Our Changing Climate
An Our Changing Climate podcast examining climate news, political events, and history from an ecosocialist and anti-captalist perspective. I dive into everything from the Earth Liberation Front, our food system, AI, ecosocialism, marxism, and more!
For more in-depth analysis and show notes, check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OurChangingClimate
Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/OurChangingClimate
Our Changing Climate
The Environmentalists Who Destroyed $100,000,000 - ELF Part 1
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This podcast is best in video form! You can watch this one and 200+ more on the Our Changing Climate YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OurChangingClimate
This is part one of a three-part series.
This Our Changing Climate documentary series examines the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Earth Liberation Front. Part One explores how a small group of environmental radicals shook industrial America to its core with acts of ecological sabotage.
Help me make more podcasts like this by supporting Our Changing Climate on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OurChangingClimate
I *highly* recommend checking out the Green and Red Podcast’s two interviews with Daniel McGowan. They were crucial for researching this series:
1. From Environmentalist to "Domestic Terrorist" with former Earth Liberation member Daniel McGowan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0VII4tdNBg
2. Dousing the BBC's Fake News Before It Can "Burn Wild" w/ Former ELF Member Daniel McGowan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU8tzy0v2gk
I would also recommend watching Marshall Curry’s documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front: https://youtu.be/qwQoi0DoOKM?si=BNZLTdRVQfVNif5s
Further Reading, Resources, and Show Notes: https://ourchangingclimate.notion.site/The-Earth-Liberation-Front-Part-One-30d3e9ecd9cb806985e1da54474a9597?source=copy_link
_______________________
Email List: https://ourchangingclimateocc.substack.com/
Bluesky: http://ourchangingclimate.bsky.social/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/occvideos/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/occ.climate/
Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/OurChangingClimate/
_______________________
For music, I use Artlist. You can get 2 months free with this link: https://artlist.io/artlist-70446/?artlist_aid=occ_2345&utm_source=affiliate_p&utm_medium=occ_2345&utm_campaign=occ_2345
I also use Epidemic Sound for some of my music: http://epidemicsound.com/creator
Support Our Changing Climate on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/c/OurChangingClimate
It's 2 a.m. on October 19, 1998, and a man nicknamed Avalon, a wilderness guide, environmental educator, and a lover of nature, is about to burn down a ski resort. He and his co-septor Country Girl drive through a snowstorm up winding switchbacks to the ridgeline of the Vale Ski Resort in Colorado. Their truck briefly stalls along the snow-covered slope, but soon they make it to their first stop, the nook where they stashed the fuel canisters the day before. On top of the mountain, snow blankets the peas. All is quiet. As dawn approaches, Country Girl drops Avalon off at the ridgeline, then makes her way down the mountain to a nearby park for a quick getaway. Meanwhile, Avalon gets to work. He scoops up the incendiary devices and jogs his way along the mountain. Peeking his head into each structure to make sure no one is inside, Avalon sets fire to a ski lift, then a lodge, then a cafe, then another ski lift. By the time he finishes his route, eight buildings are alight with flames. Stark against the night sky. One building fewer than planned because Avalon found two hunters sleeping in one of the cabins slated for the burn. But now the fires rage, and Avalon needs to make his escape. But before he does, he sneaks a quick look back at the sun peeking over the Colorado Rockies, admiring his work. An Inferno reducing the wealthy ski resort of Vale to ashes.
SPEAKER_04Vale residents awoke to shocking news Monday. Fire atop Vale Mountain had caused $12 million in damages.
SPEAKER_14Those fires that rocked the Vale community and national media were signals to the industry, to the United States, and to the world. The Earth Liberation Front was here and was ready to wage war against corporate extraction. Avalon, however, would come to witness another firestorm that began long before he set that first milk jug of fuel off under the Vale Ski lift and would last far longer. He would witness one of the biggest series of property damage incidents in recent US history, and he would experience the subsequent crackdown on those responsible. Avalon and Country Girl didn't know it yet, but the Earth Liberation Front would be turned by the US government and media into a specter of ecological radicalism for the American public. Industries destroyed, hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure reduced to ashes, bonds shattered, trust betrayed, and even a life taken. This is the story of the Earth Liberation Front.
SPEAKER_20Ecological terrorist. America's most serious domestic terrorist threat, radical eco-terrorist group, Earth Liberation Front.
