Page 8 RAIN February/March 1982 we must also learn to help reconstruct the Garden itself. We must learn to farm without destroying the soil. We must learn to deliberately rebuild ecosystems that can with help from nature evolve again into the exquisite harmony of a climax forest or a savannah grassland—natural communities such as this continent once knew, which supported humans then and could support us again if we give them the right kind of chance." ("Hallelujah!") "But first we must mourn, and accept our Sin, and know it for what it was and is, and repent, and resolve to go and sin no more. And let us always keep in our hearts, O sisters and brothers, the dream of the Garden, and of how life went on there before the Fall, so that we have a standard, a measure for our actions now, a holy ground on which to stand. Amen." In the mid-1980s the Survivalists, after successfully persuading the state legislatures in Oregon and Washington to enact a heavy gasoline tax, will introduce “a new measure which would tax cars themselves and assign the resulting revenue to improve bus, streetcar, taxi and train services." A suit filed by an auto dealer named Madera will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the special tax on cars will be voted unconstitutional. In late 1987, the people wil he angry. After the public disorders caused by the Madera decision, Vera Allwen's television speeches became more urgent. "My friends, we must consider the possibility that the federal government has become quite irrational in its decisions about fundamental energy problems. What else can we think of a government that refuses to move seriously against the automobile oil costs which are draining the economy dry? A government that puts its research and development money almost entirely into nuclear power when we already have sufficient electrical generating capacity for reasonable uses? A government that tries to force the reopening of a nuclear plant situated on an active, dangerous earthquake fault? A government that refuses to help the poor people in cold areas to insulate their houses and thus cut oil imports? A government that strikes down, through its Supreme Court, our attempts to save ourselves from such disastrous policies? "Who is crazy here—we who are attempting to take care of ourselves, or the national government which seems bent on economic and social suicide? "The answer, I suspect, lies in the fact that in the past decade we who live here on the Northern Pacific coast have become a new and different people. We have learned to think differently—more realistically and over a longer time frame—than the people in Washington, who can think ahead only four years at the most. "We did not seek this. Our history has given it to us. Through a million different experiences in the lives of millions of us, we have come to hold different values from those prevalent in the rest of the country. We conserve and preserve; they waste and spend. We treasure our natural resources; they despoil them. "Our part of the continent is relatively uncontaminated. Its forests and seashores and mountains provide a timeless uplift for our spirits when we go camping or hiking. Thus we have learned more rapidly than people elsewhere to respect the lives of our fellow species—the mammals our nearest kin, the trees whose lumber shelters us, the tiniest fish, the very grasses that give soft cover to our hillsides. And so, as fellow travelers on the planet, in this region we have enacted many environmental protections. We have expanded our parks, and fought for the preservation of our coastline public spaces. We have recovered rich farmland from suburban sprawl. We are defending the relative purity of our air and water. "Here on the Pacific shores, we are also healthier people. We live outdoor lives and are accustomed to getting around on our own two feet. We have learned again to enjoy walking—whether on solitary forest trails or on our lively streets that we have been making safe again for pedestrians, by night and by day. We have understood, earlier and more clearly than people elsewhere, the need to curb the imperial power of the car—which not only threatens to destroy our economy, but also disrupts our neighborhoods, pollutes our air, and involves us in the danger of a nuclear war over oil. We have refused to let our cars be held hostages to the OPEC countries. Instead, we have developed minibuses and streetcars and trains and new kinds of efficient taxis—alternatives which make it easier to live well without cars. And we are working to reorganize our cities so people need to move around less in their daily lives. "We have been doing all these sane things right here, in our lucky little green strip along the Pacific. We have been tending to our business here, despite interference from outside, while the national government was daydreaming and flexing its military muscles to intimidate people all over the world. 1 ask you, my friends, what can we do when we are confronted with this kind of madness? It sucks away our tax money and pours it down the armaments drain. It risks our lives in conflicts we did not choose. Its actions oppress the poor, the old, the weak, and shower favors on the already rich and powerful. Is there not some point at which we must say that we cannot participate any longer in this? When we will decide that we must have a society toward which we can feel loyalty? "From this date forward the Town of Bolinas is hereby declared an independent territory in which the laws of the county of Marin, the state of California, and the United States ofAmerica no longer have legal force whenever they run counter to duly instituted ordinances of the Bolinas Town Council." "A free people must have a government that embodies the ideals of that people. We are a people who want to feel at home here on the earth, serene in the knowledge that we are living in harmony with the other beings on the planet. If the federal government is hostile to these values, we must find our own ways to survive together, taking our proper places in the great circle of being, joining our hands and our hearts. A suicidal national government, a government that seems bent on devouring its people rather than nurturing them, forfeits our allegiance. We did not choose this situation. But we must recognize realities. My friends, dear friends—we are on our own."
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