Activist Learns About the Hard Cell

The way Melissa Rodriguez explains it, they just wanted to deliver a message that it’s not right to cut down old oaks and alter the landscape just to build some houses. And what better way to make the point than to demonstrate in front of the Newport Beach home of the company executive in charge of the project?

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now, a week later, Rodriguez, 23, is still a bit shaken by a plan gone awry -- a plan that ended with 16 arrests and with seven of those, including Rodriguez, still facing possible vandalism charges.

Someone apparently forgot to tell her that this environmental activism business can get rough. And the other side does take prisoners.

It wasn’t that way earlier this year when she and some cohorts demonstrated in front of Irvine Co. headquarters to protest a proposed development in east Orange. At that one, some protesters disguised themselves as trees, other as bulldozers and one in a tuxedo to represent company head Donald Bren. Even people in Hummers drove by and honked in support, she says.

Then came the night of Aug. 21, when about 30 people led by Rodriguez went to the home of David Eadie, an executive with Rutter Development Co. of Irvine. Unhappy with the company’s plan to build 160 homes near Cleveland National Forest -- while chopping down an estimated 500 oak trees and rearranging the landscape -- Rodriguez mobilized.

She says the group arrived outside Eadie’s home about 8 p.m. From that point on, her version of events and that of Newport Beach police diverge radically. Rodriguez says neighbors and then police got aggressive quickly and “chaos broke loose.” Police spokesman Sgt. Steve Shulman said the protesters were the aggressors and “surrounded the residence, pounded the walls and broke windows and when police arrived, they ran.”

The Orange County district attorney’s office will now decide whether to charge the seven.

What I wanted to know from Rodriguez is whether she got more than she bargained for.

“Generally, when you do a demonstration, it’s fun and exciting,” she says. “It’s something you feel so passionate about, you get to talk to people about it. You do spirited chants, have signs and put a lot of effort into it. Usually, it’s upbeat.”

But this time? “When you go into a ritzy neighborhood, we expect them not to be very nice to us,” she says. “But we had tons of fliers and wanted [Eadie’s neighbors] to know what was happening [with the project]. A lot of them would jump on the cause if they knew what was happening.”

Rodriguez, who says she formed a local EarthFirst! chapter a year ago and has been harassed by the FBI in recent months, insists that the group’s intention wasn’t violence. She won’t comment on the vandalism accusation but says, “The idea of breaking anything or endangering anyone, that’s not part of this chapter. And never has been.”

To which Shulman replies: “It might not have been her plan, but it certainly was the plan of those who got arrested.”

Rodriguez spent a day in jail, and she didn’t like it. “I’m not whining,” she says. “If I have to go do a peaceful protest and that alone gets me in jail, I will do something like that. What bothers me is going to jail for something I didn’t do and for the last year having to deal with repression for speaking out.”

Environmental protection is something worth fighting for, she says, but I get the feeling that the jail stint left her with a bad vibe.

With that in mind, I ask what her plans are.

“I might go to law school,” she says. “That might be my direction. But it’s too soon to tell.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.