Well-Known Attorneys Step in to Defend Septuagenarian Rainbow Ridge Activists
[All photos provided by the Lost Coast League]
Renowned San Francisco attorney J. Tony Serra has joined a team of lawyers to defend four activists in their late seventies, arrested and charged in June in an act of civil disobedience to defend from logging ancient forestlands on California’s storied Lost Coast.
The property in question, Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC) forestland in the Mattole River watershed, belongs to the billionaire Fisher family of San Francisco, owners of the GAP, Old Navy and a real estate empire. The four elderly arrestees, all lifetime defenders of forest restoration, salmon and wildlife recovery, and watershed protection, were arrested by the Fishers’ para-military security personnel and charged with trespassing to obstruct a business.
In addition to Serra, the attorneys of record are Omar Figueroa and Izaak Schwaiger of Sebastopol, and the Eureka firm of Rain & Zepp. Serra has defended clients in numerous high-profile cases over the years, including the recent Ghost Ship fire trial, Judi Bari vs. the FBI, Black Panther Huey Newton, Native American murder defendant Patrick Hooty Croy, the Bear Lincoln murder trial, and many others.
Figueroa has more than two decades of experience as a freedom defense lawyer, and has successfully defended numerous pro bono clients, including animal rights activists, computer hackers, and forest defenders.
Izaak Schwaiger is a civil rights and criminal defense attorney who has defended activists in the San Francisco Bay area for many years. He has won victories for homeless advocates, environmental activists, animal rights protesters, and victims of police brutality. Schwaiger has successfully prosecuted numerous federal civil rights actions against police agencies around the Bay Area.
A hearing on the defendants’ Motion to Suppress is slated for Dec. 18 at 9:30am in the Humboldt County Courthouse in Eureka.
The Mattole defendants are Jane Lapiner, David Simpson, Ellen Taylor and Michael Evenson. Lapiner is a noted choreographer and, along with Simpson, founder of the Human Nature Theater Company. Simpson, past president of the Redway-based Institute for Sustainable Forestry, is currently writing comedy about climate change. He co-founded the Mattole Salmon Group (1980) of which Evenson is now board president. Evenson owns and operates The Lost Coast Ranch®, which raises organic, grass-fed beef, and OldGrowthTimbers.com, which reclaims vintage lumber from demolition projects. Taylor recently retired from the Open Door Community Health Centers after decades as a Physician’s Assistant. She is also president of the Lost Coast League, which is spearheading the fight to preserve Rainbow Ridge.
Rainbow Ridge, located primarily on HRC-owned land, contains the largest stands of unprotected, unentered coastal Douglas-fir and associated hardwood forests remaining in California. Rainbow Ridge has been the focus of over three decades of protest, beginning when MAXXAM Inc., in 1986 undertook a leveraged buyout of the then family-owned Pacific Lumber Co. The ridge lies adjacent to the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which contains Rockefeller Forest, the world’s largest contiguous parcel of ancient redwoods.
Apart from its own unique ecological value Rainbow Ridge provides edge habitat protecting and enhancing the health of the giant redwoods and forms an important wildlife corridor to the Bureau of Land Management-managed King Range National Conservation Area on the coast nearby.
As the global climate crisis accelerates these old forests are essential to the survival of threatened and endangered species such as the Northern spotted owl, Chinook and coho salmon, Golden Eagle, Northern Goshawk, Pacific Fisher and many others.
As 350.org founder and author Bill McKibben recently wrote to the Fisher family, “It falls to few enough human beings to get to preserve what are in essence sacred groves… That Rainbow Ridge country is magical… [and if you preserve it, I would] give thanks to you and yours for making sure its remaining stands of great old trees are still there, soaking up carbon, sheltering wildlife, and reminding us what a remarkable planet we had the good fortune to be born into.”
The four protesters show their handcuffs. [Photos from the Lost Coast League]
Earlier Chapters:
- Sheriff’s Office Warns Logging Protesters Near Rainbow Ridge This Morning
- Timber Fallers on Rainbow Ridge, Protesters Again at Monument Gate
- ‘Elders Defend Elders,’ Say Activists as Four Arrested This Morning Trying to Stop Logging on Rainbow Ridge
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This is good news.
Tony’s brother Richard is an awesome sculptor and there is an extensive article about him in a recent New Yorker magazine. Two giants, those Serra brothers.
No better attorney that Mr. Serra.
