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QuoteArmed militia, Bundy brothers take over federal building in rural Oregon
by Peter Holley January 3 at 11:30 AM
Washington Post

An armed militia took over a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon late Saturday and vows to occupy the outpost for years to protest the federal government's treatment of a pair of ranchers facing prison time.

The occupation of a portion of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 30 miles southeast of Burns, Ore., followed a peaceful march for ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, who are scheduled to report to federal prison in San Pedro, Calif., on Monday after being convicted of arson, according to the Oregonian.

Prosecutors said the father and son set the fire, which burned about 130 acres in 2001 on leased federal land, to conceal poaching, according to CNN. The Hammonds argued that they were attempting to reduce the growth of invasive plant species and ward off potential wildfires. The pair was sentenced to five years in prison.

Among the occupiers are several members of the Bundy family, whose patriarch — Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy — was involved in an armed standoff with government agents over grazing rights in 2014.

Ammon Bundy told the Oregonian that he and two of his brothers had joined dozens of people in seizing the refuge's headquarters.

The federal property, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend, the Oregonian reported.

Ryan Bundy told the Oregonian that the group isn't holding hostages and doesn't want to resort to violence but will not rule it out if authorities attempt to remove the occupiers from the property. He said many of the occupiers would be willing to fight — and die — to reclaim constitutionally protected rights for local land management, according to the Associated Press.

The group is calling for the Hammonds' release and said the militia was planning an occupation that lasted "for years."

"The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control," Ryan Bundy told the Oregonian. "What we're doing is not rebellious. What we're doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land."

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was established on August 18, 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt "as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds," according to the park's website.

"The Refuge represents a crucial stop along the Pacific Flyway and offers resting, breeding, and nesting habitat for hundreds of migratory birds and other wildlife," a statement on the site says. "Many of the species migrating through or breeding here are highlighted as priority species in national bird conservation plans."

In a video interview with reporters on Saturday that was posted on Ammon Bundy's Facebook page, he said the group is standing up against government "overreach" because "the people have been abused long enough."

"I feel we are in a situation where if we do not do something, if we do not take a hard stand, we'll be in a position where we'll be no longer able to do so," he said.

A video posted days earlier on Bundy's Facebook page urged militia members from all over the country to join him:

"**ALL PATRIOTS ITS TIME TO STAND UP NOT STAND DOWN!!! WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! COME PREPARED."

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward urged the public to stay away from the area as authorities work to resolve the standoff, according to the Oregonian.

"A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution," Ward said in a statement reported by the paper. "For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation."

Beth Anne Steele, an FBI spokeswoman in Portland, told the AP that the bureau was aware of the situation at the wildlife refuge, but she declined further comment.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson told CNN that the agency and the Bureau of Land Management are monitoring the armed protesters.

"While the situation is ongoing, the main concern is employee safety, and we can confirm that no federal staff were in the building at the time of the initial incident," the spokesperson said. "We will continue to monitor the situation."

Cliven Bundy told Oregon Public Broadcasting on Saturday night that he wasn't involved in the standoff, but he struck a sympathetic tone.

"That's not exactly what I thought should happen, but I didn't know what to do," he said. "You know, if the Hammonds wouldn't stand, if the sheriff didn't stand, then, you know, the people had to do something. And I guess this is what they did decide to do. I wasn't in on that."

Late Saturday, the occupiers blocked the entrance of the federal headquarters with a pickup truck and placed an American flag over the welcome sign, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. An Oregon State Police car "idled by the side of the road just outside Burns," the broadcaster reported, but there were no signs of a larger law enforcement presence in the area.

"We are not hurting anybody or damaging any property.," Ammon Bundy told OPB. "We would expect that they understand that we have given them no reason to use lethal force upon us or any other force."

Ron Gainer, the owner of a nearby RV park who dropped off some chili for the occupiers, told the broadcaster that he counted about 15 people, a half-dozen vehicles and a trailer at the site. The estimate differed sharply from the Bundy family accounting, which put the number of people at the refuge at about 150, according to OPB.

By nightfall, the broadcaster noted, the temperature had plummeted to 10 degrees, prompting occupiers to bundle around a campfire. Some of those present identified themselves as nearby residents and supporters of the convicted ranchers.

Asked by an OPB reporter how many militia members were at the headquarters, Bundy didn't divulge.

"I will not disclose," he said. "Operational security."

Quote from: grumbler on January 03, 2016, 12:11:28 PM
I will say that five years in prison for burning 130 acres of grass seems a little much.  There's got to be more to the story than that.

QuoteWitnesses at trial, including a relative of the Hammonds, testified the arson occurred shortly after Steven Hammond and his hunting party illegally slaughtered several deer on BLM property.

http://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/eastern-oregon-ranchers-convicted-arson-resentenced-five-years-prison

By law, arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.  When the Hammonds were originally sentenced, they argued that the five-year mandatory minimum terms were unconstitutional and the trial court agreed and imposed sentences well below what the law required based upon the jury's verdicts.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, upheld the federal law, reasoning that "given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense."  The court vacated the original, unlawful sentences and ordered that the Hammonds be resentenced "in compliance with the law."  In March 2015, the Supreme Court rejected the Hammonds' petitions for certiorari. Today, Chief Judge Aiken imposed five year prison terms on each of the Hammonds, with credit for time they already served.

"We all know the devastating effects that are caused by wildfires.  Fires intentionally and illegally set on public lands, even those in a remote area, threaten property and residents and endanger firefighters called to battle the blaze" stated Acting U.S. Attorney Billy Williams.

"Congress sought to ensure that anyone who maliciously damages United States' property by fire will serve at least 5 years in prison.  These sentences are intended to be long enough to deter those like the Hammonds who disregard the law and place fire fighters and others in jeopardy."

Quote from: 11B4V on January 03, 2016, 01:08:14 PM
Your racism is astounding. :lol:

Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 03, 2016, 01:14:38 PM

Quote from: 11B4V on January 03, 2016, 01:08:14 PM
Your racism is astounding. :lol:

Eat me, pig.  After ten years you can't get my sarcasm, then go fuck yourself. 

And why aren't you out there stomping these mouthbreathers in their throats, Fed Boy?  Oh wait, you're a teabagging sleeper agent, that's why.  Fucking faggot.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 03, 2016, 12:22:18 PM

Quote from: grumbler on January 03, 2016, 12:11:28 PM
I will say that five years in prison for burning 130 acres of grass seems a little much.  There's got to be more to the story than that.

Of course you do, you're a fucking pothead.  But the crime is not burning grass, but arson on federal property.

(snip)

Quote from: Jaron on January 03, 2016, 05:17:46 PM
Someone care to educate me as to who is being terrorized here?

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 03, 2016, 05:27:42 PM

Quote from: Jaron on January 03, 2016, 05:17:46 PM
Someone care to educate me as to who is being terrorized here?

The beavers.

Quote from: Razgovory on January 03, 2016, 02:11:55 PM
I saw this early this morning but had a splitting headache and didn't post it.  God Bless you Seedy.  Despite what Grumbler thinks, Arson is a pretty serious crime.  Five years is pretty typical.  Starting a fire out West where wild fires easily get out of control is would seem to carry a little more weight. So would arson to cover up a crime.

Quote from: dps on January 03, 2016, 06:02:16 PM
I think that's the real point that's being missed.  If the jury had bought their story as to why they set the fire, they probably would have acquitted.

Quote from: The Brain on January 03, 2016, 06:50:59 PM
Actually Europe is pretty soft on crime.

Quote from: grumbler on January 03, 2016, 01:45:29 PM

Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 03, 2016, 12:22:18 PM

Quote from: grumbler on January 03, 2016, 12:11:28 PM
I will say that five years in prison for burning 130 acres of grass seems a little much.  There's got to be more to the story than that.

Of course you do, you're a fucking pothead.  But the crime is not burning grass, but arson on federal property.

(snip)

I knew there was more to the story.  Moronic federal prosecutors and legislators.  No surprise there.  There should be a mandatory-minimum 5-year prison sentence for any legislator who votes for a mandatory minimum sentence, and one for every prosecutor who argues that sentencing should be based on some arbitrary minimum, rather than on the facts of the case.

Quote from: grumbler on January 03, 2016, 06:19:13 PM

Quote from: dps on January 03, 2016, 06:02:16 PM
I think that's the real point that's being missed.  If the jury had bought their story as to why they set the fire, they probably would have acquitted.

I don't think you can be sentenced to prison time for a crime for which you haven't even been charged.  If they had been convicted of a criminal conspiracy, then 5 years would be more appropriate - but they weren't even charged with that.

I don't think that there was a motive explanation that would have gotten those two off, and I have no doubt that they were guilty of some (fairly petty) arson and should be fined, placed on probation, etc.  My beef is with them going to prison for five years.  That's a horrendously overblown sentence, both from a moral and a financial standpoint;  these guys unnecessarily lose their liberty and the taxpayer gets unnecessarily stuck with a half-million-dollar prison tab so that some congressmen can wave around their tiny penises and claim to be tough-on-crime badasses.

Quote from: The Brain on January 03, 2016, 06:50:59 PM
Actually Europe is pretty soft on crime.

Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2016, 04:39:56 PM
College kids have been occupying places for years now.

Hell there was an enormous protest movement that took the word for their name...

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on January 04, 2016, 05:58:35 PM
That's true of Zucotti Park in NYC, but the national Occupy movement involved a lot of occupations (that violated the law) of public parks around the country.

Quote from: Barrister on January 03, 2016, 10:46:34 PM
Hey, Fuck You Grumbles. :)

Quote from: celedhring on January 03, 2016, 06:37:00 PM
I don't know. Arson will land you in the can over here too, although not five years (unless there's been danger of personal injury).

QuoteHere's What Happened When Black People Tried Armed Occupation

Quote from: grumbler on January 04, 2016, 06:31:14 PM

Quote from: celedhring on January 03, 2016, 06:37:00 PM
I don't know. Arson will land you in the can over here too, although not five years (unless there's been danger of personal injury).

If there has a mandatory five-year prison sentence for burning some grass on starting a fire to cover a crime, using accelerants, and putting the lives and property of others at grave risk on government-owned property, then there's legislators are morons, too.

Quote from: Liep on January 04, 2016, 04:34:57 PM
Occupying buildings have long been a method of protest here, obviously no guns are involved. Usually it's peaceful but the more extreme kind of occupiers sometimes use molotov cocktails and such against the police.

It's not terrorism.

Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2016, 04:39:56 PM
College kids have been occupying places for years now.

Hell there was an enormous protest movement that took the word for their name...

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on January 04, 2016, 09:49:15 PM

Quote from: Liep on January 04, 2016, 04:34:57 PM
Occupying buildings have long been a method of protest here, obviously no guns are involved. Usually it's peaceful but the more extreme kind of occupiers sometimes use molotov cocktails and such against the police.

It's not terrorism.

Usually, the feds would respond by burning the building. But that might be hypocritical in this case.

Quote from: garbon on January 04, 2016, 08:30:16 PM
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/01/04/3735745/move-vs-oregon-standoff/

QuoteHere's What Happened When Black People Tried Armed Occupation

Quote from: Razgovory on January 04, 2016, 09:44:23 PM

Quote from: grumbler on January 04, 2016, 06:31:14 PM

Quote from: celedhring on January 03, 2016, 06:37:00 PM
I don't know. Arson will land you in the can over here too, although not five years (unless there's been danger of personal injury).