SPEAKER_14Three years before the destruction of the Vale Ski Resort, environmentalists are under siege in the Cascade Mountain Range at the Warner Creek encampment. The year is 1995. A group of land defenders is dead set on preventing the logging of the 14-acre timber sale on the Willamette National Forest. They've been dug in for 342 days. On the logging road into the forest, land defenders built a barricade complete with a drawbridge over a 15-foot deep trench and stood their ground for almost a year through bitter cold and snow. But on August 16th, 1995, the 343rd day of the encampment, the Forest Service cops pushed through the barricade. They toppled tents, tackled and attacked protesters, and dragged seven environmentalists away in handcuffs. Bulldozers ramm through the makeshift wall, and the logging trucks chugged into the old growth forest to hack and saw a stand of ancient trees. The almost year-long struggle had come to an end. Defeat had come at last. But from that defeat was born a new form of resistance. It was at the Warner Creek encampment that Bill Rogers, a longtime environmental organizer who went by the pseudonym Avalon to avoid the constant state surveillance of eco-activists in the Pacific Northwest, found comrades. Avalon dug trenches with Country Girl, built bipods with someone who went by the name Seattle, and locked himself to concrete cylinders alongside Donut, a man otherwise known as Jacob Ferguson. In the aftermath of Warner Creek, those on the barricades made their way back to their various homes across the Pacific Northwest. But there was something on the wind. Rumblings of an underground group of eco-savoteurs were making their way to the United States from its alleged birthplace in the UK. The potential of an underground direct action environmental group sparked hope in the disheartened defenders of Warner Creek. The Earth Liberation Front was about to take root in the communities radicalized by struggle at Warner Creek. And the epicenter of this escalation of tactics was found in Eugene, Oregon. The 1990s, a time when mainstream environmental groups were spinning their wheels on their primary mission, protecting the land and water from extractive industries. In the wake of the landslide of grassroots environmental pressure campaigns throughout the 1970s that pushed a conservative president, Richard Nixon, to establish the Environmental Protection Agency, past the Clean Air and Water Acts and the Endangered Species Acts, the environmental movement became increasingly institutionalized and professionalized throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the National Resource Defense Council turned from grassroots campaigns to lobbying. Mainstream environmentalism turned from action on the streets to voting better and influencing the right politicians. So-called big green had formed, and its success was tightly tied to maintaining good relations with corporate leaders and the state. For those directly confronting industry, like at Warner Creek, it seemed as if the organizations that claimed to be on their side were cozying up with the devil. In their minds, getting on the good side of George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, who greenlit the Willamette timber sale, was not the answer to protecting ancient stands of forest.
SPEAKER_03Moderate environmentalism is bureaucratic in nature. The issue, the way I see it, is right here. That's the issue. The issue isn't uh sitting and cutting deals in smoke-filled rooms.
SPEAKER_01The environmental, major environmental groups are still uh a reform. They still believe in the system.
SPEAKER_00The mainstream groups a lot of times aren't even saying what I'm saying. It's, you know, their positions are far too moderate, they're willing to give up too much to um commercial interests.
SPEAKER_14For frontline and direct action land defenders, the mainstream green nonprofits were bureaucrats, or at their worst, traders. They were bending the knee to the state and corporations. This inevitably bred frustration, as eco-activists across the country witnessed the continued destruction of ecosystems at the hands of corporate greed and the profit motive, while large eco-nonprofits cosied up to the perpetrators of that destruction. This climate was a perfect crucible to forge a more radical and daring underground movement. Indeed, it was decided in 1995 that the Eugene, Oregon-based group Earth First, which had since the 1980s spearheaded numerous environmental direct action campaigns in defense of the natural world, should eschew its direct action and monkey wrenching contingent. A decision that would allow the organization to become more public-facing while leaving the sabotage and property destruction to more clandestine groups. In the background of this transformation, tactics were escalating across the nation. As small-scale monkey wrenching, like gluing locks, smashing windows, and pouring sugar into excavation equipment spread, individual actors like Ted Kaczynski were planting bombs in mailboxes. And in Oregon, anger was rising. The National Forest Service, which is an arm of the Department of Agriculture, was greenlighting loggers to clear-cut old growth forests into oblivion. The Forest Service's job is not to protect trees, but instead to make sure there are enough trees so timber companies can cut them down. And all of this came to a head in Eugene, Oregon in 1997. In the summer of 1997, the people of Eugene were battling for the fate of 40 ancient trees. 40 gnarled majestic sweetgum, redwoods, big leaf maple, and black walnuts. For hundreds of years, these trees watched over the land that would come to be known as the city of Eugene, breaking up the blue sky with a shower of leaves dappling the ground below in sunlight. That is until the cybersecurity firm Symantec, famous for its Norton antivirus software, wanted to cut down those trees to build a parking garage. Local environmentalists were immediately outraged. They mounted a pressure campaign to persuade the city council to cancel the project, and a date was set for a tense public hearing meeting on June 2nd, 1997. But as the date drew near, the city announced it would start hacking down the trees one day before. This completely sidestepped the will of the people to appease the newly growing tech industry. So eco-anarchists, earthfirsters, and environmentalists took matters into their own hands. It's 2.30 in the morning on June 1st, 1997, and 11 tree defenders are in the midst of scrambling up the walnuts, the sweet gums, the old trees of Eugene.
SPEAKER_07As one of the protesters, Jim Flynn, explains in the documentary If a Tree Falls, we just went and did it, hoping that we could stave off the cutting for one day until that public hearing.
