Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [140]
One of the farmers, Virgil Fuchs, became aware of the plan, and went door-to-door informing his neighbors. He was just in time: representatives from the utility corporations were right behind him trying to get farmers to sign easements. After Virgil’s warning, not one farmer signed.
What follows is a story we’ve heard too many times, of local resistance overwhelmed by distant power, of politicians and bureaucrats who go out of their way to feign community interest while going just as far out of their way to stab these communities in the back. In essence, it’s the story of civilization: of human beings and communities harmed so cities and all they represent may grow.
Local townships passed resolutions disallowing the power lines, and county boards refused permits for construction. The response by the corporations was to ignore local concerns and turn to the state for help. The farmers also turned to the state for help, speaking to their purported representatives. The response by the state government’s Environmental Quality Council was predictable: public hearings were held, people voiced their opinions, and after discovering that opinions ran overwhelmingly against the power lines, the state doctored the transcripts of the meetings (dropping out unfavorable testimony), then went ahead and granted the permits. One county sued, but the case was dismissed.
Government representatives promised they would at least let farmers know when construction would begin, but they lied. Suddenly one day surveyors showed up in Virgil Fuchs’ fields.
Here is why in many ways I respect at least some family farmers more than most environmentalists: Fuchs fought back. He drove his tractor over the surveyors’ equipment, and rammed their pickup truck.
It must be said, however, that Fuchs was in some ways risking less by doing this than if he had committed the same actions as an environmentalist. He was sentenced to community service, and eventually even the record of his arrest and conviction was expunged. You and I both know that any environmentalist who did this to equipment belonging to any extractive corporation would probably get charged with attempted murder and receive at least fifty years in prison: remember that environmental activist Jeffrey Luers is serving more than twenty-two years for torching three SUVs in the middle of the night when no one was around, and three environmentalists face up to eighty years for allegedly torching an unoccupied logging truck. Similarly, when gun-wielding farmers in the Klamath Valley stood off sheriffs and sabotaged public dams to force water to be diverted away from salmon and toward their (publicly subsidized) potato farms, sheriffs joined the fun and no one was arrested, let alone indicted, let alone prosecuted, let alone sent to prison, let alone shot. And they got the water. If you or I re-sabotage those dams to keep water for salmon (water for fish: what a quaint notion!), and we pull guns on sheriffs as we’re doing so, we, too, wouldn’t go to prison: we would go to the cemetery.
Farmers began gathering at Fuchs’s farm and at others across several counties. They fought the surveyors wherever and however they could. They’d suddenly, for example, gain permission from the county to dig a ditch across a road (to prevent vehicles from driving across them) for this reason or that. One farmer stood next to the surveyors and ran his chainsaw so the workers couldn’t communicate.
Local sheriffs did the right thing, or at least didn’t do the wrong thing. One said, “As sheriff of this county, I became involved when the landowners and other concerned citizens objected to trespasses of their property [by the power companies].