If there has a mandatory five-year prison sentence for burning some grass on starting a fire to cover a crime, using accelerants, and putting the lives and property of others at grave risk on government-owned property, then there's legislators are morons, too.

There, fixed it for you.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 04, 2016, 10:13:48 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 04, 2016, 09:44:23 PM

Quote from: grumbler on January 04, 2016, 06:31:14 PM

Quote from: celedhring on January 03, 2016, 06:37:00 PM
I don't know. Arson will land you in the can over here too, although not five years (unless there's been danger of personal injury).

If there has a mandatory five-year prison sentence for burning some grass on starting a fire to cover a crime, using accelerants, and putting the lives and property of others at grave risk on government-owned property, then there's legislators are morons, too.

There, fixed it for you.

The prosecutors weren't able to prove that they were covering up a crime.

Quote
Church Responds to Inquiries Regarding Oregon Armed Occupation
SALT LAKE CITY —
In response to news media inquiries, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following statement Monday, January 4 (for more context on this issue, see this story from the Washington Post):

While the disagreement occurring in Oregon about the use of federal lands is not a Church matter, Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles. This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis. We are privileged to live in a nation where conflicts with government or private groups can — and should — be settled using peaceful means, according to the laws of the land.

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 01:29:58 AM
Deer

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 03:27:37 AM
They're about as respectable as Scientology.

QuoteOregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia

When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon's founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.

Waddles Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon was a popular restaurant in the 1950s for both locals and travelers alike. The drive-in catered to America's postwar obsession with car culture, allowing people to get coffee and a slice of pie without even leaving their vehicle. But if you happened to be black, the owners of Waddles implored you to keep on driving. The restaurant had a sign outside with a very clear message: "White Trade Only — Please."

It's the kind of scene from the 1950s that's so hard for many Americans to imagine happening outside of the Jim Crow South. How could a progressive, northern city like Portland have allowed a restaurant to exclude non-white patrons? This had to be an anomaly, right? In reality it was far too common in Oregon, a state that was explicitly founded as a kind of white utopia.

America's history of racial discrimination is most commonly taught as a southern issue. That's certainly how I learned about it while going to Minnesota public schools in the 1980s and 90s. White people outside of the South seem to learn about the Civil War and civil rights movements from an incredibly safe (and often judgmental) distance.

Racism was generally framed as something that happened in the past and almost always "down there." We learned about the struggles for racial equality in cities like Birmingham and Selma and Montgomery. But what about the racism of Portland, Oregon, a city that is still overwhelmingly white? The struggles there were just as intense — though they are rarely identified in the history books.

According to Oregon's founding constitution, black people were not permitted to live in the state. And that held true until 1926. The small number of black people already living in the state in 1859, when it was admitted to the Union, were sometimes allowed to stay, but the next century of segregation and terrorism at the hands of angry racists made it clear that they were not welcome.

Oregon has had more than its fair share of utopia community experiments. The definitive book on the topic is Eden Within Eden: Oregon's Utopia Heritage, where you'll find plenty of those utopian communities catalogued. But the book kind of misses the forest for the trees in not recognizing the fact that the entire state of Oregon was founded as a kind of racist's utopia. Race isn't explored in the otherwise excellent book.

Thousands would travel to Oregon in the 19th and 20th centuries, looking for their own versions of utopia. Some brave and noble people made the journey that would become cartoonishly immortalized for at least three generations now in the computer game Oregon Trail. But unfortunately for people of color, that pixelated utopia and vision of the promise land was explicitly designed to exclude them in real life.

This is not to pick on Oregon in particular as being particularly racist and terrible. The de facto exclusion of any non-white people from a number of businesses, institutions, and communities occurred throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Oregon seems to have been just a bit more vocal and straightforward about it.

I spoke over the phone with Walidah Imarisha, an educator and expert on black history in Oregon and she was quick to explain that the state is only really exceptional in that it bothered to proclaim its goals of white supremacy so openly.

"What's useful about Oregon as a case study is that Oregon was bold enough to write it down," Imarisha told me. "But the same ideology, policies, and practices that shaped Oregon shaped every state in the Union, as well as this nation as a whole."

Today, while 13 percent of Americans are black, just 2 percent of Oregon's population is black. This is not some accident of history. It's a product of oppressive laws and everyday actions that deliberately excluded non-white people from a fair shot at living a life without additional obstacles being put in their way.

Life's hard enough as it is. But life as a person of color in Oregon would prove to be like trying to play Oregon Trail in a roomful of Klansmen while the computer lab is on fire.
The question of whether Oregon should allow slavery dates back to at least the 1840s. The majority of Oregonians (which is to say the territory's new white residents who were systematically and sometimes violently oppressing its Native peoples) opposed slavery. But they also didn't want to live anywhere near anyone who wasn't white.

Even before it was a state, those in power in Oregon were trying to keep out non-white people. In the summer of 1844, for example, the Legislative Committee passed a provision that said any free black people who were in the state would be subject to flogging if they didn't leave within two years. The floggings were supposed to continue every six months until they left the territory. That provision was revised in December of 1845 to remove the flogging part. Instead, free black people who remained would be offered up "publicly for hire" to any white person who would remove them from the territory.

It seems to me unclear if that provision meant that free blacks would be auctioned off as slaves to people who were on their way out of Oregon. But one thing is clear: the territorial statutes would become irrelevant the following decade when Oregon would formally write its constitution. And that document was no more generous to the tiny black population.

The legislative founders of Oregon weren't exactly the cream of the crop as statesmen. Many of the sixty men who drafted the state's constitution loved to ramble on for hours making bold speeches about minor points of order. One significant subject of debate was how long members of the new government should be allowed to debate for. One particularly long-winded gentleman complained that he was just getting warmed up after 45 minutes.

These guys had plenty to say, but when it came to actually writing a constitution, they were pretty damn lazy. In fact, 172 of the document's 185 sections were directly plagiarized from the constitutions of other states like Ohio and Indiana.

The original parts? As David Schuman explains in his 1995 paper The Creation of the Oregon Constitution, they fell into two camps: limits on state spending and forms of racial exclusion. Somewhat ironically, the racial exclusion sections were included in an article called the Bill of Rights.

The constitution was put to a popular vote in the state in 1857 and included two referendums that were to be voted on independently. The first was whether they should reject slavery. Roughly 75 percent of voters opted to reject the adoption of slavery. The second measure was whether or not to exclude black people from the state. About 89 percent of voters cast their vote in favor of excluding black and mixed race people from the state. And thus, the exclusionary aspects of the state constitution were adopted.

The resulting Article 1, Section 35 of the Oregon state constitution:

No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such negroes, and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them.

The voters who overwhelmingly embraced this exclusion rationalized it not as blind hate, but as a progressive move that was simply keeping their new land "pure." Utopia often means starting from scratch, and just as often it means excluding undesirables.

As one "pioneer" voter who would later become a Republican state senator and a member of the U.S. House explained at a reunion in 1898:

Some believers in the doctrine of abstract human rights interpret this vote against admission of free negroes as an exhibition of prejudices which prevailed agains the African who was not a slave, but I have never so regarded it. It was largely an expression against any mingling of the white with any of the other races, and upon a theory that as we had yet no considerable representation of other races in our midst, we should do nothing to encourage their introduction. We were building a new state on virgin ground; it's people believed it should encourage only the best elements to come to us, and discourage others.

This language about virgin ground and "the best elements," burned into law in the new state, was used as a recruitment tool for other white Americans in the latter half of the 19th century — many of whom were white "refugees" from the south who were fleeing the dissolution of slavery.

"If you look at some of the recruiting materials, in essence they're saying come and build the kind of white homeland, the kind of white utopia that you dream of," Imarisha said. "Other communities of color were also controlled, not with exclusion laws, but the populations were kept purposefully small because the idea behind it was about creating explicitly a white homeland."

Technically the state's exclusion laws were superseded by federal law after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. But Oregon had a rather complicated relationship with that particular Amendment. Having ratified it in 1866, the state then rescinded its ratification when a more racist state government took control in 1868. The move was more symbolic than anything, but Oregon gave the sign that it wasn't on board with racial equality. Astoundingly, it wouldn't be until 1973 (and with very little fanfare) that activists would get the state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment yet again.

Naturally, the state's quest for an all-white utopia also included the oppression of other groups — especially those of Chinese and Japanese descent. Though Asian people were not specifically called out in Oregon's constitutional exclusion laws, the white people of many towns large and small did their best to drive out non-white people any time they got the chance.

As just one example, the white people of La Grande burned that city's Chinatown to the ground in 1893. The Chinese residents fled, with some people getting on the first train out. But some Chinese residents weren't about to be intimidated and set up camp nearby. This wasn't enough for the hateful mobs of La Grande, who broke up the camp and forced anyone remaining to get on trains out of town.

These efforts were decentralized and not officially sanctioned by the state. But as the 1910s and 20s would roll around, a new domestic terror group would re-emerge to expel, harass, and brutalize anyone who wasn't "100 percent American." Some pioneers of the era weren't going to stand for it.

As rare as the presence of non-white faces were in the 19th and early 20th century, Oregonians of color found sanctuary in the few places that they were welcome.

The Golden West Hotel was unique in that it was owned, operated, and exclusively patronized by black people in Oregon. It was the only place that black people from out of town could rent a room, and it was the central hub of black entertainment, recreation, and dining in Portland.

First opened in 1906, Portland authorities continually tried to shut down the place on trumped up charges of prostitution, gambling, and later for not having the "proper licenses."

When the owners of the Golden West were forced to plea for their license back in 1921 they "pointed out that the hotel and club was practically the only place in the city where negroes could congregate."

Renting a room or patronizing the Golden West's many businesses on the first floor didn't mean that you would live without harassment from Portland's white population. But it did prove to be one of the few places in the city outside of church where black people could find a sense of community.

"The way this history gets framed often shows people of color as passive victims," Imarisha tells me. "I think it's important to frame it that people of color are actually active change makers. The changes that would've moved Oregon forward, especially racially, would not have happened without the determination, fortitude, and sheer stubbornness of people of color."

One of those people was Beatrice Morrow Cannady. Born in Texas in 1889, Cannady hopped around the country a bit, attending schools in New Orleans and Houston before moving to the Portland in 1912 and before long she was writing for The Advocate, Oregon's largest black newspaper. By 1914 Cannady was helping to found the Portland chapter of the NAACP and the following year was speaking out against D.W. Griffith's feature length film The Birth of a Nation — a movie filled with hateful stereotypes and glorified the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Cannady's life was filled with personal and professional struggles that seemed neverending. She and her children were refused entry to the main floor of the Oriental Theatre in 1928. And it wasn't even illegal. The Oregon Supreme Court had decided in the 1906 case Taylor v. Cohn that black people could be legally segregated from whites in public places. That particular ruling wasn't struck down in the state until 1953, and even then limits on segregation in the state were only loosely enforced.

Kimberley Mangun's 2010 biography of Cannady, A Force For Change, is both inspiring and depressing. Cannady's story is one of tiny victories hard fought over an incredibly long period of time. Frankly, that's the overwhelming thing about all social and political change. Virtually nothing happens overnight.

But if Cannady's story teaches us anything it's that if you work your ass off and foster a community where people can be a force for good, you too can eventually (one day, maybe, possibly) see minor improvements in the world.

