The rise of militias: Patriot candidates are now getting elected in Oregon

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Like Trump, the Patriot Movement’s surge is due partly to fear and the perceived indifference of political leaders to places that didn’t recover from the 2008 crash

Duane Ehmer rides his horse Hellboy at the Malheur national refuge on the sixth day of the occupation. Photograph: Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images

Joseph Rice’s manner is a long way from militia stereotypes. The Patriot Movement leader does not present as a crazed gun nut, nor as a blowhard white supremacist. He’s genial, folksy, and matter-of-fact in laying out his views. But talk to him for long enough, and time and again the Patriot Movement leader returns to what really drives him: land.

Rice is running for Josephine county commissioner in south-west Oregon, and believes that the federal government’s current role in land management is illegitimate and even tyrannical.

His campaign is well-advertised around the county and appears well-organised. His growing experience in organising Patriot groups and community watch organisations has polished his skills in retail politics. He’s clearly done a lot of work to make himself politically palatable to conservative rural voters.

He has positions on education (kids should finish high school), legalised marijuana (it presents an economic opportunity) and Donald Trump (“people are tired of career politicians, and they know the country’s in trouble”).

But county supremacy is what really drives him.

Joseph Rice, who advocates for community members who would take policing into their own hands. Photograph: Jason Wilson for the Guardian

It’s this notion that is once again becoming central to local politics in the Pacific north-west. Throughout the region, people whose ideas about land management broadly align with Rice and the now infamous Bundy clan are aiming for elected office in cities, counties and even the state houses.

Taking notice of the trend, progressive watchdog group Political Research Associates even pointed to “a wave of Patriot-affiliated candidates in Oregon”.

Rice talks proudly of his connection with the Oath Keepers – a group which recruits from serving and retired law enforcement officers and military personnel. The group asserts that the oath taken by soldier and police “is to the constitution, not to the politicians”, such that serving personnel are obliged to disobey unconstitutional orders.

He’s also proud of his role in founding the Pacific Patriots network, which aims to coordinate members of various patriot groups in the Pacific north-west.

Both groups, and Rice himself, were prominent actors in the standoff at the Malheur national wildlife refuge last January. On Rice’s account, “we acted as a buffer between the federal government and the refuge”.

In practice, this meant that they were a constant presence in and around Burns, Oregon, as the occupation unfolded. Their actions included everything from warning law enforcement officers against attempting a forceful resolution of the situation to forming an armed perimeter around the refuge.

Members of the Oath Keepers walk with their personal weapons on the street during protests in Ferguson, Missouri . Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

While the Malheur occupiers are mostly in custody awaiting trial, the ideals that fuelled their protest are still very much at large.

Gradually, these ideas are taking hold in local Republican parties. While the nation has been transfixed by the Trump tilt in presidential politics, at the grassroots level in Oregon, candidates who have sympathies and connections with the Patriot movement have already successfully sought office under the GOP banner.

Josephine County local elections are non-partisan, but Rice is clearly well-integrated with the GOP there, meeting reporters in their offices and running as a precinct committee person in the primary.

David Niewert, an author and journalist who has spent decades watching the right, says that as recently as 10 years ago, Rice’s message would have been unpalatable to most GOP voters. But the Tea Party movement established a conduit for more radical ideas “to flow right into the mainstream of the Republican party”.

GOP legislators have been floating these ideas in the Oregon state house. In Oregon Congressional District 3, Carl Wilson is seeking re-election. After an initial stint in the state house between 1998 and 2003, he successfully ran again in 2014. He has wasted no time in pushing an agenda that borrows, like the Bundys, from the so-called “land use movement”. Wilson also lent his support to the Sugar Pine Mine occupation, which was a dress rehearsal for Malheur.

Wilson – who did not respond to interview requests from the Guardian – proposed Oregon Bill HB3240, which sought to set up a taskforce to investigate the transfer of federal lands in Oregon to state ownership.

