Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Activist Times Inc. Issue 285
"did u see all those girls in the opera
box to the left of the stage?"
--acckie
Hi!!! & Welcome to ATI,
all the illustriousness?
_ || '
< \, =||= \\
/-|| || || 285 - 0108040505 hrs
(( || || ||
\/\\ \\, \\
- Very Few NUMBERS To Run-
http://www.mindjack.com/report/webzine.html
http://www.geocities.com/motardation
http://www.expage.com/angeleyezxo
http://www.andnothingless.com
http://www.randyjudkins.com
http://www.fuzzdrive.com
http://www.luckyboys.com
http://www.flakmag.com
http://www.rangzen.com
http://www.anada.net
http://members.aol.com/stewa/AVeryAmericanCoup.html
http://thatbitch.com/older/archive-07222001-07282001.shtml#114
Got Quotes?
"Buy US Savings Bonds Regularly On The Payroll Savings Plan"
-- Probably on every page of your FBI file right now.
TRILOGY! (CON'T From Last Issue) written by Aaron Kreider
...[The unfortunate feature was] that they had automatic flush -
so it would flush about four times while I was changing clothes.
Automatic flushing seems to me to be a very stupid idea. Then I
returned to the hippies. There was a young woman (20-22), "Willow",
who was very hippie and a young man (23-25) who had dreadlocks
(dreadlocks are more rastafarian than hippie). They had already
raided the dumpster and had got some premium cookies and dried
fruit. They were driving with a friend who had a car, but didn't
have much of any money so they persuaded the store staff to give
them some coffee for free. They filled a thermo with a mixture of
tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. They half-heartedly tried to beg
money from people coming in the store, so they could buy some
chocolate, but failed. Kindred spirits, but like the hippies of
the sixties, they were somewhat lacking in political analysis
and not so much activists.
Around 2:30am we all decided to turn in. I went to the back of the
truck stop and rolled out my sleeping bag on some nice grass near
a small group of deer. It wasn't as cold as the previous night in
Cheyenne, and with my rated "20" F (but not really) sleeping bag,
I was comfortable. I got up at 7:30am, cleaned up (ex. washed hair
and shaved) and hitched by the truck stop exit. This was perhaps
the best hitching spot so far on the trip.
I soon met a police officer, who looked at my ID and wrote down my name.
He informed me that hitching was illegal in Wyoming (which I knew), but
otherwise was nice and even gave me advice on how to go to Alpine. He
also said the spot I was at was probably good since it was on private
property (I wonder if it is legal to hitchhike on private property,
unless the truck stop people tell you to leave?). After I said that
I was going to Alpine, he correctly guessed that I was going to the
Earth First! rendez-vous. I guess the police know all about it. Hrm.
I didn't take his directions advice since they were good for driving,
but not hitching.
Within an hour I got a ride with a male trucker going to Utah who drove
me the short ride into Evanston, where he stopped his truck twice blocking
part of the road in-town. Other than that, he was a regular nice guy and
somewhat talkative. In Evanston, he let me out at a truck stop but it
looked terrible (more of a regular in-town gas station than a truck stop)
so I walked around for a bit. I visited the free county museum which had
lots of historical artifacts, and also an old train station where I left my
name with the comment "Where is a good place to hop a freight?" Now
Evanston has three interstate exits, but they all lead to highway 89 that
goes north to Alpine. So I figured I'd walk to the north side of town and
hitch on 89. I asked a young guy for directions to 89 and after hearing
where I was going he offered me a ride! I figured this was at least one
time where I was legal since I got the ride without soliciting it.
He said he'd leave in 45 minutes, so I waited around. So I ate some food,
notably my soy nuts which had broken out of their bag and were now a total
mess (not to mention the fact that they were very oily and got my hands all
messy - note not to buy soy nuts in the future for trips and to double-bag
food). 75 minutes later and after a little worrying on my part that I was
being dumped again, he returned and we headed off.
He was a young guy about my age (early 20s), driving a truck with three
vehicles from his dad's Evanston dealership to Afton, a town 30 miles south
of Alpine. We talked a lot about the countryside, which by my standards was
very scenic (though quite dry until you get further north where trees can
grow). We drove past a ranch that he said was one of the ten largest in the
world. He was also taking classes at a community college, and also would
take people on hunts on private game fields. If you have private land you
can raise animals and have an endless hunting season, in exchange for
paying a tax by giving one of every ten of your permit-to-kills to the
government (which sells them).
