This article by Paul K. Haeder appeared in the Oregon Coast Today on October 14th, 2019.

— We meet at Oceana Natural Foods Co-op. Maria Sause will turn 77 December 9. Her face reflects five or six iterations of her life’s journey.

Just four days 80 years ago could have changed this interview – she might not have been conceived and born. Maria’s father Franta (Francisco) left Czechoslovakia a scant 96 hours after Nazi Germany took over her parents’ homeland.

The Czech family line, originally Kraus, goes way back: “I just got in touch with a second cousin two years ago who has completed the family tree. The Kraus family goes back to the late 1700s in Czechoslovakia.”

I’m with Maria on a warm Sunday, ready to feature her life — amazing intellectual and creative journeys she’s taken having been born in Chile in 1942 and her own family’s powerful narrative of survival.

I am also scrambling to get some ink down concerning the Lincoln County Community Rights’ “loss” in state court after being successful with a countywide aerial herbicide ban on forestland, AKA, clear-cuts. The short-lived ban was the first in the country won by popular vote.

On September 23, Judge Sheryl Bachart issued her ruling that Measure 21-177 is invalid based on state law regulating pesticide use. That measure (for the ban) was voted on by citizens in 2017, okaying the prohibition of aerial spraying of all pesticides.

“The fight for our legal, constitutional and fundamental right of local self-government marches on,” said Rio Davidson, president of Lincoln County Community Rights, “and it is going to take the political will of the people to make it a reality if we ever want to stop living under the thumb of corporate government.”

LCCR is now in overdrive, setting up town hall meetings to strategize to fight the judge’s reversal. For people like Maria, this is a huge blow to her community and to her concept of democracy.

“Pre-emption laws are made whenever government and industry see the people are rising up against their projects,” she said. “A government that protects industry at a higher level than it protects the safety of the people is unconstitutional.”

(To read the rest of this article at the Oregon Coast Today please click HERE.)