A coalition created to counter the use of intimidation to protest public policy announced its formation Tuesday.
The whole point is to raise public awareness of extreme militant groups that resort to intimidation and use of weaponry to interfere with normal government processes to address grievances, said Rose Chilcoat, associate director of Durango-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness.
“They’re acting like boys in a schoolyard, and they’re getting away with it,” Chilcoat said. “You can’t take the law into your own hands.”
The coalition began to coalesce, Chilcoat said, before the most recent display of bravado by a militant group, the heavily armed Oath Keepers, who are keeping government officials and the public away from the Sugar Pine Mine near Grants Pass, Oregon. The owners of the gold mine are locked in a legal battle with the Bureau of Land Management over mining practices.
What is now only a courtroom drama in Oregon follows by a scant year the withdrawal of BLM personnel in the face of armed protesters on Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada where federal officials had started to round up Bundy’s livestock for nonpayment of grazing fees.
A pattern could be developing from the in-your-face attitude of dissidents, Chilcoat said.
Great Old Broads is no stranger to intimidation for championing protection of the environment. Signs referring to them that stated WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE greeted their support of prohibiting motorized traffic in culturally sensitive areas. Then in 2012, a chain across a road prevented their vehicles from leaving a camp on private property,
Ladd Everett from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence said the events at Sugar Pine Mine scare him.
“The lack of government response sends the message ‘We can get away with it, so let’s do it again,’” Everett said.
Three principles govern the Ballots Not Bullets Coalition:
The Second Amendment doesn’t confer the right to shoot or kill federal officials solely because one concludes that the government is tyrannical.
The Constitution addresses redress of grievances, eliminating the need for violence.
Rule of law must be enforced in order to eliminate establishment of a precedent that threatens freedom.
