Calling all those who love Cascadia and wish to defend its threatened ecosystems - for the kickoff of CasT.A.Z. - a midsummer Cascadia Temporary Autonomous Zone! CasTAZ begins will be held Sat-Mon, Aug 1 -3, within an hour's drive of Eugene, Oregon. Location details will be announced, shortly! Please join us - for a day, a week, the whole summer, or beyond!

A skill-share and community building event, Cas T.A.Z. will be held in the heart of the Willamette National Forest, surrounded by a tract of beautiful and threatened ancient forest. Co-created by all participants, content and activities will be shaped by all those who attend. Please come ready to engage and take an active role! Workshops and discussions will be followed by strategy sessions and direction building for current and future campaigns. Please bring your workshop ideas, discussion topics, and suggestions! There will be space to add to the schedule and improvise, throughout the week. There will be no fully stocked communal kitchen. Please come with your own camping supplies, food for yourself and the community. Where?: The site of Cas T.A.Z. is home to many acres of native old growth forest, slated to be logged before 2011, by the Seneca Jones Timber Company. These 300-400 year old trees support a fragile ecosystem, inadequately protected by the USFS.

 http://foresestdefensenow.org

The last few weeks have been unbelievable! I want to share some of my experiences so that anyone who hesitates taking time off their job might think again, and renounce being consumer slaves of corporate capital, in favor of radical adventure and creative insurrection against the global government of militant madness.

Nearly a month ago I took time off work to partake in the most amazing Cascadia Summer, something like a summer vacation, even with an overnight in Douglas County Jail.

On Thursday morning, July 16th throughout Oregon a loud sign of relief followed by cheering started to spread as word came from Washington D.C. that the Obama administration pulled all six Records of Decision on the WOPR (Western Oregon Plan Revision). This is a big victory for the forests, salmon, critters, rivers, workers, and citizens of Oregon. Read Full Report | Portland Indymedia Coverage

There are lots of Portland Benefits In the Works!

All day THIS SUNDAY, Proper Eats will be donating 10% of all their sales from the Cafe and store to the forest defenders. Please support businesses that support local activists! And eat awesome vegan food!
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This next Wednesday will be the regular open Portland Rising Tide meeting at the Red & Black Cafe. We'll be presenting Western Oregon Plan Revision and Elliot State Forest management, and showcasing the Free State, Cascadia Summer, and Home Depot actions.

Second part will be a benefit show with a few local radical favorites. Please come and donate what you can!
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Food Fight Grocery
1217 SE Stark -- Ongoing Benefit
Food Fight has a donation bucket set up for forest defenders. So when you're buying your veggie dogs and Schreese, please drop yr change in the bucket.
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You can always donate online by visiting forestdefensenow.org

Roseburg, OR - Following its annual national gathering, the no-compromise group Cascadia Earth First!, along with Cascadia Rising Tide, dropped a huge "Dam Home Depot, Save Chile's Rivers" banner at the corporation's Roseburg, Oregon store. The store is at 3000 NW Aviation Drive.

The groups are protesting The Home Depot's buying of timber products from the Matte Group, which is involved in a proposal to build five big dams on two pristine rivers in Patagonia, southern Chile. The dams and their associated transmission lines would ruin the Baker and Pasqua river ecosystems, flood rare endangered forests and destroy livelihoods.

www.internationalrivers.org/patagonia

On July 6th forest defenders from Cascadia and across the country set up road blockades at the Umpcoos Ridge timber sale to save some of the last native forests in Oregon from clearcutting. The Elliot State Forest is one of the few remaining intact coastal forest ecosystems, and provides critical habit for Spotted Owls, Coho Salmon, and Marbled Murrelets.

Logging has been halted in the forest but the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), the state patrol, and the Douglass County Sheriffs have begun extracting people from the blockades using heavy handed police state tactics. So far over 23 people have been confirmed arrested in police raids on the blockade.

** We just got word that the remaining people in the forest have been arrested and the blockade taken down. These remaining 8 people will be processed today. All of these people desperately need your support! Read More | | | Past Coverage: Elliot Free State Locks Down, Resists Police Raid | Road Blockade Stops Logging In Elliott State Forest: Call For Action

Do you remember the days of Fall Creek, Warner Creek, the first Cascadia Summers? Do you remember the lands that were saved by the direct efforts of concerned citizens? We remember, and it is within that greater tradition of non-violent forest defense that we now come to you proclaiming that a resurgence has begun.

