"IT'S A BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY BUT
ALL THOSE PEOPLE RUIN IT. "
some asshole american general about Viet Nam
(image of three eyed smiley face)
REMCO: proudly poisoning Willits for over 50 years"
a bumper sticker i created....
hola,
it began with Dr.Patch Adams (barefoot) and peaked
with Erin Brockovich (six feet of blonde in heels and leather pants
in 100 degree weather)
...
to me Willits is a dead end culturally and morally ,
the first stoplights you come upon two hours north
of frisco by freeway, a hour north of santa rosa on the map.
(home to the famous oft broken touristy Skunk Train
and many other skunks)
so for five years there we lived in
a great house atop a mountain
above Willits and i met G Man
and watched mucho TV in
my converted garage man cave
otherwise it was pretty much a washout.
to get me out of the house SM urged me to go see
Patch Adams,as the Robin Williams movie was coming out,
at the local high school auditorium.
i grumbled a lot but i went and listened...
he talked about Remco and it's impact on the populace
perched like a dagger in the heart of Willits
was the now shuttered REMCO plant
which was a Cold War relic because,at one time,
it was the only producer of titanium/stainless steel
missile launch tubes for US nuclear subs.
not one of but The Only One...
now ( the mid 1990s) it seemed that a rash of ghastly
birth defects were related to
their habit of dumping very toxic waste hither and yon
-without permits.
so like Love Canal
angry mothers & housewives were the tip of the spear
in demanding an investiagtion and damages for
astounding medical bills and 24/7 childcare.
now Willits is a company town
before REMCO it was a timber town
for about a century then
the sawmills closed as the redwoods were all scalped
bare and Remco moved in to take up the slack
and eventually they too left.(we lived in Brooktrails,
an exurb above Willits and the site of a defunct lumber camp)
so SM and i allied ourselves with some
of the mothers/housewives and tried to impart
some of our hard won activist skills as needed.
as usual SM was elbow deep while i was in
a creative funk and on the margins...but
i did come up with five or six bumper sticker ideas
and the one above was a throwaway line added
at the very last second...the housewives LOVED it
and printed some up.
i was shocked when i saw the finished results
but less shocked and outraged
than the pseudo patriotic clique who ran the town
and it's remoter regions.
now like most oligarchy the rich lived
away from the industrial area and the poor whites
(no blacks and few latinos or indians to be found there)
lived literally next door or downstream.
there was hearsay and eyewitness reports of many many
Remco midnite express dumpings
(i did a series of cartoons for flyers
as people up there didn't like to read)
and we began to raise a stink
worse that the babies born
without eyes or brains or with
spines and organs outside their bodies
and much much worse...
the clique that ran the area
( the pols,lawyers and judges all belonged
to the same nearby private club where
decisions were made,all decisions we soon learned).
was NOT amused....
now there was a well known bias against people from frisco n
berkeley "bright lighters" coming in and stirring up shit
and we were seen as no different except
lawyers got involved, Ed Masery and Erin Brockovich
came all the way up to Willits and declared it one
of the three worse toxic sites in all KALIpornia....
WOW.
now the legacy Mayor
(like his Mom before him)
literally lived on Easy Street
(you can't make this shit up can you?)
and his admin fought tooth and nail but
finally an initial fedgov required survey
was done of the toxic plume
beneath Willits then it expanded and expanded
and expanded to cover most sites within a
forty odd mile radius of Remco which
included many remote but still populated areas...
now most damning was the fact
that despite 50 years in operation...
Remco NEVER applied for a toxci waste dumping permit
nor once went to a toxic waste dump near Santa Rosa,
not once. their workers,many of whom has injuries
and /or deformed kids...were bullied into silence and some even
were still hyper patriotic about their toxic efforts.
soon one or two truckers came forward to confess to this nefarious dumping
but they were dismissed as "disgruntled" to say the least.
long story short Remco sold their name
and business and it moved to TexASS
to further muddy the legal waters
and despite fedgov judge Allston eventually ruling
in the housewives & mothers favor
the stingy pot of money weaseled out of
the fleeing Remco
was all but empty by the time the toxic dust settled ...sigh.
told you that Willits was a company town right?
well the town "hopsital" was adjacent to
the defunct Remco site and bought and paid for
by Remco itself so that
if you did limp in with a complaint you were given
Viagra or caffeine pills and told
-go back to work!
outside health complaints and birth deformities
were dismissed as irrelevant
and the mothers as
"slutty and nutty", much like Love Canal.