Sad part is I was older people should know better trespassing on other people’s property is the illegal always has been always will be the other sad part is those people probably grew up making money off the timber industry their parents and grandparents probably worked in that field
Claudia, I agree with you 100%. My grandparents, and great grandparents worked in the logging industry for most of their lives. Time for those hot shot lawyers to head back to their dung hole, San Francisco!
So whaling was also a major industry up here. Should we continue with that practice because people’s families used to work in that industry? How about hydraulic mining? How about any of the other practices that we have come to realize are highly destructive?
This is nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. Not everything that people have done needs to be defended.
the biggest hurdles of the future are the entitlements of the past.
Its private property.
Enough said.
No zando, we should not. But breaking the law by trespassing is not the answer either. If you our I did trespass, I am sure we would be arrested.
//” trespassing on other people’s property is the illegal always has been always will be”//
~not convoys of prey tho, huh? Or the National Guard in helicopters scaring farm animals to the point of breaking a horse’s leg. Order Followers flying above private property with no evidence for their claim i.e., ergo; no injury -except what the Order Followers caused.
//”Probably they, parents and grandfolks …”//
C’mon. Tell us something!!
Legality does not equate to morality
Ecocide. There’s the word i was looking for instead of Venus Syndrome.
Legality is not reality.
Good poster.
How serious are the charges? I’m surprised the DA hasn’t already dropped the charges…with the exeption of the accordian possession. That one needs to be put away for a while.
OG,
It’s funny when Old Growth timber is the segment of Original Culture that’s being sold to the highest bidder.
Old Guys
Old Girls
Old Growth
Original Growers
What’s with the selling of everything Old? The conversion of Old into monetary gain for a quick buck. Theft of heritage.
These Old Guys & Girls are in saintly crusade to protect and nurture some of what we value most. Old Growth.
By all means, let’s do things “the way they have always been” with no allowance for updated knowledge of the destruction to the planet. By your way of thinking, no one should be using any modern tool to log the forest – do things the way they’ve always been, with axes/ sharpened stones tied to sticks.
Thank God for some people with the wisdom and knowledge to know something isn’t necessarily RIGHT just because it has been done for years. Many, many people who worked in the timber industry for years now see the accelerated practices are not sustainable for the planet.
Well, I had to look up learn what a septuagenarian means.
Now I know
Uh, Oh are you one too, Brian?
Negative.
Hopefully one day though.
Well I hope they’re bringing some commas, that statement is missing a few.
.
““The four elderly arrestees, all lifetime defenders of forest restoration, salmon and wildlife recovery, and watershed protection, were arrested by the Fishers’ para-military security personnel and charged with trespassing… .”
If we take out all the non preposition words, we’re left with the truths that don’t try to sway public opinion.
Four arrested with trespassing, is close enough.
❤❤❤
I support Jane Lapiner, David Simpson, Ellen Taylor and Michael Evenson. Thank you to Tony Serra, Omar Figueroa, Izaak Shwaiger, and the firm Rain and Zepp for your efforts to help defend the peaceful protectors of our forests.
I have known David & Jane for more than 50 years. They have dedicated their lives to the thankless job of trying to save the natural world from the predation of industry for the benefit of YOUR grandchildren.
They deserve our thanks and deep respect. They certainly have mine.
Garbage and nonsense. Ellen Taylor was a terrible “medical” provider. Just an old hippy with a soft voice. That doesn’t cure anything. Earth First! is a fraud locally and nationally too for the most part. The stoned attorney druggie defenders of Humboldt are the last people you want working on your behalf. What a sick and pathetic culture. The county – and the so-called movement – gets the activists they deserve. All very laughable.
🕯🌳Again I hope that most of the commenters above are the last of there lines,the world just doesn’t need any more idiot’s. But thank God most of you never leave Humboldt County and never really do more than jerkoff on a keyboard, at least these old hippies or drugged out lawyer went out and did something along with hundreds of thousands of children across the world.
Yep, You’re right.
No disrespect but, I thought of a country song by your words,
“Them ol’ Hippies,
And their drugged out lawyers,
Made magic with the goodness of,
The children of the world.
The children taught the adults,
What was what,
And everybody got along.
OH! Those blessed children!
That’s all the farther I got, somebody else please take over.
It’s high time for my septuagenarian attitude adjustment.
JE, Willie’s sentiments are thankfully shared by many with apparently more foresight & wisdom than you. As B illustrated, just because something was legal and /or commonplace previously doesn’t mean it is right.