Words of a Tree Sitter

Hello, hello and thanks for coming out here! Since we’re all gathered together to celebrate the 11 month anniversary of the Tree Sit, and since I have a lot of time on my hands, I thought I might write a few words to share with you all what I’ve been thinking about, why I’m up here and what it means to me to be involved in resisting the LRDP.

Like most of you, I’m sure, I love this forest and these mountains, especially the part I’m most familiar with which is called “upper campus.” If you haven’t been up there yet, go exploring for a while! It is a beautiful community full of amazing plants and animals that the indigenous people of this area knew as food, medicine, teachers, neighbors and relatives. Too many wild places like this have been destroyed and too many are facing destruction now. So why make a stand here?

Let me ask you to consider first that to have the idea of “wild places” we must have “tame” or “civilized” places. The native people of this area had no such concepts. They spoke an Ohlonean language and most of the year they lived in villages of houses made of tule reeds from the marshes by the shore. Around this time of year, they would trek up to the mountains to gather acorns, which they stored and ate year round. When they came back down, they set fire to the meadows so that in spring, grass shoots would bear more seeds and attract more animals to hunt.

This way of life sustained their culture for thousands of years. The way of life brought by Spanish colonialism and, later, the industrialized U.S., enslaved and destroyed most of the Ohlone and much of their world, replacing it with lime kilns, railroads, highways, strip malls, suburbs and universities. There are the tame places. Henry Cowell cut down this forest once already to get rich and the UC Regents want to do it again for the same reason.

So this is why the forest is not the whole issue. The destruction of upper campus’ diverse ecosystem and endangered species habitat, as well as the genetic manipulations and the torture of our animal cousins they want this new lab for, result from the same source: a culture that regards the world and its inhabitants not as a sacred living community, but as resources to be used in its ever-expanding system of technological controls. UCSC is also involved in a project at Moffett Field in San Jose to blend biotechnology, nanotechnology and advanced computing. Who knows what horrors will be possible if they can penetrate our very cells with their machines?

We have a choice. We do not have to accept this. In 1792, native resisters burned down the mission of Santa Cruz, freeing hundreds of slaves. On Nov. 7, 2007, hundreds of Tree Sit supporters fought back effectively against police using batons and pepper spray to try to stop supplies from reaching the Tree Sit. Over the winter, police attacked and arrested a number of people they accused of supporting the Tree Sit… but here we are! Not just because a few people climbed some trees, but because a whole bunch of people stuck together. We don’t have to settle for alientated roles in this society and its institutions like so many gears in a machine. It’s true that this is a fight against the force of progress, but what they call progress is fighting a still more powerful force; the rhythms and cycles of the earth, of life itself and of living communities. We want to live in sustainable balance, like the Ohlone.

Even if you don’t agree with everything I’ve said I hope it’s obvious that the occupation of these trees has created a space for people to come together, not just to fight the LRDP, but to have this dialogue. What is progress? Do we really want it? why exactly is the LRDP unacceptable to me or to you? Those who rule us and who profit from the destruction of tribes, forests and other communities, who would bend and shape us all into parts in their machine, do not want people to have these kinds of gatherings and conversations.

This is a struggle for the kinds of relationships we want to have among people, and between people and the land. This didn’t start with the LRDP and it won’t end with it. Even if they tear down the Tree Sit, we’ll do something else. Let’s keep organizing ourselves and keep getting in their way!