Inspired by all this, I decided to join the tribe. And I enrolled at SUNY Potsdam, majoring in politics and geography. That way, I could earn college credit for some of my efforts.
JB: What did you do?
RHP: I went to the office of Richard Grover, St. Lawrence County Planner and power line opponent, to obtain maps of the "right-of- way". A traumatized woman entered in tears, saying that PASNY workers were spraying dioxin. I didn't know what dioxin was. This was before Love Canal. She referred me to a book called "Defoliation" by Thomas Whiteside, which told about the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam to kill the jungle foliage so the Viet Cong would have no hiding place. Dioxin is water soluble and can be carried long distances downstream, and it was causing birth defects in children born many miles away. There is no safe level. One part dioxin per eight billion parts of body weight is sufficient to cause birth defects in laboratory animals.
I wanted to stop the line, and I wanted to stop the use of herbicides. I was relentless. I was arrested three times. Each time they arrested me was right after they tried to kill me, so who were the real criminals here?
JB: Multiple attempts on your life? Really? Tell us more, please.
RHP: The first time was a transmission tower occupation - on the farm of Harold and Stella Barse. The workers had built the lower half to the waist, and were ready to hoist the entire torso up in the air and attach it with bolts and flanges. So three women and two children sat upon the torso, and three young lads climbed up the tower. Bill Thompson, chief of security, ordered the workers to "kick those monkeys off the tower". The workers had climbing equipment, and they removed the pegs from the leg of the tower so we could not escape. They started dropping bolts, hoping to hit our bare heads. Then, "Frenchy" stood on my head and tried to force me to fall forty feet to my death.
JB: That's terrifying. Go on.
RHP: I clung to the tower for dear life, and when he gave up, I attached my leg to the tower with a steel worker's belt I had been given by Don Richmond, a Mohawk steel worker, who warned me about "Frenchy" by name. It was the same "Frenchy" who had tried to cut through Cecilia's legs, but his chainsaw had jammed. The workers hoisted and attached the torso with the three of us still up in the tower. At the end of the day, they reattached the climbing bolts, and we descended voluntarily. We were all arrested, but the justice of the peace let us go.
The second time was when they were ready to use a crane to hoist one steel girder into the air when they were building a tower. We figured if two of us sat on either end of the girder it would stop their work. Wrong. They hoisted it high up in the air with both of us on it, clinging for dear life as it swayed like a teeter totter. Then they lowered it abruptly, hoping to kill us on impact. We both leapt off the girder just in time. We were sentenced to five days in jail on a Thursday, but it was Memorial Day weekend and they had to release us on Friday. Reporters were waiting for a statement. I said: "That's the shortest five day sentence I ever served." PASNY was not amused. I was a marked man after that.
JB: What was the third time?
RHP: I'm getting to that. One night, a man named Ken Theobald came to our weekly meeting and pleaded for help. They were cutting the "right-of-way" across his farm, and they were spraying something. Every time we interfered with construction we sent someone in advance to do reconnaissance. That way, the protesters could escape into the woods as soon as the cops arrived to read us the riot act. I volunteered, and I hitchhiked to the Theobald farm early the next morning. I found among the pile of freshly cut logs a five-gallon tank sprayer, which I promptly confiscated. Having no wheels, I had to stash it in the woods. It was my responsibility now. It took them two days to realize it was missing, which gave me an alibi for the day they thought the crime had been committed. I had been in classes all day long. This enabled me to return to the Theobald farm, where I, too, stood between a tree and a running chainsaw, arm in arm with a Seneca woman we called "Jane Running Doe". We calmly educated the workers about the dangers of dioxin, and the entire crew quit their jobs in tears.
Shortly thereafter, four of us traveled to New Hampshire and joined the occupation of the construction site for the Seabrook nuclear power plant. 1,732 protesters were arrested. The 1,414 out-of-state residents were jailed. They locked us up in National Guard armories. Most of us refused to bail out, and we occupied the armories, conducting teach-ins on all manner of issues. I gave a talk about Agent Orange, with reference to the Theobald farm, and one of the VVAW members who had been at Operation POW said to me: "You need a chemist, and you need a lawyer." We bailed out to a standing ovation, retrieved the tank sprayer, and transported it to Brandeis University where it was analyzed and found to contain 2,4,5-T and dioxin, which PASNY had long denied. We drove all over the State of New York, interrogating public and private officials, getting them to incriminate themselves. We filed the transcripts with the Public Service Commission (PSC), and I held my first press conference. A newspaper printed the laboratory analysis, and this led to a statewide ban on the use of herbicides containing dioxin on rights-of-way in New York. This was quite an accomplishment for an undergraduate. Thus was born my political motto: "You can't lose 'em all." Confiscating this five-gallon tank sprayer was the single most important and effective act of civil resistance in my entire life.
JB: Impressive indeed!
RHP: It is a legal defense, rarely introduced in court, to have broken the law in order to prevent a greater harm from being done. This is what Cecilia did when she blocked a running chainsaw. This is what I did when I confiscated PASNY's herbicide. Their own environmental inspector said it posed "a serous threat" to "the many wells in the area if it is simply poured on the ground". And so we decided to educate the workers, getting their attention by blocking a running chainsaw. I remember the conversation as though it happened yesterday:
"Lady, don't you know it's dangerous to be here?"
"It's dangerous if I'm not here."
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