A monkey with a grinder?
Maybe I don't belong in this crowd. Let's see, anything, any danger, any pain is justified in defense of private property.
Dropping someone out of a tree will certainly teach them a lesson--at least right up to the impact.
<i>Ox is simply using his abilities to assist law enforcement officers.</i>
Right. Maybe when he gets old and infirm, or falls out of some tree himself, he can go down to Eureka CA and help hold down protesters so those morons with guns on their hip can swab pepper spray right on the eyes of the activists.
http://www.cnn.com/EARTH/9710/31/pepper.spray.update/pepper.38.mov
Why don't you all debate whether losing a fingernail while firing a cruise missle at Iraq should qualify for a Purple Heart? I'm sure that would be a high moral dilemma for this group. How about pushing old people in front of buses to reduce the Medicare rolls? Maybe that could be assisting a bureaucrat from the Department of the Budget?
This is really the seamy underbelly of some people I respected. How much hypocracy and shyt can be packed in one topic? Maybe I should go back and read the posts about the picture of the supposedly battered woman. Not us, tsk, tsk. Certainly not us.
Trespassing, my ass. There ought to be sanctuary in trees just like churches. I need a break from this primitive vulgar hooting. I'll respect your right to write stupidly, but I don't have to read it.
Wulkowicz
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Pepper Spray Trial Begins
by Nicholas Wilson
Use of the chemical weapon on non-violent sit-in demonstrators was unprecedented
SAN FRANCISCO -- An officer dips a cotton swab into a cup of pepper spray, then smears it into the eyes of 16-year-old Maya Portugal as another officer holds her head back and spreads her eyelids. The officers do the same to three other young women whose wrists are locked together with Portugal's. A scene from a torture chamber in some banana republic? It happened in Eureka, California in the district office of Congressman Frank Riggs on October 16, 1997.
TV network broadcasts of police videos showing the young forest activists moaning and writhing in pain outraged viewers nationwide. The use of the chemical weapon on non-violent sit-in demonstrators was unprecedented, and even California's ultra-conservative Attorney General said it was beyond accepted police community standards. An FBI investigation begun last fall continues.
Trial began August 10 in a federal civil rights suit filed by nine of the activists who were swabbed or sprayed at close range. Dubbed Headwaters Forest Defense vs. Humboldt County, the suit charges officers used excessive force. The activists seek an injunction against using chemical weapons on peaceful protesters plus damages for pain and suffering.
The incident at Riggs' office closely followed two other incidents when pepper spray was used on sit-in protesters who had locked their wrists together inside metal pipes. On September 25, seven activists sat locked in a circle in the lobby of Pacific Lumber Company's Scotia offices to protest the logging of ancient redwood forests. On October 3, two young men locked arms through the tracks of a logging bulldozer at Bear Creek. The protests all centered on the Headwaters Forest acquisition deal brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which activists insist would allow Pacific Lumber to circumvent the Endangered Species Act.
Humboldt County has been called the "Deep North"
Humboldt is a large and sparsely populated county in California's northwest corner. For 150 years its economy has been based primarily on logging. Today it is the location of virtually all the unprotected old-growth redwood forest left in the world, the bulk of it on Pacific Lumber land. Only 4 percent of the original virgin redwood rainforest remains uncut, much of that in state and federal parks. For most of the last decade, Humboldt forest activists have struggled to halt logging of ancient trees, especially in the Headwaters Forest, which is home to the Marbled Murrelet, Northern Spotted Owl, Coho salmon and other endangered species.
Arcata attorney Mark Harris says Humboldt County has been called the "Deep North," a reference to brutality against civil rights activists in the Deep South during the sixties. In 1990, Harris got a federal injunction to stop county jailers from shaving the heads of jailed Redwood Summer protesters. Humboldt Sheriff Dennis Lewis testified that there was hostility to forestry activists in his county, and even members of his own family had told him he ought to "hang them."
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker is a Republican appointee with a reputation for being strict and conservative. Walker last fall refused an injunction to immediately block use of pepper spray on non-violent demonstrators, saying he wasn't going to "second-guess" officers in the field. He has ruled against allowing any evidence about the topic of Headwaters, but also barred the defense from portraying the activists as Earth First! extremists, saying the trial must be narrowly focused on the issue of excessive force. Although the jury will decide the case and the amount of damages to award if they find for the plaintiffs, Walker alone will decide if the defendants must pay legal bills for the activists if they win.
The six-person jury consists of five women and one man with ages ranging from early thirties to late seventies, and a racial mix of Whites, Asians and Hispanics.
The legal team for the activists has won against Pacific Lumber before. Boulder attorney Macon Cowles, associate Susan O'Neill of La Jolla, and Harris sued Pacific Lumber successfully in 1995 in the first Endangered Species Act case ever to prevent logging on private property.
The nine plaintiffs are Molly Burton, Vernell "Spring" Lundberg, Michael McCurdy, Eric Neuwirth, Maya Portugal, Lisa Sanderson-Fox, Jennifer Schneider, Terri Slanetz, and Noel Tendick. They range in age from 16 to 40, with most of them on the younger end of that range.
The case for the Headwaters activists
With the jury seated, each side gave an opening statement, summarizing their case.
Cowles said pepper spray was first approved in California in 1992, but only for use by law enforcement officers against violent suspects. Pepper spray is a concentrated extract of hot cayenne peppers, and is also called oleoresin capsicum (OC). It causes severe burning pain, temporary blindness and inflammation of the eyes, paralysis of the larynx, difficulty in breathing and disorientation.
Cowles told the jury that Humboldt forestry protests had been going on for years, especially since Redwood Summer in 1990. Direct action tactics often include trespass on lumber company property, blocking gates or logging roads. Activists have used various devices to immobilize themselves and make it difficult to remove them. After beginning with chains that were easily cut with bolt cutters, they switched to hardened bicycle locks, then metal pipes to protect their chained wrists.
For years deputies used portable grinders to cut through the pipes and remove them. Other tactics successfully used by officers included negotiation or simply waiting until the activists voluntarily unlocked themselves.
But in 1997, the officers decided in advance to try using pepper spray as their preferred method of dealing with the "lockdown" protests, though it had never been used in that way before.
Cowles said the pepper spray tactic failed, and that in each of the three episodes at least some of the activists endured the pain without releasing themselves, and officers still ended up using the grinders to cut them apart.
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Sorry, story's too wordy for the automatic snipper...
