The Witness & Encampment

I remember a 1978 meeting at the San Miguel Way house in Sacramento (the FOR headquarters), when I proposed the idea that we had to acknowledge that the dam, long fought, was now almost completed, and maybe we needed to accept that the powers would not allow for their new dam not to be used at all. And that we might have to say we wanted to limit the destruction by limiting the filling. (Photo of Alexander above, playing guitar at the Witness & Encampment)

I remember the pain and anxious objection raised by some of our colleagues present. This would mean not fighting the loss of the less-traveled but almost unspeakably beautiful stretch of river, now out of its canyon and flowing between oak savannah hills. The four miles below Parrott’s Ferry down to Melones. The beginning of loss.

Later that year a number of FOR “staff”, which was a volunteer army of varying sizes, participated in one of the big demonstrations at the construction site of the proposed Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. And we saw how at least some organizers who had worked against the Vietnam War, and for Civil Rights, were thinking about and creating nonviolent civil disobedience/resistance actions. Quakers, activists, anarchists. A fruitful collaboration, still ongoing in many, many ways.

My idea – which was shared and kicked around by several collaborators – was that the beginning of the destruction of the river should be seen and experienced and recorded and reported in real time. This promised to be the ugly event itself, the likes of which very few people had ever seen, and of which we ourselves could barely conceive. But if Glen Canyon of the Colorado was “The place no one knew,” hundreds of thousands of people already knew the Stanislaus, and we definitely would not allow it to slip away unnoticed.

A meeting of approximately 50 people was held, and run by consensus. For many, it was their first such type meeting and it was powerful. After two hours, the decision was unanimous and the organizing began for the Stanislaus River Witness and Encampment.

On the late March day when the Corps said they would start backing up the waters, we established a movable camp (which is what we did by rivers anyway!), with groups of 2 and 10 and 30 and even 100, then back to 4 or 10 again. We were on the north bank, “river right,” starting at Melones. Banners, flags, old and new friends. Beautiful spring Sierra foothills weather, high runoff, lots of river flow. Wildflowers and campfires and music. And we camped at, and watched, the place where the river flowed into the reservoir, and that place was buried under the rising water. And the reservoir kept moving upriver. We moved with it.

People were urged to write in this journal, and did, at least one person writing each day.  See the complete journal.

Did our actions pointing at the destruction receive media coverage? Yes. But we were also “competing” with stories of the March 28 meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Choose your disaster.

As the camp moved upriver, the canyon steepened, campable land was less and less available, and the water rose faster. On an afternoon when no one was in camp, someone came in and stole all the banners and flags and other stuff. By May 7, we were fully washed out.

By late May, there had still been no promises to limit filling to below Parrott’s Ferry. Thus, Mark put his own plan into action. Collaborating with a small handful of people, he hid along the edge of the rising reservoir, shackled to a rock, and politely notified the Army Corps of Engineers that if they kept filling the reservoir, he was prepared to drown along with the rest of the life of the river and canyon. Once that message got out, one could say that “All hell broke loose.” And the Army Corps opened the reservoir gates to stop the filling. But all that is its own story (see more here).

In early June, after the filling was stopped, and Mark’s friends had helped him come out of the canyon (at the end of May), Friends of the River held a big gathering at Parrott’s Ferry. We were glad to reconnect after a very stressful period, and reassess. A photo of all of us on the old Parrott’s Ferry Bridge is above. The reservoir would not bury any more of the canyon, for that year at least.

Learn more about Alexander Gaguine.