Clayoquot Forest Protest Camp

Eds note: Clayoquot Island is off the western coast of Canada, near
Vancouver, British Columbia.  Its cover of dense temperate forest has been
massively reduced and clear-felling continues apace, as do arrests of
protesters.

The summer of 1993 began with the arrest of the First Fifty.  Then, in daily
headlines throughout the summer, the number of  arrestees mounted -- and is
mounting still.  One day it was women and children at the blockade, then
seniors, then people from various Gulf Islands, then "people of faith."  A
bus load of business and professional people headed for Clayoquot.  A bus
load of tourists.

Gradually another story began to be understood.  The story of a "peace camp"
in an ugly clearcut, run, it was said, on "ecofeminist principles".  A
society with a peace code of openness, friendliness and respect for all
living things; no verbal or physical violence; no damage to property, no
weapons, alcohol or drugs; an atmosphere of calm and dignity.  An ad-hoc
teaching institute under plastic sheeting and rough wood, actively promoting
three cardinal rules: equality, nonviolence and decisions by consensus.

"I wish they would keep this camp going", said a tanned woman from Salt
Spring on the last day of the camp.  "So many teenagers wanted to come and
haven't made it yet.  And it's such good training!"  She held her hand to her
heart and smiled: "My mother's heart."

On the last night of the camp the young male cook spoke seriously, "This has
been a trasmutative practice for me. It has been beautiful to feed people of
such wakefulness in times when we are surrounded by death."

Surrounded by death they were.  The "Black Hole" clearcut is an area logged
twenty years ago and replanted unsuccessfully four  times.  Blackened stumps
protrude from slash left behind.  The soil has eroded to sharp stones,
crisscrossed by rusted tree-hauling cables.

In the communities nearby the erosion was of friendship and trust.  There
were stories of families estranged, a car trashed, a bus hijacked in the
middle of the night.  The camp itself was under siege, with persons arriving
every day at the gate, sometimes drunk and confrontational, leaning on the
horns of their vehicles in the middle of the night, even managing to creep in
across the clearcut to throw stones at the tents.  Nasty encounters seemed
written into the scenario.  Thousands of people were passing through the
camp: ten thousand by summers's end.  How could this transient and often
angry population be brought within the idealistic principles of the camp's
origin?

It happened because, first of all, it was carefully planned.  Tzeporah
Berman, 24, a graduate student in environmental studies at York University,
helped choose the sites for the camp and the blockade.  "I was very concerned
about making sure that the protest would be peaceful.  We organized training
in nonviolence every day.  We developed the circles as a way of
decision-making, and worked on how they could be facilitated, and how to make
people feel a sense of ownership."  Peace-keepers were trained.  Relations
with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), at first poor, became
friendly.

Jean McLaren, 66, from Gabriola Island offered to come for the  month of
July.  "Jeannie," as she was called in the camp, has facilitated workshops on
nonviolence at the Nevada nuclear test site and for two summers on the Israel
Peace Walk.  She stayed until the camp ended in October.

Dana Kagis, 19, went to the Clayoquot area to visit her mother and to look
for work in Tofino.  She thought she would visit the blockade once in a
while.  Instead, like Jean, she stayed all summer, helping facilitate the
workshops.  "When the Midnight Oil concert happened, I got very little sleep
for three days.  I was running on pure panic.  We handled it.  We don't know
how!  We had to form another camp down by the bridge for four thousand
people.  We tried to give the nonviolence workshop to as many people as
possible, and I think we hit most of them."

Dana laughs as she remembers one of her favourite stories from the summer. 
"There were four or five men near to the front (of the stage) when the
concert was going on, with a sign saying Go Home Aussies to Your Burning
Beds.  They were holding up their  sign so that people couldn't see.  Jean
went over to them and talked with them, and made them promise that they would
behave.  And every time that they started not to, she'd go, "Oh! You 
promised!!" and they would lower their sign!"