It was in small victories that Oregonians of color had to take solace in the first few decades of the 20th century. Because once the early 1920s hit, the battle for the future of Oregon would involve a group of terrorist cowards who liked to dress up in their bedsheets and burn shit.

The arrival of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon was swift and terrifying. In 1922 the Klan in Oregon boasted membership of over 14,000 men, with 9,000 of them living in Portland. And they were setting the state aflame. There were frequent cross burnings on the hills outside Portland and around greater Oregon.

The Klan held meetings, openly participated in parades, and held enormous gatherings for initiation ceremonies. One such gathering in 1923 at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem attracted over 1,500 hooded klansmen. They reportedly burned an enormous cross, of course.

As David A. Horowitz explains in his book Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, the entire state was being terrorized. And politicians at every level of government from the state to county to city officials were involved. In 1923, Oregon governor, Walter M. Pierce, and Portland mayor George L. Baker, attended and spoke at a dinner in honor of Grand Dragon Frederick L. Gifford's birthday.

Both the governor and mayor would later claim that they didn't know the event was sponsored by the Klan. Which, if true, is perhaps less vindication for the politicians and more an indictment of just how far the Klan had seeped into mainstream culture in Oregon. But there's almost certainly no way that they were ignorant of what they were celebrating.

One reason to be skeptical? High ranking members of the Klan would meet with high ranking politicians in the state on matters of public policy. And we have the photos to prove it.

The August 2, 1921 issue of the Portland Telegram included a photo of Portland city and Multnomah county officials with two Klan members. The mayor of Portland, George L. Baker, is third from the right and the police chief, L.V. Jenkins, is third from the left.

The Telegram was one of the few newspapers in Oregon to openly oppose the Klan at the height of its power in the state. Despite being owned by white Protestant men, the newspaper's adversarial stance against the Klan's terrorism brought concerted campaigns to boycott businesses that advertised in the paper. The paper hemorrhaged thousands of readers and when it folded in 1933 many reportedly blamed the Klan's efforts.

The Klan themselves counted men like Governor Pierce as members in secret minutes obtained in 1968 from the estate of a former state legislator. Colon R. Eberhard died at the age of 86 and while his personal papers were being processed, a folder of over 200 pages of KKK meetings in Oregon was discovered, dating from 1922 until 1924. Those pages weren't handed over to the Oregon Historical Society until 1980. Public mention of their existence wouldn't happen until an article in The Observer newspaper in 1985. Klan membership lists were highly secretive, but politicians like Pierce were discussed in the minutes as being loyal KKK members.

But the Klan's presence in Oregon was far from a secret, even in the 1920s. Not only were the hooded cowards meeting with law enforcement, they were advising them on what they'd like to accomplish — all while getting their picture in the newspaper. As the Telegram would report, the Portland police department was "full to the brink with Klansmen."

The warped thing about the Klan's presence in Oregon is just how few people of color were actually living there in the 1920s. The town of La Grande as just one example, which as you'll recall had burned its Chinatown to the ground back in the 1890s, had about 7,000 people in 1920 and just forty-six people of Chinese descent. The town had a mere 15 black people.

People of color were naturally a target for the Klan during this period, but with so few people to irrationally hate for the color of their skin, they turned to campaigns against other groups like Catholics. The Klan, being for American-born Protestants, hated the Roman Catholic church and any of its followers.

Hate is a fickle game when there are so few "others" upon which to focus your gaze. The homogenous state of Oregon was fertile ground to whip young white men into a frenzy. But almost as quickly as it was whipped up, men who were surrounded by so many men like themselves quickly lost interest. People stopped paying dues, leading to a financial crisis within the quickly built organization. By 1926 the Klan in Oregon was a shadow of its former self.

Of course, the discrimination didn't stop after the decline of the Klan. White restaurants still wouldn't serve black people in Portland, black people weren't allowed in the city's swimming pools, and the local skating rink set aside a day for black people. This was as late as the early 1960s.

"I do remember the signs downtown: 'We don't serve Negroes, Jews or dogs'," one man recounts in a 1999 documentary from Oregon Public TV titled Local Color. The signs were everywhere. And they spanned over two world wars. War attracted soldiers from out of town, both black and white. Their arrival naturally led to resentment from soldiers who were used to a more tolerant atmosphere than Oregon provided.

The Oregon Daily Journal reported on some black soldiers from California who in the summer of 1918 were angered by a sign they saw in the window of a restaurant in Portland. The sign read, "We employ white help and cater to white trade only." The soldiers entered the restaurant and destroyed the sign. Similarly in 1943, soldiers going off to fight in World War II saw signs in Portland and were outraged.

The segregation in Portland was as stark as anything in the Jim Crow-era South. And Portland's bizarre dearth of black people (bizarre to outsiders who were unaware of the climate) really came to a head during World War II, when an influx of black workers came looking for the plentiful jobs offered by the Kaiser Shipyards.

"Portland was called the most segregated city north of the Mason-Dixon line," Imarisha tells me. "And so the question became where would these [newly arrived black workers] go? Suddenly you have tens of thousands of black folks pouring in when in Portland there was only one tiny neighborhood called the Albina neighborhood that was already overfull with about 2,500 black folks."

The company worked with the city to create Vanport, an enormous new housing development halfway between Vancouver, Washington and Portland — thus the name Vanport.

"At its height there was 100,000 people there and it was 40 percent black, which for anything to be 40 percent black in Oregon was astounding, Imarisha explains. "Vanport was built incredibly shoddily because it was never meant to last."

This temporary insta-town would become Oregon's second largest city, second only to Portland during the second World War.

"In fact the housing authority in Portland called it a blight and wanted Vanport obliterated. And in 1948 they got their wish when Vanport was completely flooded." Imarisha says. Amazingly, the flooding actually started modestly and people had time to leave. But Portland officials insisted that there was nothing to worry about when the first cracks started letting water into the community.

"Remember: Dikes are safe at present," a bulletin from the Portland Housing Authority read on May 30, 1948. "You will be warned if necessary. You will have time to leave. Don't get excited."

People were not warned in time and the city was flooded as the dikes fully gave way. Fifteen people would die in the floods. Less than two weeks later President Truman would travel to Vanport to see the extent of the damage firsthand.

"Because it was made with shoddy material, houses literally washed away off their foundations. All of Vanport was destroyed and about 18,000 people who were living there were left homeless."

Oregon today still exists as a white utopia in some respects. The state, much like so many others, is haunted by the residue of less explicit experiments in whitopia. These experiments form the basis of Rich Benjamin's 2009 book Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America.

In it, Benjamin travels the country, visiting places that are overwhelmingly white. He meets fascinating characters along the way, and helps to explain places like Oregon and how the actions of the 19th and 20th century bleed into the 21st.

From Searching for Whitopia:

Through most of the twentieth century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly designed to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will.

It's common to have racism without "racists."

I called Benjamin on the phone to talk about his book and what he experienced in the Pacific Northwest. He was quick to tell me that he met lots of interesting, lovely people in the region. But he was also unsettled by the unmistakable symbols of our country's racist history.

"There is and was some sense that the Pacific Northwest could amount to some form of utopia," Benjamin tells me referring to the white supremacist movement in the region. "And Richard Butler knew this himself, the old founder of Aryan Nations."

Butler died in 2004, but was obsessed as so many other white nationalist militants were, with establishing a white utopia in the area. Butler, much like the founders of Oregon, bothered to write it down.

"He identified the Pacific Northwest as what would become an Aryan homeland," Benjamin says. "So the Pacific Northwest has always had a utopic quality to white separatists."

"On the one hand, I saw a lot of can-do spirit, therefore one shouldn't be surprised by all of the technological start-ups both in Oregon and in Washington State. But I also saw a lot of Confederate refugees, to be frank," Benjamin tells me.

"I remember driving through swaths of Washington and Oregon and seeing a lot of Confederate flags," he says. "There are a lot of refugees from the South who I guess are attracted to Oregon not because they're racists but Oregon had a racial homogeneity and a conservatism and a gun culture that they really appreciate."

The Pacific Northwest offers a collision of the old and the new in so many forms. But there's something particularly disturbing about his description of the juxtaposition you can see in tech hubs — the romanticization of some particularly backwards symbols of a revolution that's supposed to be long since dead, yet nurtured in the very land that's supposed to be creating the industries of tomorrow.

"That was shocking, to drive through Oregon and witness so many Confederate flags, juxtaposed with the high-tech futurism," Benjamin tells me.

As Neda Maghbouleh pointed out for an article in the January 2009 issue of Center for New Racial Studies, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama gave Portland newspapers a striking image of its racial makeup. Just look at the photo above from Portland during Senator Obama's presidential campaign. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe Dave Matthews Band was about to go on stage.

The racial composition of any American city is a product of its history. This may seem painfully obvious, but it's something that we need to say out loud and type in bold letters to fully appreciate. The racial composition of any American city is a product of its history. And its a history that so many people in Oregon, in Minnesota, in any other "whitopia" don't seem to be privy to.

The title of Imarisha's most commonly given presentation is Why Aren't There More Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History. She has given the presentation to thousands of people around Oregon over the past four years and she's understandably frustrated that so few Oregonians are aware of something so fundamental to the state's founding. Oregon's history simply isn't being taught in most Oregon schools. And it's because even the teachers have no idea.

"It's still a hidden history today. It's not part of the curriculum that's being taught in public schools in this state. I, in fact, gave a presentation that was mostly public school administrators and public school teachers and I asked them how many of them had known about the exclusionary law before they came to the presentation. Seventy to eighty percent didn't know that Oregon had racial exclusion laws," she tells me.

"The image that the rest of the nation has about Portland is founded a lot on the show Portlandia, right? Keep Portland weird — this sort of idea of this being a white liberal playground. And it's predicated on racial exclusionary laws and the surplus resources that were purposefully kept from communities of color that were redirected into the white community."

This humble blog post barely scratches the surface of the black experience in Oregon, be it the 19th century, 20th century, or today. And it truly isn't meant to pick on Oregon as a lone destination of warped quasi-utopian intolerance. But as Imarisha said, they bothered to write it down.

It's time for white northerners to wake up to the sometimes uncomfortable history of what are now liberal enclaves like Minneapolis, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin. There are stories there that may surprise you. Even if the people committing heinous acts didn't write down their intentions first.

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 03:28:56 AM
Where are you getting this information?

Quote from: Syt on January 05, 2016, 03:30:35 AM
:o Who knew the hippie state was so evil? :o

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 03:46:47 AM

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 03:28:56 AM
Where are you getting this information?

The lives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2016, 04:09:27 AM

Quote from: Syt on January 05, 2016, 03:30:35 AM
:o Who knew the hippie state was so evil? :o

I wouldn't consider Portland to be a hippie state - large portion of it is conservative. Also, I think there were southern states with a similar stance on free blacks but they'd already been part of the union when they adopted those constitutions.

Quote from: The Brain on January 05, 2016, 04:30:52 AM
I'm confused. Are safe zones good or bad?

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 04:55:05 AM

Quote from: The Brain on January 05, 2016, 04:30:52 AM
I'm confused. Are safe zones good or bad?

They're good if you need a break from your triggers.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 03:46:47 AM

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 03:28:56 AM
Where are you getting this information?

