Magnolia Summer

Spiritual Techniques for Protecting Your Environment

by Lady Passion

Sometimes you have to sit down to stand up for your spiritual ideals — go out on a limb to save an endangered tree, brave public scrutiny and risk ridicule, backlash, and failure to win a righteous cause. *Diuvei and I recently proved this theorem true when we spent 2 1/2 months living beneath an ancient magnolia, striving by Witchy will alone to save it from a rapacious condo developer’s ax.

At stake was public parkland the County Commissioners had sold to developer Stewart Coleman. His 11-story Parkside condominium complex would have killed the olde magnolia that called Pack Square Park home — and it would have loomed overpoweringly in front of Asheville's world-famous City Hall.

It’s hard undoing what’s considered by many to be a legal fait accompli. Divergent views ran the gamut from fundamentalist revulsion at Witches circling the tree to publicize its plight, to liberals too timid to take direct action to save it, to conservatives seeking to protect private property rights at all costs.

Our protest rite on Lammas, 2007, fascinated the public and media — no one had ever seen anything quite like it before! But it was only the beginning. We fought for nearly a year before starting our stalwart squat — working “in the system” railing against the tree’s demise in endless development-review meetings and stirring up a countywide cauldron of opinion in the process via our hard-hitting commentaries and T.V. interviews.

Election-year sentiments ran high on all sides in 2007 and again in 2008 as "Parkside" became an ever-hotter election issue. Backroom deals, eyebrow-raising campaigns and fat contributions given politicians by Coleman and North Carolina's powerful developer lobby ran rampant throughout the ordeal; each time I thought I’d plumbed its depths, more corruption was revealed, and few officials escaped its taint and the public’s growing ire. Navigating through this milieu was like swimming with sharks. I had no desire to embody the city scold, yet my Pagan belief that a tree older than anyone involved had a right to exist fueled my conviction to persist for the public good. Still, it was blood curdling to realize that I was making multi-millionaire enemies.

What began as a Coven quest steadily attracted admirers and helpers of all persuasions opposed to over-development, sleaze and injustice.

I quit the “legal” rubber-stamping route on July 7, 2008, when a woman whose supposed cause was preserving trees voted in favor of sacrificing the magnolia. I strode angrily out of City Hall and sat down directly across, beneath the tree, vowing not to leave until I’d saved it.

As a longtime anti-police-brutality activist, I expected to be immediately arrested. But as the land was technically Coleman’s, the cops could do nothing without him issuing a trespassing complaint. I started out with nothing and utterly dependent on food delivered by whoever pitied me. I was living in a fishbowl in front of the court house — wide open to the elements, tourists, and judges passing by.

 I soon became aware that we were fighting not only Coleman, but the County and crazies as well. The descendents of George Willis Pack, who donated the parkland in 1901, were suing the County and Coleman for the sale of land that was supposed to be the public's in perpetuity; some of Asheville’s homeless wanted to use the tree as a flophouse; and fundies drove by at night waving baseball bats and threatening to “Cut ‘er down!”

Good-hearted folk who appreciated my sincerity sprang into action and lent me a cell phone, a video camera, water coolers, sleeping bags, and other needful things. *Diuvei and several fellow activists — notably Clare Hanrahan (who'd started sitting beneath the tree every afternoon some weeks before), David Ireland of Copwatch, Bette Jackson, and two homeless men, David and Lemar — took turns making sure I was almost never alone. An activist greenspace-conservation group began a petition that over 9,000 people signed. Save-The-Magnolia T-shirts were printed and became the hip seasonal thing to wear. Rallies, strategy meetings, and direct action training seminars were held, where normally pacifist folks practiced resisting bulldozers.

The tree soon became famous and folks came by the thousands, keenly concerned about the tree’s plight, wanting a photograph before the twin tree’s evocative trunk, or tying a hopeful fetish to a limb. Many times daily I arranged my open-air living room for optimal intimacy — creating sacred space for anyone to “come and sit a spell” beneath Asheville’s liberty tree. I and untold others bonded with the magnolia in the extreme.

I learned every dirty story there was about Coleman and the local officials; enjoyed spontaneous concerts from roving musicians; and got a massage from a passing masseuse. It was a dizzying, ever changing, raging/soothing, heady brew. Nightly, people dropped by to sip ale, congratulate us on the day’s publicity, or to offer thanks and well wishes.

Because we were camping literally in the front yard of Asheville City Hall and the Buncombe County Courthouse, nearly everyone who worked there had to pass by us every weekday — lawyers, judges, officials, politicians, government workers. We welcomed everyone to talk to us and sign the petition, and sooner or later nearly everyone did. Far from arresting us, the city's police chief showed off his new Segway to us and told us he supported what we were doing. A well-known attorney with an office that overlooked the tree told us if he saw it about to be cut down, he would fire a flare gun out of his window. A famously conservative city councilman became one of our most frequent visitors, at first arguing with and eventually admiring us for our commitment to a principle that he, too, came to support.

The gentility we displayed showed the public the real dichotomy: The Powers That Be might sell public parkland in secret, but we were citizens operating transparently — actively engaged in civil disobedience for all to see. Days stretched into weeks, then months. I clung on, nonetheless, convinced that nothing less than winning would do.

 In his hubris, Coleman believed he could use our relentless pressure to coerce officials to buy him out for mega-millions. Growing desperate as the Pack lawsuit loomed, he threatened to cut the magnolia down within 35 days; we responded by calling an immediate Press Conference at the tree, and defiantly rejected his deadline.

On the day the lawsuit came to trial in the County Courthouse, supporters packed the courtroom wearing their magnolia T-shirts, sporting Stop Parkside stickers, and waving flyer fans I’d made. As for me, I sat beneath the tree during two days of Hurricane Fay.

The day before Superior Court Judge Marlene Hyatt was to reveal her ruling, Coleman came armed with a day-glo orange canister and spray-painted the ground with a fence line; I warned him that if he proceeded, he’d need a fence to protect his mansion from public retribution. 

The next day, the judge sided in the people’s favor, and on Sept. 15, 2008, issued her official ruling that the Parkside parcel must remain public land. The merit of my months-long tree-sit had been vindicated — against all odds we’d saved the park, and the tree!

But although I'm back home under my Covenstead roof now, our struggle is far from over. Coleman appealed the ruling, and it will be heard by a different set of judges in far-off Raleigh sometime this summer (2009). The century-old Hayes & Hopson building, also part of the Parkside property, is approved for demolition — and we are working hard to find a donor or investor who will help the County buy the building for renovation as a museum/local-history center or other needed community use.

(Adapted from the article published in Oracle 20/20 magazine, Nov. 2008.)