Community Residents Challenge Maxxam/Pacific Lumber's Smear Campaign

Humboldt county, California: More than 60 doctors, lawyers, City
Council members, clergy and local residents from this rural community
have called for the cessation of ads broadcast on radio, tv and
newspapers by Maxxam/Pacific Lumber. The ads attack protesters
carrying out acts of civil disobedience against unsustainable logging
as terrorists, accusing them of "terrorizing innocent people",
urging those listening to the ads to "protect our fundamental
freedoms and rights". Their attempts to whip up public sentiment
against those who would oppose their management practices have the
backdrop of an already polarized environment, since PL's over-cutting
has put many people out of work in this timber-dependant community.

But as tree-sitters have been plucked from high altitude perches in
giant old growth redwoods by contract climbers hired by PL to
essentially carry out law enforcement activities, using pain
compliance holds and binding activists' ankles and wrists upwards of
150 feet off the ground in the branches of giant old growth trees,
the activists argue it is their rights at risk. In fact, in an
appeal of a judge's siting of an upcoming jury trial over police use
of pepper spray on protesters staging a sit-in protest in Humboldt
county, lawyers argued a fair trial is impossible in a "hotbed of
prejudice" created by the timber company's smear campaign.

Signers of the letter to PL pres. Robert Manne and Maxxam CEO Charles
Hurwitz also decried the use of images of Martin Luther King Jr. and
Gandhi in their ads as well as rhetoric trivializing the horror of
the Sept. 11 attacks by drawing parallels with non-violent forest
defense. Though civil disobedience actions in the long forest
campaign have remained non-violent, the signers say the protester's
tactics are not at issue-it is the highly-charged propagandistic
language attempting to create ill will toward protesters, and some
fear, incite violence. A letter with 60 signers (and growing) asks
Manne and Hurwitz " stop producing media material" making the "claim
that civil disobedience is an act of terrorism."

Tree-sitters are not alone in challenging PL's practices that are
laying bare steep hillsides, causing floods and degrading water
quality to the point where PL was ordered to truck in drinking water
to residents whose household sources had been rendered non-potable.
Local residents have traveled to water quality agency meetings with
photos of their flooded-out homes, and pointed to huge old growth
redwoods that have lost their footing and come down in protected
parklands downstream from PL's logging operations, threatening the
other principal economic base on California's north coast: tourism.

In addition, major lawsuits are in the courts challenging the tenants
of the Headwaters deal, which netted what PL pres. Manne called
"regulatory certainty", making their logging operations more
difficult to challenge. In a move that stunned the company and
garnered widespread community support, the county's newly elected
District Attorney in February filed a $250 million lawsuit against PL
alleging fraud in eleventh hour negotiations of the Headwaters deal,
yeilding PL a higher rate of harvest than would have been the case if
all pertinent data was taken into account.

PL has reacted to D.A. Paul Gallegos' lawsuit by launching a recall
campaign against him, and to the tree-sitters by flooding media with
smear ads. The tv, radio and print ads can be accessed at
http://htiac.tripod.com, and footage of risky extraction of
tree-sitters by PL contract climbers can be viewed at:


http://www.homepage.mac.com/davidhowitt/menu5.html

Click on "Safety Concerns".