• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2348 0

For all of his rhetoric, when push came to shove, the governor, as representative of the state’s economic system, shoved the power lines down the farmer’s throats. He said, “You know, this is a nation of laws. And there are a lot of things that I don’t like, you know, and I’m sure there’s many things that you don’t like, but there’s a process that we can work, it’s a process that’s open. It’s a process that people in November go and they make that mark on that ballot.” Let me translate: “It does not matter whether this or any other particular law or action is good for humans or the landbase. It does not matter whether you like what happens to your landbase, to your children, or to you. It does not matter whether I like it. It does not matter if the laws were designed by and for the rich, and the same is true for the courts and law enforcement. It does not matter if we lie to you and put you through processes of sham public participation. Your participation in processes that affect your life, the lives of your children, and your landbase begins and ends with a checkmark on a ballot in a meaningless election. The only thing that matters is the growth of the economic system. If you don’t like it, we will send in people with guns to put down resistance.”

Farmers broke up construction sites and corporate representatives said construction would not continue without police protection. The governor sent in state troopers, with up to ten cars and twenty cops protecting individual dump trucks.

The state legislature considered a moratorium on construction until further health studies could be performed. It was already known that electrical lines can lower conception rates and milk production in dairy cows. And the state’s own guidelines warned farmers against refueling their vehicles under the transmission lines, and warned school bus drivers against picking up or discharging children under them.

Across the state, people overwhelmingly favored the farmers over the utility corporations. But, as a corporate attorney argued, “The critical question for you as legislators is, is this a government of law, or of men?”

Think for a moment about that question, and think about its implications.

The legislators thought about it long enough to kill the moratorium.

By now the cops (who may have sympathized, but who were too enthralled to the machinery of civilization to follow their human hearts) were behind the power lines one hundred percent. They told farmers they couldn’t assemble, couldn’t drive county roads, couldn’t stop on township roads, couldn’t speak. When a farmer asked why cops were stopping farmers on county roads, the officer responded, “We will do whatever we can to get that power line through.” The farmer made the point that the officer did not say, “We are there to protect you,” nor even “We are there to protect the workers.”

In August, someone loosened the bolts on one of the 150-foot steel transmission towers. Soon after, it fell, and soon after that so did three more. People cut guard poles in half, they cut bolts three-quarters of the way through, then replaced them, waiting for someone to step on and break them.

The governor called out the FBI. A helicopter soon guarded the power line, presaging the sort of surveillance that is now familiar to the poor in many parts of the country. There were more than seventy arrests in one county alone. But home-cooked justice prevailed this time, as even the two people convicted of felonies were sentenced only to community service. In some cases, everyone refused to testify against the farmers.

A reporter asked one farmer whether he agreed with those who were bringing down towers. The farmer responded, “I wish a few more would come down, and I think they will, as time goes on. They shouldn’t have done this to us in the first place. We did everything we could lawfully. We went to Minneapolis, got lawyers, went through the courts. But either the judges are paid off, or they just don’t realize what’s going on here. I think there’s a lot of different laws and ways you can look at it.