Women warriors at the bridge to paradise

This is so exciting communicating with you all. I mean women all over the
world collaborating to take back the earth...Wow!

I went to Southern Oregon this weekend and interviewed the women warriors
of the Siskiyou. This morning they took over the only bridge that can be
used by log trucks to get to the forest to cut the old growth at the
Biscuit.

I taught the women how to post their media release of this morning's action
to Portland Indymedia and did a mini-workshop on being the media and the
Indymedia worldwide network. I told them that I talked to women from
Europe and North America and we are with them in their actions to stop
bush's war on the world.

I interviewed a 72 year old woman who was arrested last week because she
blocked the bridge. She came back from jail and taught other local and
regional women how to do direct action. The interview is below. It has
been posted on Portland Indymedia and I will post it to Rogue IMC later
today. How can we get these women's story on global. There are pictures.
There is power. There are women warriors needing our support. Bush wants
to take Answar and the 850 year old California Sequoia's. He is
destroying what is most sacred. Let me know what you think.

Ellen (Z)

Here is the interview with Joan Norman.

Joan Norman- Tell them to come with fire in their bellies

Joan is a 72-year-old woman who has been an activist for over 30 years.
On March 8th she was arrested for blocking a bridge the leads into one of
the most botantically diverse national forests on the North American
continent. Z interviewed her on March 13th at the Siskiyou forest
defenders camp near Selma, Oregon.

Joan: There are only 5% of the old growth trees left in the United States.

They are clearcutting paradise; they are doing it in spite of a legal
injunction. The courts don’t work against evil anymore. It’s time to
stand up. Whatever rules and laws that civil society once had are now
gone. This is the time we have been waiting for, we knew it would come,
and we are the ones we have been waiting for. Yes, the people to rise up!

Z: You mean we need to get some fire in our bellies?

Joan: Well, I don’t think I know about that, but maybe I do. There is some
fire in many of the people here. I see it in the eyes of the young
activists. It is such a thrill to see energy and passion of those younger
than me. It reminds me of the early days of being an activist. We were so
clear about our purpose and our resolve to end the thing.

Z: “Fire in our Bellies” is an old term and a new term it is new because
many people are seeking new personal ideals of strength, potency and
warriorship in their lives. It is old because aboriginal people would sit
in wild places trying to reconnect with the soul urge we were born to.
They would ask for a dream or vision. They would ask for direction and to
have one’s belly – solar plexis – fired up. The fire is the work we came
to do in this life. When we are domesticated, the fire is diminished and
sometimes put out. We forget our soul urge.

What “Thing” were you trying to end? You mean the Vietnam War? Where did
you start as an activist?

Joan: Why, I went with the freedom riders to the south. I went to Alabama
to stop the lynchings and let the people be free. I went to Montgomery,
Selma and Birmingham. I started out with members of a church. We took a
bus from California to the South. I walked with Martin Luther King, Jr.
The thing we wanted to stand up to then was the destruction of the
diversity of people in this nation. The slavery, racism, and violence
toward people of color. The thing we are fighting today is much the same
only we are trying to defend the diversity of the whole world, of life on
earth. We need all of it to not just survive, but to thrive as a peaceful,
loving people.

Z: So here you are in another Selma. Selma, Oregon instead of Selma,
Alabama, another place to fight for diversity. Joan, you are on an
interesting journey.

Joan: Yes, it has been a very interesting journey. You know I once was
very rich. I married a man who became very powerful. He helped to invent
the microchip. He made a lot of money and he lost his way. I was once
the wife of a rich corporate industrialist. I had a big house where many
fancy parties were held for the other rich corporate industrialists. I
did my wifely duties so that we could keep our money. I was a republican.
I came from a republican lineage. I was born in an oil town in Oklahoma.
I was born into a culture that trashed the earth, enslaved the earth to
extract wealth.