The lives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Quote from: Jaron on January 05, 2016, 02:30:10 AM
Well yes, Cliven Bundy and family are Mormons.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 03:27:37 AM
They're about as respectable as Scientology.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 04, 2016, 10:13:48 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 04, 2016, 09:44:23 PM

Quote from: grumbler on January 04, 2016, 06:31:14 PM

Quote from: celedhring on January 03, 2016, 06:37:00 PM
I don't know. Arson will land you in the can over here too, although not five years (unless there's been danger of personal injury).

If there has a mandatory five-year prison sentence for burning some grass on starting a fire to cover a crime, using accelerants, and putting the lives and property of others at grave risk on government-owned property, then there's legislators are morons, too.

There, fixed it for you.

The prosecutors weren't able to prove that they were covering up a crime.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 04:39:01 PM
Yes, clearly in this case you are the Black Knight. The White Knight is coming to somebody's defense.  :hmm:

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 04:39:01 PM
Yes, clearly in this case you are the Black Knight. The White Knight is coming to somebody's defense.  :hmm:

Quote from: grumbler on January 05, 2016, 05:57:21 PM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 05, 2016, 04:39:01 PM
Yes, clearly in this case you are the Black Knight. The White Knight is coming to somebody's defense.  :hmm:

Raz is rushing to defend the mandatory minimum sentence that I criticize (and, by implication, the federal lawmakers who passed it).  He may be also attacking the Bundy gang and/or the Hammonds, but no one is defending them as far as I know.

Quote from: LaCroix on January 05, 2016, 06:07:05 PM
minimum sentencing can get pretty ugly when the prosecutor decides to indict you on (1) arson and (2) using fire to commit a felony. 5+10 minimum years in prison.

Quote from: grumbler on January 05, 2016, 10:11:29 PM
There's no good reason for federal law on arson to be out of whack with the rest of the federal laws, except some congressman probably needed to buy some votes from some firefighters' association and so waved around his needle dick and declared War on Arson.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 06, 2016, 11:22:34 AM

Quote from: grumbler on January 05, 2016, 10:11:29 PM
There's no good reason for federal law on arson to be out of whack with the rest of the federal laws, except some congressman probably needed to buy some votes from some firefighters' association and so waved around his needle dick and declared War on Arson.

More likely a bunch of reps wanted to seem "tough on crime" and so signed onto crime bills that imposed mandatory minimums all over the federal criminal code, without much thought about the particular application to arson.

Quote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2016, 02:38:43 AM
Awww, this has really got your libertarian feathers ruffled, doesn't it?  "White Knights", "needle dicks", :lol:   From what I can tell they were charged under an Anti-Terrorism law introduced by in the 1990's in response to terrorism by anti-government activists!  So it turns out the Hammonds fell afoul a law that was meant to stop the militia fucks that are now protesting.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 06, 2016, 11:22:34 AM
More likely a bunch of reps wanted to seem "tough on crime" and so signed onto crime bills that imposed mandatory minimums all over the federal criminal code, without much thought about the particular application to arson.

QuoteThough actual historians would quibble with how the militia movement understands American history, the Bundy family has justified what they are doing by evoking a distinctly 18th-century style of American patriotism. Because the land and its resources belong to the people, and because a tyrannical government now conspires to take it from them—which they say is specifically and intentionally an effort to reduce free men to slaves—the free people of America have the right and even the moral obligation to take a stand against that government. "We're out here because the people have been abused long enough," as Ammon Bundy put it; "their lands and resources have been taken from them, to the point where it's putting them literally in poverty."

Like the original American revolutionaries, the Bundys warn of creeping tyranny. If they fetishize the constitution, it's fair to say they worship the Declaration of Independence, and the Bundys tell the same kind of story about a government's history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having as their direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny. To them, Barack Obama's federal government is not simply misguided or abusive; to them and their ideological bedfellows, the government of the United States is intentionally sabotaging the economy to drag free men and women into poverty, making them dependent on government handouts and patronage, and, thus, easy to control. Government is not just the problem; government is the enemy.

This is why the seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is only superficially about the incident that provoked the conflict—the Hammond family and its legal troubles. The Hammonds provide a useful pretext for directly confronting the Federal government, or, as Ammon Bundy puts it: "The Hammonds are just an example or a symptom of a very huge and egregious problem, but it's happening all across the United States." Bundy continues:

    We have the EPA that is taking property away from people, they are restricting whole industries, putting whole states and counties into economic depression. We have a slew of other federal agencies that are doing the same thing, and they are doing it by controlling the land and resources, because they know where wealth generates from: wealth generates from the earth, from the land and resources. If they can control them, then they can be the beneficiaries of them, and then the American people have to practically beg them for whatever they give them.

Before seizing the refuge, the Bundy brothers first appealed to the Harney County Sheriff on November 12, urging him to defy the federal government as the true representative of the people. Like their father, Cliven Bundy, who defied the federal government because he regarded it as a "foreign court," the Bundy brothers belong to the "county supremacy movement," who regard the only legitimate policing power as the county sheriff. In that open letter, they argue that the Hammonds did no more than to "use and care for the land," and, as a result, have come into conflict with the government, "those that harbor the ideology that it is a moral obligation to restrict man from the use of the land and resources." According to Bundy, "multiple federal employees are using their position in government to remove the Hammonds from the land to set a precedent for the removal of other land users."

This claim makes more sense if you assume that Obama really is a secret socialist, and that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by subversionary elements seeking to establish totalitarian rule over the American people. And a lot of Americans do believe these things. The Bundys accuse the Bureau of Land Management (along with the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies) not of enforcing the law, but of conspiring to "restrict man from the use of the land" as an end in itself. There is therefore no point in trying to "reform" how the BLM manages public lands. If this government's actual goal is tyranny—and control of the land and its resources is the instrument it uses—then public lands are only a battlefield; seizing them is a strike against tyranny, but only a first step. One has only to take these "patriots" at their word to see that they are not reformists but revolutionaries.

Though it may lack the rhetorical zip of the Thomas Jefferson original, the open letter that the Bundy family wrote to the Harney County sheriff in November is—like the Declaration of Independence itself—primarily a list of grievances. There are a few semi-quotable assertions, like the claim that "Government employees (full-time & elected) have changed their culture from one of service to, and respect for the people, to the roll [sic] of being a masters" or the declaration that "It is the duty of the people to defend their God given rights if government fails to do so or turns to devour them." But most of the document attempts to substantiate the grounds on which the Bundys are aggrieved, by telling a story of government tyranny—a 4,000-word bill of the Violations, Corruptions and Abuses and an accounting of the Facts & Events.

I'm not sure how many people read the open letter when it first appeared at the Bundy Ranch website in November, misspellings and all, or when they re-posted it in December. But on Sunday, the Facts & Events section appeared (without citation) at "the Conservative Treehouse," where it has been shared far and wide. The Conservative Treehouse is a far-right website (it ran hit-pieces on Trayvon Martin) and these days serves as a clearinghouse for news on Benghazi, how Donald Trump will make America great again, and talking points from the National Rifle Association; from there, the document has been shared many thousands of times on Facebook, and was even re-re-posted back onto the Bundy Ranch website. Despite being essentially authored by the Bundys themselves, it is viewed in some circles as unvarnished truth, the key contextualizing document in the latest Bundy affair, at least for those sympathetic to the militia movement (and especially for those who reject anything published under the shadow of .gov, and who get their facts from Infowars and from Facebook).

This, for example, is how the Bundy family describes the origins of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which they have occupied:

    (aa) The Harney Basin (were the Hammond ranch is established) was settled in the 1870s. The valley was settled by multiple ranchers and was known to have run over 300,000 head of cattle. These ranchers developed a state of the art irrigated system to water the meadows, and it soon became a favorite stopping place for migrating birds on their annual trek north.

    (ab) In 1908 President Theodor Roosevelt, in a political scheme, create an "Indian reservation" around the Malheur, Mud & Harney Lakes and declared it "as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds". Later this "Indian reservation" (without Indians) became the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

This is a libertarian fairy tale, even before the authors go on to dismiss wildlife conservation as a "political scheme." In the beginning, there was the land. But like all virgin soil, it required entrepreneurial ranchers to settle it before it could produce value, and this was central to the myth: that nothing existed before the arrival of these free men. The "Indian reservation" is mentioned a full paragraph after the Harney Basin "was settled in the 1870s," and safely enclosed in scare-quotes (along with the parenthetical disclaimer "without Indians" to emphasize that the Indians didn't really precede the settlers). Even the birds didn't really arrive until after our heroic pioneer ranchers had built "a state-of-the-art irrigation system" to make the lake a hospitable stopover spot.

For the Bundys, then, nothing really happened before the 1870s. They do not mention Spanish explorers in 1532, or French Canadian trappers, or the British occupation after the war of 1812, or Oregon statehood in the 1850s. Their story most definitely does not begin thousands of years ago, when the first people settled the region. They have no time for how the Army re-settled the northern Paiute in the Malheur Indian reservation in 1872—emptying Harney County for settlement by white people—nor how those same white settlers demanded (and got) the reservation dis-established in 1879 so they could have that land too.

But history didn't begin in the 1870s. A lot had to happen before rancher-settlers could run hundreds of thousands of cattle in Harney County, and so a lot has to be forgotten by ideologues like the Bundy family. In part, this is because most of the pre-1870 erasures was done by the federal government. Obviously, the U.S. military first had to ethnically cleanse the land, getting rid of the various native peoples that had lived in these stretches for thousands of years. But even after the land had become "free" to white settlers, prospective ranchers still needed markets for their cattle, especially once their primary market for meat, the Army, had moved on to other territories. It was the federal government that stepped in and bailed them out, taking on debt by an act of Congress to finance and build a railroad system. Without the Central Pacific Railway, those thousands of cattle could never have been sold.

Despite the Bundy mythology of family farming and homesteading—individual homesteads headed by patriarchal Free Men—cattle ranching in Harney County was first and foremost a corporate concern. For one thing, raising cattle is and has always been a capital-intensive industry, so Harney County ranchers had to be, and were, financed by businessmen in California, which is where most of the ranchers originally came from. In the 1860s and '70s, the prospects for cattle ranching in California had become dim: A few major droughts and a piece of fencing legislation in 1874 (which favored planted agriculture over stock-raising by placing the financial burden for fencing on cattle ranchers instead of on grain farmers) effectively closed the California range, sending herds east into the northern Great Basin.

When Peter French first came to Harney County in 1872, for example, he represented Hugh J. Glenn, a businessman in Sacramento, acquiring land and cattle for what he would eventually incorporate (in California) as the French-Glenn Livestock Company. French would marry into Hugh J. Glenn's family, but only after their business partnership had been consummated, becoming one of the two major corporations that owned the vast majority of the ranchland in the county. Peter French acquired his land by any means necessary, but all of it had originally been acquired by and then from the federal government. Sometimes French bought it from discouraged family settlers, who were looking to move on; sometimes he forced them to move on, so they would sell their land to him. Sometimes he quietly fenced off and seized what would have otherwise been public rangeland; according to a General Land Office report of 1886–87, around 30,000 acres of commons had somehow found itself enclosed by French-Glenn fences. Another means of sidestepping the law was for his own employees to file homestead claims and then immediately sell the land to their employer (according to historian Margaret Lo Piccolo Sullivan, French-Glenn acquired around 27,000 acres between 1882 and 1889, of which around 16,000 were "purchased" from employees listed on the company ledger).

