There are going to be consequences if a person stands up to authority, so a person should always pick their fights. This issue, gang of issues really, on Cortes is a noble cause and fighting for it maybe justified, but civil disobedience is only a tool. Civil disobedience is good at gaining time. During that time generating publicity is paramount. Fortunately, social media and YouTube allow instant access and a growing list of supporters.
Publicity wise, there's a long list of big names who could help focus the cameras on Cortes' issues, folks like David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and Elizabeth May are neighbors, the cameras love celebrities, B.C.'s got lots of 'em. But, publicity too is just a tool to be used to somehow raise the dough to buy the land. Buying the land or finding something acceptable to trade for it, is the only long term way any of the past 'wars of the woods' were ever settled.
Sometimes the 'stalling and publicity' takes longer than you'd hoped, remember how Julia Butterfly Hill lived in Luna, a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days, successfully preventing it from being cut down. Luna lived, and others around Luna did too because Hill lived on two six-by-six-foot platforms for 738 days. She used solar-powered cell phones for radio interviews and became an "in-tree" correspondent for a cable television show and hosted TV crews to protest old-growth clear cutting. Julia Butterfly became a national sensation and a public relations nightmare for the logging interests. Wonder if she's available and interested in standing at the blockade in front of the RCMP and cameras?
The more publicity the Cortes Island Blockade gets the bigger the headache the big-wigs get.
