INCITING TO VIOLENCE IS NOT
ACCEPTABLE
Dear HCN,
At a
recent news conference, a reporter asked House Speaker Newt
Gingrich if he felt that the anti-government rhetoric of the new
Congress might be partly responsible for encouraging actions like
the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Gingrich replied
that it was a “grotesque and offensive” question. Is it so
far-fetched?
Since the new Congress took power in
January, there has been a drumbeat of diatribes against federal
employees and the regulations they enforce – particularly federal
environmental rules. Federal agencies and their employees are
castigated as unneeded, unwanted and a drain on our society.
Several bills passed by the House, if enacted, will suspend
environmental laws regulating grazing and timber cutting on federal
lands. Sonny Bono, R-Calif., says we should “put all the endangered
species in one locale and blow them up.”
The
rhetoric of the anti-regulation extremists in Congress is being
matched by anti-government wackos in the “wise-use” and
county-supremacy movements. In this emerging climate of fear and
senseless violence, federal employees in federal and state
resource-management agencies throughout the West have been shot at,
sent death threats, harassed and intimidated.
One
top Forest Service official recently told me he thought there was a
50 percent chance of a Forest Service employee being murdered this
summer in either Idaho or Nevada.
This spring,
two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement agents
investigating the death of one of the gray wolves recently released
into central Idaho attempted to serve a warrant on a local rancher
as part of their investigation. Rather than assisting fellow law
officers, the sheriff came to the aid of the rancher on whom the
warrant was being served, telling the agents to go back to
Washington, D.C.
Encouraging and justifying this
intimidation, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, who has sponsored an
“endangered salmon bake” fund-raiser, responded by saying she will
seek federal legislation requiring U.S. law enforcement agents to
seek written permission from county sheriffs before taking action
within local jurisdictions.
Now is the time, as
President Clinton recently said, to stand up to this kind of
“reckless speech” that spreads hate and leaves the impression that
violence is acceptable.
Jeff
DeBonis
Washington,
D.C.
Jeff DeBonis is executive
director of Public Employees For Environmental
Responsibility.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Inciting to violence is not acceptable.
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