SPEAKER_14The mission was clear. All they had to do was stay in those trees for 24 hours. The 11 activists handcuffed their hands around those trees in high-up branches and prepared to weather the storm. And the storm certainly came. The clock ticks to 6 a.m. Riot cops arrive on the scene. Gas masks covering their faces, batons in hand, pepper spray, and tear gas on their hips. They immediately get to work protecting the destruction of a historic landscape for the soon-to-be property of Symantec. Tear gas canisters fly into the crowd, protesting the tree cutting and the streets below. Police push, drag, and rip people away from the fenced-in lot that is home to the ancient trees, while another group of cops set up the cherry pickers. One by one, the law enforcement agents ascend into the foliage to face down the tree defenders.
SPEAKER_08Eugene police department seemed hellbent on removing us from the trees as quickly as possible.
SPEAKER_14They take out scissors and start cutting the inseam of each tree sitter's pants. Like unfeeling machines of the state, the cops then subject the protesters to chemical torture until they relent. They douse each person in pepper spray all over their body, but especially their crotch, until they relinquish their hold on the old trees. Eleven tree defenders soon turn to seven, who soon turn to three, and then to one last tree sitter. As the cops dragged down the protesters, the arborists dragged down the redwoods, the black walnuts, and the sweetgums soon after. By mid-morning, only one sweet gum still stood. An editor for the Eugene-based Earth First journal, Jim Flynn, stood strong as the Eugene police relentlessly showered him with pepper spray. Every piece of his body was an inferno of pain. He just had to hold out for the rest of the day. And as the crowd below watched the horrors of state repression above, they started yelling and shouting, the police escalated.
SPEAKER_18The cops grab a guy off a bike and smash his face into the pavement, and he was not resisting. He repeatedly said, I'm not resisting as they twisted his arms behind his back, and that wasn't enough. They had to stand on his head as well, and then force the spout of a pepper spray can into his eye and nose and mouth. Myself and my wife were both mazed. I watched children be mazed.
SPEAKER_14Eight hours later, Jim Flynn was still defending the sweet gun. The cops had unloaded roughly a dozen pepper spray canisters onto him to get him to budge. And for eight hours, Flynn bore excruciating pain to save the tree that he now hugged. But the chemical fire that burned white hot all over his skin and eyes reached a tipping point. Jim Flynn had endured enough torture. He finally relented. The cops hauled him down, washed him off, and threw him into jail for sitting in a tree. And as Flynn rode in the back of the police van to the jail, the last sweet gum fell. Paradise could now be paved for a parking lot. For many Eugene environmentalists, this day marked a moment of radicalization. The city ignored a public hearing. Peaceful tree sits were met with chemical torture from agents of the state. The government seemed more interested in protecting the property of a tech corporation than the environments and bodies of the people it supposedly represented. Debates started circulating. Was non-violent protest enough? For three Green anarchists named Jacob Ferguson, Sunshine, and Kevin Tubbs, the answer was no. They were fed up with the inaction of the large so-called green nonprofits. They witnessed the clear-cutting of the Willmet forest that they had tried to protect with the Warner Creek barricade. They had watched as friends and comrades were chemically tortured for sitting in trees. After having exhausted all of their tactics, battling the state and corporations on logging roads, streets, and in the courts, after education campaigns fell flat and voting harder led to Bill Clinton, those three soon turned towards the ideology and structure of the Earth Liberation Front. Ferguson, Tubbs, and Sunshine would bring fire and wrath down on the logging profiteers that were ripping apart the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Ferguson and his friends didn't start the Earth Liberation Front. Its origins trace back to England, where a similar catastrophe of warring environmental ideologies and tactics was at play.
SPEAKER_09When decades of attempts to solve problems through legal means had proven fruitless, are we supposed to continue to work strictly within the law or give up altogether?
SPEAKER_14Supposedly, the Earth Liberation Front began with a group of individuals who broke away from an Earth First chapter in Brighton, England. But the movement quickly spread around the world with early ELF attacks in the Netherlands and Germany, targeting airports, hunting platforms, and neonazis. Across these disparate actions, the Earth Liberation Front was connected not by bonds of membership or leadership, but through ideology. Because this wasn't your typical organization. The ELF was underground, leaderless, and non-hierarchical.
SPEAKER_17The ELF is organized into autonomous cells, which operate anonymously and independently from one another and the general public.
SPEAKER_14That's Craig Rosebrug, an important figure in this story. But we'll get back to him in a little bit.
SPEAKER_17He goes on to explain that the ELF contains no hierarchy or central leadership, but instead operates under an ideology. And if an individual believes in that ideology and they follow a certain set of widely published guidelines, he or she can perform actions and become part of the Earth Liberation Front.
SPEAKER_14Those guidelines reflect the core ideology of the Earth Liberation Front.
SPEAKER_17Three rules that require all who claim the ELF's name to cause maximum economic damage to a given entity that is profiting of the destruction of the natural environment. To educate the public on the atrocities committed against the environment and life, to take all necessary precautions against harming life.
