Alex Reid Ross over a Bark wrote this excellent article, originally posted on Defending Dissent, detailing the recent harassment of environmental activists in the Pacific Northwest. Clearly, this increased harassment comes because the stakes are so high for everyone and because groups like Rising Tide are doing such amazing work. The last paragraph definitely gets at that idea:
“My [attorney] was not able to find out what or why they were bothering my sweet folks, but I will tell you why,” one activist whose parents were visited wrote. “Its [sic] because Portland Rising Tide is outreaching, training, and organizing hundreds of Pacific NWers of all age groups to engage in a level of civil disobedience not seen in decades. We are going to do it to save our neighborhoods, our communities, our salmon, and our climate. And that scares the shit out of the powers that be.”
Ross does a great job working through individual stories that show the effects of harassment on people’s lives, and also provides the larger context of the movement as it continues to evolve.
