Julia Butterfly Harassed At Conference

by Sunny Lewis

Julia Hill at the podium is berated by the woman kneeling. Steelworker Don Kegley stands ready to intervene (Photo: Sunny Lewis)

Hill was speaking to an audience of about 3,000 at the University of Oregon Law School's conference on environmental law in the public interest. She was describing the difficulties she experienced while 180 feet up in a redwood tree on Maxxam/Pacific Lumber Company land in Humbolt County, California, when a woman stood up in the crowd and began scolding Hill for giving money to Pacific Lumber Company.

Part of the agreement that Hill signed with Pacific Lumber last December to end her two year occupation of the giant redwood required her to pay the timber company $50,000. The money will be used to finance forestry studies at Humboldt State University.

The woman charged the stage on which Hill was speaking, repeatedly demanding an explanation, but would not let Hill answer her questions. Despite calls from the audience to have her removed, she was allowed to harangue Hill.

Two steelworkers, also speakers at the conference, were controlling access to the stage, but did not force the woman to leave, although they did try to calm her down.

"All I want to know is the truth," the woman screamed. "Tell us now, why did you give money to the corporation?"

"You don't want to understand," Hill said, ruffled. "You just want to get me in an argument. I don't want to get in an argument."

"I understand that giving money to a corporation is not what we want to do," said Hill.

Crying, Hill compared Pacific Lumber's ownership of the tree she calls Luna to the ownership of slaves. "I was willing to do whatever it took to see it free," she said.

"Those people who owned those slaves were just like the corporations today. Because corporations place only a value on money. They don't remember the value of life. The people who owned another human being didn't recognize the value of that life."

"People who had money, gave money to set them free so that they could live as a symbol of the freedom of others, just as Luna now lives as a symbol."

Encouraged by a supporter, Hill kneels onstage to quiet the crowd (Photo: Sunny Lewis)

Hill finished her address passionately by reading a poem "to honor every person who has been imprisoned for standing up for the truth, knowing that they might be hurt or killed."

The woman who charged the stage was allowed to leave unhindered. She vanished into the crowd and disappeared.

Speaking in a preacher-like cadence, Hill told the audience in Eugene she got through her two years atop Luna because, "Luckily for us, the universe, the creator, whatever you want to call that higher power that is a part of our lives because it is in each and every one of us and is in all of life, only gives it to us day by day, struggle by struggle, hardship by hardship, and as we make it through each one we become stronger and we can handle the next and the next."