One day the fire grew in my belly. I knew that the way we lived was
wrong. The people around me were mean. I had dreams. Then I began to
pay attention. John Kennedy was running for President then. I was so
inspired by what he said to us, to all the people. He spoke directly to
the people. I stopped being a republican and joined JFK’s election
campaign. I brought democrats, working people into my big house. I put on
fundraising events to get JFK elected. After JFK was assassinated I tried
to help get Bobby Kennedy elected. I met Bobby Kennedy. I was inspired
by his words and actions. And, then they assassinated him too.

All this brought much turmoil to my world. My husband was still a
Republican and I was spending more and more time with the everyday people
of this country. The working class. I left everything I knew. I sold
everything that was left to me after I left my husband and the corporate
world. I lived small and I joined in to defend the earth and its people
against the war against the people and the war against the natural world.

I have been arrested over 100 times standing against injustice. After the
civil rights struggle in the south, I joined the protests against the
Vietnam War. I saw the genocide against the people of Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos and I jumped in, with both feet. I was at the WTO protests in
Seattle in 1999, I went to Washington DC to stop the G8 and the WTO
takeover of the world. I have been in the streets with the best of them.
I have lived for 30 years in a community of freedom riders. I lived in a
motor home for 12 years and traveled to where I was needed. I had my own
kitchen, my own first aid station, my few books and my passion for freedom
and justice.

I was at the Nevada test site protests. I stood beside the true hero’s of
this country. I stood by them at Fort Benning to protest the School of
the America’s, the place where international terrorists, death squads are
trained.

Z: Aren’t you afraid to go to jail? What is it like there?

Joan: Like I said I have been to jail over a 100 times. And, no I am not
afraid. The food is gray, the walls are gray. The jailers are not as
mean as the cops who arrest you are. Once you get in the jail, there are
rules, but the jailers usually are not mean. They are just doing their
jobs the best they can. I look at like some crazy comedy. They are doing
what they think is necessary and I am doing what I think is necessary. We
just don’t agree on what is necessary. The people in the jails are mostly
working poor struggling to survive. They are in jail for all sorts of
crazy things, some big things, but mostly small things. These people are
kept so distant from the rest of America, they don’t even know we care.
When I am in jail, I educate. I listen to the stories and I pass these
stories onto people wherever I go.

The meanness comes when we are arrested. One of our group who was arrested
on last Monday had his arm dislocated by a sheriffs deputy. And to answer
your question, NO!. No, I am not afraid. I am 75 years old. Do you know
that this culture has in store for me, an old woman? They will wait for
me to be sick at the end of my life and then strap me to feeding tubes,
pump deadly drugs into me, put me on a machine to make my lungs go up and
down, and wait for me to die. I am not bound to go out that way. No, I
would rather go out in a blaze, defending the world I love. I will be on
the front lines someday and my soul will know the time to go, and I will
just leave. I will make that decision. Knowing this, I am not afraid. I
am more afraid that my grandchildren will think I did not try hard enough
to leave them a legacy of peace, and world worth living in. I don’t want
them to know the beauty of trees by looking at a book. I want them to be
able to walk among 800-year-old trees and know that is our destiny. That
is where we have to get back to.

Z: It sounds like jail is just another important part of the journey you
are on?

Joan: Oh yes! Some of the most important people of my life I met in
jail. I met my teachers, my inspirers in jail. I met the greatest people
I ever knew in jail.

Z: Who did you meet?

Joan: I was in jail with the Berrigan Brothers. I was in jail with
Philip Berrigan, the radical priest who poured blood on draft records and
pounded on missile silos, and took at stand at the gates of hell: The
School of the Americas at Fort Benning. I was in jail with Corbin Harney,
an elder of the Shoshone tribe. We went up to the sacred lands at Four
Corners New Mexico and tried to stop the mining of uranium on this
sovereign native land. I was arrested with Corbin Harney.

Z: I can imagine the teachings that happened in jail with these great
visionaries.

Joan: Yes, well jail has been my classroom. Ronny Gilbert, a musician,
has a song about being in jail that describes our experience. It is
called “ We all sang Bread and Roses”. That song describes my experience
exactly. We sat down together in the cells and sang songs of resistance
and tried to educate the other prisoners. We used non-confrontational
communication to show others how to live in this world. We tried to live
in each moment, the peace that we want in the world. It did not matter if
it was another prisoner, or a jailer, we tried to teach this peaceful
resistance. I am still doing this today.