There were many schemes. It was possible to buy land that had been surveyed as "swamp" from the government at very low prices, for example, if you promised to drain and use it. So sometimes French and others would flood the land first, rendering it swampland so as to lower the price. Sometimes they didn't even bother. In one of the most notorious bits of fiscal legerdemain, French purchased 50,000 acres of swamp land in 1877 from a previous owner who had certified it as swamp, before purchasing it, by technically crossing it in a boat—a boat drawn by mules. The regulatory agencies eventually caught up with these schemes, but by the time they did, most of the land had already been distributed among a very small number of hands.

After the 1870s, the story of Harney County ranching became a story of class warfare, as cattle barons such as French sought to expand and monopolize the range by destroying or incorporating smaller competitors. The underlying economics—and corrupt local governance—tended to favor the syndicate: Only well-capitalized firms, with many employees, had the resources to drive their cattle to the nearest railhead, hundreds of miles away, so small-scale ranchers often had no choice but to sell their cattle to the big operations (at whatever price the large operations chose to buy). Large firms could drive small ranches out of business, simply by refusing to buy from them. Of course, sometimes the big fish eating the little fish paid their own price: Hugh J. Glenn would be killed by a disgruntled employee, and Peter French, in turn, would be shot and killed in 1897 by a small-holder whose farm he had encircled as part of a long-running border dispute. But that was the old West.

The era of the great cattle barons had already passed, long before the Hammonds moved to Oregon and bought their ranch in the Diamond Valley, what had once been a part of French's 140,000-acre empire. When the frontier closed at the dawn of the 20th century, sheep farms, drought, and desertification put the big cattle ranches into debt: The French-Glenn Livestock Company would be sold to Henry L. Corbett in 1907 and become part of the Blitzen Valley Land Company, which would in turn be re-organized as the Eastern Oregon Livestock Company, in 1916. But in 1935, the company would be underwater again, this time for good; its shareholders would look to the government to buy them out.

There are many reasons why the government owns so much land in Harney County. Some of the land is of no value to anyone; the Army took all of it from the northern Paiute, but never found buyers for some of it. Sometimes it was always more profitable for individual ranchers just to use government land without buying it. And sometimes the land fell back into the federal government's hands because the ranchers no longer wanted it. For all the infrastructure it built to make cattle ranching profitable (and the massive fraudulent handouts to well-connected and well-capitalized cattle corporations), the federal government enabled the great cattle empires of the 1870s only to watch them go belly up. But they were, of course, too big to fail: In a story as old as finance capitalism, the federal government bailed them out and bought back the land.

Western militia-types like to fantasize that they are oppressed by a "foreign" government. They like to play dress-up, to pretend that they are entrepreneurial family farmers who built it all themselves. But you can tell the story of Harney County as a morality tale about the evils of big government only if you leave most of it out. And so they do. The story the Bundy brothers tell is mostly empty space, like the Western frontier of their imagination. And perhaps this is fitting. After all, what is American history if not a history of unspoken violence, told by erasure?

QuoteUPDATE: (6:57 p.m.) The FBI and Oregon State Police arrested six people in connection to the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. One person was killed.

Ammon Bundy, Ryan C. Bundy, Brian "Booda" Cavalier, Shawna Cox and Ryan W. Payne were all arrested Tuesday night along Highway 395 between Burns and John Day, police said.

Officials said one person suffered non-life threatening injuries. The injured person was reportedly transferred to a local hospital.

The arrest of Ammon and Ryan Bundy along with three others took place around 4:30 p.m. Shots were fired during the arrest.

Law enforcement said no additional information will be released at this time about the deceased person.

In a separate event in Burns, Oregon State Police arrested Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Arizona. They did not give details about the nature of the arrest.

Everyone arrested Tuesday night will face felony charges, according to law enforcement.

Quote
Shots were fired about 4:25 p.m. (7:25 p.m. ET) when the FBI and Oregon State Police began an "enforcement action," the FBI said. It didn't identify the victim but said he or she wasn't a law enforcement officer.
Three other people were in custody in addition to the Bundys in the initial incident, authorities said:

   
• Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nevada
• Shawna Cox, 59, Kanab, Utah
• Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Montana

Ammon Bundy speaks to reporters Jan. 5 at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images — file    Two other people — Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Arizona, and Peter Santilli, 50, of Cincinnati — were arrested later in separate but related incidents, the FBI said.
Santilli is well known locally as a webcaster and activist who has vigorously supported the Bundys. He was live-streaming the initial confrontation when his feed went down late Tuesday afternoon.
No further information was provided about O'Shaughnessy.
Related: What Is the Occupation in Oregon Really All About?
All face federal felony charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats, authorities said.
      Oregon State Police Sgt. Tom Hutchison walks toward a police roadblock Tuesday on Highway 395 between the towns of John Day and Burns. Dave Killen / The Oregonian    Protesters led by the Bundy brothers have occupied the land refuge since the beginning of the year. Members of the group had been scheduled to appear at 6 p.m. for a meeting with authorities in the town of John Day in Grant County.
Oregon State Police said the initial incident occurred about 20 miles north of Burns on U.S. Highway 395, the main roadway linking Burns and John Day. At least 50 miles of Highway 395 were closed between the towns for a "crash/hazard," according to the state Transportation Department. 
The Bundys are sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.
Cox's husband, Donald, told NBC News on Tuesday night that his wife — who'd been planning to return home Tuesday to Utah — "isn't a member of anything but felt like the cause was good."
Shawna Cox, a mother of 12 and grandmother of 43, has been friends with the Bundy family for about 15 years, Donald Cox said.
"She's a cowgirl," he said. "She's a patriot. This is all about her constitutional rights."

Quote

Shawna Cox, a mother of 12 and grandmother of 43,

QuoteWhen Donald Trump accused Clinton and Obama of creating ISIS, he was absolutely 100% correct. This fact was undeniably established in 2015 when I interviewed former Army Special Operations Officer and advisor to George W. Bush, Scott Bennett. However, this is merely the starting point of this article.
A Treasonous Conspiracy of Monumental Proportions

Both the Bundy and Hammond Ranch affairs is about control of significant amounts  of uranium and the BLM is willing to shed blood in order to procure this uranium for very nefarious purposes.

This article will unequivocally implicate Hillary Clinton in her role of deliberately committing abject treason against the people of the United States through the illegal appropriation of uranium, at both the Bundy and the Hammond ranches and then selling the uranium to the Russians in order to help fund her presidential run through a largely untraceable offshore account.

I am taken back by the brazenness of the plot. I am even further taken back by the fact this event, as the reader will soon learn, was reported in the New York Times as well as other mainstream media outlets. Is it really necessary to point out that the uranium that Clinton, and the fact that it is subsequently being sold to the Russians, could potentially be used against the American people and its military, in the form of nuclear weapons, and this blood money is helping to fund the presidential campaign of a political despot of epic proportions.

Please walk through with me the progression of the events and facts related to this story which accurately casts Hillary Clinton into the light as the single biggest femme fatale traitor in American History.

Making the Connections Between the Bundy and Hammond Ranches and the Presence of Coveted Uranium

Go to the youtube channel owned by dutchsinse. He makes a very compelling case that several ranches, not just Bundy's and Hammond's have been under assault in order to procure precious metals. In the following youtube video, dutchsinse asks the following question:

"Let's just call it what it is. Human greed is at stake here. Who is going to get the gold back there in the back country? Who is going to get the uranium?"

One of the big problems in America today is that "public servants" like Hillary Clinton actually represent a foreign enemy masquerading as a domestic public servant.

I will go one step further than Donald Trump's assertion that Clinton and state that Hillary Clinton is this generation's Ethel Rosenberg.


    Hillary Clinton, the Ethel Rosenberg of her generation. Clinton sold uranium to the Russians while serving as the Secretary of State and this is what both the Bundy and the Hammond Ranch Affair is all about. And there is nothing to suggest that these nefarious acts are still ongoing.

A former key member of the Obama administration and current Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, has proven herself to be the Ethel Rosenberg of her generation. You may recall your U.S. history as Ethel Rosenberg sold nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. In an act every bit as egregious as Ethel Rosenberg's treason, Hillary Clinton sold uranium to the Russians while serving as the Secretary of State. Ironically, the original source on this treasonous act committed by Clinton was none other than the liberal rag we call the  New York Times.

The proof is undeniable that Hillary Clinton committed the treasonous act of selling uranium to the Russians while Secretary of State, as reported in the New York Times. The Russian blood money, as reported, is being held in an offshore account and is being used to fund her run for the Presidency.

From the New York Times...

"A Uranium One sign that points to a 35,000 acre ranch by John Christensen, near the town of Gillette, Wyoming. Uranium One has the mining rights Mr. Christensen's property."   This is proof of more BLM chicanery which will involve multiple BLM ranches.

The New York Times further asserts that members of the Canadian mining industry, who have supported Clinton's campaign, financed and sold off to the Russians a company known as Uranium One. Uranium One is directly responsible for transferring uranium from BLM land to the Russians through an off-shore holding company. Again, according to the NY Times, the Russians, through three separate transactions, acquired Uranium One, while paying off the Clintons and their Canadian partners from 2009-2013.  The business deal also involved paying Bill Clinton $500,000 dollars for a speech on energy which was delivered in Moscow.
Conclusion

If one wants to understand how a 73 year old rancher could be sentenced, as a terrorist, to five years in prison for overseeing a controlled burn, for legitimate purposes, I just told you all you need to know.

Hillary Clinton, the Benghazi murders, 36,000 national security emails on her private computer and now this? And some of you would have the country believe that I am opposed to Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. God help us!

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 02:04:54 PM
Like how people don't try to avoid violence when blacks are involved...

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 02:08:39 PM
So you are going to cite a case from 3 decades ago that end with black people getting bombed?

Quote from: garbon on January 04, 2016, 08:30:16 PM
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/01/04/3735745/move-vs-oregon-standoff/

QuoteHere's What Happened When Black People Tried Armed Occupation

QuoteA live video feed from the DefendYourBase YouTube channel, showed several militants operating a large excavator. At least one of the militants was dressed in military-style gear and carrying a rifle.

"The media has been ordered to leave, and that means they are coming to kill us and they don't want them to see that!" the man yelled into the camera. "They're going to murder all of us and the media are cowards."

"The media has been waiting for a bloodbath this whole time we've been here!" he exclaimed. "Now, there's going to be one and they're told to run? Because the feds don't want them to know who is murdering us!"

Continuing to shout into the camera, the militia member called for the American people to join his cause: "Right now, it is on!"

"What you going to do when the militia comes after you, FBI?" a second militant added.

"Get here, get some," the first militant said, pleading for volunteers with military training. "This is history in the making."

"There are no laws in this United States now!" the man insisted. "This is a free-for-all Armageddon. Any LEO or military or law enforcement or feds that stand up and f*ck their oath — don't abide by their oath — are the enemy!"

"If they stop you from getting here, kill them!"

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 02:08:39 PM
So you are going to cite a case from 3 decades ago that end with black people getting bombed?

Quote from: Razgovory on January 27, 2016, 02:29:20 PM
I'm thinking that garbon is more concerned with the spate of shooting of unarmed black men.

Quote from: Valmy on January 27, 2016, 03:32:00 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 27, 2016, 02:29:20 PM
I'm thinking that garbon is more concerned with the spate of shooting of unarmed black men.

Understandable. But the unarmed black men are not being shot by the Feds.