"It was often a struggle to keep the idea of Gandhian-style nonviolence as
our focus," admits Valerie Langer, 30, "but we did  it.  Sometimes there were
over 400 people coming to consensus over the nature of the action we would
take.  I have no doubts the Peace Camp changed the lives of hundreds,
thousands of people."  She quotes one retired labour organizer who spent
three days there.  "This shouldn't work but it does."  Valerie worked both in
the amp and in the office of the Tofino-based Friends of Clayoquot Sound,
working on the international campaign to save the remnants of the old-growth
forest.

"We based our actions on the Women's Pentagon Action and the women of
Greenham Common," says Tzeporah Berman.  "Certainly this camp was not just
run by women.  But women are in a special position working on environmental
issues.  Against them are male loggers, mainly male RCMP, a male prosecuting
judge.  I don't  think that's a coincidence.  We're not just fighting for
this issue but for recognition and equality."

She now faces a virtually unprecedented court action: five hundred charges
for aiding and abetting civil disobedience.  Her trial is slated for December
6.  "If they win this, it sets them up to arrest other people who are
facilitating social justice and environmental actions, and to intimidate
others from organizing."

Most of the camp organizers face stiff jail sentences and large fines.  Sile
(pronounced Sheila) Simpson, 92, has the distinction of having received the
longest, most punitive sentence so far:  she had been arrested three times
for blocking logging roads in the Clayoquot.  On the day of her third arrest,
this past July, she had not planned to be arrested again.  She had taken
guests from her Tofino bed and breakfast to see the ancient trees on Meares
Island, and on this day took them to see the blockade.  Suddenly she found
herself once more blocking a large logging  truck.  She was given a six-month
prison sentence, later reduced to four months on appeal, was imprisoned at
Burnaby Correction Centre for Women for twenty-two days and then released on
electronic surveillance.

Later in the summer, she sat at the gate of the peace camp singing songs she
has composed about the blockade and  accompanying herself on a folk guitar.

"We women need to connect with our blood," she said in her soft Irish accent.
"I am trying to get in touch with the wilder, freer spirit inside myself."

Part of the joy of their leadership for all of these women has been watching
others, especially young women come into the camp and, as Langer says, "not
saying boo" and then develop into positions of strong leadership.  A
seventeen-year-old woman still in high school ended up in charge of the
twenty-four hour security.  Others facilitated the difficult meeting circles
in the evenings or helped with other aspects of the camp life.  "Within two
weeks they had become integral, fully participating members of the Peace
Camp, taking on major responsibilities."

Dana Kagis says that for her the camp was "an exercise in  community."  There
were problems, but there were also profound rewards.  "Eco-feminism generated
some backlash, and some men whom I would call strong feminists held workshops
on unlearning sexism.  I think they handled it extremely well."

On the last morning of the blockade, Mabel Short, a matriarch of the
Nuu-Chah-nulth, announced a call to the chiefs to reclaim native land in the
Clayoquot, and asked to be the first arrest that day.

Near her, standing in the road with others who were prepared to be arrested,
were two twelve-year-olds.  "I was willing to be arrested because it would
mean actually saving a tree," said Eva Prevost.  Her friend Elizabeth Reed,
whose native name means Black Bear, agree: "I wanted to save a tree.  I
wouldn't get arrested for anything else," said Eva, "but it's better than
being arrested for criminal reasons!"

In the end the logging trucks stayed away.  Mabel and her sons retreated
ceremonially to their car and other blockaders broke into celebration.  In
the line-up for supper the night before, in the midst of hugs and advice and
listening, Jean McLaren had declared, "I've just facilitated my last workshop
at this camp.  Tonight I'm going to have my face painted."  When the sun rose
at the Kennedy Lake bridge, there she was, with a pink and blue  striped
face, dancing up a storm.

There could have been bloodshed this past summer.  The Times-Colonist
compared the blockade to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the FLQ Crisis
in 1973, Oka in 1990.  The difference, points out Valerie Langer, is that
this one was peaceful.

And the reason for that is, women planned for it to be peaceful, and worked
very hard to keep it that way.
Chrystal Kleiman
From Focus on Women, Nov '93.