Pepper Spray Fallout

by Anne Arkee

On October 30, nine activist plaintiffs and their attorney appeared in a San Francisco federal court to argue for a temporary restraining order against Humboldt County's use of pepper spray on nonviolent activists. At a pre-hearing press conference, they showed the media police video footage of actions where chemical agents were used on protesters. That evening, national TV and radio news programs broadcast the harrowing footage around the country. The next morning, the front pages of most of the West Coast newspapers featured a photo of one of our pepper-swabbed comrades.

Headwaters activists have been pepper sprayed several times since Redwood Summer (remember the 1995 post-Rendezvous action?) but never in such a premeditated manner. During three separate Headwaters actions this summer, Humboldt County Sheriff's deputies and Eureka Police officers tried to force activists to unclip from lockboxes by swabbing liquefied pepper spray on their eyelids and, in some cases, their eyeballs. In the Eureka office of Frank Riggs, our local pro-industry Republican Congressman, as well as backwoods on a bulldozer, activists were sprayed in the face after first being swabbed. In the headquarters of the Pacific Lumber Company, activists withstood the agonizing pepper spraying and were eventually cut out of their lockboxes with metal grinders.

The pepper spray controversy has stimulated a timely debate on the right to protest in a "free society." This tough question has created a booby trap for Riggs, an ex-cop and the highest timber money recipient in Congress, insuring his departure from public office next time around. In his aggressive attempt to avert public sympathy for Earth First!, Riggs even denies that using pepper spray at close range and on juveniles is a human-rights issue. While Riggs accuses us of eco-terrorism, sabotage, vandalism and every other branding typically reserved for those who really piss off the corporate bootlickers, EF! is using our perfect record of nonviolence to debunk his rhetoric. We're trusting, perhaps too much, that sensible people will seek out the truth.

"These are not nonviolent protesters, they are wanton lawbreakers..." he blurted in a message to Congress the day after police footage of the pepper spray incidents hit national news. He claimed that "Sixty protesters stormed my office. They threatened, they actually accosted and assaulted my two employees working in the office at the time... they then trashed and vandalized my office, throwing bark and sawdust six-inches deep on office equipment," leaving four young women, one of whom was a juvenile and "should have been in school," locked around a stump.

The next day Riggs put out a press release circulating a fake inflammatory Earth First! flyer the Eureka police chief gave him. EF!ers originally found the flyer this past summer at local colleges and turned it in to the police as a phony. Citing this classic COINTELPRO-style document as our work, Riggs tried to detract attention from the dirty Headwaters deal (he helped engineer) and discredit our claims of police abuse. He claimed we support the Unabomber, property damage and various false messages about the Headwaters campaign. Infamous EF! "infiltrator"/wise use private investigator, Barry Clausen even got involved in the shenanigans, but his press release was disregarded by the news media.

With each passing day, Riggs grasped at a new reality, sending news releases to media outlets around the country detailing events that never happened. He held a press conference in his Eureka office, introduci