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Law student Courtney Brown told the packed EMU ballroom last Thursday that she thought Julia Butterfly Hill was "otherworldly." Yet from the moment she delicately stepped onto the stage with her bare feet, Hill seemed to be pleading with the Eugene audience to see her as a regular person. "I'm just a human being," she repeated from the stage in a speech that focused on honoring diversity in the environmental movement. She seemed to be warding off the kind of confrontation that marred her speech at last year's conference, when hecklers interrupted and accused her of selling out. "We're not isolated. We're a unit and we're powerful," Hill says, adding that activists should react to differences by asking, "What perspective does that person bring that I don't have?" Her keynote may have gone off quietly, but a handful of activists confronted her outside the bathroom after the speech. One young woman angrily criticized her for charging money to speak (she was not paid for her talks in Eugene). Another wondered why she refused to align herself with Earth First!, the group responsible for initiating the Luna tree sit. Hill tearfully responded that the accusations were "very hurtful," and continued to be one of the most painful aspects of her work. "How can we stop nitpicking each other?" she asked the small throng. "I always honor activists," she said. "I honor the fact that they give a damn." In an interview the next day, Hill said she had prayed for the hostile woman before going to bed and again when she woke up. "Her energy was so combative. She's got a lot of power. Wouldn't it be phenomenal if she chose to use that power in another way? If she could have shared her concerns from a place of respect, she would be heard by people who don't already believe what she has to say." Hill said that when the conference organizers asked her to come back this year, she didn't hesitate. She commended L.A.W. for signaling to the hecklers that they couldn't beat someone into not coming back. "Being here was to put myself in a vulnerable position. But I think the Law Conference is important. I'm not going to act out of fear." She gestured down the crowded hallway of the Knight Law School. "If that woman last night knew what half these people were doing, she'd be attacking them the same way. Because I'm a public figure, she feels compelled to address me." Hill has drawn widespread criticism for her appearances in the mainstream media and her collaboration in a payment of $50,000 to Pacific Lumber/Maxaam to spare Luna, the tree she occupied for two years. She knew everyone at the conference would be fixated on last year's clash. It was ironic, she says, that the hecklers turned the attention away from the conference and onto her. "It just fed into the whole media frenzy they say they hate. I told them, 'Now the only thing the press is going to focus on is what you did to me last night.'" But she said what stood out from this year's conference wasn't the conflict -- it was watching the organizers witness the results of their hard work. "To see the looks on their faces when they watch people get inspired -- it's beautiful." Her icon status has given her access to forums where there otherwise wouldn't be a grassroots voice, she says, but she often wishes she were not in the public eye. "The only reason I do it is because I feel compelled to. There was a split in the road, where I knew I could stay the timid, shy Julia, or I could become this woman held up for attack and ridicule. It was a tool and a toolbox offered to me, and I took it." -- Kristina Johnson Back to Environmental Law Conference Index Eugene
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