BURNS, Ore. — “We want the long guns put away,” said LaVoy Finicum this weekend.
Finicum, one of the original number at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, was explaining why he and fellow standoffers said thanks but no thanks to a convoy of much more hardcore militia that showed up with military style uniforms, armor and weapons Saturday.
Ammon Bundy’s group has ebbed and flowed over the occupation now entering its 10th day, with supporters coming and going, sometimes staying at the Refuge buildings, sometimes staying elsewhere, including at hotels in town, just down the hall from federal law enforcement agents.
The Bundy group has been unusually sensitive, for armed standoffers, to public perception. Struggling for a way to describe the group, with their mix of cowboy swagger and PR sensitivity, USA Today coined the term “new age militia.” They have invited the public to visit the occupation site and continue to welcome all comers, from curious folks to journalists to politicians.
Bundy and company want people to come tour the grounds and facilities and ask questions and listen to their message about tyrannical federal mismanagement of vast tracts of land in the West.
Most of the occupiers are armed, with sidearms, but they don’t make much of a show of it. They certainly don’t brandish those guns like the new visitors on Saturday did.
Todd MacFarlane, a lawyer working with the occupiers to help resolve the conflict, told Reuters they had turned back the convoy over concerns “about the perception the armed visitors conveyed.”
The Washington Examiner found locals to be annoyed with the occupiers and embarrassed with all the press coverage they are garnering for the sparsely populated county, but generally unafraid of them.
School was closed last week as a safety measure. Students will be hitting the books again come Monday morning.
The FBI has taken a low key role in the conflict, so far. The agency’s reported base of operations is the Burns Municipal Airport, which should give some clue what the government is planning if a peaceful resolution cannot be reached.
Given the layout of the Refuge buildings, including high visibility on three sides, an observation tower and easily choked access points; the fact that the occupiers are armed and have professed a willingness to shoot it out, if necessary; and the ongoing presence of members of the public and journalists, the best bet for a low casualty assault would be by an air drop, at night.
But almost everyone who has spoken, on or off the record and for either side, has said they devoutly hope to avoid a bloody conflict. The actions of Harney County Sheriff David Ward generally and the Bundy group Saturday, put the truth to those claims.
Generally, Republicans have expressed sympathy for the standoffers’ cause but revulsion for their methods.
Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz begged them “stand down peaceably.” Donald Trump said he’d handle the problem like so: “I’d talk to the leader. I would talk to him and I would say ‘You gotta get out — come see me, but you gotta get out.'”
Yet not all conservatives, elected or otherwise, have been so quick to condemn the standoffers.
Take Raul Labrador, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from nearby Idaho who did not support Bundy patriarch Cliven’s run-in with the federal government two years ago. This time around, he’s more conflicted.
Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event last week, Labrador called the sentences meted out to ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond that started this whole episode “unjust”; he emphasized the peaceful nature of the takeover; and he called the occupation “civil disobedience.” This time, with guns.
Will any of this new attention translate to a larger movement or public policy changes? Deana Rohlinger, a sociologist from Florida State, thinks it might.
She points out in Fortune that occupy movements, armed or otherwise, have led to serious changes in American politics.
“The Occupation of Alcatraz Island for 19 months by Native Americans in 1969 caused President Nixon to concede that ‘the time has come … for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions,” Rohlinger writes.
That and other staged occupations by American Indians resulted in “millions of acres of land [being] returned to them and the U.S. government pass[ing] dozens of proposals supporting tribal self-rule.”
And just try to imagine the Bernie Sanders campaign giving Hillary Clinton any trouble whatsoever without Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy movements often annoy the public and public officials, says Rohlinger, but that’s part of the point: to become the proverbial squeaky wheel and leverage that annoyance.
