(((I’m in the anti-poverty world of liberal activism, fyi)))

It’s no great surprise that tree activists equate trees with humans. Very real genocide is going on against trees. They don’t want any more trees to fall. I don’t really want them to, either. We’ve paved more than enough land in the world to house all the humans and all the commerce we might want, so long as we’re willing to tear up old pavement and start over again. there is no reason for another tree to ever fall down.

But here’s the heart of your point:
“What I’m suggesting is that the tree-siters give up their threats and position for money and influence. Everybody wins, noone gets hurt, the building goes up in a legal way, and the tree sitters win a moral victory.”

One, I doubt they want money and influence. They want to save the freaking trees, right? And if they are showing an enduring campaign, it’s because people like sustaining the ACTION. Believe me, all the supporters will fade away as soon as boring negotiations start. They have power there.

and as soon as they become “part of the process” they’ll be impotent. Believe me. They best they will be able to do is sit in at meetings and be slightly annoying. From that point, it’s done. They’ll have no clout. Their base will drift away. They could easily not save a single tree.

If these activists are anything like activists I know, then there are two things going on here that you might not understand:
1) there’s no real organization. This is just a cause that’s gotten hot. When it goes away, all the structure around it will probably go away too, which means that any sort of long-term place at the table is pretty undesirable and won’t do anyone any good. In fact, even if they won’t admit this out loud, it’s probably true and their smarter members probably know it.
2) Particularly in light of #1, they won’t won’t want a moral victory. They will want to save some trees.

My guess is that they could really care less about the legal framework or freedom of speech or who’s got a right on paper to what. They care about trees. Trees don’t move easily, and if they are any sort of habitat, their dependent species REALLY don’t move easily.

I say, more power to them. We’ve killed way too many trees in this world already. It’s sad that we have to worry about saving a random set of man planted trees, anyway, since trees alone are a shadow of what trees used to represent: wild spaces. forests. real ecosystems.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric people have to use to get motivated for such a protest is one which admits no compromise, and it’s nigh impossible to stop that once it’s started. If the leaders of the tree-sitters agreed to some negotiation, the more radical members would simply brand them traitors and refuse to leave.

Mark my words: this is inevitably going to end in a violent incident.