SPEAKER_14Melding together philosophies of green anarchism, social ecology, and deep ecology, the ELF wasn't just interested in raising awareness about ecological destruction or voting harder for green champions. Many who formed ELF cells saw capitalism, the profit incentive, or perhaps even civilization as a destructive force and wanted to directly confront it.
SPEAKER_17The destruction of life is not a mere random occurrence, but a deliberate act of violence performed by those entities concerned with nothing more than pursuing extreme economic gain at any cost.
SPEAKER_09When the state itself causes and profits from the various injustices we struggle against, how is it logical to believe the system will change without being forced?
SPEAKER_14ELF tactics used property destruction to force the system to change. This meant cells were under increased scrutiny from the police. So to avoid detection from the state, alongside removing the supposed ills of hierarchy, the Earth Liberation Front championed a leaderless model and was highly anonymous. ELF cells never communicated with each other and did not know each other's real identities. This leaderless and mysterious organizational structure meant that even if one ELF group fell into the hands of the state, others can continue untouched.
SPEAKER_17This also meant, as Craig Roseborough puts it, there's no realistic chance of becoming active in an already existing cell. Take initiative, form your own cell, and do what needs to be done to protect all life on this planet.
SPEAKER_14Sunshine, Jacob Ferguson, and Kevin Tubbs did just that. With the ideological guide and principles in mind, they formed an Earth Liberation Front cell that would soon strike fear in the hearts of the industrial barons of the Pacific Northwest. In the early morning hours of October 28, 1996, a newspaper carrier from the Salem Statesman Journal was working his route in Detroit, Oregon, slinging papers onto the front steps of homes and businesses. All was normal until he passed the Federal Ranger Station on the outskirts of town. There, he saw licks of smoke curling from a forest ranger's truck. In a matter of seconds, the truck burst into flame. The fire department came quickly and quenched the flames. But in the aftermath, as they sorted through the ashes, it became clear that this was no accident. On the roof of the station was a milk jug full of a mix of diesel and gasoline. It had failed to ignite, saving the building from disaster. And there was no question as to who was responsible. On the station's wall were scrawled the words Earth Liberation Front. Just two days later, on October 30th, the Earth Liberation Front struck again. Roughly 130 miles away at a ranger station in the forests outside of Oak Ridge, Oregon, three figures dressed in dark clothes, faces covered, pulled up to the dumpster outside the outpost and placed a DIY firebomb inside. Along the eastern wall of the property, they placed a second gas-filled milk jug. Both were set to go off once the incense sticks inside of them burned down. With the firebombs set, the group scattered nails along the driveway to slow down firefighters, swapped the tires of their borrowed Subaru, and made their getaway into the night. This time, both devices did their job. Because in the morning, the Forest Rangers of Oak Ridge Station woke up to find their place of work reduced to ashes. Two fires. October 28th, October 30th, 1996. The first real actions of the Pacific Northwest ELF Cell. Acts of destruction, to be sure. But were these two arsons an act of rage or a strategic escalation of tactics in the long struggle to defend the last remnants of untouched old growth forests? For Jacob Ferguson, Sunshine and Kevin Tubbs, it was perhaps a bit of both. All three had witnessed and lived through the hard-fought struggle of Warner Creek, had witnessed the Forest Service barrel down the blockade and lay out the red carpet for chainsaws and trucks, and for years had been forced to watch as peaceful blockades were violently broken apart by local police and Forest Service agents in the name of a logging agency that was rapidly leveling surrounding ecosystems. For these three, it was time to change their tactics. It seemed to this trio that the only thing that the capitalist state and the barons of industry would pay attention to would be a direct hit to their bottom line. So Ferguson Tubbs and Sunshine filled up some old plastic milk jugs with a mixture of gasoline and diesel, wedged a sponge into the handle with some incense, and drove to the ranger station, claiming the destruction in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. And with those two actions, they ignited a spark that would burn white hot in the coming years. Nine months later, in late July of 1997, Craig Rosebra walks into his local post office in Portland, Oregon. A longtime animal rights activist in the Portland scene, Rosebra, together with six other organizers, formed the Liberation Collective a year earlier in 1996. An organization that sought to connect larger social justice issues with the animal liberation struggle, the Liberation Collective soon became a clearing ground for messages from the direct action group, the Animal Liberation Front. So as Rosebra gathered letters out of the Liberation Collective's mailbox on that hot July day, he wasn't surprised when he noticed a strange-looking note amongst the stack of envelopes. The handwriting of the address was purposefully distorted, and there was no return address. Cautiously, Rosebraw ripped open the envelope flap, and inside he found a communique from the ALF and the cheekily named Equine Zebra Liberation Network, or EZLN, a nod to the Zapatistas, who were also known by the same acronym. The letter was clear. The ALF and the EZLN were claiming responsibility for a recent attack on the Cavill West horse rendering plant in Redmond, Oregon, a few days before. Under the light of