Anarchy in Wisconsin!

reposted from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison — Republican lawmakers want to act quickly to limit public access to a proposed iron mine site in northern Wisconsin following the destruction of mining company property there by environmentalists at the site last week.

Rep. Mark Honadel (R-South Milwaukee) said he will try to convince fellow GOP lawmakers to slip the change into the state budget bill when it comes up for debate in the Assembly Tuesday, though he acknowledges that there’s little time.

“I don’t know if it’s too late for the budget but something’s got to change. We just can’t have these people running around on a worksite,” Honadel said in an interview. “We certainly don’t need this when we’re trying to get a good viable business going in the state.”

The protest and vandalism at the mine site, and a separate incident at a Department Natural Resources service center in Wausau last week, underscore the emotion surrounding the possible construction of an open pit mine. A spokesman for the mine described the vandalism the as “eco-terrorism.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) acknowledged the discussions on limiting public access to the mine site Monday, saying that they were in the early stages.

Currently the public has access to the land where exploratory drilling is being carried out by Gogebic Taconite as the first stage in the possible siting of a $1.5 billion mine in a heavily wooded area of Iron and Ashland counties.

“They want to do something to limit the areas they can go,” Fitzgerald said.

Gogebic has an option on the mineral rights of the land, which is regulated under the state’s managed forest law. In exchange for sharply lower property taxes for the landholder, the managed forest law gives the public access to wooded lands for activities such as hiking, hunting and fishing.

Honadel said he wants to rewrite that law to prohibit the public from being in areas where mining work is happening. He said the public is already prohibited from being in areas where logging is going on.

“It just makes common sense,” Honadel said.

Frank Koehn disagreed. Koehn is the president of the Penokee Hills Education Projection, a group opposed to the mine that organized a hike with about 50 people to the site of the mine on Saturday. There were no incidents, according to Koehn and Iron County authorities.

Koehn, who hadn’t heard about the GOP plans, said it’s crucial for people to see the mine site to be able to learn about the impact of the proposal.

“So far there hasn’t been much coming out of the Legislature on mining or much else that makes sense of late,” Koehn said.

When logging operations are under way under the existing program, signs can be posted to keep the general public 300 feet away from the logging site, according to Kathy Nelson, who oversees the managed forest program for the Department of Natural Resources. Within a year, at least half of the logging that was to be done must have occurred for the public to continue to be excluded, Nelson said.

The terms of the arrangement are set by administrative rule, rather than state statutes. Administrative rules are written by state agencies but must receive the approval of the governor and lawmakers.

Gogebic’s spokesman Bob Seitz said last week the company is worried that a separate act of vandalism earlier last week could foretell more trouble. Seitz called it “eco-terrorism.”

Seitz didn’t immediately return a message requesting comment.

Iron County Sheriff Tony Furyk on Friday estimated damage at $2,000 after protesters with covered faces slashed tires, damaged equipment, destroyed a worker’s camera and took away her cellphone.

In a posting on Earth First! Newswire on Friday, an unidentified person wrote:

“… Folks took the space over for about an hour. They jumped on trucks and the collection tank and threw pieces of equipment like pickaxes, fire extinguishers, and shovels down the hillside into the thick of the woods. Fences were knocked over and broken…

“We were able to inflict damages upon the company in the form of an entire day of labor costs through the disturbance and subsequent police reports that their workers had to spend their shift doing, as well as shatter their sense of security.”

Also, on June 10 [sic], a group of protesters briefly occupied the DNR service center in Wausau, yelled profanities and nailed a banner to the roof stating opposition to the mine.*

They tried to make their way into non-public areas of the building but were stopped. No arrests were made, according to the DNR. But one day later in a memo to the entire agency, Deputy DNR Secretary Matt Moroney said the department is working with law enforcement agencies to develop an “action plan for managing mining protest incidents.”

Journal Sentinel reporters Patrick Marley, reporting from Madison, and Lee Bergquist, reporting from Milwaukee, contributed to this article.

*This actually occurred on May 20th according to a system-wide email sent out to staff by DNR Deputy Secretary Matt Moroney.

from WPR

The Iron County Sheriff’s Department is investigating damage to a Gogebic Taconite (GTAC) drill rig, allegedly caused by protesters on Tuesday.

Sheriff Tony Furyk tells Wisconsin Public Radio that there has been damage to the drill, and that his department is taking statements and interviewing GTAC drill site workers. He says the company is alleging that a part of the drill has also been stolen.

A Tuesday morning raid by protesters on the drill site in a secluded area of the Iron County woods resulted in what law enforcement says was a verbal, non-physical, confrontation. Furyk expects charges to be brought as early as tomorrow.

GTAC spokesman Bob Seitz says the damage is criminal.

“They damaged some of the hydraulic levers, slashed some tires, discharged a fire extinguisher, pitched tools into the woods…That kind of damage is up there. It didn’t stop us from beginning drilling.”

The damage supposedly happened after about a dozen people came out of the woods 9:30 on Tuesday morning. Said Seitz:

“They ran in, dressed in black, their faces wrapped in a turban. The people up their said it looked like al Qaeda. They yelled profanities and threats.”

“Absolutely not,” says Bill Heart with the Penokee Hills Education Project — which opposes the mine – in reaction to Seitz’s description. He was on the drill rig site half an hour after the incident and knows people involved.

“The people I saw, I knew a couple of them. Some of them were wearing black jeans but they were clean-cut kids, most of them. And I call them kids because they’re probably in their early 20s. Calling them a terrorist is kind of laughable.”

Heart says this small group made mistakes by damaging equipment and scaring workers. He says none are part of the nearby LCO Harvest Camp or are tribal members.

