Activism Change

On site report of the John Quigley take down

Question:

On site report of the John Quigley take down 10/Jan/2003, Fredric L. Rice All that effort spent for one lousy tree. It’s a damn shame those people don’t take on a meaningful cause. You sure don’t see a turnout like that for ANY picket of Scientology…but then, trees don’t hire PIs, dig through your trash, or make false complaints to the police. Rather than wasting all that time protesting about Scientology, why don’t you do something about the homeless?

Like Shydavid’s work at women’s shelters and domestic abuse hotlines. All these problems — over population, the destruction of ancient trees and the environment, homelessness, domestic abuse, and Scientology — are all legitimate but hopeless efforts to fight.  Even if money was available to oppose such things it would still be hopeless.  But they are all _worthy_ venues to fight since to do nothing is to die a sort of spiritual death and just maybe a few — people or trees — are saved along the way (kind of like slot machine gambleing, huh?) Some people who oppose Scientology have become _defined_ by their opposition; fighting Scientology becomes their way of life and Mr. Minton mentioned that fact in one court transcript.  It’s like Segourney Weaver constantly fighting the aliens — she did nothing else.  Environmentalists are prone to the same problem of becoming defined by their environmentalism.  Good or bad depends upon the level of extremism, the methodologies of their opposition, and whether the activist has become addicted or not. Each of us has to pick their ground and their meaning.   Each person has a right to say "This far and no further!"

At the Quigley take down last night the protesters were of all mixed "racial" types that Southern California is home to.  Blacks, Mexicans, Indians, whites, Asians were all there shaking hands, touching each other on the backs and holding each other’s shoulders while talking in a spirit of humanity that rarely exists among individuals who are not united in a cause.   The people there knew it was just one tree in a long line of trees that had already been cut down in the canyon and, in fact, going further in there are still others that are set for destruction.   "This far and no further" when Quigley climbed the tree was the act of a speed bump that, while doomed to be run over by the developer, slowed him down just a bit, long enough for the world’s media to take a look at Don Quixote tilting at Windmills that threaten humanity’s quality of life. Granted that many such acts are stupid.  I think it might be in the genetic code.  The problem is in grading those in "stupid", "inspired by the gods [oh dear]", "probably a good idea", "you’re a loonie", etc. Thankfully, most countries don’t limit that expression. I probably wouldn’t be upset about anyone’s non-violent protest. Frequently, I think that many "attaboys" at a picket are for sticking to Co$, rather than about protesting what they’ve done. Go figure!

Picketing them hurts their revenues, I think. — George W. Bush threatens to kill us all — for oil http://www.gwbush.com/ http://www.bushwatch.net/ Soon to come: http://www.notserver.com/

Response:

On site report of the John Quigley take down 10/Jan/2003, Fredric L. Rice All that effort spent for one lousy tree. It’s a damn shame those people don’t take on a meaningful cause. You sure don’t see a turnout like that for ANY picket of Scientology…but then, trees don’t hire PIs, dig through your trash, or make false complaints to the police.

That’s not very fair, though.  Environmental activists have adopted a venue of activism that’s every bit as legitimate as the people who criticize and work to expose Scientology’s crime racketeering.  You yourself have put in as much time, energy, and committment working to expose and/or stop Scientology’s some times deadly and always dangerous "NarCONon" quack medical frauds.  Said environmentalists might well consider such efforts to halt Scientology’s abuses to be a meaningless cause. The Old Glory effort isn’t "just one tree."  The L. A. Times this morning — page one photograph, no less — called the effort a symbol of what’s taking place in Southern California over the past couple of decades.  There’s deeper meaning in opposing unchecked expansion of the human species at the cost of uprooting trees that were here before the European invasion.  That "one tree" is a line that was drawn by some people who have honest and legitimate concerns about our future and our quality of life in Southern California and the large numbers of people who came out day by day reflects what I think is growing unease at our growing population and what that means. Critics, human rights, free speech rights, or whatever you want to call us activists who work to reform or halt Scientology’s abuses and crimes are just as Quixotic, just as doomed to failure, in my opinion.   We’ve kept a lot of people from being swindled and quite possibly killed by the criminal enterprise, but nothing we’ve ever done or will ever be able to do will stop the criminal enterprise completely.   It’s up to the FBI and BATF to take out organized crime and we all know that the right people are being paid the right amount of money to make sure that never happens.  Well, Quigley was a speed bump that halted another kind of abuse which effects other people in other ways, and in the end he’s just as doomed to failure as we all are since his problem, too, is insurmountable because the right people are getting paid the right amounts of money. These environmentalist extremists are alike in many ways to the extremists that oppose Scientology’s abuses.  I don’t see how you could consider their effort meaningless without also considering or own efforts to be meaningless. — George W. Bush threatens to kill us all — for oil http://www.gwbush.com/ http://www.bushwatch.net/ Soon to come: http://www.notserver.com/