The bill went nowhere in the Democrat-dominated state house, but Wilson’s stance has drawn a large number of donations. Notably, according to Oregon electoral filings, last year Koch Industries donated $2,500 to his campaign committee.

This kind of support in a sleepy Oregon district only makes sense when it is seen as a part of the right’s bottom-up strategy to push and legitimate the view that federal land management needs to be rolled back.

Those ideas get a hearing in Oregon’s rural counties because communities there are squeezed in a social and economic vice. In the last three decades, counties like Josephine have been hit with a series of shocks.

First, the timber industry declined, though only partly because of changes in federal land management practices. This led to diminished prosperity and a collapse in funding for public services. Federal timber payments declined 90% over the course of the 1990s. Later, the 2008 bust and recession hit rural Oregon hard, and many areas have yet to recover.

Supporters hold signs during a rally in support of rancher Cliven Bundy. Photograph: John Locher/AP

Since 2012, when the last federal payments dried up, Josephine County has struggled to provide the basic elements of public order.

The budgets of the sheriff’s office, juvenile justice centre, adult jail and district attorney’s office have been cut by more than 65%. In 2012, they set free county prisoners they could no longer afford to house, and a sheriff’s department that had once boasted 30 deputies was reduced to six. Large sections of the county are still not effectively policed, especially after dark. State police highway patrolmen have been diverted to answer emergency calls.

Jessica Campbell, co-director of the progressive Rural Organizing Project, says that this has led to unacceptable outcomes, particularly for local women. In particular, she says it has made women more vulnerable to domestic violence, with perpetrators knowing that night-time 911 calls will be unlikely to get a response.

In 2012, a woman was raped in her home in Josephine County after she called 911, and was told no officers were available to help her. At the time, the county sherriff admitted that he did not have the resources to collate crime statistics.

While Rice plays down the issue of violent crime, Campbell says his position depends on “a whole lot of privilege”. Efforts to raise special levies for public safety have repeatedly failed at the ballot box, scuppered in part by anti-tax campaigns.

Finally, last March, the county declared a “public safety fiscal emergency”, starting the path to emergency state funding. For Rice, this is not only an unforgivable renunciation of county sovereignty, but “a perpetual marketing thing” that the county commissioners employ in order to claim more money.

He advocates beefed-up neighbourhood watch programmes and “resident deputies” – community members who would take policing into their own hands. In effect, self-organized, patriot-style organisation would fill the void left by permanently weakened county institutions.

In addition, he offers the economic panacea of reopening federal lands to extractive industries. It’s a message with undeniable appeal in parts of the country that feel abandoned, economically and politically.

Like Trump, the Patriot Movement’s surge is due in part to fear, pain and the perceived indifference of both economic winners and political leaders to the fate of communities that have never recovered from the 2008 crash. In places that need radical solutions, the only radical proposals they are hearing come from the right.

It remains to be seen whether this will translate into big successes on 17 May. Either way, until significant efforts are made to repair the wreckage in rural America, the patriot movement will continue to find an audience.

COMMENTS

CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER: OREGON STANDOFF ISN’T ABOUT RANCHERS, THE FEDS CANNOT OWN LAND OUTSIDE DC

The Federal government has been seeking to expandit’s power for years, and President Obama has insisted that because he was a professor of Constitutional law he somehow is more equipped and capable to teach us how this country should run and why we must obey whatever he says.

He therefore jammed Obamacare through Congress with not one Republican supporter, and then somehow conned the Supreme Court into affirming that U.S. citizens MUST purchase insurance or be fined. This is typical of the lawless Obamaadministration, and we have truly become a banana republic, though that is not how the Constitution is written.

See the excellent video on page 2 regarding Constitutional limitations that are being violated.

There is a new rebellion happening in Oregon and it has to do with ownership of property and exercise of power. The Federalgovernments seems to think that the citizens only own property leave of the government, and in essence that is true.

If a person buys a piece of property and pays property taxes on it,  that is a form of rent paid to the government, and the government can seize that property and push the rightful owner off of that land if the taxes are not paid. How then does someone own a piece of property if the government can demand rent and evict if that rent or tax is not paid?  It is stunning when seen this  in the broad context, and true students of the Consititution will recognize the con that we have all bought in to.

