From: [email protected] Subject: Pilgrim Family Emergency Airlift American Land Rights Association PO Box 400 – Battle Ground, WA 98604 Phone: 360-687-3087 – Fax: 360-687-2973 – E-mail: [email protected] Web Address: http://www.landrights.org Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE – Washington, DC 20003 Phone: 202-210-2357 – Fax: 202-543-7126 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 3, 2003 EMERGENCY AIRLIFT FOR PILGRIM FAMILY BLOCKADED BY PARK SERVICE IN McCARTHY TO OCCUR ON OCTOBER 11/12 The National Park Service blockade of the Pilgrim Family and their animals continues in McCarthy in the heart of the Wrangell St Elias National Park and Preserve. After closing the only road to their property in April, the National Park Service refused to consider the situation an emergency and is insisting on continuing a protracted bureaucratic permitting process that has stalled the Pilgrims’ request for access all summer (10/1- letter from National Park Service regional director Marcia Blaszak). Winter is near and the situation is becoming dire. The American Land Rights Association is assisting a committee of Alaskans in organizing an emergency relief airlift of critical supplies, including food, clothing, medicines, money, feed and materials. A drive for donations and volunteers will begin immediately to collect resources for transfer to the marooned Pilgrim homestead located 13 miles up McCarthy Creek from the village of McCarthy. The Berlin Airlift in 1948 was America’s response to a Soviet blockade of free Berlin. A totalitarian top down command and control regime tried to starve out the citizens of Berlin after World War Two. The Soviets closed the roads, cut the railroad tracks and all other means of ground access. Heavily armed military guarded the access routes into Berlin. They could not shut down airplane flights. For many months America and other countries joined to keep a starving city alive and supplied with food, fuel and other needs. So now it is time for the citizens of America and especially Alaska to rise up again against a top down command and control heavy handed bureaucracy, the National Park Service, and keep the Pilgrim Family and their animals from being starved out in the Wrangell St Elias National Park and Preserve. As in Berlin, heavily armed Park Service personnel dressed like a S.W.A.T. team are preventing access for the Pilgrims. Access would be available if not for the Park Service blockade of a designated RS 2477 Right of Way that is also protected under the terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). The Pilgrim Family Airlift will take place Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12. Supplies, including food, money, and materials, will be gathered at four locations -- Fairbanks, Wasilla, Anchorage and Glennallen-Copper Center -- by Thursday, October 9th. They will then be trucked to McCarthy. The Pilgrim Family Airlift will begin on Saturday, October 11th. Volunteer pilots are needed to ferry the flyable supplies into the Pilgrim Family Marvelous Millsite in upper McCarthy Creek valley. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY AND WE CAN’T POSSIBLY GET ALL THE SUPPLIES THAT ARE NEEDED IN WITH THIS AIRLIFT. THAT CAN ONLY COME WITH THE PARK SERVICE COMING TO THEIR SENSES AND STOPPING THIS HEARTLESS WAR AGAINST THIS FAMILY. This is a massive effort to relieve a family in distress in respond to a National Park Service-caused and instigated crisis. THE COMMITTEE Rick Kenyon, pastor, McCarthy-Kennicott Community Church (also the editor of the local Wrangell-St Elias News) 554-4454 Laurie Rowland, McCarthy, 554-4498 Kathy Stratton, Glennallen, 822-5545 Clarence Catledge, pastor, Copper Basin Assembly of God, 822-5523 Dan & Pat Sentz, Wasilla, 376-4574 Ray Kreig, Anchorage, 276-2025 Lee Ann Gerhart, Anchorage, 243-8951 Warren Smith, Fairbanks, 456-3733 MORE INFORMATION See: http://www.landrights.org/ak Chuck Cushman, Executive Director, American Land Rights Association PO Box 400 – Battle Ground, WA 98604 Phone: 360-687-3087 – Fax: 360-687-2973 – E-mail: [email protected] Web Address: http://www.landrights.org Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE – Washington, DC 20003 Phone: 202-210-2357 – Fax: 202-543-7126 – E-mail: [email protected] -- To unsubscribe from this mailing list; please visit http://governance.net and enter your email address.