Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [108]
The thirteenth premise of this book: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
My friend who was tree-sitting down in Humboldt County—her name is Remedy—was recently pulled from the tree. With the assistance of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, Pacific Lumber sent several climbers after her. She locked down, which means she climbed far above the platform where she lived, the platform she shared with flying squirrels, crows, termites, ants, and tiny salamanders who live in rotted-out hollows high inside the trunk, wrapped her arms around the tree’s woody flesh and put them inside metal sheaths, then locked her hands together. She did this so climbers would have to cut her away from the tree before they could pull her down.
The main climber is called Climber Eric. Pacific Lumber routinely hires him to take out tree-sitters. He climbs the trees, talks to the tree-sitters with the soft voice and smile of someone who knows he’s backed by the full power of the state, and tells them things will go much better for them on the ground and in the courts if they come down now. If they don’t come down on their own, he tells them he’s going to bring them down, and still smiling says, “See those deputies on the ground? If you resist, or make even the slightest move against me, they’ll shoot you.” I do not know if he still smiles as he cuts tree-sitters from lockboxes. Nor do I know if he smiles as he puts them in pain compliance holds—that is, as he tortures them—until they go limp. Then he ties them and brings them to the ground. Because of Climber Eric’s treatment, at least one tree-sitter is months later still unable to use his thumbs.
I need to say Climber Eric’s use of violence is not limited to his professional life: he has twice been arrested for domestic violence.
As he cut Remedy out of her lockbox, he said to her, smiling (of course), “When you get down, to celebrate, you should get yourself a pearl necklace.” Pearl necklace is a pejorative term for having a man’s semen around your neck. I do not know if he was attempting to imply that he should be the one to ejaculate on her. I do know he was saying this to a woman whose hands were not free, and I know further that even if her hands had been available, and had she been able perhaps to slap him for the comment, she would still have had to hold back—to lie back and take his comment, as it were—for fear the deputies on the ground would have shot her.
Often when they pull down tree-sitters, the cops, goons, and loggers force the tree-sitters to watch as they cut the trees the sitters were trying to protect. In this case they didn’t do that.
That night another tree-sitter—this one named Mystique—climbed back up. She was there a few days before Climber Eric came for her too. Mystique climbed higher and higher, far higher than Remedy had ever dared, to the top of this ancient redwood—which are the tallest of all trees—to where the trunk was smaller than her arm. Climber Eric followed. He reached for her. He told her that he and the other climbers, as well as the cops on the ground, had already agreed that if she fell they’d all say she committed suicide by jumping. He tied a single rope to her waist and lowered her upside down to the ground.
That night, another climber made his way up the tree. This climber has already withstood several assaults by Climber Eric. As I write this, the tree still stands.
If Nazis or