The threat of Palco bankruptcy two years ago prompted our reviving the Heartlands Project which aims to reclaim local ownership of Pacific Lumber Co. through the only financing mechanism that can overcome the tremendous debt load Maxxam has placed on Palco ownership.
I hope Mark Lovelace and other environmental activists do the right thing this time around and help Native Americans help save Palco as a viable and sustainable timber company so that hundreds of Palco workers can remain employed. Too often we've seen environmental activists more concerned with their own environmental or political career paths to want to help local Native Americans at Bear River achieve their medicine man's wonderful vision of creating a sanctuary for all Native American tribal spiritual and cultural leaders within the beauty of ancient redwood groves of recovered tribal ancestral land. Now is the time to help Native Americans step in with a means to save Palco properties from liquidation.
We would like to hear something positive from Humboldt Watershed Council, EPIC, ISF, and any environmentalists who want keep PL lands from subdivision as well as keeping Palco viable into the future as a commercial timber company employing hundreds of Humboldt citizens in an employee owned and operated new and diversified Pacific Lumber Co.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Steve Lewis Blog
A Biomystical Christian activist perspective on current events
We are Holy One
Altarnative
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(121)
-
▼
January
(9)
- Mateel Video College Proposal
- Gardenville
- Palco Bankruptcy
- Lack of spiritual consciousness is the reason SoHu...
- Why is the Eureka Reporter editor using his paper ...
- Praise for Carlson Electronics move to Arcata?
- Neterei Karta Jewish anti-Zionism
- How Zionist's are trying to kill Jimmy Carter's book
- Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
-
▼
January
(9)
About Me
- Steve Lewis
- Prophesy bearer for four religious traditions, revealer of Christ's Sword, revealer of Josephine bearing the Spirit of Christ, revealer of the identity of God, revealer of the Celestial Torah astro-theological code within the Bible. Celestial Torah Christian Theologian, Climax Civilization theorist and activist, Eco-Village Organizer, Master Psychedelic Artist, Inventor of the Next Big Thing in wearable tech, and always your Prophet-At-Large.
4 comments:
As a long time forest defender, I have mixed feelings about the bankruptcy of Palco and its subsidiaries. First the bad. E.P.I.C., the Steelworkers, and anyone else the companies owe money to will be screwed out of millions. Plus I have reason to believe that Palco is selling logs under the table to smaller mills, keeping the money, and crying to be broke. So its not like this will hurt the baddies in charge who hve been milking this county for resources, while disregarding the outcry of residents, and the environment itself, via flooding, slides, siltation, and a wide array of other "cummulative effects."
On the other side, is hopefully Hurwitz will be removed from the situation, and something good can come out of it. A community owned timber operation sounds good. As long as change ensues. If "investors" demand profits, its the same game. Overcutting to pay off debt to investors. Overcutting and quick and ease of operation come with an environmental loss that Im not willing to legitimize. The operation MUST exist without the burden of paying allready rich individuals with the profits rightfully owned in my eyes by all the residents of the area. Maxxam has stolen enough of the One leggeds (trees) profits. We must regain the profits, and restore the forest to a healthy state. This is not cheap. But it is possible with the revenues, as long as they are not garnished by top-pay bigwigs and investors. Then we can begin to demonstrate sane forestry, harvesting, and healing the forest in one process. We owe it to the forest, and all its diverse creatures and lifeforms, and to the rivers of this land, as well as to ourselves.
We owe it to local Native Americans to restore Native American species to their own ancestral land. They were far better stewards of it than we European-Americans.
Please, environmentalists, try to understand that the war with Hurwitz cost us all far too many old growth trees cut and lost forever. That war has gone on now for two decades without any positive results on the ground except for Headwaters Forest which Hurwitz was willing to sell since Redwood Summer in 1990. The problem is conflict of interest in environmental leadership which needed an "enemy" to gain sympathy for their cause. So Hurwitz was the designated enemy and because of this attitude which I still see, the reality that only purchase of PL land works to get rid of Hurwitz and Maxxam ownership. Julia Hill proved that when her publicity campaign ended up with a very expensive purchase of Luna. Luna, to me, symbolizes all that's been wrong with the old enviro war approach to Palco.
Help us at Heartlands to organize Palco workers/Bear River economic alliance to buy out Palco and make it a truly sustainable, locally owned, employee owned and operated company that saves every last remaining old growth tree on PL lands. Our lottery mechanism allows us to do this. It is the only financial means around that can deal successfully with the loss of immediate profits from Palco bankruptcy.
Thank you, Rudi, for your comments. I hope more enviros chime in here. There's an opportunity to do something great with the Palco situation but we need help to accomplish it. I am nearly 63 and Sparky, 50, wants to devote his time to teaching traditional medicine ways to the younger generations of his tribe. We need younger people to take up the Heartlands baton and keep it going. It is a tribal-communitarian organization.
Mr. Lewis, I am in full accord with the idea of local ownership. It is appropriate in so many ways and offers the best hope to restore the forest, sustain jobs in timber and to keep this enormous block of wild lands unbroken.
One modification I would propose to this overall shared vision is that the PL mill and the Scopac properties might achieve different ownerships, the mill being owned by some partnership of the workers and the financing instgitutions with the workers having the largest share. The Scopac lands should be owned either by a community-based non-profit perhaps the Redwood Forest Foundation which was created for this purposeh, or by an instrumentality of Humboldt County.In this latter case, profits would ultimately return to the county though there may be very few for the next 25 to 30 years. I would imagine native American participation on the Boards of Directors of both organizations.
Why create another Redwood National Park out of commercial timber land? Why destroy a working timber company? Or do you really believe enviros when they claim there's nothing much to harvest?
Our Heartlands plan keeps the commercial enterprise intact while giving the community ownership two ways--through Palco ESOP and through Bear River tribal ownership.
Please see the Heartlands plans at Heartlandsproject@blogspot.com. I think I will be dedicating this blogspot to anti-Zionism.
Post a Comment