On Saturday, protesters will walk to the rig. Seitz doesn’t expect a repeat of Tuesday’s trouble: “As long as we can keep separation between them, we have no problem with protesters coming out.”

Ros Nelson of Washburn is organizing the walk through the woods. She says it will be a family event but people should be prepared:

“Bug spray for sure. It will be about a three-mile walk. And it’s not a protest, it’s not a march, it’s not a show of antagonism. I think the better word would be witness.”

Drilling began yesterday and will take several days to complete.

On Tuesday, June 11th, some wild ones awoke to the sound of a drill rig and flatbed trucks driving up the ridge of the Penokee Hills in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Idea Drilling LLC were attempting to drill the first of eight core samples that would be used to determine the quality and quantity of iron ore in a 22-mile long stretch of the Penokee Hills, slated for open-pit mining destruction by Gogebic Taconite. Forty percent of Lake Superior’s wetlands lie downstream from the Penokee Hills, as does the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation, whose members depend on healthy waterways for their wild rice and fish. Surely, the amount of waste rock present in this type of mining would result in sulfides and heavy metal pollutants being exposed to these precious waterways downstream and would change the land that human and non-human lives depend on for survival forever. Making the preliminary stages of this mine as expensive as possible to send a clear message to financiers that this is an extremely risky investment is one strategy that was being pursued in the following action.

Wearing t-shirts and bandannas for masks, about fifteen wild ones sprang into action, added their own lock and chain to the gated entrance and built several barricades out of small boulders and downed trees. This was done on the access road in order to delay the anticipated police response for what was to happen. Once arriving to the site where the drill workers and managing geologist were, folks took the space over for about an hour. They jumped on trucks and the collection tank and threw pieces of equipment like pickaxes, fire extinguishers, and shovels down the hillside into the thick of the woods. Fences were knocked over and broken and personal cigarettes were raided out of one of the company vehicles as workers and the manager stood in awe. When it was discovered that the manager was taping all of this for evidence, their camera was snatched, broken, and thrown into the woods. Minutes later, a smart phone was snatched for the same reason and it met a similar fate.

At this point, some of the workers escaped the site in a company vehicle in order to find reception to call the police, because cell phones and CB radios do not work once you are on top of the ridge. We stayed about 10-15 minutes longer, but then decided to leave in order to avoid arrests. We disappeared into the woods and were able to outwit and outrun sheriff deputies on ATV’s because we know the terrain better than they do. We were able to inflict damages upon the company in the form of an entire day of labor costs through the disturbance and subsequent police reports that their workers had to spend their shift doing, as well as shatter their sense of security.

Another outcome of the protest is that Gogebic Taconite will be forced to hire private security for the company contracted to do exploratory drilling in the Penokee Range. Ashland and Iron County sheriff’s deputies were on the scene Tuesday, but Ashland County Sheriff Mick Brennan said they can’t afford to staff the drill site 24/7, so that kind of security is up to the mining company.

May the costs continue to be imposed and may the security guards and mining managers cower in fear.

-some wild coyotes

Ⓐ

The Players:

Gogebic Taconite (GTAC)– Hurley, WI

Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce (WMC)– Madison, WI

Idea Drilling LLC– Virginia, MN

Cline Resource and Development Company–  Beckley, WV

Hillsboro Energy LLC– Hillsboro, IL ‎

Foresight Energy– Palm Beach, Florida

Carlyle Group- Washington DC

Chris Cline, who owns a 33,413-square-foot mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and a home in his native Beckley, West Virginia, where his 150-acre property contains a lake, and a go-kart track. Cline also owns the 164-foot (50 m) luxury yacht Mine Games, which has five staterooms and its own submarine. Chris Cline is the industrial mining magnate who owns the parent company of Gogebic Taconite, Cline Resource and Development Company, Foresight Energy and Hillsboro.

Mainstream Coverage

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) is Wisconsin’s biggest lobbying firm, financed by business and industrial elites to craft the legal policies that govern us and permit the transformation of all existing life to the that of the commodity. They want more clear-cutting and tree farms instead of wild forest, more mines where pristine rivers carve through wetlands and ancient rock formations. They want more factories, more pipelines, and more sprawling concrete highways that connect dispossessed workers to the infrastructure and technology that is turning the planet into a smoldering pit of death. They wish to keep us imprisoned in this world of work, alienated from the land, each other, and the activity that makes up our daily lives.

They have also recently been pushing hard toward further industrial development in the Lake Superior region, specifically, opening the Bad River Watershed (where 40% of Lake Superior’s wetlands are located) and the Penokee Hills up to open-pit iron mining. We understand that this will significantly affect people’s subsistence strategies, particularly the Bad River Ojibwe who are directly downstream from the proposed mining site and rely on the walleye and wild rice that the pristine waters give to them in order to survive.

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Tar Sands Blockade: A Presentation and Discussion of Resistance

Two Wisconsin activists who have spent time in the actions to blockade the Keystone XL Pipeline will be talking about their experiences and the issues that inspire them.

5:00PM, Friday, February 1st

UW-Stevens Point
Dreyfus University Center (Alumni Room)
1015 Reserve St., Stevens Point, 54481

https://www.facebook.com/events/136939603131785/

Protecting the Water

Frank Koehn, a longtime activist from Herbster, Wisconsin, will be here to talk about the proposed taconite mine and protecting the Penokee Hills, the Bad River Watershed and Lake Superior from resource extraction projects that put profit into the hands of corporations while destroying the resources people depend on for survival. 

7PM, Saturday, February 2nd

UW-Stevens Point
Dreyfus University Center (Laird Room)
1015 Reserve Street
Stevens Point, WI 54481

https://www.facebook.com/events/395036663922151/