Recent Reads: Speece, Defending Giants

 In my twenty years of teaching at community colleges I was continuously fascinated by the experiences that my students shared in class. One student in my environmental history class a couple  years ago had been a lumberjack in the northwest. He described to the class what that entailed, confrontations with protesters, and even what an unpleasant experience it was to strike a tree spike with a chainsaw. I couldn’t help thinking about this as I read Darren Speece’s superb Defending Giants: The Redwoods  Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017). 

 

The Redwoods Wars transpired in the northwest coast of California from the early 1980s to the end of the twentieth century. From Speece’s description of the events in that twenty-year period, it certainly sounds like so many battles fought over a long, grueling war as local activists battled both external environmental groups and a multinational corporation. Their objective was to ensure sustainability. They were radical for employing direct action to confront loggers and for seeking to regulate timber harvesting on private land. The battleground went beyond the forests, reaching into the courthouses, trailblazing a new front for both environmentalists and business resistance to regulations. Their great success was in bringing this local matter to national and even international prominence. 

 

For much of the first three quarters of the twentieth century a corporatist approach protected the Redwoods from over harvesting. Save-the-Redwoods League and Sierra Club supported the California Board of Forestry who worked with Pacific Lumber to set harvest goals. For their part, Pacific Lumber was a paternalistic corporation who feared depleting a valuable resource. This arrangement had its drawbacks, of course, and the cooperation is a bit of a simplification, but this status quo lasted until the 1980s. What changed?

 

Well, lots of things changed, as Speece tells us. First off, Redwoods country became a prime destination for back-to-the-land hippie refugees fleeing urbanization. They arrived with an anti-government and anti-corporate mindset and many years of grass roots organization and protest experience. Second, an external firm, fueled by junk bonds and loaded with debt took over Pacific Lumber. This business had no interest in the local economy or sustainability. The Redwoods to them were one more resource to be leveraged to maximum financial payoff to stabilize their finances. Third, the emergence of a more militant environmentalism as exemplified by Earth First!. Finally, on the other end of the spectrum was the radicalization of the anti-environmentalist movement often referred to as the Sage Brush Rebellion.   

 

Local activists battled the international lumber giant for two decades. This is the meat of the book and Speece covers much ground in detail, examining the personalities, intent, tactics, strategy, sources, and outcomes of each of the scores of battles waged during the Redwoods Wars. Direct confrontation created more distrust, and violence. Each success by either side further enflamed mutual hostility. A car bomb seriously injured activist Judi Bari. The FBI even arrested her on the assumption that she was a terrorist who was on her way to bomb someone else. Pacific Lumber violated laws and regulations in their quest to cut trees, an opening that activists sought to exploit with lawsuits. On their other flank, local activists resented and resisted efforts by national environmental organizations to take control of their protest movement. The dedication and strength of the local activists is one of the main points of Speece’s interpretation of the Redwoods Wars.

 

The Redwoods Wars ended with “The Deal,” a bundle of compromises brokered by the Clinton administration in an effort to shore up the president’s support among environmentalists in the lead up to the 1996 election. Pacific Lumber agreed to sell land to California and promised to file the necessary plans with the proper agencies. A deal on paper was one thing, lining up all the parties and implementing it took another few years. There definitely was a hang-over effect. Unsurprisingly, considering the emotional investment, both sides struggled with second-guessing and regrets.

Colorado State Pioneer Museum

The Colorado State Pioneer Museum (CSPM) is housed in the old El Paso County courthouse that was built in 1903. It is free to the public and well worth the time. Guests will learn about Colorado Springs and the American West. 

One of the museum staff told me that decision to convert the courthouse to a museum was done to save the building from being razed to make room for a parking garage. That would have been a terrible shame! It is a beautiful example of the architecture and style of the Progressive Era city beautiful movement. There is a recreated courtroom on the third floor and functioning 1906 Otis elevator, which moved a lot quicker than I thought it would. There are numerous items representing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

General William Jackson Palmer was the founding spirit of Colorado Springs. He was a Civil War cavalry officer who won the medal of honor in 1865. After the war Palmer became a railroad executive, industrialist, and, in 1871 founded the settlement that would become Colorado Springs. As a wealthy man and town leader, Palmer attracted much attention from newspaper writers and gossips. Unsurprisingly, many myths and legends emerged about the Palmer family. CPSM has an entire room focused on separating Palmer family fact from fiction. 

Author Helen Hunt Jackson lived in Colorado Springs. Her house is partially rebuilt in the CPSM. In addition to A Century of Dishonor 1881), her ground-breaking work on American treatment of Native Americans, Jackson also wrote poems and other stories. 

Colorado Springs became known as a playground for rest and recuperation, especially for those suffering from tuberculosis (TB). A room with replica doctor's offices, TB patients, a pharmacy counter, and explanative plaques tells this prominent part of early Colorado Springs history. There is a small exhibit on women's suffrage, which Colorado granted in 1893. In my humble opinion this could have been expanded upon. An exhibit entitled "Any Place North and West" examines the life of African Americans in Colorado Springs. Although there as no de jure (legal) segregation in Colorado, there was de facto (practiced) segregation. I think it is always important to remind people that segregation was not a strictly southern phenomenon. There were many examples of segregation practiced in northern and western cities. And not just small ones like Colorado Springs. Chicago was a heavily segregated city through the use of public housing money and restrictive covenants to ghettoize African Americans. 

There were several different collections of Native American artifacts. The most impactful to me was the work of guest curator Gregg Deal who used the photographs of Roland Reed taken around 1910 to show how the camera distorted native life. Deal's exhibit is divided by theme with about five or seven Reed photographs in each theme. For example, one theme was entitled Romanticism and showed how Reed's staged and posed photographs and the use of scenery and costume, were designed to best appeal to white Americans who felt pressured by the pace and demands of modernity and industrial capitalism and longed for a primitive life. Here Reed gave it to them. The larger point that I think Deal was making is that this was appropriating Native American images and then using those photographs to define their lives without their own agency for the gratification of a white audience. Yet, another example of appropriated Native American culture. However, I should mention that Deal is not overly didactic in his presentation. After a brief five minute introductory video, the emphasis is on the creation and organization of the themes around the very large images, not explanations. The point is to let the guests do their own thinking about this. Ironically, I was wearing my St. John's University t-shirt and hat. Their sportsteam used to be called the Red Men. Although this was probably more  because of the school color, it did, nonetheless, appropriate the image of Native Americans. When I was a master's student there in the early 1990s, St. John's renamed their teams the Red Storm. It is long overdue for others to follow.