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| Log Trucks Blockaded in Downtown Eureka; Three Arrested 8-4-04 For Immediate Release - Contact: August 4, 2004 For immediate release August 4, 2004 Contact: NCEF! Media (707) 268-5613 Log Trucks Blockaded in Downtown Eureka Three Arrested A large demonstration for the protection of Old Growth and an end to Maxxam corporation's destructive logging practices in Humboldt County at noon today included nonviolent civil disobedience. As a truck carrying large logs approached the intersection in front of the Eureka Courthouse, activists carrying banners surged into the street, stopped and boarded it. Eureka Police and County Sheriffs responded some fifteen minutes later, by which time a large crowd had gathered, most expressing loud vocal support for the action. A fire truck was called to assist in removing two activists from the logs on top of the truck No pepper spray or compliance pain holds were used. With the help of the firemen, police officers were able to conduct themselves in nonviolent manner different from the brutal treatment activists have sometimes received from law enforcement. Three people were arrested. The two activists who climbed onto the logs on the back of the truck held a sign proclaiming: "Defend the Forest, Support Forest Defenders". Others surrounded the truck and then stopped a second log truck holding up banners with the messages: "Palco--Cutting Tomorrow's Trees Today" and "Save the Mattole". Traffic in the remaining lane was slowed but allowed to pass. One man sat down in front of the Arcata Redwood logging truck and was repeatedly hauled away by police who, however, declined to arrest him. Officers also returned a banner used in the blockade to activists, after it was ripped from their hands by an angry bystander. The Mattole watershed, where Maxxam is currently clear cutting hundreds of acres of ancient Douglas fir on steep and landslide- prone slopes, has been the focus of recent protest since North Coast Earth First! opened an action camp at Grizzly Creek Redwood State Park Campground in late July. Last week activists staged a triple blockade in the Mattole, by constructing a mono-pod structure at a main gate, as well as an activist who suspended herself from a "traverse" line strung between two trees a half mile in on Redwood State Park land and a school bus with activists cemented into a road near Rainbow Ridge, twelve miles inside corporate property. Four arrests were made, although the young woman suspended from the traverse line 20 feet above the road was too high for the sheriff's cherry picker to remove and was left in place. The blockade lasted for an hour, and ended when protestors were removed and arrested, to the cheers of the crowd, and three police officers rode off on the back of one of the logging trucks. Meanwhile, tree-sitters in the Freshwater and Van Duzen watersheds are completing a 10-day fast for the forest, to call attention to the need to pass the Heritage Tree Act, SB 754.  << Back to Press Release Archive | Latest Press Release | Newsroom | | 
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