2009 CPEO Military List Archive

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:11:55 -0800 (PST)
Reply: cpeo-military
Subject: [CPEO-MEF] EXPANSION: Pinon Canyon, Colorado
 
Not One More Acre!
Ranchers in Colorado's Piñon Canyon fight a massive Army land grab.

Trey Garrison
Reason
March 2009

Mack Louden spits Copenhagen juice on the floor of the empty storage bay of his shuttered feed store in Trinidad, a small town in southeastern Colorado an hour's drive from Louden's ranch. He rests his hand on a leather cell phone holster like a gunslinger might. Then he grins. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't frown. He is letting something happen that's pretty alien to his nature: There's a photographer with a lens about two inches from the nose on Louden's life-creased, weather-worn face, crowding his personal space. Under any other circumstances, someone this far inside his personal space would get some serious pushback.

But Louden, an activist for the group Not 1 More Acre!, puts up with the inconvenience. What the cause asks for, ranchers like Louden give. The alternative is the end of life as they know it. Publicity is a powerful if uncomfortable weapon for people accustomed to their privacy, for whom property lines and personal space are more important than mere law. In the asymmetrical war these ranchers are fighting, they use any weapon they can, because theirs is an opponent that tends to win: the U.S. Army.

The Army already occupies 245,000 acres of Colorado's desolate Piñon Canyon, which it uses for large-scale, force-on-force mechanized brigade combat exercises involving tanks and armored units. But since 2006 Uncle Sam has had his eye on at least 418,000 acres more, to handle increased demand for maneuvers and the expansion of Fort Carson.



...

For the entire article, see
http://reason.com/news/show/131415.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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