Z: What goes through your mind when you know you must resist, and you may
be arrested. I mean, what kind of mind set do you have to have to be
arrested.

Joan: I know when it is time. I just know when we are supposed to stand
up, you know have a backbone. We can’t let these people who have no
social consciousness rule the world. Their appetite for war and greed are
insatiable. If we let them take our peace, our air, our water, the sky,
the trees, the plants, we will be lost. We cannot live without these
gifts to us. These things are our true national, no not national,
planetary treasures. They belong to all living things on the planet.

When it comes time to resist, I just do it. I sit down and I don’t move.
I don’t talk. I sit down and I hold my own sovereign space and self in
that spot. I am fighting the good fight. I am just like Tar Baby in that
story about Brier Rabbit and Tar Baby. I am just like Tar Baby. I go
limp and I don’t resist. I let them arrest me.

Last Monday, they came and removed me from the bridge I was blocking by
carrying me in my chair to the edge of the sheriff’s vehicle. They put me
down there and thought I would stay put. Then the officers went off to
arrest someone else. I got up and moved my chair back to my space. My
sovereign space. An officer yelled, “ hey you are not supposed to do
that! Get back over where I put you”. I just laughed. People have been
trying to get me to be where they put me all my life. I have a right to
stand up against evil and I will.

I am not afraid to say my truth. Once I was up in a tree sit and a logger
came to the tree and he yelled up at us, “Why don’t you get a job?” And,
I yelled down to him “ I do have a job, defending the forest is my job”.
And, then I said to him “What kind of job do you have? Cutting down the
forests? I like my job better than yours.”

And the logger just walked away.

Z: Tell me more about the “good fight”? How do you know what is the good
fight?

Joan: The good fight? Well, the good fight is different for each person.
My good fight has been about resisting injustice where ever I find it. I
find it in unusual places. Early on the good fight for me included
fighting for the right for women to control their own bodies, their own
fertility. The state needs to stay out of women’s bodies. That is part
of the good fight for me.

Right now, the good fight for me is making sure the natural world is not
destroyed by greed.

This fight to save the forests came to me through my grandson. I was not
much of an outdoors person. I had never had a chance to live and explore a
truly wild place. My grandson lived on the edge of a forest. He was a
beautiful child. He spent from early in the morning to nightfall
exploring the forests. I was concerned about this. I thought he was in
the forest to get away from his family. I talked to him. I said I was
afraid he would get lost, but instead he was found.

He said “Grandma, it’s so beautiful and amazing in the forest, you have
to come with me so I can show you”. So, I went with him. It was hard
for my old bones and joints. I had to try and keep up with him. He was
so excited to be showing me this pure, beautiful world he had found. He
was so excited that someone in his family would go with him. I had to
try to go up these steep paths and over logs on the trail, but I did.
And what he showed me was just so amazing. I saw it the first time
through the eyes of a child. We should all go into the forest with young
children. They see it like it is meant to be seen. With the innocence
of a being still connected to the earth. They see it the way humans
lived it for thousands of years. I cannot explain in words what my
grandson taught me. I can only say that you cannot read about nature and
wild places, you have to go there. And, once you do, no threat of jail
will keep you from preserving it. The wild places are the last place on
earth that we have to remember our heritage and show us our legacy. We
need to stand up and protect these places. This is why, at this time of
my life, after all I have tried to defend, I am a forest defender.

I lived in cities and I never went to the woods. No one I knew went to
the natural places. We just went from store to house to work. We created
gardens and lawns and tried to bring some natural beauty to our homes, but
it wasn’t the same. We never saw the intense beauty of the forest, or
desert or wild ocean places. We watched it on TV. But to live in it, be
in it, it is so much different than seeing it in a book or on TV. It
changes you to be where it is wild. It reminds you that it is time to
wake up.