the full moon, Jacob Ferguson, Kevin Tubbs, and a fellow organizer Seattle, who is also at the Warner Creek encampment, alongside one other, sneak onto the grounds of the Cavill West horse rendering facility. It's July 21st, 1997. A few days before, the Associated Press published an article revealing that 90% of the wild horses rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management's Wild Horse and Borough Program ended up in slaughterhouses. And one of those slaughterhouses was the Cavill West facility. Outraged by The article. Ferguson, together with Seattle and two others, lug 35 gallons of a mixture of soap and petroleum to Redmond, Oregon. Their goal is to end Cavilwest's ability to profit from slaughtering wild horses. Night has arrived and Tubbs sits in the car manning the police skinner, keeping the engine warm for the getaway. Seattle, meanwhile, drills a series of large holes in the walls of the slaughterhouse office, making sure to wait for the loud hum from the coolers to kick on to mask the noise of drilling. After he finishes, the rest of the team fills those holes with a highly flammable fuel mix. While Seattle moves on to the building housing the refrigeration unit to again prep holes for the fuel. In a matter of minutes, the holes are full of fuel and the team places electrically timed lighters in them, ready to burn the entire place to the ground. On their way out, the group checks to make sure no one is inside the buildings. They place the remaining 10 gallons of fluid into the storage shed and pour two gallons of highly corrosive muriatic acid into the air conditioning fence. The job is almost finished. Seattle just has to connect the batteries to the electrical timers. A risky job, as one errant spark could set the whole building alight early. He connects the first incendiary device. Success. He moves over to the second device, and as Seattle shifts the battery towards the ignition, a spark jumps the gap. The building erupts in flames, the group needs to leave immediately or risk dying. They stream off the property, shed their clothing into a hole, pour the rest of the acid onto the heap of their shirts and pants and covered in dirt. In just a few minutes, they pile into the getaway car and Tubbs slams on the gas. The next day, Cavill West is ash and burnt timber. That single action dealt at least $1 million in damages. Cavill West was never again able to rebuild. And with this victory, members that would soon become a notorious ELF cell would send a communique to the Liberation Collective, claiming responsibility under the more well-known acronyms of ALF and EZLN, a letter that Craig Rosebra would open in the middle of a post office in Portland. Overnight, the group stopped what so many had tried and failed to stop for years. But this escalation of tactics into industrial sabotage wasn't just contained to Oregon. By the latter half of 1997, Earth Liberation Front cells and actions were emerging across the country, and Craig Rosebra, alongside his fellow organizer Leslie Pickering, were fielding communiques from across the nation. The powder keg would explode on October 19, 1998, in Vale, Colorado. After setting eight buildings alight, Avalon makes his escape. Locating a hiking trail, he tears off down the mountain. But in the dark, rocky terrain, Avalon badly twists his ankle, slowing down his descent. He soldiers on though, desperately looking for the right trail. He finally finds the bike path he's been looking for, limps down it, and makes it all the way to the park where Country Girl sits in the car. They immediately take off down the road, and on the radio, they start to hear reports about the fire on the mountain.
SPEAKER_04Fire atop Vale Mountain fires across the Vale Mountain Ski Resort to protest its expansion.
SPEAKER_14As the smoke cleared at Vale, the ELF had dealt $12 million in damages, and a communique landed in Craig Roseborough's inbox. The arson was committed on behalf of the Lynx. The communique warned that putting profits ahead of Colorado's wildlife would not be tolerated. This action is just a warning. Two years before the fire, in August of 1996, the U.S. Forest Service approved an expansion of Vale south of the resort's ski area. The expansion would encroach on one of the last roadless regions in the heavily developed area. A region which was a known habitat for Martin, Boreal Ow, Golden Crown Kinglet, and perhaps most importantly, one of the last remaining habitats for the Canadian Lynx, which had been seen in the area just four years before. In the wake of that decision, a coalition of environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the Colorado Wildlife Foundation, the Colorado Environmental Coalition, and others submitted an official request that the expansion decision be overturned. Indeed, the expansion was so unpopular that by 1997, the U.S. Forest Service citizens' comments were 80 to 1 opposing the expansion. Legal battles ensued. But in October of 1998, the federal court once again greenlit the expansion. The construction was slated to break ground on October 19th. That is, until the Earth Liberation Front struck that very morning. The Vale Fire would open the floodgates for countrywide uptick in ELF arson's inactions. And with that pressure on extraction capitalists and private property came increased media scrutiny.
SPEAKER_12They call themselves eco-terrorists.
SPEAKER_20A radical new terrorist group is operating in our area.
SPEAKER_12There are terrorists carrying on business as usual right here at home.
SPEAKER_14The actions of the Earth Liberation Front were denounced, and the group was labeled terrorists.
SPEAKER_20One of the most dangerous and mysterious groups in the country.
SPEAKER_14And while the Earth Liberation Front, which had yet to kill or injure a single person, was being labeled terrorist, the U.S. was continuing its long history of terrorism throughout the Imperial Periphery.
