In Burns, ‘militia’ has friends, critics

BURNS — Harney County Sheriff David Ward has said they are no longer welcome here.

Armed militia members, who call themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and who seized control of public buildings this past weekend at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 30 miles south of here, should go back to wherever they came from.

Back to Nevada and Arizona. Back to Idaho and Montana.

But many in rural Harney County, Oregon’s largest but also one of its most sparsely populated counties, say they are glad that brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and others in the group of about 20 are here.

“I think they stand for a good cause,” said Linda Gainer, co-owner of The Narrows, a cafe/general store south of Burns and just a few miles north of the refuge, standing behind her counter on Tuesday afternoon. “Our constitutional rights are being destroyed. I’m not going to say I totally agree with the way they did it, but I agree with what they stand for.”

Area residents will get their chance to say more about how they feel during a town hall meeting at the Harney County Fairgrounds in Burns on Wednesday afternoon. The Harney County Sheriff’s Office is hosting the meeting to discuss safety concerns and what it says are “disruptions caused by the behavior” of those at the wildlife refuge headquarters, where a small herd of national media has been camping out since the self-styled militia arrived on Saturday night.

Ryan Bundy, 43, standing on the snowy grounds outside one of the refuge buildings with a couple of other cowboy-hat-wearing militia members on Tuesday, declared, “We’re here to help the people of Harney County reclaim their rights. Our goal is to restore and defend the Constitution.”

Bundy and his brother hail from Southern Nevada and are the sons of Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff there with the government over cattle-grazing rights on federally owned land.

The developments in Oregon emerged Saturday, after about 150 people protested in Burns over the news that local ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son, Steven Hammond, 46, were being ordered back to prison. The father and son were convicted of arson in 2012 for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, prosecutors said. The elder Hammond served three months and his son one year.

U.S District Court Judge Ann Aiken sentenced them in Eugene in October to an additional four years in prison, in keeping with federal sentencing guidelines, according to the state Department of Justice.

The Hammonds, who according to The Associated Press have distanced themselves from the militia group, turned themselves in to authorities on Monday.

“I really wish they wouldn’t have reported (to authorities),” said Ryan Bundy, a sheathed pistol on his hip, about the Hammonds. “I wish they were here with us.”

The Bundys and other militia members say that, according to their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has no right to own land in Oregon except for military purposes.

The refuge “does not belong to the U.S. government, so it doesn’t exist in reality,” Bundy said.

The story has garnered national attention and dominated social media sites in recent days.

Many have made fun of the group’s occupation of the refuge headquarters, drawing comparisons to the Islamic State’s terrorism in the Middle East, and creating hashtags with names such as #VanillaISIS, #YeeHawd and #YallQaeda.

A convert

Wade Fagen of Bend decided to find out Tuesday what all the fuss was about, driving through a snowstorm for about 130 miles on Highway 20 all the way to Burns, then the 30 miles south to the refuge.

Fagen said he wasn’t sure what he would find but added that he came looking “for the truth, for justice; to see if what the situation they’re going through parallels what I’ve gone through.”

The 52-year-old said he is an arborist who got pushed out of the logging business in his 20s because of the spotted owl controversy. The bird gained protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1990, significantly reducing old growth logging in the Northwest.

Dressed in a Navy blue Bend (High School) Lava Bears jacket, Fagen said some in Bend told him not to come.

“Oh, don’t go there,” they said. “Those people are crazies!”

But after the militia’s daily 11 a.m. press conference with the media, Fagen wandered past the pickup trucks blocking the road that descends to the refuge’s big-brick buildings and found himself chatting enthusiastically with Ryan Bundy and LaVoy Finicum, an Arizona rancher who has publicly stated that he’s no longer paying federal grazing fees there.

“I didn’t know what I’d find,” Fagen said. “I didn’t know if I’d find hoodlums with guns.”

He was somewhat taken aback by how receptive he found the militia members to be.

“Sometimes you learn the damndest things by doing the damndest things,” Fagen said.

And now?

“I’m very pro-militia now,” he said with a grin.

Others, not so much.

Business is booming

A few red signs placed along Highway 20 leading into Burns read: “No Bundy Caliphate in Harney County: Take Your Hate Somewhere Else!” — another reference to the Islamic State.

Ryan Bundy on Tuesday echoed his brother’s recent statements, saying the group is determined to stay there until the 300-square-mile refuge — created in 1908 as a wild bird preserve in a proclamation by President Theodore Roosevelt — is turned over “to the people of the county,” even if it takes several months.

Bundy said the land “should be controlled by the government closest to the people, which is the county,” to allow for cattle grazing, mineral and logging rights.

Gainer, the cafe and general store owner, said her business has been booming recently because of the militia members and the media who have arrived to cover them.

However, she also said she has grown exasperated with the nasty phone calls and rude emails that her business has received, some from as far away as Pennsylvania.

“Some of them are chicken poops,” she said of certain email writers, “because they don’t say (who they are).”

Gainer, who owns the cafe and store with her husband, Ron Gainer, said she knows the Hammonds.

“I think they paid their fine the first time,” she said. “I think it was pretty sucky for them to have to go back (to prison). They’re good people. Very hard-working.”

Some local residents agree with Sheriff Ward, Gainer said, that the militia members need to go home.

But many who support the group being here “are afraid to say anything” because they have grazing permits with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Gainer said.

Roxanna Baldwin, who came in to the cafe before heading back to her nearby 329-acre ranch that skirts the massive refuge to tend to a sick cow named Freckles, said she, too, has known the Hammonds for years and thinks they got a bad deal. And she also supports the militia.

“I do,” she said. “I believe in it.”