Response:

On site report of the John Quigley take down 10/Jan/2003, Fredric L. Rice 5 police cars, lots of trucks, and started evicting the ground support crew, tearing down the signs that school children and other well washers had placed on the smaller fence that had surrounded the oak tree.

<laughing! "well washers…"  Microsoft Word didn’t like "wishers." — George W. Bush threatens to kill us all — for oil http://www.gwbush.com/ http://www.bushwatch.net/ Soon to come: http://www.notserver.com/

Response:

On site report of the John Quigley take down 10/Jan/2003, Fredric L. Rice Two of my sons and myself drove to Santa Clarita and the site of Old Glory, the 300 year old oak tree destined for cutting to make way for the widening of the road (for background see http://www.skeptictank.org/treesit/treesit.htm for description and photographs.) We had arrived at 6:00 p.m. (Friday night) with the belief that the police were going to bring Quigley down since he had stayed treed after authorities served the tree a notice of trespassing.  The bad guys had installed a 8 foot hot fence a long way down the street and put in K-rail barricades all over the place to keep citizens from re-supplying John. A couple of nights ago the bad guys had come at 1:30 a.m. in the dark of night with over hired security goons, more than 5 police cars, lots of trucks, and started evicting the ground support crew, tearing down the signs that school children and other well washers had placed on the smaller fence that had surrounded the oak tree. The people who live in the area had quite a bit to say about the noise; the bad guys picked 1:30 in the morning to try to avoid the media.  It didn’t work very well since the ground crew and other activists who were being evicted from tents under the tree were quickly in contact with the media which came out in large numbers and were on site and filming a half hour later.  The bad guys helped out by turning on lights on trailers they had brought with them. Tonight the atmosphere was utterly unlike a protest or a picket and was more like a circus and summer camp.  After finding a parking spot for our Jeep we walked down to the new barricades and started looking at the security arrangements to see how well the bad guys had planned ahead to keep activists from re-supplying John.  We had heard that a very small boy the day previously had managed to get under the fences and make it to the tree to get something to John but the fence covering the culvert on the right hand side of the site up against the cliff had been strengthened with more fencing and sand bags so that route had been blocked off. There were seven news vans parked up and down the street, six of them being large, well equipped vans from the major television stations, and one of them a smaller van from a Mexico television news station.  It was hard to see but a television news van had managed to get parked in the residential housing area directly across the road from Old Glory and had its boom extended. Parking was not yet a problem though the whole area was quickly filling up.  Toward around 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. the cops started stopping cars further down the road and telling them they couldn’t proceed unless they lived in the area.  Most looked to me like they turned around and parked way the hell down Pico Canyon Road and started to walk in though we did see people turn around and leave when told there’s no way to park in the area. There were about 200 people down the street singing, talking with each other, yelling slogans, and chanting down at the far end where the road had been blocked off — and blocking the road seems like an illegal act; blocking the road was not done due to safety reasons or any legitimate reason other than to keep people from exercising their freedom of speech rights to include their chosen audiences which included John Quigley. I’d hazard a guess that about one fourth of the people at the site were children under the age of 18.  While many of the people were in their 30’s, the demographics of the people who had come out to support the saving of the oak tree and to support Quigley were broad spectrum and not what I would consider to be the usual type of environmental activists in a general sense.  I suspect the media and the easy access to the site accounted for that. Looking at the signs that had been placed on the new fence I noticed that the _message_ being conveyed by some of the people protesting the planned destruction of the oak tree had changed somewhat.  Previously the attitude and message was uplifting, light, and positive, appealing to the city to do what’s right and divert the highway.  Tonight there was a sign on the fence where most citizens gathered at the early evening hours that equated the city planners and Antonovitch (spelling?) to terrorists, equating three people to Osama, Saddam, and I think the leader of North Korea.  It was more than a bit much and extreme and was a new slant to the protests that cropped up from time to time during the night. A walk way of dirt along the fence on the right of about 10 or 11 inches wide allowed citizens to approach the tree to within about 110 feet or so.  