SPEAKER_02It was the CIA that armed the terrorists. B-52 bombers fired cruise missiles deep into Iran.
SPEAKER_14This frustration with globalization, with US imperialist intervention, would boil over at the World Trade Organization conference in 1999.
SPEAKER_11Well it's Seattle, a West Coast US port, and what these protesters are saying is that while there's globalization, while trade is expanding around the world, that's happening without due regard to the environment and without due regard to the port.
SPEAKER_14Mass protests against the World Trade Organization erupted on the streets of Seattle, where the conference was located, and the police came down hard on those in the street. Curfews, tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and beatings pushed some into more aggressive means of defense. The battle in Seattle had begun. Frustrated with the imperialist politics of the U.S. and the violent tactics of the Seattle police, McGowan donned his darkest clothes and fought back.
SPEAKER_15I was uh, you know, involved in the black block part of the protest. We got attacked by undercover cops and people were accused of fighting back.
SPEAKER_14From his hometown of Rockaway in Queens, New York, McGowan initially moved to California to protect old growth forests. He had been active in the Pacific Northwest radical environmental scene for a couple of years, but the police repression on the streets of Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests was the final straw. In the aftermath of the WTO protest, McGowan moved to Eugene, Oregon.
SPEAKER_15To get involved with the Earth First Journal and also meet up with some of the people that I was was hanging out in Seattle, who I had a feeling were interested in bringing me in to something.
SPEAKER_14It was in Eugene that McGowan connected with the Earth Liberation Front. The Pacific Northwest ELF cell was growing, and they wanted McGowan to be a part of it. McGowan was no stranger to direct action tactics. He had a history of GMO crop destruction across California and Oregon.
SPEAKER_15I had engaged in a lot of sabotage actions at that point. I don't know, 20 or something like that. Maybe 15.
SPEAKER_14The ELF would mark an escalation in tactics from McGowan, but as he joined up with a few of his other comrades he met in Seattle, he was ready to do more than just pull up GMO crops. As McGowan considered whether to escalate his tactics, a broader conversation emerged both within environmental circles in hotspots like Eugene and the national media about whether the ELF was effective in their goals. The ELF was a shock to a movement that had long viewed itself as rooted in nonviolent ideologies. Was property destruction a necessary, useful, or even strategic escalation of tactics? 19 years later, human ecologist Andreas Malm grapples with this question in his provocatively titled book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Throughout, he digs down into the root of why property destruction is such a disparage tactic on the environmental left.
SPEAKER_13Our entire capitalist culture and bourgeois civilization are built around the idea that private property is sacred. I mean, in the US in particular, it's the most sacred thing there is.
SPEAKER_14When examining whether economic sabotage and more specifically property destruction is quote unquote good or bad, or even just an effective tactic, the context in which that destruction takes place is crucial. For MOM, climate change is violence. So destroying the property of a fossil fuel industry that causes tens of thousands of climate change-related deaths for each pipeline and refinery they construct, perhaps is a justified tactic. Regarding a newly constructed pipeline by French fossil fuel giant Total Energies, Mom calculated that it would kill nearly 8,000 people every year.
SPEAKER_13And that's only the deaths caused by heat. So not the floods, not the hurricanes, not the drought, the food supply shocks.
SPEAKER_14But it's crucial to note that destruction and sabotage are not proposed as the answer to these problems. Instead, they are obstacles to slow down the momentum of a train barreling off a cliff.
SPEAKER_13Violence is never the answer as in the solution to something. But violence, certain types of violence, if you define property destruction as a type of violence, can be necessary to break down the inertia and the resistance of an deeply entrenched order and the all the power interests that come together come with it. And the scale of the transformation of our society that we need. I mean, changes of this proportion, I think, have never in history been accomplished without confrontation.
SPEAKER_14Property destruction then could be perhaps best understood as a useful delay tactic for a much broader movement. One that wields countless other tools in a diverse toolbox. Almost every movement for social change, whether the suffragettes, the US Civil Rights Movement, or the South African anti-apartheid movement, has been accompanied by militant wings that went beyond nonviolent civil disobedience. The history of those struggles suggests that without militant escalation, those more peaceful movements would have been less effective. Take the civil rights movement, for example. While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. staged sit-ins and marches, Malcolm X and later the Black Panthers took up arms to defend themselves from the police and white supremacists. Indeed, Dr. King himself even had an armed escort at times. To white America, the perceived militancy of Malcolm X's black nationalism made Dr. King's nonviolence seem more appealing. Indeed, Malcolm X explained this tactic to Coretta Scott King.
SPEAKER_10Malcolm X leaned over and said to me, um, Mrs. King, I want you to tell your husband that I didn't come to Selma to make his job more difficult. But I thought that if the white people understood what the alternative was, that they would be more inclined to listen to your husband.
