Crowds of supporters and a car of elders breached the police line
The people working to stop old-growth logging on southern Vancouver Island are using inventive tactics, determination and sheer numbers to prevent the RCMP from removing them from the various blockades in the forests west of Lake Cowichan and north of Port Renfrew.
On Friday (May 28), RCMP arrested most people stationed in and around the Waterfall blockade, except for one.
He was in what the organizers have dubbed a flying dragon: a cantilever position where the person was sitting at the end of a plank suspended over a steep drop. The other end of his plank was held in place by the weight of his car.
Police were unable to remove the individual safely after hours of effort, witnesses say.
Early the following day, many protest supporters gathered at a police line on Braden forest service road blocking access to the Waterfall blockade, about 12 kilometres north of Port Renfrew. Among the hundreds was elder Bill Jones and a 17-year-old Victor Peters, whom Jones calls the true Pacheedaht First Nation hereditary chief.
Jones cut the yellow police tape, a crowd of supporters behind him, as he addressed the RCMP standing a few metres up the road.
“You’ve been draining this territory for some 200 or 300 years. You have cut all our timber with no guilt or remorse. You are invaders. And I say to you: clear the road, to escort my chief,” Jones said.
Read the full article here: https://www.sookenewsmirror.com/news/rcmp-arrest-all-but-one-at-waterfall-blockade-protesters-it-take-back-next-day/