I got out in Afton and started walking on main street to get to the north
side of town. I walked with my "ALPINE" sign pointed towards on-coming
traffic. Within several minutes a pickup pulled-over behind me, but I
didn't realize for sure that they were offering me a ride since there were
already two people in the cab (and cars normally pull-over in front of you)
until they pulled-over a second time. These guys were characters. An older
guy (40-50) who likely served in Vietnam and was from the area, and a
younger guy (late 20s) who was born and raised in Mexico (possibly of
American parents). They were nice, though they got me a little worried when
they started describing themselves as "outlaws" or even "mercenaries"! It
was hard to tell how much of what they were saying was true, but likely
they viewed themselves as outlaws in theory and had at least some run-ins
with the police to back it up. Whether or not they were running from the
police at the time or were guilty of significant crimes for which they had
not been caught - I could not tell. At the time they were running a
landscaping business with the pickup. Part of their philosophy was violent
rhetoric, i.e. they said they'd kill someone who did x to me. The older guy
had cut off part of someone's finger and had to pay $10,000 fine for it. He
pointed out the spot where he did it as we drove. The younger guy had hit
someone with Mexico with a bottle and only paid $50. They pointed out
places like where the rough cowboys lived and another place where a guy who
made the most powerful shotgun in the world lived (it could kill an
elephant). The younger guy was teaming up with the older guy who was going
to teach him to be an outlaw (or whatever). They talked a fair bit about
guns. As outlaws, they and the others who were hiding from the law in
Wyoming were not happy about all the police descending on their home ground
due to the Earth First! rendez-vous. They knew all about the rendez-vous
and dropped me off at the entrance to the national forest on the road that
led to the gathering. They were nice, but for a while they had me worried
since they were talking a little violent and there I was sitting in between
the two of them in the truck cab. They didn't distinguish between political
left and right which was very interesting, and almost seemed apolitical
(except for their general anti-government stance). For instance they
referred to both left and right as "radicals" (ex. the radicals in Michigan
- i.e. the Michigan militia). Though they were clearly closer to the right,
at least culturally.
At the entrance to the national forest it rained a little, though there was
some cover. There wasn't much traffic, but most people would stop to see if
you needed a ride. I met my first person who was going to the rendez-vous,
decked out in EF! gear, he had hitched there and was now walking on foot.
He decided to keep walking to the camp, even though it was twenty miles, in
hopes of getting a ride on the way (and he got a ride just after I did).
After being there for 45 minutes I got a ride from a woman in her thirties
from Portland who was also going to her first rendez-vous. We arrived at
6pm (the day was Tuesday). I walked around a lot, took a long time to setup
my tent and feed the local mosquitoes. It was very difficult to get all my
gear in the solo tent (a three pound Eudora Solitaire - which is too low to
sit-up in), so I stuck some of it on the side of tent partially sheltered
by the rain fly. I tried to go to sleep starting around 10:30pm to the
sound of "The Freddy's back and there's going to be trouble, Hey na, hey
na, the Freddy's back!" and other noises of the night that kept me awake
for a while. To top it off at 3am we were hit by a big thunderstorm. As I
had very little camping experience, and never tested my new tent in the
rain I wasn't sure if it would hold-up for the hour-long storm. But it did
and only let a tiny bit of water through.
Middle Section
The next day I got up around 10:45am, and eventually headed over to the
morning circle in time to catch discussion on whether or not we should file
for a forest service permit.
The typical day started with a 10am morning circle where everything was
discussed ranging from people stealing, to the shitter situation, to
workshop announcements. The morning circle started with a group howl. From
noon until 8pm, there were workshops every two hours. There was a workshop
schedule that anyone could add to, but workshops were always changing
location. Despite many people not using watches, things were pretty timely.
Food was tricky. There was a communal kitchen ran by Seeds of Peace which
served good vegan food. As some people who showed up without plates learnt,
the kitchen would serve you food on cardboard - if you found some. Also
some people dumpster-dived in town, scoring us many donuts and one-time
about ten bags of cookies. The tricky aspect was that you never knew when
meals would be served, so I often missed meals since I was in a workshop
and there wouldn't be any food by the time the workshop ended. I attended
workshops on BC forests, paganism and activism, Peg Millet's account of how
the FBI got her for trying to cut down power lines, a music jam and
sing-a-long, EF! history, and community living. After workshops, around 9pm
the sunset, it became significantly colder (I wore pants, and up to three
t-shirts and a sweatshirt) and people hung out at campfires.
