Three more people were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience August 14 at Wendell Massachusetts State Forest near Greenfield, bringing the total number of arrests to nine since August 6. The goal of the ongoing protest is to stop planned logging of 80 acres of 110 year old oak trees on publicly owned land. Logging causes climate change.
The people who were arrested on August 14 are Plainfield, Massachusetts residents Erik Burcroff and Rema Loeb; and Dennis Carr of Cummington, Massachusetts.
The activists are asking people who want to risk arrest for non-violent civil disobedience – and people who want to provide “jail support” or just learn more – to come to Wendell State Forest as soon as possible.
The activists are in the forest all the time, or almost all the time. At least one of the activists is usually at the ranger station to direct people to the protest. The station is at 392 Montague Road in Wendell, Massachusetts.
The activists are asking people to come to a hearing for a preliminary injunction to stop the logging in Wendell on August 21 at 2 p.m. at Franklin county superior court in Greenfield.
More information, and links to the organizers' Facebook pages, are at:
www.restore.org/save-wendell-state-forest
A phone number, e-mail address, and snail mail address are at:
On August 15 the New Yorker magazine published an article by Vermont resident Bill McKibben. Europe is buying trees from the USA to burn to make electricity, he writes. The Republican governor of Massachusetts wants to burn trees for electricity too. “Burning wood to generate electricity expels a big puff of carbon into the atmosphere NOW. Eventually, if the forest regrows, that carbon will be sucked back up. But EVENTUALLY will be too long—as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear last fall, we’re going to break the back of the climate system in the next few decades,” McKibben wrote. “The payback time ranges from 44 years to 104 in forests in the eastern U.S."
The full article is at:
www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/dont-burn-trees-to-fight-climate-ch...
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On August 19 dozens of people began a six-day march from Boston to a New Hampshire jail used by Trump to imprison immigrants. One of the marchers is Nancy Braus of Putney, Vermont, near Brattleboro. In a phone interview on August 21, Braus told the Valley Post, "The Trump administration continues to separate immigrant children from their families. Asylum is almost impossible to get for people who are in dire need. We're walking to protest all of that.”
Details about the march are at:
www.facebook.com/events/384825008810072
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On August 30, more frequent Amtrak service starts between Greenfield and Springfield, with stops in Northampton and Holyoke. This victory is the result of work by activists who have a web site at www.TrainsInTheValley.org. There already is frequent train service between Springfield and New York City.
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Getting from Brattleboro to the Connecticut river valley town of White River Junction, Vermont takes one hour by car or an hour and 19 minutes by Amtrak. On August 15 in White River Junction police arrested 25 people for non-violent civil disobedience. They were protesting Trump's treatment of immigrants.
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