More on the planned EF! protest today...

On Wednesday, 12/10, I posted some remarks on the Everglades EarthFirst! (EF) protest in Palm Beach Gardens later today (Friday). You can read that post here. Here is an image from EF promoting the event:

EF themselves promoted today's protest as a fun affair and encouraged entertainers and revelers to attend. Now things have taken a turn. The protest today by EF will likely be a contentious event and probably include some civil disobedience. If you were considering attending the protest, you might want to reconsider.

On Wednesday EF posted this story. In the first photograph you see EF leader Panagioti Tsolkas in the baseball cap. In another photograph they allegedly show an EF member trespassing on the Briger Tract. 

This is where "Fire Ant" at the Broward New Times becomes a significant character in the protest today by Panagioti Tsolkas and EF. On June 26, 2014 Fire Ant wrote the following article, Anarchists Claim Sabotage of Scripps Development: "We Spiked the Trees in the Briger Forest".

From the article:

In an effort to sabotage development of Briger Forest, the last major tract of undeveloped land along I-95 in Palm Beach County, an anonymous band of self-described anarchists claims to have booby-trapped "countless trees" in the area and to have vandalized the work of surveyors.

[and later...]

The tactic purportedly used in Briger, "tree spiking," involves hammering nails or metal rods into trees, either at the base, to damage chainsaws, or higher up, where they will destroy saw-mill equipment.

Tree spiking has been controversial even within anarchist circles and has been specifically targeted by federal law.

EF just happens to be an organization that promotes the Anarchist political philosophy. Now imagine for a moment you are the police chief for Palm Beach Gardens, charged with protecting citizens and property within your city. You know EF members are Anarchists, Fire Ant wrote about Anarchists spiking trees which is an act of ecoterrorism, and EF is engaged in stopping 'destruction' of the Briger 'forest'. If you were in charge of the safety of a community would you be concerned about EF? Now add this information from Activist Facts. 

Let us revisit the post by EF I referenced above. In the very first sentence they write, "On Friday, December 5, over 50 activists gathered for a rally outside of the Briger Forest in Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens." The Palm Beach Post reported there were, "about 35". EF wrote, "Palm Beach Gardens police—many undercover—surrounded the protest, blocked traffic, followed vehicles, covertly filmed protesters, prohibited participants from accessing public roads, and used loudspeakers to shout their opinions and drown out the chants of the crowd." Here is the video from Channel 12 (WPEC). Do you see any evidence of such police activity? If there was, wouldn't Ch12 Chuck Weber mention something about that?

EF then refers to a 'preface' (which is not readily available that I could find) where they state, “this tactic [tree spiking] is not one that Everglades Earth First! would engage in.”

Just by coincidence I ran across this flyer in downtown Lake Worth in mid-October. Would this be a training session for EF and what we might expect later on today?