SPEAKER_14This is known as the radical flink effect. A phenomenon that occurs when a more militant wing pushes the public towards accepting the main movement. Whether it was suffragettes smashing windows to drive men towards the negotiating table, or Black Panthers defending the streets with guns, making sit-ins look more reasonable, academics have argued that escalating towards radical tactics has led to increased support of the more mainstream movement. The ELF can at best be seen in this light, as a radical flank that made tree sits and logging blockades seem tame and therefore more acceptable. But when it comes to the tactic of property destruction, at the end of the day, it's a question of politics. For Craig Rosebrot, the violence of industry far outweighs the destruction of a ski resort.
SPEAKER_12You see the fire I take it as a completely legitimate target. I do. And the use of arson against that program as justified. I do.
SPEAKER_14For those who fought back against police brutality and globalization in the streets of Seattle in 1999, property destruction is justified. As Kurdish revolutionary leader Abdullah Ochilan argues, these acts of destruction are like a rose growing thorns to defend its beauty. For those deeply embedded in capitalism and the sacredness of American property, however, such acts are horde.
SPEAKER_02Vandalism is vandalism, destruction is destruction, whether it's of lives or property, it's not acceptable.
SPEAKER_14This, however, cleanses history of the many acts of property destruction taken in parallel with nonviolent movements for justice. Because capitalism demands the deification of property and to a broader extent profit, the effectiveness of radical flanks and more radical tactics like property damage are often brushed over in mainstream histories of social progress.
SPEAKER_13A comrade in some conversation called this peacewashing.
SPEAKER_14In a follow-up to that woman's response to vandalism at the WTO protests, we can see this peacewashing at play in American history. What do you think of the Boston Tea Party?
SPEAKER_02I thought it was wonderful.
SPEAKER_14Ah, thank you. So then the question of whether the property destruction of the ELF is justified seems to be a matter of politics. For the owners of those businesses and some of those who relied on logging or skiing to put food on the table, this was terrorism, plain and simple. But for the members of the growing ELF cell in the Pacific Northwest, after the failures of the mainstream environmentalist movement, it seemed that there were no other options to prevent environmental disasters that could affect the entire globe except to meet power with power. Back in the Pacific Northwest, Daniel McGowan linked up with Jacob Ferguson and other new members of the ELF cell like Suzanne Savois in the winter of 2000. The cell was growing as their actions gained more attention. Steeped in his environmental work at the Earth First Journal, McGowan was ready to strike back at old-growth logging companies. Company trucks full of the corpses of redwoods passed by McGowan during his commute in UG. And one of those timber corporations was Superior Lumber. In McGowan's own words on the Green and Red podcast, Superior Lumber was logging hard to find spots. Their target was set. But they needed to come up with a plan. To avoid the ever-present surveillance of local police and federal agents, Avalon, together with Ferguson and new members like McGowan, met in secret using books as code. Employing predecided text like The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, they would use page, line, and word numbers to disseminate messages across the group to determine gathering times and locations. This code was later used by the FBI as a means to paint the cell as a cult, describing these meanings as the book club, with figures like Avalon and Ferguson as leaders.
SPEAKER_15We have these little sessions, these skillshares, and the government called a book club, but nobody called it that.
SPEAKER_14It was at these skillshares and discussion circles that Ferguson, Avalon, McGowan, and others set their sights on the Superior Lumber. Superior Lumber was one of the hundreds of Pacific Northwest logging companies that were chopping down some of the last remaining ancient forests.
SPEAKER_15We picked this place for its unspectacular nature.
SPEAKER_14Like many of the other timber companies operating in this area, Superior Lumber had been in and out of courts trying to get the green light to chop down trees in protected areas. Finally, on December 29th, 2000, the Seattle District Judge okayed the sale and extraction of a patch of forest on Bureau of Land Management land that had been previously halted for failure to follow environmental regulations. So, the ELF got to work planning. And on the second day of 2001, they struck. McGowan sits in the back of a van dressed all in black with another new ELF member, Suzanne Savo. It's past midnight on January 2nd, and McGowan's palms are coated in sweat. He's racked with anxiety as the group drives through the pitch black forest towards the Superior Lumber offices in Glendale, Oregon. In the front sit Jacob Ferguson, Kevin Tubbs, and another ELF member, Stan Meyerhoff. They arrive at the site in the dead of night. McGowan is the first one out. He hops out of the van and holes up in a ditch nearby with a good view of the target. He's lookout number one. With McGowan in place with a two-way radio in hand, the other five make their way to the second lookout location south of the offices. Savoir gets out of the back seat and positions herself in a phone booth, ready with her radio to alert the team if anything seems odd. Right now, the coast is clear. The final three quickly make their way to the building and get to work. They nestle two five-gallon buckets full of gasoline and diesel along the east wall of the building that abuts the parking lot, then make their way around the building to the west side. There, under the electric meter, they plant three more buckets of fuel, set electric timers, jump back into the van, and drive away. By the time they scoop up McGowan and Savoie, only 15 minutes had passed. At 2.29 a.m., the police scanner in the van pings with activity. The blaze had begun. And thanks to the position of the fuel along the walls, the flames reached the attic before setting off the alarms. The entire roof was on fire before anyone was notified. The next day, Steve Swanson, the president of Superior Lumber, walked through the remains of his offices. It was clear the ELF had succeeded. The heat was apparently so extreme that computer monitors and lights melted. Years of files and documents turned to ash overnight. Over $1 million in damages. In the aftermath, an email landed in Craig Rosebraw's inbox. Signed by the Earth Liberation Front, the first four words read, We torched Superior Lumber. It seemed that the fire at Superior Lumber was a call to action. As the communique signs off with, This year we hope to see an escalation in tactics against capitalism and industry. While Superior Lumber says, make a few items, do it better than anyone else, we say choose an Earth Raper and destroy them. And the call was heated all over the country. 