>From: "altamira" <altamira@ecpi.com>
>Subject: RE: More Green Party
>Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2000 18:48:24 -0500
>The second time I felt really threatened was when the guys in the black
>helicopter paid me a visit along with a bunch of their buddies on the
>ground. This was a Ruby Ridge scenario. They claimed that from the air a
>couple of Vitex trees I had growing in my garden looked like marijuana.
>These guys were very well armed. If I'd had a gun in my hands, I have no
>doubt whatsoever that I'd be dead now. The guy who appeared to be the
>leader was very nervous; he seemed to think that I had a cult of followers
>secreted in my house or something and that he might never leave my place
>alive. I talked soothingly to him to calm him down and after a while he
>lowered his gun. I don't much like to tell this story, because some people
>think I was a coward for not either a. fighting and "taking out" as many as
>I could before I went down (and at an abstract level, I think they're at
>least partly right [except that my daughter and her friend were here--what
>a
>dreadful choice to have to make, between being a coward or leaving my
>daughter motherless--or maybe dead in case they just started shooting
>wildly--they seemed very nervous, so they might have done that]if more
>people would fight this sort of thing, maybe it wouldn't keep happening);
>or
>b. suing the federal government for sending men onto my land. Maybe I
>should
>have done more research on the latter option.
>
> They said they had the right to come onto my land without a search
>warrant
>because they had probable cause to think that illegal activities were going
>on here due to the Vitex trees, which, as I said, they mistook for
>marijuana
>plants. The way I viewed it at the time was that I wouldn't get far by
>suing
>them--others had tried it and failed to get anywhere. I hadn't suffered
>any
>real damages--in fact, they helped me out by cutting back a root that was
>blocking a gate. I don't know, though. It's still something that bothers
>me. I remember once seeing a man being taken into the federal courthouse
>in
>handcuffs and thinking, "Oh, there's a criminal, a bad guy," and then
>suddenly realizing that odds were he wasn't a bad guy at all, that he'd
>probably done something I wouldn't consider a crime at all. That, in fact,
>the bad guys were the ones wearing the guns and driving the car.
>
>From time to time I hear of people being tortured in prison here is the US,
>and I wonder: truly, how far have things gone? I know Germans who were
>alive during the 1930's and early 40's who had no idea of what was going on
>behind the barbed wire fences. Maybe, yeah, they looked the other way
>some,
>but how do I know I'm not doing that right now?
>
>I hear of political atrocities in other countries supported by US dollars.
>And I look the other way and say, "Well, there's nothing I can do about
>it."
>
>What IS to be done? It seems as though, once you pass a certain point, the
>path is more or less fixed. It will be traveled. And the observers' only
>choice is to stand there and hope they don't get mowed down; or to leave.
>So many times people have ended up being trapped because they were afraid
>to
>leave the comforts of home, even when they saw bad things coming down the
>pike. "It can't happen here. It won't happen to me," and all that.
>
>Bonnie
>
Here's a cheerful thought... These people are always counting on you
thinking that no matter how bad it is, there's something to salvage, some
possibility up to the last moment of survival, even as the guy in front of
you in line is blown away, maybe the horse will sing....
So, what about those people for whom that isn't the case? Like people in
great pain with terminal cancer. What if we guaranteed them publicity and
honors - a permanent record of their contribution - if they put themselves
on the line and set themselves up as a target that shot back?
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