In the early 1990s, national Anti-Indian organizations joined the
Washington Association of Realtors and the Building Industry Association
in Washington state to create
property rights groups with
sufficient funding and organizational support to defeat implementation
of Growth Management environmental protection by altering the political
climate. Key to that
Wise Use Movement
task was the recruitment of paramilitary white supremacists willing to
threaten tribal and environmental activists, thus generating widespread
fear among communities in fourteen counties statewide.
Four years into
their campaign to mobilize resentment, eight white supremacist
Christian-Patriot militia members were sentenced to federal prison for
violations of explosives and firearms statutes, in which they planned to
murder their political opponents. I later wrote an
eyewitness account of this turmoil.
Today, in the Klamath River Basin of Northern California and Southern
Oregon, tribes and environmentalists are threatened from a mobilization
of resentment by the agricultural industry, with assistance from
national Anti-Indian organizations. As Charles Tanner Jr.
reports
at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, the
nascent hate campaign is receiving active support from the Tea Parties.
Whether this confluence of white nationalism with industrial power will be able to derail
restoration
of the Klamath River is hard to tell at this point in time. What is
certain, though, is that the reshaping of the political landscape there
-- as in Washington state twenty years ago -- by white supremacists with
industry backing, is unlikely to be one conducive to either
conservation or cooperation.
*Additional information about the Wise Use Movement and its Anti-Indian component is available on the
Public Good Project website, most notably
Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound, as well as in the Center for World Indigenous Studies
DayKeeper Press.
Wikipedia pages on the
Militia Movement and the
Christian Patriot Movement contain a number of helpful references. News articles about the connection between industry-financed property rights field agents and the militias ran in the
Portland Oregonian in 1996, and in the
Anacortes American in 1997. Neither are available online.
Steal this State by Paul de Armond and Jim Halpin, an article about Wise
Use and county secession, ran in the August 17, 1994 issue of
Eastsideweek;
Merchant of Fear, an expose by de Armond and Halpin of Wise Use
fundraiser Alan Gottlieb, ran in the October 26, 1994 issue of
Eastsideweek,
a defunct Seattle area publication. Angry White Guys with Guns: the
Rise of the Citizen Militias, by Daniel Junas, ran in the Spring 1995
issue of
Covert Action Quarterly. All three articles are transcribed on the Public Good site.The July 1996 FBI
arrest of Washington State Militia/Freemen and the subsequent trial was covered in the
Seattle Times, as well as in the
Bellingham Herald by crime reporter Cathy Logg. The
Herald
stories are not archived online, but the transcript of the federal
indictment of the Christian Patriots is available at Public Good.
Coalition for Human Dignity compiled a thorough documentation of the
Christian-Patriot militias, but their online archive disappeared after
they disbanded as an organization. Western States Center also compiled
reports on Wise Use violence, but these apparently have not been
digitally maintained. Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment
played a key role in education and organizing in the Pacific Northwest,
but disbanded at the end of the 1990s. For scholars, Political Research
Associates has compiled a useful bibliography for
Studying the US Political Right.