Z: Yes, I live in a city and many people around me never go outside the
city. I live next to Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and people once in a
while lift their eyes towards the mountains and say how beautiful it is
but they rarely do they go there and just be in the place of beauty. If
they do, they bring all sorts of noise and gadgets with them. It’s almost
as if they are afraid of what the earth will say to them.

It is amazing to sleep on the ground, feel the earth breathing through
you, and look up at the sky at night and see the millions of stars. Last
week Mt. St. Helens erupted and many people stopped what they were doing
in the city to look at the ash plume rise into the sky. It was a good
reminder that nature is very powerful too. As we become less wild, and
more domesticated, we won’t know how to survive if and when this
artificial world ends.

Joan: Well, it will end. That is the prophecy. When I went to Hopi Land
I learned about a prophecy. Here look at the back of my shirt. The
prophecy is on the back of my shirt.

Z: Well let me write that down too.

“When the earth has been ravaged and the animals are dying. A tribe of
people from all races, creeds, and colors will put their faith in deeds.
Not words to make the land green again. They shall be known as the
Warriors of the Rainbow. The protectors of the environment.”

Joan: We are truly the ones we have been waiting for.

Z: You spoke today about personal sovereignty and the individuals right
to stand against injustice. Can you explain this concept of personal
sovereignty?

Joan: We are sovereign people. We are self-contained. There is a light
in you that came into you when you were born. In this light lies your
purpose for being here. Your job is to let your light shine on what is
around you. When we stand up against unjust laws and rules and
regulations we need to make sure that we are letting that pure light
shine. We are not cogs in a corporate machine. If we connect with that
light, we will know the right way to live on his great planet.

When I was in jail with young people, I try to teach this concept. I try
to teach the difference between individuation, where people run around and
act selfishly and destroy everything, and learning to know the reason you
came to this life and letting your internal light, your sovereign light
shine of the work you came to do in this life.

We have a very unjust legal system right now. It all started in 1896 when
our government gave corporations personhood. The few people who wrote
these laws of corporate personhood were a Supreme Court judge and his
robber baron friends. The Boston Tea party was about fighting this
corporate take over of the world resources and people. The
revolutionaries wanted to keep the corporates and monarchies out of this
new country. They had pretty much taken over all of Europe. People were
starving; the forests and natural lands were being decimated in Europe.
The air was foul from burning coal; sewage ran in the rivers of London and
other large cities in Europe. This is the legacy of greed. This is what
the corporates want to spread over the whole world.

Z: They must have some plan to save their own. Maybe, like in Huxley’s
“Brave New World” the rich will build domed cities where the atmosphere is
controlled and they will be able to breathe, but the rest of us will be
left to try to survive in a wasteland.

Joan: I don’t think they have a plan. They are not deep thinking,
forward thinking people. They are out of touch with everything living and
natural. Everywhere they look they see enemy’s, people who want to keep
them from the present moment of greed and consumption. They want profits
now. They don’t think about five or ten years or a hundred years from
now. We need to adopt a different way of acting and being and stand up.
The biggest challenge to people of good consciousness now, is to get
people to stand up. To stop being afraid, and stand up.

Z: What will you do now, here in the Siskiyous? What kind of a stand do
we need to take right now?

Joan: We are here for the duration. There are many local women here and
dedicated men who love the earth and love the peace. We are just a few
now, but we are growing and we will not sit by as paradise is turned to
stumps. We need people to come here and help us defend this place. They
are cutting the big trees just beyond this camp. Everyday, seven days a
week they are cutting down the trees. They don’t care that we had a legal
injunction to stop the cutting. We can’t just sit here and let it happen.
Tell the people, where you are from, it’s time to get some backbone and
some fire. Where was that fire?

Z: Fire in our bellies.

Joan: Tell them to get some fire in their bellies and come to this gate to
paradise and help us defend it. Tell them to come. I will be here.

---------------------------

http://portland.indymedia.org/

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/313319.shtml Interview with Joan
Norman: Tell them to come with fire in their bellies.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/313303.shtml Women draw the line
against lawless old growth logging - (Press release from the women)