Quote from: Jacob on January 27, 2016, 03:11:47 PM
Seems like some of the insurrectionists are getting worked up: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/berserk-militant-promises-bloodbath-as-feds-move-in-this-is-a-free-for-all-armageddon/

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 03:35:22 PM

Quote from: Valmy on January 27, 2016, 03:32:00 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on January 27, 2016, 02:29:20 PM
I'm thinking that garbon is more concerned with the spate of shooting of unarmed black men.

Understandable. But the unarmed black men are not being shot by the Feds.

True the FBI has just been doing a great job at compiling counts of citizens killed by police at a figure way lower than the reality on the ground.

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 03:47:03 PM
Maybe if you ask one more time.

Quote from: Valmy on January 27, 2016, 03:38:31 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 03:35:22 PM
True the FBI has just been doing a great job at compiling counts of citizens killed by police at a figure way lower than the reality on the ground.

Again what is your complaint here? That you want black terrorists treated more carefully or for the Feds to be more aggressive with these militiamen instead of trying to find a way that avoids bloodshed?

Quote from: grumbler on January 27, 2016, 04:00:11 PM

Quote from: Valmy on January 27, 2016, 03:38:31 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 03:35:22 PM
True the FBI has just been doing a great job at compiling counts of citizens killed by police at a figure way lower than the reality on the ground.

Again what is your complaint here? That you want black terrorists treated more carefully or for the Feds to be more aggressive with these militiamen instead of trying to find a way that avoids bloodshed?

This is garbo.  What makes you think that this time he is bitching about an actual complaint?  For instance, he'll bitch about FBI statistics on citizens killed by police without ever noting that compiling such a list isn't the FBI's job and local law enforcement isn't required to report these cases to the FBI.  Facts don't matter when it comes to garbo bitching.

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 04:09:15 PM
And yet the FBI announced a plan to overhaul their database of such records saying it was embarrassing and unacceptable that news outlets had better records.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Quote from: Jacob on January 27, 2016, 03:11:47 PM
Seems like some of the insurrectionists are getting worked up: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/berserk-militant-promises-bloodbath-as-feds-move-in-this-is-a-free-for-all-armageddon/ (http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/berserk-militant-promises-bloodbath-as-feds-move-in-this-is-a-free-for-all-armageddon/)

QuoteA live video feed from the DefendYourBase YouTube channel, showed several militants operating a large excavator. At least one of the militants was dressed in military-style gear and carrying a rifle.

"The media has been ordered to leave, and that means they are coming to kill us and they don't want them to see that!" the man yelled into the camera. "They're going to murder all of us and the media are cowards."

"The media has been waiting for a bloodbath this whole time we've been here!" he exclaimed. "Now, there's going to be one and they're told to run? Because the feds don't want them to know who is murdering us!"

Continuing to shout into the camera, the militia member called for the American people to join his cause: "Right now, it is on!"

"What you going to do when the militia comes after you, FBI?" a second militant added.

"Get here, get some," the first militant said, pleading for volunteers with military training. "This is history in the making."

"There are no laws in this United States now!" the man insisted. "This is a free-for-all Armageddon. Any LEO or military or law enforcement or feds that stand up and f*ck their oath — don't abide by their oath — are the enemy!"

"If they stop you from getting here, kill them!"

Video: https://youtu.be/tuZQW28qFkQ (https://youtu.be/tuZQW28qFkQ)

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 27, 2016, 07:14:54 PM
Hmm I don't think MOVE is the best example of reasonable use of force . . .

Quote from: Razgovory on January 27, 2016, 07:21:28 PM

That sounds like an incitement of violence.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 27, 2016, 07:14:54 PM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Hmm I don't think MOVE is the best example of reasonable use of force . . .

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 27, 2016, 07:14:54 PM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Hmm I don't think MOVE is the best example of reasonable use of force . . .

Quote from: Caliga on January 27, 2016, 08:16:15 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 27, 2016, 07:14:54 PM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Hmm I don't think MOVE is the best example of reasonable use of force . . .

You think dropping bombs from a helicopter was inappropriate? :o

Quote from: Tonitrus on January 27, 2016, 08:48:29 PM

I think it is.

Bombs should be dropped by bombers, dammit...preferably strategic bombers.  :mad:

Quote from: Razgovory on January 27, 2016, 09:27:27 PM

Quote from: Tonitrus on January 27, 2016, 08:48:29 PM

I think it is.

Bombs should be dropped by bombers, dammit...preferably strategic bombers.  :mad:

Yeah, but would meaning involving the air force.  They'd be lucky if the bomb didn't fall in Ohio.

Quote from: 11B4V on January 27, 2016, 09:19:27 PM
:lol:

(https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xlf1/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/12573697_1133518613334744_1103894585629815582_n.png.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoibCJ9&oh=427b0b007d04bc107ffabe15e42d6d6a&oe=57298948)

Quote from: Tonitrus on January 27, 2016, 09:47:22 PM
The top middle dude?  Looks like the camera got him right in the middle of one of those face-twisting, deep nasal inhalations.

Quote from: Caliga on January 27, 2016, 08:16:15 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 27, 2016, 07:14:54 PM

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 27, 2016, 02:04:41 PM

Quote from: garbon on January 27, 2016, 01:56:50 PM
You get a lot more time to fuck around.

The MOVE group you talked about earlier was involved in a year-long standoff with police in 1978 and the 1985 action was after 4 years of complaints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE)

Hmm I don't think MOVE is the best example of reasonable use of force . . .

You think dropping bombs from a helicopter was inappropriate? :o

Quote from: Caliga on January 27, 2016, 09:42:34 PM
The fuck is wrong with that one dude's face?

Quote from: Caliga on January 27, 2016, 09:42:34 PM
The fuck is wrong with that one dude's face?

Quote from: derspiess on January 29, 2016, 03:11:35 PM

Quote from: Caliga on January 27, 2016, 09:42:34 PM
The fuck is wrong with that one dude's face?

Uh I think that's a woman, Cal.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 28, 2016, 12:46:26 AM
Somehow I don't see that happening if the standoff was in Greenwich or Brookline.

Quote from: Caliga on January 29, 2016, 03:13:37 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 28, 2016, 12:46:26 AM
Somehow I don't see that happening if the standoff was in Greenwich or Brookline.

Are you trying to say that the Philadelphia response was...... RACISS???? But the mayor was a black dude! :o

Quote
By Peter Henderson
BURNS, Ore. (Reuters) - As four armed anti-government protesters held their ground at a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon on Friday, the family of a protester killed by police said he seemed to have been shot in the back with his hands up, although authorities said he was reaching for a gun.

Relatives of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, 54, a spokesmen for the group that seized buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, said he posed no threat and they were not accepting the authorities' assertion that he was armed.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released video on Thursday of state police fatally shooting Finicum, and contended it showed him making a move for a gun in his coat pocket.

"LaVoy was not 'charging' anyone. He appears to have been shot in the back, with his hands in the air," the family of the Arizona rancher said in a statement through their attorney.

"At this point we will await the outcome of any investigation, but based on the information currently available to us, we do not believe that LaVoy's shooting death was justified."

Four armed protesters were still holed up on Friday at the remote refuge, 30 miles (48 km) from Burns, a small ranching community in the state's rural southeast.

The FBI says it is working "around the clock" to negotiate with the holdouts.

Ammon Bundy, who led the occupation that began on Jan. 2, was arrested on Tuesday along with other protesters including his brother, Ryan.

Bundy has issued messages through his attorney urging those who remain at the refuge to stand down, and saying they would continue to fight federal land policy through the courts.

Bundy and his brother Ryan were ordered held without bail pending trial on felony conspiracy charges, a U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday.

"There are no conditions I could impose that would ensure the safety of the community. I'm worried about him occupying another government building," U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman told the hearing in Portland.

The occupation began when Bundy and at least a dozen followers seized buildings at the refuge in the latest flare-up of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres if land in the West.

Authorities said Finicum was armed when he was killed, and on Thursday night they released aerial video that showed him fleeing in a white truck, nearly striking an officer while trying to evade a police barricade, then barreling into a deep snowbank and exiting the car.

The grainy footage shows Finicum raising his hands and then turning and flailing his arms. He then lowers his arms to his body and is shot by Oregon State Police troopers, the FBI said.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI's Portland office, told reporters Finicum can be seen reaching for his jacket pocket, where officers found a loaded 9mm semi-automatic handgun. But the lack of focus in the video makes it difficult to discern Finicum's precise movements.

The dead rancher's relatives said the video seems to show him gesturing, or trying to keep his balance in the snow.

"Although he may have been animated, he does not appear to have been threatening or posing any real threat or danger to anyone," Finicum's family said in their statement.

That view was echoed by some the two dozen people who held a rally outside the Harney County courthouse on Friday.

"It's kind of like murder, it looks like to me. They had every chance to take them peacefully," said 54-year-old local resident Cam Ray.

A 79-year-old rancher, Monte Siegner, held a sign that read: "Ambushed and assassinated."

"He got out with his hands up in the deep snow," Siegner said. "I didn't see any gun."

The FBI video was released hours after Todd Macfarlane, a lawyer for Finicum's relatives, said other evidence may exist that shows Finicum was not threatening authorities.

Macfarlane said one potential source of information about the shooting was Victoria Sharp, a woman who says she was friends with some of the armed protesters and claims she was at the scene and watched Finicum die.

Sharp said in an interview with Reuters that Finicum was shot with his gun in his holster and his hands in the air, shouting and walking toward police.

Neither state nor federal law enforcement would comment on whether Sharp was at the scene or on her description. Reuters was not able to independently confirm her version of the events.

(Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, Victoria Cavaliere and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Daniel Wallis in Denver, writing by Daniel Wallis; editing by Bill Trott, Toni Reinhold)

QuoteThornton called the arrests "a dirty trick" by law enforcement.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 29, 2016, 10:23:00 PM

QuoteThornton called the arrests "a dirty trick" by law enforcement.

