| Earth First! in Lincoln, Maine |
| May 4 , 1998 |
| Lincoln,
Maine - An early morning reports tells us that the eco-terror group, Earth
First!, is in Lincoln this morning, May 4th, 1978. Estimates number them
about 30. This time, their "protest" is about "clean water",
tied in with some kind of Native American reference, which is becoming a
favorite ploy with environmental
groups. This appearance in
Lincoln follows an activist pow-wow among radical Greens over the week-end,
here in Maine. The weak-kneed reaction of the State of Maine four years ago emboldened the radicals, so don't underestimate them. Earth First! members occupied an office of the Maine Dept. of transportation to protest plans to build a cargo port on Sears Island in the fall of 1994. Protesters entered the DOT office and demanded a meeting with a DOT lawyer. When told that she was not available, they entered the working (non public) section of the office, disrupted office workers for 20 minutes until Capitol police arrived. Workers could not function until the intruders were cleared out, according to reports from Associated Press. One protester damaged a couple of ceiling tiles when he tried to climb through the ceiling to enter the lawyer's office. Two or three of them had to be physically removed. NO ARRESTS WERE MADE. Their "penalty" for doing what anyone else would have been arrested for, was to be able to confer with the DOT lawyer for 2 hours. According to Jim Freeman, member of Earth First!, Maine Greens, and head of the Native Forest Network here in Maine, "the action, with no arrests, was viewed as reasonable by the press..." Freeman claimed that approximately 50 Earth First!ers raided the MDOT office to go through their files after they first refused to meet with the activists. Freeman lives on Verona Island, near Bucksport. MDOT would have done everybody a favor if they had displayed zero tolerance and treated them as they would you or I if we had done the same thing. The Native Forest Network, you may recall, shut down a chip mill in Shelburne, New Hampshire last June 16th, when a protester fastened himself to a wood-chipper shaker with a kryptonite lock. Chip mills are another of their latest targets. The rationale? "We don't need chipmills on our land. We need to protect our surviving forests." There was also a demonstration at the Mead plant in Rumford last fall. That's the kind of people who are in Lincoln today. |
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