TAKE THE HIGH GROUND: MORALLY, IF POSSIBLE -- BUT ALWAYS TACTICALLY

I've been posting regularly of late on our contemporary harassment problems here in Idaho.  I much appreciate the supportive comments I've gotten, on list and off, from a number of people.  I assume others are reading my material.

I strongly believe that, when things of this sort occur, people should report them as publicly as possible.  No useful purpose is served by remaining silent. The most dangerous period in any campaign of any kind comes when people retreat.  Fighting sensibly is the only good and effective medicine.

We set up our Lair of Hunterbear website very early in 2000.  Its initial purpose was to publicize the many attacks on us that began almost immediately upon our arrival in the Gem State in July, 1997.  In time, we feathered our site out with a vast amount of other material, mostly social justice in nature.

From time to time recently, I have indicated that I will, in due course, provide a good deal of the historical harassment stuff.  For the moment, here is a very, very small sampling of that:

FROM -- HOSTILITY AND HARASSMENT IN IDAHO [OUR FAMILY UNDER SIEGE AND ATTACK] -- HUNTER GRAY   

I have written much about Federal surveillance task forces.  
And - Labor Notes [August 2001] Page 1 carries this story:  "Portland: Anti-Terrorism Task Force Targets Unions"    Interesting and explicit discussion of the FBI/State/Local Task Force going after a number of unions including International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Carpenters, and others.  



On this, Professor Roy Wortman, Kenyon College, has been a member of  our Bear Without Borders discussion list from its outset to this present moment.   

On March 18, 2000, five days after my [never-to-be-answered] letter of March 13 to Postal Inspection Service, I sent important manuscript and related documentary and photographic materials to Professor Roy Wortman, Department of History, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.  

This was a Saturday. Professor Wortman needed the materials very quickly, and the only mail service at that time on Saturday was the U.S. Postal Service.  I therefore sent him the materials on an Overnight Express Mail basis [with the understanding that he would receive the package early on Monday] -- and I did so at a Pocatello Post Office where I am known.   Professor Wortman did not receive the materials until Tuesday.  And, when he opened up the package, he found the contents water-soaked and ruined.  He telephoned me immediately.  Forthwith, I sent backup materials to him by Overnight UPS -- under some Teamster control!  Roy received the package in Ohio quickly and safely --   first thing the next morning.  These materials were a critical component of his subsequently full and detailed and excellent study, I Consider Myself A Real Red:   The Social Thought Of American Civil Rights Organizer John R. [Salter] Hunter Gray -- subsequently published Winter 2001 by the Journal Of Indigenous Thought. This major essay is readily accessible on this Website.   http://hunterbear.org/Red%20essay%20on%20Hunter%20Gray.htm  (The Link again, just to make sure: http://hunterbear.org/Red%20essay%20on%20Hunter%20Gray.htm )  



Material to me from the Committees of Correspondence.

We received, today, a periodic -- regular -- bulk mailing of socialist
publications from New York City.  Sent on April 19, by Priority Mail, it
should have reached us long before today.  It was mailed very securely in a
tough, resilient, obviously water resistant Priority package.  But the 20
magazine-type publications therein have been substantially water-soaked: at
least one-third of each was quite wet -- and the  now dry outside mailing
address label was obviously water-stained.  It's quite clear that the
package had been dunked in water which had then entered the almost -- but
not quite completely -- sealed mouth flap of this large tough plastic
Priority mailing envelope.

No rain or snow here for the past  good while.  

Followed into the Wild Country.

NEW!  At the end of October, 2002, I took one of my very frequent -- sometimes daily -- five and six mile hikes up into the very rough and rugged turf which begins almost at our back door.  There was some fresh snow and, as always, I saw no other persons once I got into the basic very wild country.  Very early the next day, I retraced that junket and suddenly saw the footprints of someone else -- from the previous day -- faithfully following mine over some considerable and increasingly rough distance.  Then, when I entered the really rough and steep stuff -- and it was clear I was taking an obscure and extensive game trail almost straight up and from which I could see much down below and on all sides -- the person turned back.  We never see other people near there and, as a very experienced tracker from childhood, I never see "sign" of anyone in dust or dirt and -- until this situation -- in snow.

As I have indicated, I'll keep people posted on the contemporary stuff and, in time, will provide much more of the historical material.

As I wrote recently: All of these things and many more ills "go with the turf" of any effective social justice activist organizer. But the joy of worthwhile struggles always trumps the mosquitoes. With cool heads and never recklessly, we just keep on, keeping on -- full ahead and steady.

Comments on the whole Federal surveillance situation will be welcome.

Solidarity Forever,

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website with much
material on grassroots organizing techniques:
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
.
See the new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. This book is a full, very detailed 
discussion of the rise and development of the Jackson  
Movement of 1962-63.  And this book is also an organizer's
how-to manual:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
and also "Fifty Years: Remembering Medgar Evers" :          
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)