Warrior Poet Prose

Here’s a video that gives a sense the most popular Rendezvous, an event that saw not hundreds but over a thousand…

1987 Grand Canyon Round River Rendezvous & Uranium Mine Action

Andy Caffrey the Virtual Candidate | Myspace Video

Andy Caffrey: “This is the one video clip that probably means the most to me, and I didn’t shoot it. I did record audio of the Sagebrush Patriots Rally that year and release a 96-minute cassette of that music a year later, “Battle Cries From The North Rim.” But I think these four clips were a big inspiration for me to go to video in 1988. Hollenhorst liked us, and the four clips almost make a single “How to take over a uranium mine” how-to video. And I thought that was pretty cool!

Later, I thought, people 180-feet up in redwoods, might make inspiring video. And I even got used in several places, raising a fist among the marchers wearing a blue monkeywrench bomber long sleeve t-shirt that “we” gave to Don Hodel at Hetch Hetchy Damn a few months later when we couldn’t fiind any clean ones to give to him and Dianne Feinstein. And then Michelle Miller, Janaka (who would come back two years later with Bodhi Seed as Emu and tour Turtle Island as The Wallys) and I sing Bill Oliver’s song “Holes” with Bill and Glen Waldeck, a shot they used over and over!

I met John Hollenhorst at the rendezvous, and hung out with him quit a bit, pointing him to good interviews, and straightening him out on things like biocentrism, Deep Ecology, Miss Ann Thropy’s “Hooray AIDS!” letter, “No Compromise,” etc. So after the RRR I contacted the southern Utah news stations, who put me in touch with copying services, and $80 later I had these four clips. Unfortunately those tapes were destroyed in the 1991 Oakland Firestorm.

But I had made a copy as part of a compilation to show in the reception area at a Portland EF! event, and that copy was part of the tapes I rescued from the fire. This and over 300 hours of similarly invaluable video of Earth First! culture that I have shot and collected since 1985 is now very aged and at risk of becoming unplayable. This is the single greatest archive of its kind in the world.

In fact, there is nothing at all like it in the world. Most of it is now over twenty years old on tapes that deteriorate at fifteen years. I am trying to professionally digitize it all. If you would like to help me with that effort, please let me know. If you can help with a contribution of money or expertise, you can also reach me at Andy Caffrey P.O. Box 324 Redway, CA 95560″