There’s a notion about how Clinton supporters have activists that get things done and that Sanders supporters are failed activist that prance about getting media but nothing accomplished so I thought I would share my “failures” with you.
I was a founding member of the Cove-Mallard coalition, which was an Earth First! associated group that ended up stopping the largest ever authorized timber harvesting in America. Lazy is the exact opposite of everything people did. We were in the middle of nowhere in the Nez Perce National Forest past Dixie, Idaho, population 20-30. We owned a 20 acre inholding within the forest that we clandestinely bought. Getting to any actions usually required hiking through genuine wilderness for 5-15 miles and avoided Forest Service and other federal, state and local workers! Seriously. Getting fresh water was an hour long drive each way, thankfully almost all of its a majestically beautiful drive. The feds raided us, ABC National News sent Barry Sarafin to cover us and, of course, the day he arrives is the day the locals decide to attack one of our own who was left with permanent nerve damage in his face. We even had a logger pull up in his truck and point his shotgun at us and threaten to kill us for stealing their jobs, which we talked him down from and as we did more and more people showed up with the “If you’re shooting one of us, you’re shooting all of us” solidarity with over a dozen people shaking and freaked out after he and his incredibly embarrassed wife left. This took six years to come to fruition. Six years of people living out in the wilderness and working our asses off to get things done and to slow down the logging and road construction. Here’s a link to Earth First at wikipedia, we are mentioned in the 1990’s section, use the find feature on your browser for the word “cove” and you’ll get right to where our bit is. If you were involved and wonder who I am, I went by Opal Starr at the time.
During the second summer I decided I disliked Florida and did not want to return and was going to settle down in either Missoula, MT or Moscow, ID. I picked Moscow because it had a lot more trees and it was smaller so the never ever even once car driving me could walk and bike around much easier than I could in Missoula. (Yes, I ride in cars, I avoid it as much as possible as I have a metal rod fused to half my spine and car wreck could leave me paralyzed if the rod broke and damaged my spinal cord.)
That was the 90’s. So what did that group of those same people that came from or settled in Moscow do in the aughts? Lots of things, but one of the biggest would be the creation of Radio Free Moscow, which began broadcasting in October 2004. We have been on the air ever since. We have one paid employee, everybody else is a volunteer. Our music director, accountant, board of director members, DJs, journalists, graphic designers, etc. are all volunteers. We air nationally produced shows like Democracy Now and Flashpoints and we also create our own weekly talk and news shows along with doing weekly morning and evening news reports. We have been giving a voice to all who want it. Pretty much anybody who wants to volunteer can do so and getting a radio show only takes filling out the application and getting trained. We have also trained countless citizen journalists. We also host our own candidates forums and debates for local and regional electoral candidates. You’re welcome to visit our site, we stream live 24/7 and there is also a link to our wikipedia article.
We stopped the biggest US Forest Service timber sale after six arduous years of work. Later, we created our own FM radio station that takes perpetual hard work to keep on the air because most of its programming is from scratch. Because we are soooo lazy.
The lazy journalist, Al Giordano, whose conjectures are based on anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias that declared us Sanders supporters as lazy dilettantes that don’t get anything done can eat a bag of rotting hot dogs. I know how hard so many of my friends work and what they have accomplished over the years.