Quote from: katmai on January 27, 2016, 11:04:36 PM
Mormon inbreeding? :unsure:

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on January 30, 2016, 01:22:05 AM
I'm surprised Jaron had the 500 gold pieces to claim Defender of the Faith.  :hmm:

Quote from: Jaron on January 30, 2016, 01:18:09 AM

Quote from: katmai on January 27, 2016, 11:04:36 PM
Mormon inbreeding? :unsure:

:rolleyes:

Quote$6 million will go to restore Malheur refuge, cover other costs of standoff
The Oregonian
March 23, 2016

BURNS – Crews from a national cleaning company bustle from building to building at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, ravens watching from perches in the towering cottonwoods outside.
Big steel boxes serve as giant garbage drops. Truck-mounted vacuums whine with industrial strength. Workers come and go from big cargo trailers, drawing supplies to clean carpets, wash walls and remove stains.
The compound is under one giant spring cleaning. The workers are scrubbing away traces left by armed militants.
Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, stood outside the closed visitor center Wednesday, vowing that the refuge would be better than ever after the crews are done.
The 41-day occupation of the refuge will give way to "something more" than before – the reserve will become a symbol to the rest of the country that collaboration, not confrontation, endures, Ashe said.
He trekked to the Oregon desert to meet with community leaders two days after Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited.
Ashe and Fish & Wildlife employees who briefed reporters read from the same script as Jewell had earlier in the week: The refuge is a national model for getting along with your neighbors.
Ammon E. Bundy, 40, of Emmett, Idaho, said the opposite when he led a group of anti-government protesters in taking over the refuge headquarters on Jan. 2. The siege resulted in one death and the federal indictment so far of 27 people, including Bundy.
Federal officials shared photos of what they found at the compound after the FBI had scoured it for explosives and evidence. The photos captured scenes of messy living – clothes strewn around one room, an office ransacked with chairs knocked askew and equipment on the floor, a Jim Beam whiskey bottle tucked among couch cushions.
Removing the debris and repairing the damage is likely to take until early summer. Until then, the headquarters remains closed but the public is free to roam the rest of the 187,700-acre bird sanctuary.
Ashe said the occupation will cost his agency roughly $6 million. About $2 million of that came during the takeover and included paying to move the refuge's 17 employees out of town for safety to live at government expense in hotels for weeks.
The rest, Ashe said, is going for repairs and upgrades to make the refuge the bright star in the national constellation of refuges.
Still, the takeover has changed the government mindset about such remote installations. The agency remains worried, Ashe said, that an occupation could happen again here or elsewhere. Those who work on the Malheur must remain vigilant against a repeat of January's takeover, he said.
The refuge, 30 miles southeast of Burns, is known nationally for collaboration among government, environmentalists and ranchers, he said: "a great example of good government, good community, good intentions."
At a bluff on Wright's Ridge, on the refuge's northern shoulder, local leaders echoed that.
Gary Marshall, a longtime local rancher and chairman of the High Desert Partnership, said years of work by diverse groups arrived at a plan for the refuge that accounts for all needs, from environmental to economic.
With the water-logged refuge landscape stretching out behind him, Marshall noted that none of the occupiers talked to him or others to learn what had gone on. Bundy repeatedly said at news conferences that the refuge and other federal lands had been mismanaged in ways that oppressed local ranchers.
"They were misinformed or they didn't care," Marshall said.
Dan Nichols, another local rancher, said he decided recently not to retire after 20 years on the Harney County commission but will seek re-election because he wants to be part of refuge's future.
Back at the refuge compound, fish biologist Linda Beck said she's glad to be back to work, but faces a daunting task. The occupation disrupted plans to remove invasive carp by commercial fishing earlier this year. The prolific carp consume habitat sorely needed by birds.
"We lost the opportunity to fish for these fish in a really condensed setting," Beck said. Malheur Lake covered about 3,000 acres at the beginning of the year. Now, it stands at about 20,000 acres. Still, the refuge and its partners will try netting fish starting in May.
But Beck estimated the disrupted work will cost about three years of carp control because the fish are such efficient breeders.
By day's end, Beck and her colleagues were ready for their next appointment.
They were heading for a barbecue set up to welcome them back to duty – and back to the community. Their hosts were the 20 or so ranchers who graze cattle in partnership with the refuge.

-- Les Zaitz

QuoteThe 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by angry ranchers ended in mid-February, bringing to a close a dumb standoff that was a drag on federal resources and resulted in the death of LaVoy Finicum.

However, weeks after the standoff ended the property is still far from usable.

That's because, in addition to leaving behind booby traps, the dildo-waving ranchers also left behind a huge mess, bringing the overall cost of their stunt to an estimated $6.5 million when you count cleanup, repair, and the cost of relocating federal workers during the standoff.

The extent of the ranchers' filth-making is well documented in a series of photos collected by KATU 2, which depict piles of garbage, structural damage to the building, and holes the ranchers dug on the property. Refuge employees say the ranchers also stole personal items from their offices.

The most expensive thing they futzed up was likely the septic system, which the 20-odd occupiers clogged and ruined "due to overuse," according to the Bend Bulletin.

This was presumably what led to them having to defecate al fresco and leaving behind a "trench" of human feces for clean-up crews to deal with, when they were finally removed from the property.

Quote from: Tonitrus on March 25, 2016, 02:22:16 PM
Misleading to lump "upgrades" into the cost total.

Quote
Nation
Ammon Bundy, other militants found not guilty in Oregon standoff trial
BY Conrad Wilson, OPB
October 27, 2016 at 7:43 PM EDT

Ammon and Ryan Bundy have been found not guilty of conspiracy. Their five co-defendants Jeff Banta, Shawna Cox, David Fry, Kenneth Medenbach and Neil Wampler have all been found not guilty as well.

Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on Ryan Bundy's theft of government property charge.

The jury returned its verdict after some six weeks of testimony followed by less than six hours deliberations, and the last minute replacement of a juror after an allegation surfaced that he was biased.

The jury was instructed to disregard their previous work and to re-consider the evidence

The charges stem from the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns in eastern Oregon's high desert. The armed protest began Jan. 2 and ended when the final four occupiers surrendered to the FBI on Feb. 11.

Prosecutors initially charged Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan Bundy, and 24 others with conspiracy to prevent Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees from doing their jobs at the wildlife refuge in Harney County. Some defendants named in the indictment faced weapons charges for carrying firearms in a federal facility, as well as theft of government property.

Only seven defendants went to trial in September. Others have pleaded guilty or are scheduled to go to trial in February 2017.

Through the government's case, prosecutors attempted to show the jury evidence about when the alleged conspiracy began, as well as how the occupation unfolded and ultimately ended.

The government relied heavily on testimony from law enforcement, including Harney County Sheriff David Ward, as well as dozens of FBI agents who responded to the occupation or processed evidence at the Malheur refuge after the occupation ended.

"At the end of the day, there is an element of common sense that demonstrates the guilt of these defendants," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight said during his closing arguments during the trial. "These defendants took over a wildlife refuge and it wasn't theirs."

Conversely, the defense sought to make its case about a political protest – one about protesting the federal government's ownership and management of public lands.

"The people have to insist that the government is not our master; they are our servants," Ryan Bundy said during his closing statement to the jury.

Bundy added the occupation had "nothing to do with impeding and preventing the employees of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge."

The occupation in rural eastern Oregon fueled a long running debate about the role of the federal government when it comes of managing public lands, especially for ranching and other natural resource-based professions.

Throughout the armed protest, occupation leader Ammon Bundy frequently said their goal was to shift the federally-owned land to local control. During presses conferences and interviews, Bundy frequently said he wanted to "get the ranchers back to ranching, get the loggers back to logging and miners back to mining."

While federal prosecutors worked to keep their case focused on conspiracy, the trial quickly came to symbolize the growing divide between urban and rural America.

"How did any of these people benefit from protesting the death of rural America?" Attorney Matt Schindler, hybrid counsel for defendant Ken Medenbach, said during his closing statements to the jury.

Five of the seven defendants took the stand in their own defense during the trial. Occupation leader Ammon Bundy's testimony stretched over the course of three days and included stories about growing up on a ranch and his family role in the 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada.

With the first Oregon trial concluded, the Bundy brothers and several other defendants who participated in the Malheur occupation will now travel to Nevada, where they face charges for their roles in the Bunkerville standoff.

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2016, 05:24:13 AM
Contrast the Oregon stuff with how authorities handle the protests over the pipeline in North Dakota:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-arrests/index.html

Quote from: The Brain on October 29, 2016, 04:02:16 AM
Is there anything whites can't do?

Quote from: Eddie Teach on October 29, 2016, 08:49:17 AM

Quote from: The Brain on October 29, 2016, 04:02:16 AM
Is there anything whites can't do?

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTIyMTgxODc1M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzMzNDA0MQ@@._V1_UY268_CR3,0,182,268_AL_.jpg)

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2016, 05:24:13 AM
Contrast the Oregon stuff with how authorities handle the protests over the pipeline in North Dakota:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-arrests/index.html

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2016, 05:24:13 AM
Contrast the Oregon stuff with how authorities handle the protests over the pipeline in North Dakota:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-arrests/index.html

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2016, 05:24:13 AM
Contrast the Oregon stuff with how authorities handle the protests over the pipeline in North Dakota:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-arrests/index.html

Quote from: Valmy on October 29, 2016, 10:01:31 AM

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2016, 05:24:13 AM
Contrast the Oregon stuff with how authorities handle the protests over the pipeline in North Dakota:

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/22/us/dakota-access-pipeline-arrests/index.html

It is different though. One is the Feds who have all this Constitutional stuff they have to abide by. The other are the States and they don' t give a shit.

Quote'A pivotal moment in the west': pro-militia Oregon sheriff seeks re-election

Glenn Palmer, a three-term incumbent linked to the Patriot movement, is among the west's most controversial local officials and could stay in office after Tuesday

There's an election on Tuesday, and voters in Grant County, Oregon, face a stark choice. They have to choose their sheriff, and the result of that race will resonate far beyond the county. Many observers will see it as a referendum on the gains made in the west last year by the Patriot movement.

Just as in the presidential race, those involved see it as having an almost existential significance. "This is a pivotal moment in the history of Grant County, and the entire west," says Todd McKinley, the wiry, clean-cut contender who's hoping to dislodge the three-term incumbent, Glenn Palmer.

The Guardian spoke with McKinley in a coffee shop in the main street of John Day (population 1,707) . He chose a window table at the far end of the coffee house. When told that other interviewees had asked to meet here, he said with a smile, "it's a good spot. You can watch your back."

Even more than in other small towns, people here seem to have a sense that they are being watched and listened to closely. Some feel the need to hold their political opinions close to their chests.

Not so for McKinley, who has spent his whole policing career in the Grant County sheriff's office, working alongside his opponent from 2001 onwards. But over the years, his relationship with Palmer grew strained, due in part to his former boss's unusual political connections with the Patriot movement, which refers to a range of anti-government groups, including militias, tax protesters and so-called "sovereign citizens".

"I believe the sheriff's office [should be] more about policing and less about politics," he said.

This year, Palmer has become one of the most controversial local officials in the west after his support for "constitutionalist" and militia groups became a topic in Oregon's media, as well as the subject of complaints by those working alongside him.

After a group of armed men led by Ammon Bundy occupied the Malheur wildlife refuge in neighboring Harney County on 2 January 2016, this remote corner of Oregon became the center of a national story. Palmer praised them as "Americans" and "patriots" in local media and argued that the government was "going to have to concede something".

When members of the Malheur occupation's leadership were finally arrested on 26 January, they were on their way to John Day to address a public meeting, which Palmer attended. One of those leaders, Lavoy Finicum, was shot dead after he left the car and appeared to reach for a sidearm. Among his last words were: "I'm going over to meet the sheriff in Grant County."

Earlier in the occupation, on 12 January, two occupiers – anti-Islamic activist John Ritzheimer and Ryan Payne, alumnus of the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff in Arizona – met with the sheriff at a group lunch in John Day. Ritzheimer told reporters at the time that Palmer had "a practical plan for helping unravel the federal government", and that he had asked the two men to autograph his pocket constitution.

During and after the occupation, Palmer received pushback from a group of local residents, calling themselves Grant County Positive Action, who organised protests against the occupation and took out ads in local newspapers demanding that Palmer explain his actions.

John Day's 911 dispatch manager, Valerie Lutrell, wrote a complaint to Oregon's department of public safety standards and training about Palmer, in which she mentioned the support he was showing for the militia occupying the Malheur refuge as well as his "disregard for the potential consequences of pushing his personal agenda". She also claimed that he was "viewed as a security leak" by his own staff, as well as local and state authorities.

This complaint and others triggered an ongoing investigation by the Oregon department of justice into allegations against Palmer, including tampering with police records.

