Ecofeminism at the Camp

Content on different types of experiences and impressions of the camp - thoughts on what to include;

Circles at the camp - who to include?

Men's impressions of EF at camp - Jay Hamburger

Jay Everything in this camp was discussed, immediately you were in a camp in which there was going to be communication, there was going to be dialogue, there was going to be an attempt at a certain kind of openness and there were going to be, yes there were going to be rules, on a kind of a level there were going to be some rules, or an attempt at some rules. Nothing harsh but in the least an attempt of some form of order, for instance, there was to be open respect, at least an attempt at it, for women. And that’s where this was, I hope this is ok sounding, that’s where this was different, because in the, they put out a brochure, and in the brochure it said that this was a feminist run, I think they said, there was a phrase that this was a feminist-run camp, which as far as I knew, I had no idea that this was the case, as a matter of fact, my impression was that this…Atty and I had been out to Clayoquot before, I had gone out before without Atty and helped with an oil slick clean-up that had happened on the beaches out there, and I knew that some very dynamic women were involved in the Friends of Clayoquot but I had no idea that it would get, it would become almost a policy or that very powerful or very strong women were going to suddenly…in a sense take charge and have a philosophy that was going to be stated there. To my knowledge I’ve never really experienced anything quite on that level, before or after, I’ve been involved in a lot of movement struggles, anti-nuclear down in Las Vegas, out at the test-grounds out there in Nevada, Denver, Colorado, New York City and everything,, and yes women have played an extremely prominent role and have said ‘look, mind your Ps and Qs you know, I’m a feminist, I don’t wanna hear that BS, you gotta figure out where you’re coming from and reorient yourself because you guys are outta line or off the wall, you don’t know. You have to re-educate yourself’. So I wasn’t coming into something that was completely foreign, it’s just when it was stated like that, I had never quite been in a situation that open about issues that were going to say ‘look this is where we’re at, this is where we’re coming from’. And I said to myself ‘ok, alright, ok, this, ok’ and also because I’d lived with somebody who happens to be a woman, I also wanted to respect that, I wanted to show not only…I was willing to go all the way with it, to say ‘well if this is what it’s about and if in this camp this is a way of showing greater respect to my partner because she’s motivated towards this, she’s driven, she really believes in what this is all about, then I will try and respect that and I need to learn and I need to step back and I need to observe and be quiet and listen’. And by god, the day after or the second day after the big action had happened, because the way it was set up, every night we would all, anywhere from 300 to 1000 of us, would gather around the fire and decide the next day’s action. It came up at the next day or the day after that the action was to be an all woman would get arrested, there were to be no men sitting in the road, that it would be all women, and they even went to the extent that on the day of the action we all got up, I guess it was 3.45, we were all out there at 5.30 in the morning, that the men were to sit to the side, down by the little fire that they had made there, I guessed they passed some cocoa around and tea. And the women were up on the road, singing and getting ready to get arrested, and it was incredible because here I, you know I lived pretty closely with my partner and here was [laughs] here, you want to be together, and here was very distinctly a woman’s action, no men [laughing] up on the road, the men were down there, and my partner, in particular for me, she was up there arm-in-arm with women and singing with women, and it was a jolt, I have to say. First of all, you have to respect that, you can’t go around in that kind of a situation breaking the rules, you can’t run up on the road or screaming saying ‘hey wait a minute, I feel left out’, I mean you can, but it would be better almost…there was a forum for that, and the forum was either before that night to talk about it, or after it. But the shock of being suddenly separated and being, we were all men together and there were the women up there, they were heroic, that particular day, there were some wonderful wonderful women arrested and it was very moving, I think, as far as I was concerned, there were three days, ‘cos we were out there for two weeks, left and then came back for another, I mean we couldn’t stay away, we were actually at Clayoquot for three weeks, Atty and I. But the three most moving demonstrations that I witnessed, and we witnessed a lot of them, we witnessed it almost every day, were the women getting arrested, the children getting arrested, which was for us, that was well into the third week we were there, and that was very moving because the police didn’t know what to do. The Sergeant Doyle or O’Donnell or whatever, I forget his name, he literally did not know what to do when the children were sitting in the road and came up with a threat ‘we’re gonna get social services in here to take the children away’, which immediately enraged everybody out there on the road, it only forced us all down to the police-house in Ucluelet to demonstrate. Once again, they were trying to deter us, it didn’t work, it made matters worse, they got more demonstrating. And the third of course was when Atty and I actually, for ourselves, stood out on the road with some very dear close friends and got arrested.  