by
Peter Rugh, originally published on Wagingnonviolence.org., Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/would-smokey-the-bear-get-arrested-to-stop-fracking
When artist Lopi LaRoe used Smokey the Bear imagery to
encourage anti-fracking activism, the Forest Service threatened her with
a lawsuit.
Smokey the Bear thought he smelled a fire in the woods.
But as he
approached the clearing and saw a giant derrick jutting out into the
sky, he realized that what his nose had picked up was the scent of
hydrocarbons.
It was another piece of evidence suggesting that the
increasingly widespread method of oil and gas extraction known as
fracking was poisoning the environment. He decided something must be
done.
At least that’s the way that artist, Occupy Wall Street veteran and
environmental activist Lopi LaRoe sees it. But last week she received a
letter threatening her with jail time and thousands of dollars in fines
for enlisting Smokey to the anti-fracking cause.
In the fall, LaRoe created an image of Smokey that altered his famous
invective “Only you can prevent forest fires” to “Only you can prevent
faucet fires” - a reference to the
phenomenon of flaming taps
that occasionally occur near where fracking takes place. The adjustment
seemed to her in line with the message of conservation Smokey has come
to embody.
“This is the radicalization of Smokey the Bear,” said LaRoe. “This is
Smokey waking up and saying, ‘Oh you didn’t do that to my environment.’
Smokey wants to fight the corporations and protect the air and the
water and the plants and the animals and the people.”
Her parody went viral. She began printing T-shirts at the insistence
of friends on Facebook, but demand quickly surpassed those in her
immediate circle of contacts.
Soon she was packing Smokey in FedEx
envelopes and sending him off to Australia and other far-flung terrains.
There are also tote bags and patches with the Smokey meme available at
LaRoe’s website
(the tote bags, she advertises, are “great for dumpster diving”).
LaRoe
says she’s not out to become rich and the money she charges customers
goes toward covering her costs so that she can keep spreading the
message of faucet-fire prevention far and wide.
“It spread like wildfire,” she said, grinning ear to ear.
Not everyone is amused. LaRoe received a cease-and-desist letter from
the Metis Group, which serves as legal counsel for the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s Forest Service division.
The letter informs LaRoe that
Smokey, his character, and his slogan are property of the U.S.
government and warns that she has until May 2 to halt the use of Smokey
on her “products” and to stop distributing electronic copies of the
meme. Otherwise, she faces up to six months in prison and a penalty as
high as $150,000.
“Any time anybody uses Smokey’s image for anything other than
wildfire prevention,” said Helene Cleveland, fire prevention program
manager for the Forest Service, “it confuses the public. What we’re
trying to do is keep Smokey on message.”
Cleveland added that the 1952
Smokey the Bear Act takes the character out of the public domain and
“any change in that would have to go through Congress.”
Two other entities besides the Forest Service claim joint rights to
Smokey. The National Association of State Foresters - a nonprofit
organization consisting of directors of U.S. forestry agencies - and the
Ad Council.
Remember
“This is your brain on drugs”? Or the
Indian weeping over pollution?
They were the Ad Council’s handiwork.
A nonprofit, it describes itself
as a promoter of “public service campaigns on behalf of nonprofit
organizations and government agencies” with a focus on “improving the
quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community
well being and strengthening families.”
Smokey the Bear was born at the
Ad Council, on the desk of
abstract expressionist and Marx-influenced art critic Harold Rosenberg, who had a part time job there in the mid-1940s.
The
Ad Council’s board of directors is a conflagration of representatives of the world’s wealthiest corporations, including such companies as
General Electric,
which announced plans last month to spend $110 million on a research
lab devoted to the study of fracking, and finance giants such as
Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
On its website, Citibank advertises an
“extensive array of deposit, cash management and credit products” for
oil and gas drillers, while a
JPMorgan Chase subsidiary boasts
its “Oil & Gas Investment Banking group covers the complete oil and
gas value chain, which includes exploration and production, natural gas
processing and transmission, refining and marketing, and oilfield
services.”
LaRoe believes that those who claim to own Smokey “don’t care that I’m selling a few T-shirts. They’re out to crush the meme.” Both the Ad Council and the Metis Group declined to comment for this story.
Despite the warnings in the cease-and-desist letter she received,
LaRoe has not ceased or desisted. Instead, she enlisted the help of her
own legal counsel, who fired back with a letter to the Metis Group on
Friday.
In it, attorney Evan Sarzin argues that LaRoe ‘s culture-jam
appropriation of Smokey is permissible under the fair-use exemption to
exclusive copyright ownership and chides the the Forest Service for
attempting to infringe on LaRoe’s First Amendment rights.
Sarzin also points out that this is not the first time the Forest
Service has sought to silence environmentalists for appropriating
Smokey’s image.
In the early 1990s, the Forest Service demanded
reparations from the Sante Fe-based conservation group LightHawk after
it used Smokey’s likeness in ads critical of the agency’s practice of
auctioning off land to timber companies (the Forest Service, as part of
the Department of Agriculture, makes its land available for commercial
use).
Unlike LaRoe’s Smokey, LightHawk’s black bear appeared angry and
wielded a chainsaw. “Say it ain’t so, Smokey,” read the ads.
With legal funds provided by the Sierra Club, LightHawk sued the
Forest Service in 1992 for infringing on its freedom of speech.
The
court eventually sided with the plaintiffs, noting that “the satirical
use of Smokey the Bear to criticize Forest Service management techniques
is unlikely to cause confusion or to dilute the value of Smokey the
Bear to help prevent forest fires. Thus the Forest Service cannot have a
compelling interest in prohibiting such use.”
Sarzin also calls attention to the fact the Forest Service’s own
research points to environmental degradation caused by fracking.
A 2011
study published in the Journal of Environmental Quality by Forest
Service researchers
linked frack fluid to the death of 150 trees
in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.
Despite their findings,
the Forest Service is considering approving fracking leases in the
nearby George Washington National Forest. The Southern Environmental Law
Center, which opposes the plan, says it represents a threat to local
wildlife - including the black bear.
A report released last month by the the National Parks Conservation
Association warns that fracking for oil is decimating the ecosystem
surrounding Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named after the Republican
president who founded the Forest Service.
“Unless we take quick
action,” the report warns “air, water and wildlife will experience
permanent harm in other national parks as well.” Thus, Sarzin writes,
LaRoe’s Smokey meme “is a message that the Forest Service should
endorse.”
LaRoe hopes that by gaining publicity she can force the Forest
Service to take a stand against fracking.
In order to continue the
fight, however, she says she needs the support of groups whose mission
it is to defend civil liberties or protect the environment to provide
legal defense funds - just as the Sierra Club did for LightHawk.
“This about more than me as an artist,” LaRoe said. “This is about
everybody’s right to freedom of speech and a healthy environment.”
Her childhood memories of Smokey, she explains, are compelling her to
keep raising faucet-fire prevention awareness despite the threat of
jail time.
“When we were little kids we were taught that there is this
bear out there that wants to protect our forests. Smokey is our bear. He
belongs to the people.”
Peter Rugh wrote this article for
WagingNonviolence, where it originally appeared. Peter is a writer and activist based in Brooklyn, New York.
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