So far, Palmer has avoided publicly detailing the precise nature of the relationship he had with the occupiers. He has fought attempts to get access to his email exchanges with the Bundys during the occupation. The sheriff has long refused to speak with local outlets such as the Oregonian, and reportedly threatened its reporter with legal action for attempting to contact him.

Indeed, he's not inclined to explain himself publicly at all.

The Guardian repeatedly endeavored to speak with him about the election with in-person visits and phone calls to his office. Palmer's only response was a curt "no thank you" to an email request.The Malheur standoff revealed just one dimension of Palmer's relationship with the so-called Patriot movement. He has also had a long association with the Arizona-based sheriff Richard Mack.

Mack founded the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a group resolved to assert the authority of local sheriffs in the face of any federal attempt to register or seize firearms, arrest or search individuals, or use military force against citizens. They argue that federal agents should not arrest people or seize property "without first notifying and obtaining the express consent of the local sheriff".

In short, they believe that the county sheriff is the highest legal authority in the land (they even claim that "the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the president"). In that, they share the same basic hostility to the federal government, and the same reading of the constitution, as the Malheur occupiers.

Mack is also a board member of the Oath Keepers, a group founded in 2009 whose goal is to defend the constitution – and in particular the second amendment right to bear arms – against what they see as federal government overreach.

More disturbingly for locals, Palmer has according to local press appointed 65 "special deputies" – far more than any other Oregon sheriff – who report directly to him. In the letter of complaint written by Lutrell, the 911 dispatch manager, she complained that Palmer had provided no list of the people he had deputized, but had said that "anyone that I deputize" should be given access to the town's dispatch systems.

Odd incidents have been reported involving these special deputies. In October 2015, according to Lutrell's letter, Palmer asked a forest service officer to release a man he had detained because he was a special deputy. In September this year, another deputy shot a dog dead in the street in Canyon City, saying it had attacked her.

Because of this lack of transparency, some local residents were not willing to be named after talking to the Guardian, fearing possible intimidation.

One who is less reticent is Dan Becker, a local McKinley supporter who has retired from the US Forest Service.

"There's a lot of anger here," he says of his community, explaining that Palmer, his local supporters, and his Patriot connections are trying to harness it. For them, "this is Lexington or Boston Square. This is their moment to take back what they believe America has lost or left behind. They're serious people."

Like other local residents the Guardian talked to, he emphasizes that Palmer's hardcore supporters are small in number – the inner circle is around 20 people, including some outsiders drawn to Grant County by Palmer's reputation.

And their biggest opportunities seem to arise from disaster.

'Palmer knows what's right and wrong'

On 14 August 2015, the Canyon Creek Complex became one of the most destructive wildfire in Oregon's history.

In a few hours it gutted 43 homes and incinerated numerous cars, RVs, and outbuildings. It burned up 110,000 acres of giant Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs in and around Grant County's share of the Malheur national forest.

Of those events, McKinley says: "I ran the operations. We got it done and we didn't have a life lost."

McKinley says the success in preserving local lives is evidence that cooperative relationships between between county and federal agencies help everyone. But the trauma of lost homes further soured local politics, and many ended up blaming changes in the US Forest Service's fire management practices. Old school strategies – such as thinning out trees with logging and clearing undergrowth – have become less prevalent as environmental values have exerted greater influence.

In August 2015, the Guardian was present at a meeting in neighboring Prairie City at which US Forest Service officials who were preparing the community for possible evacuation were subject to sustained, hostile questioning from some residents about fire prevention.

This blame game played into the hands of Palmer and his tight group of local, rightwing allies, who, in keeping with Patriot movement ideology, see federal land management and ownership as a usurpation of local prerogatives.

Specifically, according to a report by the social justice thinktank Political Research Associates, Palmer and other Patriots adhere to a particular doctrine of "coordination", which is interpreted by those hard-right groups to give local governments an equal position at the negotiating table with federal and state government agencies.

After the fires, in September last year, Palmer deputized 11 Grant County residents to draft a natural resources plan for county-level land management. Such a plan, developed outside county processes, is in keeping with Patriot tactics of establishing bodies which are intended to function as shadow governments pushing their own agenda.

The plan calls for negotiations between the United States and the county "on a government-to-government basis" in determining public land use, not mere consultation. This means the county is seen as having equal or greater authority than the federal government.

One of those deputised to write the plan was Jim Sproul, of Prairie City.

Sproul told the Guardian that the plan was intended for "use in the coordination process, which is federal law and allows local government agencies to have a meaningful say in these land use decisions". Sproul describes the writing committee as "a citizens' group", adding that "Glenn [Palmer] supports us 100% because he knows what's right and wrong."

The group was small, though, and neither elected not formed by any recognized process. Members wanted to put it to a ballot, but county commissioners rejected it.

Still, Sproul believes that if the plan were put to a ballot, it would be successful – adding: "That's why you're seeing so much of a push against our sheriff." He claims the plan was shot down by commissioners because of the power of the existing consultative management body, Blue Mountains Forest Partners.

Like his plan, Sproul thinks Palmer will prevail. "He's a constitutional sheriff – he represents the people, all of the people. He's a damn good sheriff, he's well liked, he will win this election."

He says Palmer edged McKinley out of the sheriff's department because "Todd has a problem with authority. He doesn't follow orders," pointing to his political disagreements with Palmer.

McKinley says: "I find it interesting that [Sproul] is accusing me of having an issue with authority when he was supportive of the Malheur occupiers."

The natural resources plan was the culmination of a longer history of conflicts between Palmer and the federal government. In 2011, he terminated a contract with the Forest Service which had seen deputies patrolling federal land in exchange for payments and the use of Forest Service facilities, such as a search and rescue helicopter.

In his own letter terminating the arrangement, Palmer cited Article I, Section 8 of the US constitution, which in part reads:

The federal government shall exercise authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.

Many in the Patriot movement believe that these are the only purposes for which the federal government can acquire land. National parks, forests, wildlife reserves and public land are, they believe, simply unconstitutional.

It is also the same fragment quoted by the occupants of the Malheur national wildlife refuge to underpin their demands that the federal government hand over control of public lands to counties.

Unemployment in the 'timber belt'

Palmer's letter also cites "socio-economic" issues as a reason for breaking off the agreement – like the Bundy group, Palmer attributes the long-term decline of Grant County, and by extension the western interior, to the refusal of federal agencies to allow unbridled economic exploitation of public land.

A public break between Palmer and McKinley arose from the latter's decision to write a letter to the local newspaper disagreeing with the sheriff's decision not to renew that contract. Palmer put him on administrative leave.

The truth involves a bigger story. Grant County is in the "timber belt", an area stretching from northern California to Washington which has suffered from the disappearance of logging and milling jobs over the last four decades.

Almost every county in rural Oregon has shown some degree of recovery from the depths of the last recession. But according to figures from Oregon's office of economic analysis, employment in Grant County peaked in 1992, and is still around 15% down on 2003, with very few signs of improvement.

Whereas some timber belt towns have increased in size as retirees and others move in, Grant County's demographics look a lot more typical of the rest of rural America. In 1980 there were 8,210 people there; in 2035 it's projected there will be just 6,785, while Oregon as a whole will have practically doubled its population to almost 5 million over the same period.

Grant County is still dependent on its remaining timber mill as a private sector employer, but the future may be even bleaker than its immediate past.

Environmental protections and more stringent management of public lands have played some role in this, but only some – more efficient milling, cheap imports, the disappearance of the "low-hanging fruit" of old growth timber, and the decline of the US labor movement have also badly affected the logging industry.

This complex misfortune heightens the temptation to blame federal agencies for local problems, says McKinley. "There's less logging, unemployment – people want to blame someone, so they blame the Forest Service."

According to Becker, the disappearance of timber jobs from the 1980s on led many unionised, Democratic-voting mill workers to leave town. This tipped the balance further toward conservatism in a now deep-red county.

Glenn Palmer's politics, though, go beyond mere conservatism. He's part of a gathering movement that wants to challenge the very idea of federal public lands, and Democrats have few incentives to challenge such candidates in conservative areas.

Some of Grant County's problems come down to the fact that is it a long way from anywhere – but versions of this political dynamic are visible everywhere, to the extent that they have come to define the political landscape of 2016. In the face of change and decline, Palmer, politicians like him throughout the west, and the Patriot movement as a whole are offering their own version of the promise to make America great again.

There aren't any polls in Grant County. We won't know until tomorrow whether it's people have finally decided that those promises are hollow.

Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2016, 11:16:00 AM
Wait so a group of sheriffs think that sheriffs should be the ultimate and final law of the land?

QuoteU.S. Extremist Blames 'Compliant' Jews for Holocaust in Idaho Protest

Ammon Bundy tells crowd during anti-lockdown demonstration that Jewish people thought 'putting their head down and trying to not be noticed was the better way' in WWII

In a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Idaho on Saturday, anti-government extremist and militia leader Ammon Bundy blamed Jews for their fate in the Holocaust, saying their mass murder happened because they were too compliant to government authorities.

"Just look at the pictures of the Holocaust," Bundy told the crowd gathered at the steps of the State Capitol building in Boise, at an "Idaho Is Open For Business" rally. "It always amazes me how you see pictures of men and women stripped completely naked, lined up and facing a mass grave, where they are shooting them in the back of the head and falling in the grave."

Bundy then asked why the Jews "would line up knowing" what their fate would be.

"You must ask yourself: Why did the Jewish people not – how did they get in that position? I'm not someone to be a judge of another people, but we must learn from history. Because they thought that putting their head down and trying to not be noticed was the better way. They thought that compliance would get them through it, and it was just a period of time that they might just pass through and end up better on the other end.

"And that is a decision that we have to make right now. Is it better if we just comply? Is it safer to comply? If we comply now, they will go further ... until we are lined up naked facing a mass grave and being shot in the back of the head."

In his speech, Bundy compared himself to Holocaust victims, portraying himself as a survivor of government oppression. In January 2016, Bundy led the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon – part of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the U.S. government's control of millions of acres of land in the West. Bundy was later acquitted of federal conspiracy and weapons charges for his role in leading the uprising.

He said his own experiences helped his understanding of the Holocaust narrative. "I have been there and I know for a fact that this is true: When you have faced so much tyranny in your life, there is a point when you would rather line up naked and get shot in the head. And, my friends, why we're here today right now is to make sure that never happens!"

QuoteAmmon Bundy Hosts More Than 100 Worshipers at Easter Service in Defiance of Stay-At-Home Orders

QuoteAnti-government activist Bundy protests at officer's home

MERIDIAN, Idaho — Anti-government activist Ammon Bundy was one of several dozen protesters who showed up at a southwestern Idaho police officer's home after the officer took into custody an activist at a city playground closed because of the coronavirus.

The protesters at the officer's home on Tuesday are angry with Republican Gov. Brad Little's stay-at-home order. Meridian has closed at least some portions of parks. Anti-vaccine activist Sara Brady, 40, was one of several parents who went to the closed playground on Tuesday and refused to follow an officer's instruction to leave, then told the officer to arrest her. She has been charged with trespassing.

At Governor Little's press conference Thursday, he was asked a question about the protests and called them "disgusting."

Little also had harsh words for business owners who choose to ignore his stay-home order. A gym in Middleton and a bar in Nampa have already reopened. Little says he does not condone these actions, adding that "It's not fair to the rest of the citizens of Idaho that are making these sacrifices. People who don't comply with this stage (of reopening Idaho) or other stages are jeopardizing peoples health."