Number of pages in the bus’s new Backstreet Gazette: 5

Number of donated bagels still uneaten: 150

7 am—Waking up in the natural light with the birds makes getting up earlier easier…sometimes. What really does it is BOGA (it’s yoga, but not) brought to you by Amanda, every morning at a bus stop near you. Amidst hooting and hollaring and jumping, the caravan pieced together it’s tent piece and folded itself on the bus for an early morning start.

11 am—The green flat landscape starts. And doesn’t stop. Ever.

2 pm –Pit stop at the Painted Desert, where coal deposits struck by lighting burn in the earth, creating the orange color that paints stripes across the desert. The gift shop was full of Teddy Roosevelt parafanalia, and not much mention whatsoever about major battles for the land waged by Custer’s army.

4pm –Did I mention the flat green landscape? It’s still here.

1 am—Arrival in Fargo. Greetings by the Unitarian church welcome party, who waited up. Crash and burn.

They kill 1500 buffalo a year in Yellowstone. They come at them with helicopters, shoot them for stepping outside the bounds of the park, bounds that were placed around the last living pure breed of buffalo in the United States.

The Caravan stopped at the Buffalo Field Campaign campsite on our way through Montana, and were greeted by welcoming activists who sat down and talked to us about what they do, and two dancing, blonde haired twin toddlers, who proved that living out in Yellowstone created quite the rambunctious, free spirited characters. The camp is a series of four cabins, with a communal house for volunteers, and about 26 pairs of skis. The woodlogs are piled up outside the walls of the houses, and a placid lake is spread out in front of them, all within a few miles outside Yellowstone.

The Buffalo Field Campaign began as a solidarity movement with the buffalo and native tribes to protect the buffalo from being killed by policies that have been kept in place by anitquated laws. They spend most of their time in the field with the buffalo, sitting with them, and being present when they are assaulted. Their tactics have evolved from direct actions and media awareness of the issue, to policy changes and lawsuits pioneered by former volunteers of theirs who went on to become lawyers.

At the heart of the issue, however, their campaign is about more than the buffalos. The situation is a convergence point for multiple issues of discrimination and policy in the United States. It’s about racism. The buffalo is a symbol of strength and connection to the past for Native Americans –allowing it to flourish would represent a victory for them, and give their people strength. At the core of the issue is landrights and economics –major opposition to the buffalo come from cattle ranchers in the area, who make a kiling off of grazing their cattle on pulic lands (grazing cattle on private lands costs $11 to every $1 grazing on public lands costs). Public land grazing is one of the largest agricultural subsidies that happens in the United States; rather than let the buffalo roam it, the private cattle ranchers would rather feed their animals on it rather than pay to own their own land and have taxes and upkeep.

The buffalo represent the idea of America in many ways –the lone animal on a field, primal, strong, with the wisdom of the original people. Today, they are caught between economic greed, stagnant policies, and straight up discrimination, and the result is a wild and sacred beast is being lost. It’s a metaphor for the spirit of our country…and it’s up to us to do something about it.

While most people curled up in sleeping bags on the floor of the church, a few of us started talking with Dan, the guy who lives in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Missoula. Once he mentioned that town was only 10 minutes away, we filled up our waterbottles with a little bit of wine, and ventured off into the great unknown yet famous hippie town of Montana.

Dan was quite the unassuming, long-haired guide. He does ad placement for the Missoulan, one of two local Missoula papers, and lives with his boss. There are only seven people that run a paper with 27,000 distributions every day, and most of their content comes from other papers. They’re owned by a corporation that’s mostly interested in profit –and those comes from the ads he places, like Thursday’s Wal-Mart half-pager.

I only know two things about Montana, and they all come from my fathers stories of the sixties. The first is that Missoula has weird weather –being at the center of a pre-historic crater, something happens that traps the clouds above the city in its own convection cycle. According to Dan, this means the snow is toxic. The second thing is that somewhere in Missoula is a woman named Cassie, the girlfriend my father left to go onwards to Seattle and find his wife-to-be, my mother. Cassie married the house painter my dad brought home to dinner a few nights before he left. Small, strange town, Missoula is.

Now I know more things: Like Missoula was named after a saloon and titty bar named “Miss Ou—La-La.”  (according to my mother, this is not true –it’s a native word for “ambush.” I’m going with the titty bar…)  Most of the buildings in the town are original, and none of them are over a few stories tall, because Montana is the Big Sky State…and we wouldn’t want to interfere with the vista. The city paid a famous sculptor 2 million dollars to build an art installation encapsulating Missoula, and what he finally unveiled at the end of the main drag in town were four gigantic red X’s. The town was outraged, but the artist took the money and run. There’s a raging river that roars through the best place in town is the Butterfly Herb Cafe.   Missoulans idea of a good time is floating down the river that runs through the center of town in innertubes and a rack of beer, but people drown every year because they tube too early and get sucked into the faster running waters beneath the surface. Finally, there’s a great all night diner called Finnigans where you can get free refills on your hot chocolate.