Communicating to those personally responsible for trashing our forests, poisoning our citizens, fouling our drinking water, and killing our salmon is a tactic often forgotten in grassroots advocacy to protect our priceless forests. But folksinger Utah Phillips spoke the truth when he said: "The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses."

I'm writing to inform you that as of March 2009, Eco-Advocates (aka: Cascadia's Ecosystem Advocates) has officially relaunched the Boycott of Umpqua Bank or Stumpqua (stumpquabank.com) to send a strong message to bank Chairman/timber baron Allyn Ford (owner of Roseburg Forest Products) to replace his obsolete deforestry practices of toxic clearcutting and taxpayer-subsidized public lands logging with responsible and ethical forestry practices on his own land.

The Stumpqua Bank Boycott gives average citizens the power to apply direct pressure to an individual personally responsible (Ford is SOLE OWNER of Roseburg Forest Products) for poisoning our children, trashing our forests, and spoiling our drinking water. A letter or phone call only means so much to a greedy timber baron. But if you put your money where your mouth is and withdraw your accounts from Ford's precious Umpqua Bank -- whether it's $100 or $100 million -- you can rest assured he'll sit up and take notice.

 http://stumpquabank.com

Fire, windstorms, insects and disease have been a part of Pacific Northwest forests for millennia. These natural disturbance are frequently dubbed "catastrophic" to the landscape. Yet in the past 150 years man has left a significant imprint on the land through logging, road building and grazing.

Hosted by the Crag Law Center and the Mazamas Mountaineering Center, SE 43rd and Stark, Portland, Thursday, April 2, 2009, 6:30 pm.

On Saturday, March 21, 2009 Ploppy Palace Productions and Tobacco Road will be hosting a concert to raise awareness and funds for the Hold The Line Campaign and for Everglades protection. As part of this four stage extravaganza, some of South Florida's top bands, spoken word artists and community activists will join together to raise awareness for this vital natural resource.

The BLM's massive Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) logging plan has ignited a groundswell of opposition stretching from government scientists and the general public to Oregon's Governor and Congressional Representatives. Unfortunately, the BLM is pushing forward with the misguided direction of the Bush administration regardless of popular opinion, the law or scientific review.

As it stands today, the WOPR is the law of the land for over 2.5 million acres of forests in Western Oregon, and the BLM is taking steps to implement the plan on the ground. The first major project under the WOPR was just announced, and it is a 1400 acre clear cut above salmon-bearing streams in Oregon's Coast Range called "Edson". If allowed to move forward, this destructive Bush-era plan will repeat this form of industrial logging across Oregon's remaining natural heritage.

6 Earth First! activists entered Barley Barber swamp this morning, bringing closure to a 5 day, constant vigil near an entrance to the swamp. They were arrested, along with 11 more activists who were rallying on adjacent property. Read More | Update: Everglades Earth First! Stand off with Law Enforcement at Barley Barber Swamp

Over four hundred days ago, a handful of activists climbed up into the trees on Science Hill as a symbol of resistance to the University of California's plan to destroy 120 acres of campus forest. On December 13th at approximately 8:00am, the tree sit drew to a close as police seized control of Science Hill, arresting one tree sitter. Later, a tree cutting company hired by the university cut down a grove of 100 year old redwood trees to make way for construction of a Biomedical building.

On December 3rd, tree-sitters unfurled a 30 ft. wide banner on the edge of the Great Redwood Forest, east of Eureka, CA. The banner read "Hey Green Diamond, Stop Clear-cutting - Earth First!". The Green Diamond Resource Company plans to log 60 acres of large second growth and residual old growth Redwoods in the near future. The two groves represent the oldest remaining forest and best habitat for old-growth dependent species like the northern spotted owl.

There is a place near the river, where I live, that used to be a forest. I used to go walking there. The light filtered down through the trees, into the deep, green shade where I walked. Kestrels and red tailed hawks prowled above the branches near the edges of this wood. Deeper in the trees, delicate wildflowers blanketed the earth beneath the ferns in the spring. Now and then, deer would leap from the sheltering brambles as I walked. Musk rats, otters, and beaver glided through the lazy water of a clear and sparkling stream that wound its way through here. Trout darted from beneath the grasses bending out over the water from the shore. It was beautiful.

Last spring, bulldozers and loggers and heavy equipment came in and mowed it to the ground. They left muddy tracks and a flat wasteland behind them. I heard the land was being... "developed."