Sojourner Truth Radio

Activists and co-founders of the Shawnee Forest Defense John Wallace and Karen Frailey join host Margaret Prescod for the hour to discuss recent developments in their campaign towards making the Shawnee Forest a national park and climate preserve. The Shawnee National Forest is located in Southern Illinois. The Shawnee National Forest encompasses a 289,000 acre area in southern Illinois stretching from the Mississippi River to the Ohio River which contains some of the most ecologically bio-diverse areas in the United States. Three decades ago, in the summer of 1990, activists from Earth First! occupied the Fairview Timber sale site in the Shawnee Forest which is located in Southern Illinois for 79 days — using their bodies to block the logging equipment and using legal strategies to challenge the harvesting of the lumber in court. This historic action has come to be known as the Shawnee Showdown. This relatively small group of activists were successful in stopping commercial logging in the Shawnee Natio