May I recommend a TV program? "The Fire Next Time"

[Bluebear]

It's a PBS: P.O.V. documentary. It is airing in about ten minutes here on the "World" channel if you have cable.

'The people of the Flathead Valley in Montana were used to thinking they live in "the last best place in America." Kalispell, the county seat and valley's largest town, means "prairie above the lake." But as revealed by Patrice O'Neill's new film, "The Fire Next Time," the last best place may become the next worst flashpoint in the country's running battle between the forces of economic development, environmental activism, and anti-government extremism.

Green swastikas were burned to protest environmental laws. A radio talk show host regularly called for the "eradication" of "green slime" while broadcasting the addresses of local environmental activists. Lug nuts were loosened on a car belonging to an anti-hate campaigner's daughter. While loggers and mill workers were facing lost jobs and rising living costs, right-wing extremists plied them with racist and anti-government rhetoric. Most ominously — in news that flashed across the nation and even around the world — a shadowy terror group called Project 7 was discovered with a cache of arms and a hit list of local government officials, police officers and their families.

It was the unmistakably rising tension in the town that led ex-police officer Brenda Kitterman to invite The Working Group to bring its grassroots anti-hate program, Not in Our Town, to Flathead Valley. Ever since the broadcast of its 1995 film, Not in Our Town, about the response of Billings, Montana, to a rash of hate crimes, The Working Group has been helping local communities deal with intolerance and violence by holding film screenings and community discussions. When O'Neill and crew got to Kalispell, however, they realized they had landed in the midst of a conflict too complex to be comprehended, much less soothed, by a few community meetings.

The Working Group ended up staying two years, earning the trust — or at least the willingness to speak candidly on camera — of antagonists on all sides of the Flathead Valley land wars, while documenting the valley's increasingly tense web of conflict, intimidation and public invective. From the outset, the filmmakers show they are not "strike a match" documentary makers. Far from heating up the action for dramatic effect, the filmmakers aim for the drama of a community seeking to restore its sense of kinship in the face of mounting stresses from within and without. In "The Fire Next Time," they appear to have crafted the rare documentary that widens communication — with signal exceptions — between declared enemies.'

[skids]

1. P.O.V. has been very good lately.

"Streetfight" was awesome. This one was good too. Put it on your TV viewing schedule if you have one.

[Lisa]

2. thanks for the heads-up!

I teach a college course that looks at the relationships between resource development and conflict. We've seen a bit of how environmental issues can get highly complex and politicized, up here in BC -- but this film sounds like it did an extraordinary job of examining the issues behind the "land wars".