Earth First! Blockades Site of Activist's Death, Releases Tapes
by Nicholas Wilson
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by Nicholas Wilson
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Grizzly Creek --
Forest activists
today vowed to continue blockading the
logging road leading to the place where David "Gypsy" Chain was killed by a
felled tree last Thursday. They said they were protecting the evidence at a
crime scene, and called for a police investigation consistent with
manslaughter caused by gross negligence of a Pacific Lumber Company logger.
Monday morning saw about 60 people gathered at the gate to the logging road to the Pacific Lumber logging operation in Grizzly Creek, according to Earth First! organizer Darryl Cherney. Several people were chained to a junked car placed in the road along with logs and other debris. A sheriff's deputy came, looked at the blockade and left shortly before 9AM, according to Cherney, who called for more supporters and observers to come to the scene. Cherney said activists had renamed the place Gypsy Mountain, and called for permanent preservation of the ancient redwood forest there as a memorial to the fallen activist. Last year deputies used pepper spray in three instances in which forest activists were locked down in protests. Pepper spray has not been used since nine activists filed a federal civil rights suit against Humboldt County for excessive force. A trial in that suit ended in a hung jury in August. A sheriff's representative testified during that trial that it is still department policy to use pepper spray on locked-down activists. |
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At a Friday
press conference,
members of Earth First! also released witness statements and mostly-audio videotape that suggest the say the attitude of the logger who felled the killing tree fits a general pattern of increased violence towards the protesters. Jeremy Jensen, one of the witnesses who was near Chase when he was killed, told reporters "I saw a huge Doug fir coming down and it landed approximately six feet away from me."
The statement signed by Jensen and six other EF! members that were in the forest at the time said loggers were intentionally falling trees in their direction: ...Gypsy's death is not an isolated incident of violence. In the last several months trees have been intentionally fallen at nonviolent activists at the Luna tree sit and in the Mattole watershed in Humboldt county. This is part of an escalation of violence against nonviolent forest defenders in the Northwest and all over the world. A transcript of the videotape was also released, with EF! stating that the logger quoted is man responsible for falling the tree which killed Chain. The full transcript, complete with even more violent obscenities, is available at the Earth First! media site. EF! narrator Mike McCurdy films logger chasing other activists downhill threatening them, screaming.
Albion Monitor September 21, 1998 (http://www.monitor.net/monitor)
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Sheriff's investigator Juan Freeman made a statement to the media one day
after the death saying his preliminary finding was that the death was
accidental. Earth First! released a videotape made shortly before the death
which they said proves the logger who felled the fatal tree threatened to
shoot them and to fell trees toward them.
LOGGER: Why the fuck weren't they here early this morning?