BLOCKADE

[In August of 1993, environmentalists in Clayoquot Sound launched B.C.'s largest  peaceful incidence of civil disobedience, in protest of the multinationals' clearcutting the pristine old growth of the Sound. All that summer, dawn after dawn, larger and larger numbers of people gathered at the Kennedy Lake bridge to block the road and stop the logging trucks. A Peace Camp was set up nearby, and people came from all over the world to join the movement. Bobby Kennedy came, so did Paul Watson of Greenpeace. The Greenpeace boat was in our harbour, very exciting! By the end of the protest, over nine hundred people had been arrested for standing on the road for the trees. Some spent time in jail, went back to stand on the road and were jailed again.

The multinationals, who were destroying the area and laying it waste, served no time.

 I was working two or three part-time jobs, so could not be there as often as I wanted. But I was there some mornings, the most emotional and passionate mornings of my life, united in standing on the road for the trees....for the planet!

I was there the morning of the Women's Blockade, when we spiral danced on the road. That night my conservative son called me: "Mom, I saw you on the news, dancing around the road with a bunch of hippies." Hee hee. My kids never know what to expect of this wild mother of theirs. Keeps it interesting!

It is now many years later. The trees are still coming down. Here is the poem I wrote the morning after the Women's Blockade: I can still remember the pride, the joy, the POWER we felt that morning, as the men formed a circle respectfully off to the side and accompanied us with drums.]

August 1993 - Clayoquot Sound

Grandmother,

I can feel you near me

as I dance and sing

with this group of women

on the road.

We mourn man's treatment
of the earth

as, at the same time,
we celebrate

our power.

We have a voice

and we will use it.

Our drumbeat is
the heartbeat

of the Earth Mother.

After all the untold years

of pain and tears

that held me down

I have risen

as an eagle
seeks higher ground,

no more earth-bound.

I have found my voice

and I will sing with it,

laugh into tomorrow,

feel my strength,
my peacefulness

and my joy,

along with love and pain

for Mother Earth.

Grandmother,

now that I am
a grandmother too,

I can hear you.