One year anniversary of forest defender Beth's fall to her death

Picture: Beth (right) at a protest of George W Bush's inauguration, in San Francisco, on January 20 2001 (from video). Now we can see the disastrous affects of his presidency and we have to continue the fight without her.


"It could have been me but instead it was you
So I'll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two"
Holly Near

One year ago our friend Beth O'Brien (Horehound) was killed at the Eagle Creek tree-sit in the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon on April 12 2002. She fell 150 feet (50m) when she slipped while climbing a rope ladder between two platforms. She had just snow shoed in with supplies. We know that she was very excited to be there and her death in this tragic accident makes us very sad. She was 22 years old. The tree-sit had just, three days before, succeeded in saving the forest, from logging, and activists were only waiting for signed documents canceling the timber sale before coming down.
She was from Santa Rosa, California where she started a local Food Not Bombs, worked with Earth First! and the Purple Berets-against police brutality and she made many things happen with her energy. Recently she had moved to Oregon to work with the Cascadia Forest Defenders. In the Bay Area we remember her coming to the events we organized where she shared her indignation at protests and showed her love of life.
At her funeral in Santa Rosa her Father spoke to us. He said that right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh had called her a "Tree-sit suicide bomber" and "If she was saving the trees why didn't they save her". This outraged him and he called for us to take action.
In these days of constant protests against war and for a livable world the police use pepper spray and concussion grenades in Portland and concussion grenades and wooden bullets in Oakland and I know that if Beth was still alive she would be right there with us. She was always doing so much somewhere in this world that needs so much. I miss her as an activist and a friend. I miss her smile and energy. I miss the knowledge that no matter where she was, she left the world a better place. I remember when I was at the protest of the G8 in Genoa, Italy in 2001; the police shot one person to death, almost ran over us with tanks and broke my friends bones while they slept. Soon Beth and so many others in Portland and around the world were protesting, blocking an Italian ship and not forgetting us. I will never forget her.

"Los mejores ya partieron
Los que caeron por nuestro libertad,
Los que caeron por nuestra libertad"

The best ones have already gone,
Those that have fallen for our freedom
Those that have fallen for our freedom
(Song about EL Salvador's FMLN guerillas from the 80's)