After checking with people to see what the status was, one son and I worked our way along the fence’s dirt path toward the tree and met with another group of people there.  Three television news crews were at that location and a guy from KFI talk radio was there. John had a small electric light up in the canopy and, even in the darkness we could see that much of his support platform had been removed by the bad guys.  The American flag still hung down from nearby his platform but it did look like the roads and other support equipment had been removed. The new fence blocked off the public access right along the rock cliff on the right — which was another civil rights violation — and it looked to me like the fence was pretty well confining anyone from going in and getting supplies to John.  I had thought that the fence was impassable but that proved to be incorrect as events transpired later. It had been reported that Quigley’s cell telephone had gone dead — not surprising the number of interviews he’s given over the phone — but he was still in contact with a ground crew by radio.  My sons had brought radios and about a forty pounds of other electronic equipment so we got to listen in. Over the next couple of hours the number of people rose to about 300 or 400 with most of them down by the blocked off road’s barricades though about 100 down where I and one of my sons was.  The other son had stayed at the road block and was in contact by radio.  Toward the end there were about 200 of us down closer to the tree. There was much singing, clapping, the yelling of slogans, and, down by the road block, a prayer circle forming up.  In the quiet periods messages would some times be yelled back and forth between John and well wishers on the ground. With the noise John didn’t seem able to understand a lot of what was yelled but he usually yelled back a "Thank You" regardless.  }:-} I don’t know what time it was but down the road a tanker truck drove up to the barricades and it looked to me like this was the start of the arrival of the equipment to take John out of the tree.  I yelled up a warning to John to "lock up" if he hadn’t done so already since it could have been the start.  People in the area around me were wondering if the bad guys were going to water John down to see if that would make him leave the tree — not a totally unlikely notion since Antonovitch doesn’t seem to care about his political future in this county. John yelled down "What?"  The tanker truck came up the road and it started to look like it was really the start of the take down but the tanker had stopped directly across from Old Glory to talk with the knot of police and security goons and then proceeded further down the road and out of sight.  False alarm, and the only one that night. There were eight security goons inside the fence, four of them in one little knot, three in another, and one of them walking the far fence keeping an eye on the culvert that had been dug and sided in concrete.  At one point in the protest six or seven of them collected near us at the fence for a while and then they all turned and walked away. When they were about 40 feet away we started shaking the fence and pretending to go over it which made some of them come back.  That got everyone laughing though.  Since there were a lot of children all over the place nobody was going to do anything so stupid as to rush the fence — or so I had thought. More and more cops kept showing up, and a cop helicopter stayed in hover mode above the site with his Night Sun off but without doubt using FLUIR to watch for activists working their way into the fenced in area and on to the hillside up the cliff to the right.  A distance away and at a higher altitude was a news crew in a helicopter also in hover mode filming and reporting on the line of cars that was coming in and/or being turned back. From time to time the cop’s helicopter would leave station and circle around over the hillside turning on his Night Sun to look at things up there and then return to station.  At about 8:15 or so, I think it was, the news copter left. The police copter then took up station over the expensive residential houses on the left and illuminated the oak tree and surrounding ground with his Night Sun from time to time. Eventually it was reported by telephone that a large force of bad guys were heading our way so my son and I went back to the blocked off road barricades to rejoin the other son and to await the arrival of the force that was coming.  We had grabbed about 30 or 40 other people to strengthen the number of protesters at the road for the new arrivals. A couple of minutes later more police cars came in followed by a fire company paramedics truck and a hook and latter fire engine which was in turned followed by more cop cars. They each got a good yelling and good-natured cussing amid boos and (thankfully) only a few yells of "fascist Nazis" and other inappropriate comments. As the last cop car went past the opened gate, two young women started grabbing at people saying, "Let’s go!" and one grabbed my shirt and yanked be toward the opening.  I knew immediately they wanted everyone to come streaming in to the site and I must admit I thought about … read more »

Response:

Filed under: Environmental Activism

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