SOBS: Photography: Another Carmageddon

Gallery Two -- Click any image to enlarge

Mick relaxes in the afternoon outside his treehouse. Most often, the treehouses were made of scrap wood and found tree limbs with plastic tarps for a roof — the larger trees could accommodate up to five treehouses. In the winter, protesters slept under many blankets to stay warm, but some treehouses even had wood stoves in them. Bottles of urine and bags of rotten food were suspended from tree branches, kept ready to drop on sherrifs' and bailiffs' heads.

A stuffed animal dangles from a tree as Mick rope swings at Camp Gotan. Behind him, a nine-mile fence separates the protesters' camps from the bypass construction area. In the background is a Bray's/Pinkerton's security truck full of officers who are videotaping the "suspicious activity." Between the police and the private security agencies, a protester could expect to be photographed and videotaped several times a day.

By the time this photo was taken, a nine-mile-long swath of 500-year-old oak trees and 1,000-year-old yew trees had been destroyed to make the bypass. Bath tubs, mattresses and other junk was thrown into the fenced area by upset protesters.

Mick, foreground, and Meadow protect two trees marked for clearing as diggers raze camp Spiritual Roots. Spiritual Roots was being cleared to make way for an acess road's access road and was one of the last camps to be cleared.

More than a thousand protesters gathered on January 9, 1997, for the "Reunion Rampage," a celebration of people coming together the previous year to fight the building of the Newbury bypass. When protesters arrived, they only found one tree standing; the police were overwhelmed, and the fence was cut open, allowing access to the compound.

Protesters and townspeople, including grandparents and their grandchildren, gather around the last tree standing inside the construction route, singing, dancing and climbing the tree.

A truck , security compound and monstorous digger burn as over 1,000 people seep back into the night following the climax of the Reunion Rampage. Over a million dollars worth of damage was done to the site; protesters of all ages participated, from grandparents to children.


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