We thought we were winning, but we were quite mistaken. And the biggest reason, in my opinion, is that we failed to understand that the hundreds of forest workers we were blockading could be our allies and not our enemy. The result? Inter-community tension that you could cut with a knife; regular death threats to our leading activists; and ultimately, a perhaps permanent loss in our ability to ever co-organize around our common ground.
Class Blindness
Why couldn't we see it coming? I believe the main reason is that our movement was blind to the class privilege which informed our work. We simply could not fathom that loggers might also have a strong desire to protect the forests - so as to ensure themselves and their children a secure forest job base well into the future. In addition, we could not distinguish between the corporation and the workforce. We perceived them as having the same values: cutting the forest down in order to get rich.
By the time I proposed that perhaps loggers were actually our allies, and that we needed, at a minimum, a new staff position to focus on building these relationships, it was too late. The damage had already been done. All chances of real dialogue had evaporated.
It is now 1997. The battle over the future of the ancient forests continues to escalate. As nature's healthy edges recede by the day, the stakes grow higher. Who's on what side? Who are our allies in the campaign? Who are our opponents? And who the heck is "We" anyway? Are professional D.C. based enviro-lobbyists any more "We" than local loggers worried about their future employment prospects? I'm not so sure.
Our society is so culturally fractured, and so many of us are now committed to single-issue campaigns, that it's almost impossible to gauge how broad-based a movement we could actually build to protect what's left of the ancient forests and the human cultures which depend on them. Most of us don't know our neighbors. Most of us are too timid to share our deep thoughts with our co-workers for fear of alienating ourselves if they think differently than we do. Environmentalists still don't talk to mill workers. The wealthy don't talk to the unemployed. Euro-Americans rarely have meaningful conversations with Native people or other people of color. Yet so many in our society are suffering, most of them unorganized and silent. It's a very difficult time in America for those of us who envision a healthy and equitable society. What is to be done?
In my opinion, here's the hardest piece each group will have to tackle:
1. Environmentalists will finally have to confront and acknowledge the vast amount of class privilege which they are mostly unaware that they carry. And they will have to educate themselves about the proud history of working class culture so that they finally begin to understand that they too are "workers," so that they no longer blame workers for the sins caused by CEO's in distant corporate boardrooms, and that most of the freedoms and privileges they take for granted came through workers' social movement struggles (in fact, if unions weren't around, practically all of the wealth would be held by just a few people and the rest of us would be serfs!).
2. Forest and mill workers will finally have to confront their lack of understanding of ecological principles: ancient forests are not a renewable resource; protecting biological diversity is essential if nature's species (including ours) is to survive; osociety's standard of living is way beyond the earth's capacity to support us- and this includes the lifestyles of most well-paid workers; perhaps most critical, we are all connected in a great web of life, and what we do to the forest has direct impact on all of us.
Threats?
Forest and mill workers tend to see environmentalists as more of a threat to their jobs than the giant corporations which employ them. Although clearly absurd, it is no accident. Corporations, under the tutelage of public-relations fixers, have learned that it's easier to have workers fighting their environmental battles for them. Obviously, environmentalists are simply the messengers with a very unpleasant message.
Unfortunately, environmentalists have their own tunnel vision. They continue to perceive forest and mill workers as uncaring about the natural environment, and interchangeable in their values with the corporations which employ them. This is equally absurd. The fact is, if loggers had the power to set forest policy in the woods, they certainly would not support clearcutting because they would have the long-term interests of their own families and multi-generational communities as their priority. Loggers don't stand up publicly and oppose clearcutting for obvious reasons: they are pawns in the operation and easily replaced in a society where the government chooses to maintain a high unemployment rate in order to keep workers docile and scared. Forest workers are terrified for their futures and it is simply made worse by an environmental movement which utterly fails to communicate with them in ways which speak to their current fears and anxieties.
To me there is only one critical division line in our struggle, only one relevant us and them. It's the line between giant corporations and the citizens who care about the health of their communities (and I mean health in the broadest sense, economic, ecological, social, etc.)
Imagine a day in the near future when loggers recognize a forest road blockade action for what it is, the activist equivalent of a union picket line, and thus, in a show of solidarity, choose not to cross it because they understand that both groups, activists and loggers, share common ground. Now imagine a larger leap, where both groups are well enough organized and supported by large enough numbers of active and empowered citizens that we no longer have to meet at a blockade because we have become powerful enough to dismantle the corporations which interfere in the lives of our communities. And in their place, we have created locally owned and democratically managed companies.
You may see the picture I paint as impossible pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Perhaps. But the alternative is an increasingly impoverished society, both economically and ecologically, where citizens fight for the crumbs and giant corporations control everything. From my perspective, we have nothing to lose, and a healthy and more equitable world to gain. Are you ready to get off the couch? I'd love to hear from you.Contact Paul Cienfuegos at PO Box 27, Arcata, CA 95518 or 707-822-2242 or Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited