Only a
handful of occupiers remained at the bird sanctuary Thursday morning when the Pacific Patriot Network issued its call for support. The group's members had helped persuade Patrick to leave the refuge, said Joseph Rice, a founding member from Grants Pass. The FBI had assured them that Patrick would be given safe passage out of the area, Rice said Wednesday night. He described the FBI taking Patrick into custody at a nearby checkpoint as a betrayal.
On Thursday morning, BJ Soper, a founding member of the group from Redmond, echoed the sentiment on Facebook and called for a dramatic response. "The events of the last few days in burns have culminated into a lot of massive frustration and anger," Soper wrote. "The lies and mistrust used to arrest Jason Patrick last night were dirty and caused any trust left in the tank with the fbi to be lost," he said. Soper called for thousands of people to converge on Burns peacefully to tell the FBI to leave.