Why Is The FBI Harassing Activists In Cascadia?
Thanks to Defending Dissent Foundation and Earth First! Journal for permission for Censored News to publish this original work!
Alexander Reid Ross , January 5, 2015, In : Analysis & Opinion
Editor’s note: this story has recently been picked up by The Statesman and AP… but you heard about it here first! Sign up for our weekly digest here, to get the latest on dissent & repression delivered to your inbox each Friday.
In August 2014, two activists with the environmentalist group Rising Tide spent a week riding the backwoods highways of Idaho monitoring a megaload—a big rig hauling equipment for processing tar-sands oil that’s wide enough to take up two lanes of road, too high to fit under a freeway overpass, can be longer than a football field, and can weigh up to 1,000,000 pounds.
They had no idea that they would soon be wrapped up in a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that encompassed three states and several environmentalist groups.
Helen Yost of Moscow, Idaho, and Herb Goodwin of Bellingham, Washington, have spent years travelling through area the bioregion of Cascadia to halt megaloads, from Washington and Oregon to Idaho and up through Montana. They are used to harassment from law enforcement. That week, Goodwin said, the two were stopped on average twice a night, by law-enforcement agencies ranging from state troopers to local police in Sandpoint and Moscow.