Brockovich declared that there were many
Love Canals thru out the USA
and that the under funded EPA
was not up to the tasks of either
enforcement or detection of same.
still ain't.
happy? Earth Day.
namaste
mega
ALL THOSE PEOPLE RUIN IT. "
some asshole american general about Viet Nam
(image of three eyed smiley face)
REMCO: proudly poisoning Willits for over 50 years"
a bumper sticker i created....
hola,
it began with Dr.Patch Adams (barefoot) and peaked
with Erin Brockovich (six feet of blonde in heels and leather pants
in 100 degree weather)
...
to me Willits is a dead end culturally and morally ,
the first stoplights you come upon two hours north
of frisco by freeway, a hour north of santa rosa on the map.
(home to the famous oft broken touristy Skunk Train
and many other skunks)
so for five years there we lived in
a great house atop a mountain
above Willits and i met G Man
and watched mucho TV in
my converted garage man cave
otherwise it was pretty much a washout.
to get me out of the house SM urged me to go see
Patch Adams,as the Robin Williams movie was coming out,
at the local high school auditorium.
i grumbled a lot but i went and listened...
he talked about Remco and it's impact on the populace
perched like a dagger in the heart of Willits
was the now shuttered REMCO plant
which was a Cold War relic because,at one time,
it was the only producer of titanium/stainless steel
missile launch tubes for US nuclear subs.
not one of but The Only One...
now ( the mid 1990s) it seemed that a rash of ghastly
birth defects were related to
their habit of dumping very toxic waste hither and yon
-without permits.
so like Love Canal
angry mothers & housewives were the tip of the spear
in demanding an investiagtion and damages for
astounding medical bills and 24/7 childcare.
now Willits is a company town
before REMCO it was a timber town
for about a century then
the sawmills closed as the redwoods were all scalped
bare and Remco moved in to take up the slack
and eventually they too left.(we lived in Brooktrails,
an exurb above Willits and the site of a defunct lumber camp)
so SM and i allied ourselves with some
of the mothers/housewives and tried to impart
some of our hard won activist skills as needed.
as usual SM was elbow deep while i was in
a creative funk and on the margins...but
i did come up with five or six bumper sticker ideas
and the one above was a throwaway line added
at the very last second...the housewives LOVED it
and printed some up.
i was shocked when i saw the finished results
but less shocked and outraged
than the pseudo patriotic clique who ran the town
and it's remoter regions.
now like most oligarchy the rich lived
away from the industrial area and the poor whites
(no blacks and few latinos or indians to be found there)
lived literally next door or downstream.
there was hearsay and eyewitness reports of many many
Remco midnite express dumpings
(i did a series of cartoons for flyers
as people up there didn't like to read)
and we began to raise a stink
worse that the babies born
without eyes or brains or with
spines and organs outside their bodies
and much much worse...
the clique that ran the area
( the pols,lawyers and judges all belonged
to the same nearby private club where
decisions were made,all decisions we soon learned).
was NOT amused....
now there was a well known bias against people from frisco n
berkeley "bright lighters" coming in and stirring up shit
and we were seen as no different except
lawyers got involved, Ed Masery and Erin Brockovich
came all the way up to Willits and declared it one
of the three worse toxic sites in all KALIpornia....
WOW.
now the legacy Mayor
(like his Mom before him)
literally lived on Easy Street
(you can't make this shit up can you?)
and his admin fought tooth and nail but
finally an initial fedgov required survey
was done of the toxic plume
beneath Willits then it expanded and expanded
and expanded to cover most sites within a
forty odd mile radius of Remco which
included many remote but still populated areas...
now most damning was the fact
that despite 50 years in operation...
Remco NEVER applied for a toxci waste dumping permit
nor once went to a toxic waste dump near Santa Rosa,
not once. their workers,many of whom has injuries
and /or deformed kids...were bullied into silence and some even
were still hyper patriotic about their toxic efforts.
soon one or two truckers came forward to confess to this nefarious dumping
but they were dismissed as "disgruntled" to say the least.
long story short Remco sold their name
and business and it moved to TexASS
to further muddy the legal waters
and despite fedgov judge Allston eventually ruling
in the housewives & mothers favor
the stingy pot of money weaseled out of
the fleeing Remco
was all but empty by the time the toxic dust settled ...sigh.
told you that Willits was a company town right?
well the town "hopsital" was adjacent to
the defunct Remco site and bought and paid for
by Remco itself so that
if you did limp in with a complaint you were given
Viagra or caffeine pills and told
-go back to work!
outside health complaints and birth deformities
were dismissed as irrelevant
and the mothers as
"slutty and nutty", much like Love Canal.
Brockovich declared that there were many
Love Canals thru out the USA
and that the under funded EPA
was not up to the tasks of either
enforcement or detection of same.
still ain't.
happy? Earth Day.
namaste
mega
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