Oak Grove Extraction #5

The extractors now had five cherry pickers, climbers, a large crane, a giant crane and all sorts of new equipment. They began to chip away at our infrastructure. We held out heroically and risked our lives many times for what we believed in. It was hard to hear the screaming when people almost died. For hours this went on. My life was endangered several times. Slowly we lost our lines and tree sits.

I was on a line with another tree sitter. A wrecking ball was lowered near the line . The heavy wrecking ball pulled the line down. We both believed that the line would snap and that we would fall. It was only luck that the line slipped off the ball and did not break.

The extractors spent 12 more hours before they finally chased us back to Redwood. It had taken them a huge police operation, massive amounts of heavy machinery and 23 hours to destroy the majority of our tree sits. But we were not totally beaten even then. We were still in the trees and one tree sitter had made it to the grove. We began to set up more lines that night.