Dear HCN,
Ray Ring’s cover story on
the environmental movement in Montana is a fascinating and
instructive history which all Western environmentalists should
study. But I can’t help feeling Ray missed one of the most
important factors in the decline of Montana’s progressive coalition
and the environmental movement in the rural West
generally.
Ring accurately reports that today
“many (Montanans) see themselves fighting against what they think
of as an alien movement.” But he fails to analyze how much this
attitude has been created by the drumbeat of anti-environmental,
right-wing propaganda.
The criticisms of the
antis, repeated ad infinitum, come to be accepted as truth even by
those who know better. And so Ray Ring, like reporters and writers
across the West, unconsciously adopts the rhetoric of the antis
when he generalizes about environmentalists’ “reluctance to
compromise” and “all or nothing stands” and reports that one
environmental professional makes “$2,000 more than the governor.”
Never mind that the salary is an anomaly and that most professional
environmentalists earn working-poor wages with few
benefits.
The closest Ring approaches the
importance of an organized, well-funded anti-environmental right is
when he quotes Dan Funsch’s reference to “right-wing” think tanks.
But he fails to note the control of print and radio media that is a
cornerstone of the antis’ gains in rural areas. Ring also fails to
compare the proliferation and funding of environmental groups with
the similar proliferation of groups whose mission is to discredit
the environmental movement by creating and perpetuating negative
stereotypes. Foundations which fund the environmental movement are
now household names in the rural West, but no one reveals who funds
the antis.
Ring is correct that future success
will require a return to progressive coalitions. Such coalitions
will face difficulties in rural areas, however, until the antis’
campaign of misinformation, labeling and media control is exposed
and becomes a focus for progressives – including progressive media
like HCN. To date, however,
HCN has all but ignored this aspect of the
emerging West, a failing which Ray Ring’s otherwise excellent
article repeats.
Felice
Pace
Etna, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Montana story ignores antis’ ongoing attack.
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