I guess there were up to 400 people who attended at least part of the
event. It was hard to say since we were generally in different spots, and
people were coming and leaving. It was mostly young people in their
mid-twenties, primarily hippies and punks. There were also some old-timers
who'd been around for a while, as old as fifty and several children.
I had expected that I'd know at least several of the people there, but I
didn't meet anyone I knew until a friend from UC Boulder SEAC showed up on
Friday. It felt somewhat cliquish, as people weren't making an attempt to
befriend me, I didn't know people, and I hadn't put up my tent in one of
the main encampments (in fact I consistently had to stumble around every
night trying to find my tent in the dark). Compared to others I looked
really mainstream. I guess I should have kept my beard. Maybe a third or
half of the men (the hippie-types, not the punks) had beards. I guess I'm
much more used to working with people who are less radical than I. My take
on the typical attendee was that they were anarchists, revolutionaries (of
course), and would have no problem with monkey-wrenching or even the
tactics of the ELF/ALF (notably fire). EF! has been evolving to have
greater concern for non-wilderness issues and the people in attendance
cared about issues like globalization. Many attendees had hitchhiked or
hopped a train to get there. One person even hitched a ride on a private
plane to Jackson, WY. It seemed like many people did not have full-time
jobs, many of them might be doing full-time activist work or roaming around.
I especially enjoyed campfires when there was music. The two songs that I
remember the most are the Anarchist Love Song (which is a blast) and Burn
them Down (a song about Vail). I bought a copy of a newly published
songbook whose songs I hope to learn someday soon! One night, I was sitting
around a camp fire listening to people play and sing when there was some
chanting coming nearer and nearer. We were being invaded by a small group
of people from the "naked make-out party" who were chanting "This is what
democracy looks like." In solidarity with the several naked newcomers, our
performer declothed for the next song. It was the first time I'd seen
someone perform naked, and it was even better since he had a talent for
switching voices and was very funny. Several days later, this was topped by
a naked older performer who tried to walk across the fire on a log (he
slipped and fell, but recovered without being hurt). The peak of silly
nakedness was a young guy who put on a short piece of "Nutcracker Theater"
with Mumia and Officer Faulkner "puppets" whom he drew on his testicles.
Nakedness never reached mass proportions, perhaps because it was so cold at
night.
Weather was excellent. It was sunny and warm during the day, but not hot,
and then cool at night. It generally rained just a little bit in the
afternoon. We had a second thunderstorm in the morning of the last day I
was there with some worrisome close lightning strikes.
After three days of workshops, I spent the last day hiking. I tried to hike
up a mountain which was mostly burnt, however I was unable to get all the
way to the top as it got too steep and it was also extremely tiring work. I
did get some excellent views though. I was mildly lost on the way back, but
fortunately got back to camp just as my water was running out. I was real
dirty from the soot but too tired to clean-up so I just walked to where the
rally was and stayed there from around 6pm until 4am. The rally was
awesome. It was basically a talent show / coffeehouse style. There was
music, rap, radical cheers, poetry, and a play (which I missed). There was
an official program that ended around 10pm, but the music and fun kept
going past 4am. I decided to turn in at 4am, since I wanted to get some
sleep as I'd decided that since people were beginning to leave before the
mysterious "Action" on Monday (which nobody ever told me about what was
going to happen - I guess the planning was done on Sunday), and that it'd
be good to get a ride out of the place on Saturday early afternoon.
Part II : And Back Again
Since I'd stayed up late, I did not have my things in order until 2pm. I
got a ride to Alpine with three people from Wisconsin. They could have
given me a ride to Wisconsin, which would have been extremely nice, but
since their car was tightly packed, I had to de-car in Alpine.
That afternoon it rained, hailed a bit, and when I arrived in Alpine I sat
down at the gas store for perhaps almost an hour to wait out some very
strong winds. After they died down, I walked south to the outskirts of town
and found a low-traffic intersection where vehicles could pull-over to pick
me up. After a moderate period of time, I got a ride from two young guys
who were going all the way to I-80. Yeah! They had been camping and were
returning home to Salt Lake City. On the way back we passed two hitchhikers
who'd been at the gathering, who were stuck at an intersection with no
services. The funny thing is that it's normally easier for women to get
rides, however in the case of these two hitchhikers that advantage might be
muted since my drivers though they were male.
Unfortunately I did not pay much attention to where we were going, and when
we realized that we were going a different way than which we came, I
figured we'd just missed the 13-mile highway 89 shortcut and would be
shortly back on route. But instead, after finally studying the map we
learnt that we were on Idaho and Utah's 89 instead of the 89 in Wyoming.