The latest land and power battle is over father and son ranchers in Oregon by the name of Hammond who are going to jail on an arson charge this week. In 2002 and 2006, these ranchers decided to clear some brush and overgrowth on their ranch landby conducting a controlled burn, a very common activity in large areas such as their ranch in Oregon. The fire accidentally spread onto federal lands but was put out by the ranchers without any help from the feds. However, the Federalgovernment still charged the ranchers with arson and are determined to jail them for 5 years each. Incidentally, the Federal land is flourishing, is now less of a wild fire hazard, and no properties were damaged in the incident.

The Constitutional attorney in the following video cites the Hammond case, but then goes on to instruct us on why it is only a small part of the huge overreach of the Federal government, as shown by the Constitutional limitations that the Federalgovernment has been ignoring.

Oregon Case is Tip of the Ice Berg

The following video should be seen by every person who is concerned with the power of the federal government in each of our lives. It clearly shows that we are being swamped by policies, procedures, and actions that are clearly unconstitutional, and that our way of government, as established by the founding fathers, is slipping away.

This video should be shown to every high school civics class in the nation. Unfortunately, the schools are now under the federal Department of Education, so you can bet it will be the last thing the kids are shown. But it is a clarion call to help educate us regarding the reach of the Federal government.

Armed group takes over Oregon wildlife refuge building - CNN.com

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www.oregonlive.com

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One of them is Ammon Bundy, the 40-year-old son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who is well-known for anti-government action.

He spoke by phone to CNN Sunday morning. Asked several times what he and those with him want, he answered in vague terms, saying that they want the federal government to restore the "people's constitutional rights."

"This refuge -- it has been destructive to the people of the county and to the people of the area," he said.

"People need to be aware that we've become a system where government is actually claiming and using and defending people's rights, and they are doing that against the people."

The group is occupying part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns after gathering outside for a demonstration supporting Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son ranchers who were convicted of arson.

Prosecutors said the Hammonds set a fire that burned about 130 acres in 2001, to cover up poaching. They were sentenced to five years in prison.

The Hammonds, who are set to turn themselves in Monday afternoon, have said they set the fire to reduce the growth of invasive plants and to protect their property from wildfires, CNN affiliate KTVZ reported.

The Hammonds have been clear in that they don't want help from the Bundy group.

"Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family," the Hammonds' attorney W. Alan Schroeder wrote to Harney County Sheriff David Ward.

CNN law enforcement analyst Art Roderick, a retired U.S. marshal who investigated anti-government militias for years, warned that Bundy's call for supporters to join him might "turn into a bad situation."

"What's going to happen hopefully (is) ... we don't go out there with a big force, because that's what they're looking for," he said. "The last thing we need is some type of confrontation."

He said that over the years, law enforcement has learned how to handle a situation like this; one that hasn't erupted in violence and in which a law may be broken, but there's no immediate threat to anyone's life.

The best approach now, Roderick said, is to wait the group out and to figure out how to bring a peaceful end to the standoff.

'We are not terrorists'

After the march Saturday, the armed protesters broke into the refuge's unoccupied building and refused to leave. Officials have said there are no government employees in the building.

"We will be here as long as it takes," Bundy said. "We have no intentions of using force upon anyone, (but) if force is used against us, we would defend ourselves."

Ammon Bundy said that the group in Oregon was armed, but that he would not describe it as a militia. He declined to say how many people were with him, telling CNN on Sunday that giving that information might jeopardize "operational security."

The elder Bundy drew national attention last year after staging a standoff with federal authorities over a Bureau of Land Management dispute.

"We are not terrorists," Ammon Bundy said. "We are concerned citizens and realize we have to act if we want to pass along anything to our children."

He wouldn't call his group a militia, but others are.

"I don't like the militia's methods," local resident Monica McCannon told KTVZ. "They had their rally. Now it's time for them to go home. People are afraid of them."

