

The same article quotes him telling protesters, quote, the federal government is probably not going to like what you're doing. We're not going to respond to oppose you, but just let you know that the federal government is a big machine and Donald Trump has done a lot of crazy illegal things and you're putting your health and safety and your lives on the line out there for what you believe in. Evidently, this made other sheriffs in Arizona mad and they kicked him out of their little club. and suggested that Arizona Department of Public Safety might take over responsibilities in the area. This is, frankly, a laughable claim.

The idea that more than 1,000 Border Patrol agents in the sector are in danger and desperately need the help of a 44-person sheriff's office is ridiculous, as is the idea that the sheriff is going to do anything to stop Border Patrol officers from violently removing people peacefully protesting. At the end of the day, the war wasn't stopped because of cops, and nor did cops do anything to defend basic constitutional rights to protest. just as they did not in Minneapolis, where my colleague Margaret and I were kettled by local cops while reporting on the anti-ice protests this January. It was people who stopped wall construction in L'Aquille.

If we want to stop this elsewhere, it's not going to be cops who are going to do it. By this point, 30 people had been arrested, and clearly pressure on the landowners whose fields the camp was on had grown. There were two landowners, one who owned the field where people camped, and the other who owned the former United States Custom Building, yes really, that had been used by campers to charge their devices and organize. Eventually, people were asked to leave the fields. As I said last time, this was a camp built to last. And that meant that tearing it down required considerable labor. It can be easy at these moments for people to fade away and feel defeated. The overwhelming spectre of state violence, the ugliness

of the proximity of the wall, and the danger of detention are all very obvious and clear reasons to stay away. But when requested, people came all the way down to Likil to clean up the camp and leave the land in a clean condition. This is a type of resilience that comes from community and from building movements, but about more than just what we organise for, but also why we organise in the first place. In a way, the cleaning up of the camp was as important as the building.

Of it, if not more so.

Like I said last week, these moments are not just about why people are there, but also how people are there. When people show they can take care of each other without controlling each other, and take care of the land as well, that power extends way beyond a valley or a meadow. This is something everyone who came can take with them to the next tree, or mutual aid effort, or meeting, or wherever else they go. People often like to ask who will put out the fires without the state paying firemen. And the answer, of course, is the same people who risked their lives saving strangers in the deserts and mountains of the borderlands. Or the people who put their lives in danger in the freezing North Atlantic

to rescue mariners. Or the people who cleaned up a camp in southern Arizona. Which is to say people who care about each other. In Abuela Tree, the last remaining and a time of writing still standing tree, there was a banner. It said, From Mexico to Minneapolis, resistance is fertile. And that got me thinking. The beautiful thing about giant trees is that they were all once tiny seeds. Every oak tree was once an acorn, and every acorn can be a giant oak tree. To grow, an acorn needs sustenance, soil, water, and sunlight. If it has those in space and time, it can become so big and so strong that it seems like it has always been there. And so we can forget it was once one of hundreds of tiny acorns.

Movements are a bit like trees in that sense. They can grow big and become so huge that it seems like they were always there. The giant monoliths we see in history, the revolution in Spain, in Rojava, in the USA even, were once small groups of people with ideas that seemed radical and goals that seemed impossible. In Rojava, my Kurdish friends liked to talk about movements like mushrooms.

With mushrooms, the mycelium under the ground could be vast. They could spread and cover huge areas without ever being visible. Then, Sometimes, when the time is right, the mushrooms can emerge on the right day, with the right moisture and temperature. We can't see the mycelium, the giant networks that feed and sustain and create the mushroom. And so we think mushrooms just pop up. The same is true of movements. They must grow deep roots before they can send up strong trunks.

But once these roots are in the soil, they can't so easily be pushed over or cut down. In L'Aquille, new sprouts are already growing where the giant trees were. Miles away, cuttings from those trees that were destroyed are sprouting in people's homes and greenhouses.

Across the country, I hope, the.

Seeds people planted in Minneapolis and Chicago and L.A.

And for years and decades before.

That when our border and migrant communities have defended themselves from aggression are beginning to sprout.

Right now, there's a prayer camp on autumn land.

There's not necessarily something everyone should flood to, but it's part of the same brute structure as a camp in L'Aquille. All around the country, even far from the border. People who never really thought about the war from November of 2020 until last year are mad as hell about it now. They don't just have to be angry anymore. They can be part of something. I don't particularly know where the next time a movement will sprout is.

Nobody does. That's what makes it beautiful.

Just like searching for mushrooms in a forest in autumn is beautiful. But I know that everyone who spent time in L'Aquille has become a stronger part of that root structure because of what people learned there. Living together and caring for each other without controlling each other. People learn to be brave and be kind and to be brave and kind at the same time. I want to finish with something Philip told us in the first episode before any of this happened. Because I was re-listening to that episode knowing now how things ended I thought it seemed particularly prescient.

There's a magic that happens in an encampment that is really a sustaining force for movement and resistance politics to continue forward that is apart from a decisive victory of the campaign. So in most resistance struggles, whether their top-line goal is achieved or not, the way that people hold each other through the.

Struggle and are not.

recreating the dominant form of social organization we're forced into in mainstream life that break and that opportunity to live in a different way in a good way that's both more aligned with the land and the spirits of like those that came before us to like resist the forces that are destroying the world and breaking us, to be building something that's communal and positive on the ground with each other, to be holding each other up in a good way, challenging each other to push our comfort zones and our boundaries and escalate struggle, but to do so while holding each other safely. and not dominating one another is not something that people are living in most day in and day out lives in most places in the

U S. So it's an opportunity, I think, to like both build the world we want to see, but in doing so, it's like sustaining an energy and giving these experiences that are contagious or that you, that you, that people want in their lives so badly that it brings people back to the next struggle. And when people share of their experiences, of course it can be crushing and heartbreaking if campaigns don't achieve their big goals, but people remember what it was like to be part of them in such a way that the movement is sustained and resistance lives on.

Natural Cause is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for Natural Causes listed directly in episode descriptions.

Thanks for listening.

Lochiel Part 2: The End of the Tree Sit

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