Missoula by night was not all that bad. Rachael and I sat in the booth nodding off into our pancakes feeling like we were rocking on water, the aftermath of 10+ hours on a bus. We talked about Zapatistas, how pachyderms are elephants, how raccoons clean their food, and the University of Montana in general. We were back by 5 am, and up by 9 the next morning.

Number of sleeping bags strewn randomly around the bus: 14

Number of bagel and hummus sandwiches made: 37 9

am– We rolled out of the Unitarian church with a goodbye to our kind host Dan, the guy who lives in the basement, and the prospect of Yellowstone before us. 2 pm –Pit stop at the Pitt, the Berkely Pitt in Butte, MO, one of the largest superfund sites in the country, where years of mining exploitation have left poisonous chemicals a few years away from seeping into the aquafiers and poisoning the entire watersupply in the area. It’s a tourist attraction now—pay two dollars to hear about the destruction, and a nice ladies voice talk about how mining there financed the industrial revolution. Yippee.

4 pm– Detour to the Buffalo Field Campaign, a few log cabins on the outskirts of Yellowstone housing incredible activists working to oppose the massacres of buffalo in Yellowstone that happens every year to maintain the population within the park. The group began doing direct actions and media coverage of the atrocities in the late 80′s, and discussed the multiple levels of injustice that are apparent in the situation with the buffalo –from historic racism against the most important connection to the land and heritage that Native Americans have, to the conflict of interest between private farmers wanting to use public lands, to the bureaucratic state agencies stonewalling change for their own vested interests. Check out more at www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

6 pm—Yellowstone! America’s first national park! 25 bucks to get in, and pure glory all the way through. Except for the construction. It was like a cross between a safari and an amusement park –real live animals, but seen from the comfort of your car barrelling down the road. The vistas were stunning, dropping in out and of hillsides with the Rocky Mountains in the distance and rushing streams and green trees on every side. Most of Montana forces you to remember that America is truly amazing and gigantic.

10 pm –Decision to camp in an RV park…which promptly turned the sprinklers on us. Not so happy campers.

11 pm –New campsite with rushing water and expansive stars lulling us to sleep. No sprinkers.

An eclectic mix of 25 rebels from around Cascadia is making their way across the country to participate in the Allied Media Conference and the United States Social Forum in Detroit. Representing Portland, Eugene, Olympia, and Seattle, the 25 activists are heading to what could be the largest convergence of social movements in recent US history. The Cascadia Freedom Caravan is composed of community organizers, hip-hop artists, students, mechanics, carpenters, and one baby still in the womb.

The Cascadia Freedom Caravan is currently rolling out from Missoula, Montana after spending the night at the local Unitarian Church. Between music, discussions, debates, and soccer breaks, members of the caravan are exploring the different issues and desires that are driving us to spend another three days trekking across mountains and plains towards Detroit.

“We’re in an era of economic, environmental, and social crisis” says Anjali Cadambi. “It’s become evident that we can’t rely on government and ‘experts’ to solve the problems we face. I believe the connections everyday people make with each other are powerful in envisioning new possibilities in how we can move forward. I believe there is a lot of hope and I’m excited to meet people from all over to work out real solutions.”

The Cascadia Freedom Caravan should arrive in Detroit by the 17th. Stay tuned for more updates and action dispatches.

http://bmediacollective.org/

]]> http://freedomcaravan.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-final-hurrah/feed/ 0 final-hurrah-poster1 freedomcaravan final-hurrah-poster1 http://freedomcaravan.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/last-thursday-fundraiser-a-success/ http://freedomcaravan.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/last-thursday-fundraiser-a-success/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:05:03 +0000 freedomcaravan http://freedomcaravan.wordpress.com/?p=55 Continue reading →]]> Greetings fellow travellers, generous donors and curious onlookers,

The Cascadia Freedom Caravan is happy to announce that we are indeed on schedule to leave for Detroit on the 13th of June. We have raised over $2,000 (you can view the lovely thermometer barometer here) and are still hoping for more to roll in so that we can cover the cost of housing in Detroit.

Most of our funds have come from rolling up our sleeves and participating in fundraisers like this week’s “Last Thursday” event, where we made over $374 from bake sales!

Our goal is to foment discussion and interaction amongst local community leaders and organizations interested in the values of the Forum, and to facilitate interaction amongst ourselves before, during and after the trip, to maximize the value of the experience. We plan on having a series of meet and greets before we go, to stop at strategic points between here and Detroit to share our work in Portland with people along the way, and to collectively document the experience.