While this was fine for the two guys who were going to Utah, it put me
around 70 miles off-course. The advantage was that it even more scenic than
the way I'd came - we often had mountains on both sides of us. The two guys
were quite talkative, one had even been at Purdue and knew about and was
supportive of the anti-sweatshop campaign there. I ate two of their large
pretzels and a piece of red licorice. Around 7:30/8:00pm, I got off at a
truck stop on the north side of Ogden.
After about an hour, around sunset, I got a ride from a quiet guy perhaps
in his thirties who was just driving around without a particular
destination. Anyways, he gave me a ride about 70 miles to the third and
most eastern Evanston exit, which was great. I tried talking to him, but he
said very little. So we mostly listened to music with the windows partially
down. We stopped at one rest stop, and as an example of the trust that
people put in each-other, he left his keys in the car so I could have taken
off with it if I was malicious.
I tried hitch-hiking for a couple minutes at Evanston, but it was night and
there was very little activity at the truck stop, so I walked under the
interstate overpass a short distance to a rest/information area. I scoped
it out. There were only several cars using it each hour, but the police
drove by at least twice and there was a sign saying that you weren't meant
to sleep there (and if drivers aren't meant to sleep, they probably don't
want hitch-hikers even more). Perhaps though sleeping at rest stops is
tolerated out west? I've heard some accounts where there were a
considerable number of people sleeping out in the open in rest areas and it
seemed not to be a problem. I rolled out my sleeping bag on the grass in
the back. I slept there from midnight or so until 6am, so that I'd be up
before the staff came to open the building at 8am. It was pretty cold,
especially towards the morning due to the wind, so I didn't get the best
night of sleep. Around 6am, I woke up to find that the sprinklers were on,
and the spot I had chosen was within a couple feet of getting very wet. My
sleeping bag was already quite wet since there was a lot of dew, or maybe
I'd been sprinklered without noticing. I shook my sleeping bag out to dry
it off, packed it up, cleaned up in the bathroom (including washing my
hair), and headed off to the interstate to get a ride.
I first tried hitching in front of the on-ramp, but probably most of the
traffic was local, so I wasn't getting any rides. After an hour, I switched
to the interstate, and around 9am I got a ride from a middle-aged pothead
in a hippie-decorated peace/love car. The car was a little beat-up,
upholstery coming apart and the speedometer didn't work. He was going to
Boulder to spend a couple days in jail (for drugs I assumed, but didn't
ask). He smoked marijuana while driving, though seemed to drive fine. We
stopped a lot. For one thing, he liked to have the gas tank 3/4 full if not
more and this was aggravated by the fact that he didn't have any money
(other than $50 left on a credit card), so to get money for gas he'd stop
at gas stations or truck stops to sell bracelets which he hand-made out of
four different colored pieces of string. He'd also check to see if there
were any "brothers or sisters" (hitchhikers) that needed a ride since he
used to hitchhike a lot until he had recently bought a car. On two
occasions, I saw him raise $5 in only a matter of 5-10 minutes. I also
donated $6.20 to gas. He also didn't like to...
[CON'T next issue]
*Appendix*
And here's a song spoof I rewrote two verses for
that goes as follows:
This land's not your land, this land's not my land
>From Silicon Valley to Wall Street
>From the corporate towers, to the factory farms
This land's not made for you and me
(need to add some verses here)
I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side, I saw ten thousand people
Shutting down the IMF and World Bank meeting in DC!
This land is your land, this land is my land
>From California, to the New York Island
>From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
[can someone tell me why the word "from" followed
by a placename always shows up with a ">" before
it on emails nowadays?]
I'll end by saying as soon as I get some social distance
from it I'll write something up about http://www.webzine.ws
I had (and I hope you did too) the time of my life, and
I'm still waiting to "land" from it. Yeah, a little overwhelmed
yet. NYC. I can't get to the SF one coming up. If anyone is
sitting on the fence on that one, you owe it to yourself to
well, to just take my word for it. Go.
Go, go! Do it. Just go. You will not be disappointed. Fun
stuff to be had by all. Hopefully I'll think up a real essay
about it next week or the week after.
It would help of course, if I got just a little more sleep
each night since. Get a little caught up, you know. Well, I
never sleep when I'm still inspired, do I?
marco
shoutz and gr33tz this week go out to Sunny Day, Randy J.,
Kaustubh and the boyz, and Beanieman out there with all
the noise. And Carl!
I'm the kid of the round man of sound in town signing off
saying, "may all your days be sunny." :)
got feedback?
ati@etext.org
