[Carry_Okie]

I know Mark is going to be pissed at me for saying this, but I love the stories we hear every now and again when one of them falls.

No, not pissed, just sad for the way your anger has blinded your imagination. If someone gets hurt extracting them, PL will get the heat. Here's what to do:

Tree sitters are the perfect captive audience; they're not going anywhere.

Allow them very limited supplies: water, bread, and maybe some cheese. DO NOT permit them batteries (no radios, no flashlights, no music, no cell phones).

Go get some beers, a sleeping bag, and some sandwiches in a cooler. Offer them a good meal if they come down. Set up a team of foresters and landowners and read to them, 20 hours per day. Read them Holly Swanson's book. Read them Ron Arnold's books. Explain to them how they are being used by the very big corporations, banks, and investors that they think they are fighting.

Arrest anyone who interferes.

Then read them my book. Have the landowners add anecdotal stories of how they have loved their land for over a hundred years, how taxes (that paid for their schools and built their parents' houses) forced them to log the old growth harder than anyone really wanted to, and how these kids are ruining their lives and their communities. Who takes over then? The big timber concerns, developers, and the government (which routinely makes a mess of things).

These kids have never had real parents. If it's done with firmness, kindness, and relentless commitment, they'll come down, and maybe even join the human race.

It's the photo-op from heaven.

This needs to be a test of will and commitment, not of force. It's teaching them about their complicity in the destruction of the very freedoms that allow them to voice their opinions. It's holding them accountable for their destructive greed to control the forest for their own pleasures.

It's their love of forests against ours. If we win that battle we will have taken the moral high ground and dealt a body blow to the entire movement. It's worth both the effort and the expense.

[EBUCK]

Mark you got mail (groundcover)....

[farmfriend]

How about sending all that in an email to the company?

[Grampa Dave]

Actually, you should read them passages from your book.

When you pause and rest your voice, we could replay Ronald Reagan's comment about redwood trees over and over. Then GW's remarks made in Medford, Oregon last about the need for logging to protect our forests could be played.

During this time the star spangle banner could be played with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

They would last about 24 hours. If they don't come down, we could fire up chainsaws and start falling trees around them. Then, we tell them, that each hour they are up their tree, we will cut down 60 trees for decks.

[Carry_Okie]

And I don't care if it takes weeks.

[goody2shooz]

The beer kegger idea is good but to be really, really effective you must add polka music. Now that will drive out of the trees!

[sweetliberty]

I really like your approach and I agree that it might be effective, certainly more effective than other things that have been tried. It seems we have developed such an "us against them" mentality in almost everything and reason and and genuine compassion have been lost in the process. Granted, the attitude is understandable given that we are ceaselessly subjected to outrageous assaults against our hearts and souls, as well as our sensibilites, and I think it is a way of defending ourselves against what we can no longer process.