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NATIONAL
PARK SERVICE WAR IN THE WRANGELLS |
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| TARGET: PILGRIM FAMILY |
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MORE:
PRESS PHOTO! |
Wrangell-St. Elias News-Gary Green | |
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FALL 2003: McCARTHY, ALASKA -- EMERGENCY AIRLIFT FOR RELIEF OF PILGRIM FAMILY BLOCKADED BY NATIONAL PARK SERVICE |
October 3, 2003
The National Park Service
blockade of the Pilgrim Family and their animals continues in McCarthy in the
heart of the Wrangell St Elias National Park and Preserve.
After closing the only road to
their property in April, the National Park Service refused to consider the
situation an emergency and insisted on continuing a protracted bureaucratic
permitting process that has stalled the Pilgrims’ request for access all
summer (10/1/03 letter from regional director Marcia Blaszak).
Winter is near and the situation is becoming dire.
THIS IS BOTH A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS AS WELL AS A LINE IN THE SAND FOR LAND ACCESS. THE PARK SERVICE IS BLOCKING LEGAL LAND USE THROUGHOUT ALASKA. ALASKANS -- BOTH RURAL AND URBAN: IF YOU DON'T RALLY NOW TO STOP THIS AGENCY IN MCCARTHY, LARGE PARTS OF OUR STATE WILL BE NEXT FOR THE GREEN IRON CURTAIN OF EXCLUSION.
The American Land Rights
Association is assisting a committee of Alaskans in organizing an emergency
relief airlift of critical supplies, including food, clothing, medicines, money,
and materials. A drive for
donations and volunteers will begin immediately to collect resources for
transfer to the marooned Pilgrim homestead located 13 miles up McCarthy Creek
from the village of McCarthy.
The Berlin Airlift in 1948 was
America’s response to a communist blockade of free Berlin.
A totalitarian top down command and control regime tried to starve out
the citizens of Berlin after World War Two.
The Soviets closed the roads, cut the railroad tracks and all other means
of access. Heavily armed military
guarded the access routes into Berlin. They
could not shut down airplane flights. For
many months America and other countries joined to keep a starving city alive and
supplied with food, fuel and other materials.
So now it is time for the
citizens of America and especially Alaska to rise up again against a top down
command and control heavy handed bureaucracy, the National Park Service, and
keep the Pilgrim Family and their animals from being starved out in the Wrangell
St Elias National Park and Preserve. As
in Berlin, heavily armed Park Service personnel dressed like a S.W.A.T. team are
preventing access for the Pilgrims. Access
on a designated RS 2477 Right of Way that is also protected under the terms of
the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
The Pilgrim Family Airlift will take place Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12. Supplies, including food, money, and materials, will be gathered at four locations -- Fairbanks, Wasilla, Anchorage and Glennallen-Copper Center -- by Thursday, October 9th. They will then be trucked to McCarthy. The Pilgrim Family Airlift will begin on Saturday, October 11th (detailed plan and supplies list hotlinks below).
Volunteer pilots are needed to
ferry the flyable supplies into the Pilgrim Family Marvelous Millsite in upper
McCarthy Creek valley.
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY AND WE
CAN’T POSSIBLY GET ALL THE SUPPLIES THAT ARE NEEDED IN WITH THIS AIRLIFT.
THAT CAN ONLY COME WITH THE PARK SERVICE COMING TO
ITS SENSES AND
STOPPING ITS HEARTLESS WAR AGAINST THIS FAMILY.
This is a massive effort to relieve a family in distress in
response to a
National Park Service-caused and instigated crisis.
The crisis was made worse by the fact that the Pilgrims winterized home burned to the ground last spring with much of their winter supplies. This is a mother, father and 15 children so their needs are extraordinary. If they had not had to deal with Park Service harassment and its road blockade all summer they would be much farther along in taking care of themselves.
THE
COMMITTEE
* Rick
Kenyon, pastor, McCarthy-Kennicott Community Church (also the editor of the
local Wrangell-St Elias News) 554-4454
* Laurie Rowland, McCarthy, 554-4498
* Kathy Stratton, Glennallen, 822-5545
* Clarence Catledge, pastor, Copper Basin Assembly of God, 822-5523
* Dan & Pat Sentz, Wasilla, 376-4574
* Ray Kreig, Anchorage, 276-2025
* Lee Ann Gerhart, Anchorage, 243-8951
* Warren Smith, Fairbanks, 456-3733
Chuck
Cushman, Executive Director
American
Land Rights Association
PO Box 400 – Battle Ground, WA 98604
Phone: 360-687-3087 – Fax: 360-687-2973 – E-mail: alra@landrights.org
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE – Washington, DC 20003
Phone: 202-210-2357 – Fax: 202-543-7126 – E-mail: landrightsnet@aol.com
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