I think you missed a point too, Frank. This was not a matter of opening
public land for commercial purposes. The Bundy cattle had already been
grazing on that land for decades. It was a matter of suddenly closing it.
On 8/3/2017 3:39 AM, Frank Ventura wrote:
However... if you open up public lands for commercial purposes you really open
the flood gates. The same arguments will be made to allow big petrol to put up
oil rigs or maybe letting Raytheon use it as a test site for their missles.
Protected lands need to be protected from commercial purposes.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:25 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Defend the Bundys! Defend
ranchers’ access to, public land
An interesting point of view. On the one hand, I can agree that if the cattle
are not running pipelines across the land, or cutting down the timber, or
building private golf courses, then why not allow them to graze? I've seen
cattle on vast stretches of near desert land. No one is going to do anything
that can harm this land simply by grazing.
But I fail to see the connection with this situation and the Corporate
Capitalist. The land in dispute is public land. If the government has laws
regulating who can use this public land, and there is a fee for such uses as
grazing, then either pay the government the fees or get busy changing the laws.
Anyway, I can't make a connection. If we tossed out the current Ruling Class,
and installed a Socialist government, how would that change the question about
who can use the land for what purposes?
Now if the Capitalist Government allowed oil drilling or fracking, or any
private commercial project that disrupted the land and put money in private
pockets, I would agree that it could be pointed out that this was a gross
misuse of the land, for private gain.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/2/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2017/8129/812953.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 29 August 7, 2017
(As I See It)
Defend the Bundys! Defend ranchers’ access to
public land
BY JOEL BRITTON
OAKLAND, Calif. — “In Defense of Ranchers’ Rights to Graze Cattle on
Federal Lands” was the topic of the Militant Labor Forum here July 21.
This writer was the speaker, on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party.
On July 17 Dennis Richter, from Los Angeles, and I attended the
opening day of the frame-up retrial in Las Vegas of Scott Drexler,
Richard Lovelien, Eric Parker and Steven Stewart, four men who
participated in a protest three years ago demanding that Cliven
Bundy’s cattle be freed from federal government impoundment. A number
of other people who joined the protest, including Bundy and two of his
sons, are in prison pending later trials on related charges.
This past spring a jury in the same courtroom had been unable to find
the defendants guilty. The charges included “assault on a federal
officer,” “threatening a federal law enforcement officer,” “interstate
travel in aid of extortion,” and “conspiracy to commit an offense
against the United States.” Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial
of the four, while two others were convicted on some of the charges.
The Bureau of Land Management seized 400 of Bundy’s cattle near his
Bunkerville, Nevada, ranch in April 2014, and was preparing to take
them to California and sell them. They claimed to be acting in defense
of the environment, with court decisions backing them up.
The fact is the Bundys — like most farmers and ranchers — pride
themselves on being stewards of the land, on which their livelihoods
depend.
Hundreds of ranchers, family members and other supporters from all
over the western United States rallied in defense of the right of the
Bundys and all ranchers to graze their cattle on lands controlled by
the federal government.
Federal agencies control nearly 87 percent of the land in Nevada. For
generations Bundy family members paid grazing fees, until BLM
bureaucrats arbitrarily limited Cliven Bundy to grazing 150 head on
the land. He decided to ignore the order and continued to graze his
cattle as his family had done for decades. By 2014, the family faced
$1 million in unpaid fees, fines and interest, and a series of court
orders to stop using federal lands near his small 160-acre ranch.
Following a tense standoff between the heavily armed Clark County
police, sheriffs and BLM cops on one side, and Bundy family members
and their supporters, a few of whom were armed, on the other, the
cattle were released. As Lovelien’s attorney Shawn Perez said in his
opening statement at the trial, “Not a shot was fired, not a bottle
was thrown, not a rock was thrown.” Not by Lovelien, any of the other
defendants or any other supporter of the Bundys.
After this victory, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, at that time the
majority leader in the Senate, threatened, “It’s not over!” And sure
enough, the FBI went to work to cook up “evidence” for frame-up
charges against Bundy, the current defendants and others. The
defendants have been denied bail while awaiting trial.
When the prosecutors failed to get the four defendants convicted last
spring, they pressed for a new trial and got Judge Navarro to bar
defense attorneys “from referencing constitutional rights to freely
assemble and to bear arms,” and “from mentioning alleged misconduct or
excessive force by law enforcement,” as they did successfully in the
earlier trial.
Working people should stand with the Bundys and the other defendants.
The day before the trial began, Richter and I knocked on doors in a
workers’ neighborhood in Las Vegas near the Nellis Air Force Base.
“We introduced ourselves as members of the Socialist Workers Party,
explained our revolutionary perspectives and reported on protests in
defense of the Bundys and the other defendants party members had
attended the day before,” said Richter. “The four workers who we had
the chance to speak with at length said they had heard about the ranchers’
protests and the trials. They expressed their solidarity and all got
copies of the Militant.”
We explained, and I repeated it at the forum in Oakland, that a
fighting alliance between workers and independent producers such as
ranchers and farmers is necessary to end the dictatorship of capital
and to make the revolutionary changes needed in this country. “The
logic of workers, farmers and ranchers fighting in our interests —
against the wealthy capitalist rulers and their government — is to
mobilize in our millions to take power, to establish a workers and
farmers government,” I told the forum.
Such a government would ensure that ranchers are able to continue to
make a living and act as guardians of the land and the environment as
a whole.
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