But I guess, when I read in the programme, I was constantly reading, I’d read the programme because it was very well written, very well put out, that this was, I think it was feminist-oriented or feminist-run camp, I was not sure exactly what that meant, but in looking back, in living the experience, I see that in this particular case, there were some very strong, very wonderful, very brilliant, very environmentally oriented women, were spokespeople, were very much in charge of the way things were going, and were run, and you know by god, they did a good job, they just did a damn good job of keeping the ball going and of speaking out and of coordinating the situation. That doesn’t mean that men weren’t allowed to talk or that men weren’t involved, men were very much involved, but you were in a world in which things were, the dynamics were a bit different because we were trying to go for some things that maybe for many many years has been pushed under the rug, for many many year, it had been dominated by other issues or other procedures, I mean I’m sure all the people talked about this, there were a couple of wonderful spokespeople, Valerie Langer spoke many times, and was seen as a leader or seen as a spokesperson or seen as a coordinator. Tzeporah Berman was very active, extremely active in the very ground, ground roots, the actual talking that was going on each night, the actual sitting there at the circle and being the coordinator, being the moderator. There were times when it was handed over to a man, but my memory is that women were often the moderators, the person that would get the ball rolling and keep the momentum. A woman named Fireweed I believe, is an old friend of mine from the Harmonica Virgins, two or three days on Hornby back in ’87 I think, ’88. She, while we were there, was a real spokesperson, you know, she would speak out on the line, she would keep order, she was the person, the responsabs, when I went down to Nicaragua we had one person or two people who could speak Spanish very well, who could communicate with the Nicaraguans, the Sandinistas and we called them the responsabs and Fireweed was a responsab, she would get on top of a truck and make a speech, or Valerie Langer would get on top of a truck and make a speech, but it doesn’t mean that men didn’t do it, it just means that in this case women were given, or demanded a very prominent role, as much if not more than men. I found it, accept it. If I had an objection, I said ‘this is their time, this is the situation, they’ve worked for it, Friends of Clayoquot is a great organisation, and let them have it, because they’re doing a good job and they’re getting the point across and it’s driving people in the industry crazy, so be it, if what they are is great activists, environmental activists, if they’re great tree huggers, then honour that’. Where it may have run into trouble, if there was any, was that it may have begun to dawn on some men that this was the case. And so what you had is, you had some objections at times, not all the time, but you had some objections or people pointing out that men needed to work on themselves, that some men in that camp needed to work on themselves and what was the best way? Was for there to be a men’s group in which during times during the time, after the action in the morning, we would have workshops, and there needed to be some workshops about men, men needed to sit down and men needed to talk about men’s issues, such as aggressive behaviour that could go on in the camp, that men need to look into themselves and they were fucked up [laugh] and that they needed to figure out why they were screwed up, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t like ‘oh god, all men are screwed up in this camp, there’s really consistent bad behaviour going on in the camp’. No, no, my feeling was, you may get some disagreement as you go on interviewing, but my impression was that there were some men who needed to work on themselves, there were some men that needed to, even if they weren’t wearing a skirt and trying very hard to reorient themselves back into finding the feminine side, not the feminist side, but the feminine side of themselves, get in touch with that, and explore that, and almost exploit and come into being with it. Some men were having a bit of difficulty then, a certain very male side or a chauvinist side, or a slightly abusive side that made women uncomfortable and even some men uncomfortable, that they needed to check that, look into it and find out what was going on. That did happen, I attended one or two men’s groups meetings, because I wanted to, because I wanted to find out if maybe there was still, there is sides to myself, but I also felt that I could help out in some of those men’s groups meetings, that I could help out, I could help out on a couple of things, and also, you know, living with a partner that I wanted to keep myself in check, you know, it never hurts in a relationship to go back and check those things out. But those meetings were extraordinary, there was some, we would go on a circle, the usual circle, everybody would be given a chance to speak and I would say that those meetings were great, that they were necessary, there was more than willing to say ‘for god’s sake guys, go off and figure it out’, this was encouraged as well as I think, if I’m correct, there was some women’s meetings, where women needed to sit down and work a couple of things out.