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative said the agency and the Bureau of Land Management are aware of the armed protesters.

"While the situation is ongoing, the main concern is employee safety, and we can confirm that no federal staff were in the building at the time of the initial incident," the representative said. "We will continue to monitor the situation."

What the protesters want

When asked what it would take for the protesters to leave, Bundy did not offer specifics. He said he and those with him are prepared to stay put for days or weeks.

"We feel that we will occupy this as long as necessary," he said.

"We are using the wildlife refuge as a place for individuals across the United States to come and assist in helping the people of Harney County claim back their lands and resources," he said.

"The people will need to be able to use the land and resources without fear as free men and women. We know it will take some time."

He did not explicitly call on authorities to commute the prison sentences for the Hammonds, but he said their case illustrates officials' "abuse" of power.

"Now that people such as the Hammonds are taking a stand and not selling their ranches, they are being prosecuted in their own courts as terrorists and putting them in prison for five years," Bundy said.

He said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has taken over the space of 100 ranches since the early 1900s.

"They are continuing to expand the refuge at the expense of the ranchers and miners," Bundy said.

He also said Harney County, in southeastern Oregon, went from one of the state's wealthiest counties to one of the poorest.

CNN has not independently corroborated Bundy's claims.

"I want to emphasis that the American people are wondering why they can't seem to get ahead or why everything is costing more and you are getting less, and that is because the federal government is taking and using the land and resources," Bundy said.

"And if it is continued, it will put the people in poverty."

What the feds say

Acting U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams of Oregon gave a starkly different perspective on the arson case.

His office declined to comment on the situation at the wildlife refuge Saturday, but it cited an opinion piece written by Williams in the Burns Times Herald last month defending the federal prosecutors' actions in the Hammonds case.

"Five years ago, a federal grand jury charged Dwight and Steven Hammond with committing arson on public lands and endangering firefighters," Williams wrote for the newspaper. "Steven Hammond was also found guilty of committing a second arson in 2006."

The prosecutor said witnesses saw the Hammonds illegally slaughter a herd of deer on public land.

"At least seven deer were shot with others limping or running from the scene," Williams wrote.

He said a teenage relative of the Hammonds testified that Steven Hammond gave him a box of matches and told him to start the blaze. "The fires destroyed evidence of the deer slaughter and took about 130 acres of public land out of public use for two years," the prosecutor wrote.

Williams also disputed the notion that the Hammonds were prosecuted as terrorists, as Bundy suggested.

"The jury was neither asked if the Hammonds were terrorists, nor were defendants ever charged with or accused of terrorism," Williams wrote. "Suggesting otherwise is simply flat-out wrong."

CNN's Holly Yan, Evan Perez, Kevin Liptak, Kevin Bohn and Jackie Castillo contributed to this report.

Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters

www.oregonlive.com

Update at 9:15 p.m.: Statement from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward: "After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation."

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night, Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.

"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

Neither man would say how many people are in the building or whether they are armed. Ryan Bundy said there were no hostages, but the group is demanding that the Hammonds be released and the federal government relinquish control of the Malheur National Forest.

He said many would be willing to fight — and die, if necessary — to defend what they see as constitutionally protected rights for states, counties and individuals to manage local lands. 

"The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control," he said. "What we're doing is not rebellious. What we're doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land." 

Government sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the militia also was planning to occupy a closed wildland fire station near the town of Frenchglen. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management posts crews there during the fire season.

Law enforcement officials so far have not commented on the situation. Oregon State Police, the Harney County Sheriff's Office and the FBI were involved.

Ammon Bundy posted a video on his Facebook page calling on patriots from across the country to report to the refuge – with their weapons.

Pennies In Protest Marchers pause outside the entrance to the Harney County Sheriff's Office to toss pennies. The coins were meant to symbolize citizens buying back their government

The dramatic turn came after other militia groups had tried to dampen community concerns they meant trouble.

Brandon Curtiss, a militia leader from Idaho,