2001 would be a busy year of property destruction for the Earth Liberation Front. While McGowan was battling in the streets of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest ELF cell grew, others were taking action in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. Across the country, the flames of the ELF and its ideology sparked fires of resistance that licked at the heels of other industries spreading capitalist decay. At Michigan State University, the ELF set fire to the offices of Catherine Ives, a GMO researcher linked to Monsanto funding. Years of research turned into fuel for a raging inferno, causing $1 million in damages. In the Midwest, another ELF cell set its sights on urban sprawl, burning down a partially built luxury home, encroaching on the Lake Monroe watershed in Indiana. A few months later in Minnesota, the ELF deals $500,000 in damages to excavation equipment constructing the Highway 55 reroute. Again, in Indiana, a series of acts of sabotage from April to September target logging and excavation equipment and even a Republican Party office building. With the diversity of ELF cells came a diversity of goals. While the Pacific Northwest cell had focused on forest and wildlife protection up until this point, other cells sought to strike back against globalization, GMOs, and capitalist destruction. But it was an ELF cell's fight against luxury condominiums and urban sprawl on Long Island that would burn the hottest. There, an ELF cell would form and hit hard and fast, waging what they called an unbounded war on urban sprawl from July of 2000 to January of 2001. The cell's first target was a group of condos in the midst of construction that they called future dens of the wealthy elite. To test the waters, the Long Island ELF cell spray painted and smashed hundreds of windows at construction sites throughout the fall of 2000. But it soon became clear that this was just the prelude to the main act. It's the night of December 9th, 2000, and the half-built houses at the Spring Lake Development in Middle Island, Long Island are about to burn. Four figures sneak across the construction site, checking to make sure no one is in the buildings while they place DIY incendiary devices along four rows of condominiums. That night, 16 homes felt the kiss of flames. One structure completely burnt to the ground, while three others were heavily charred. In the aftermath, the group sent a communique claiming that window breaking and disabling vehicles can only do so much. And in the battle with our Earth in the balance, we cannot hold back or go soft on those pillaging the planet for profit. The Long Island cell had decided to escalate, but they were far from finished. Ten days later, they burned down the construction site of another luxury home at Miller Place. Then 10 more days later, they hit a third target, this time at the island estates in Mount Sinai on Long Island. Four more luxury homes under construction were reduced to ashes. December 2000 marked a crushing blow to the profits of the condo developers of Long Island. Over the course of five months, the Long Island ELF Cell took 11 major actions against Urban Sprawl, marking one of the most active periods for the Earth Liberation Front on record and dealing millions of dollars in damages. But like any flame that burns bright, the actions quickly died out. The cell was dismantled as their security culture failed. One member boasted. To his friends about the fires, and the cops got wind, and he was caught. In the interrogation room, he folded and snitched on the rest of the cell, leading to the capture of the other three members. The cops had finally managed to take down an ELF cell, and those arrests foreshadowed a coming storm. Back in Eugene, Daniel McGowan finally found a chance to strike at the GMO industry that he had long struggled against. This, however, would be the last action he would ever take under the ideological banner of the ELF, but he would certainly go out with a bang. The plan was to hit two places at once, dealing a devastating blow to genetic modification research. It's May 21, 2001. Ten members of the ELF Cell are on the road to their targets. With Savoie behind the wheel, McGowan, Stan Meierhoff, and two others drive towards Jefferson Poplar Farm, a research center for genetically modified poplar trees in Klaskany, Oregon. Adrenaline building, the group desperately hoped that they wouldn't get stopped by cops driving through the small town of Plaskony because in the trunk lay the makings of firebombs. They make it through the town fine, and they pull up to the site. While one of them jumps out to be the lookout, three others, including McGowan, lug several five-gallon buckets up to the walls of the two buildings, set electrical timers, and get to work on a line of trucks. Under each truck, McGowan places a tray full to the brim with gasoline. Then he runs a fuel-soaked rag between each tray to make sure each one will catch. All is ready for the match, and McGowan is soaked to the bone in gasoline. So far, no one has seen them at work. It's radio silence from the lookout. McGowan strikes the match, and the farm goes up in flames. Hundreds of miles away at the University of Washington, Avalon and four other members of the Cell set their own incendiary devices in the offices of GMO researcher Toby Bradshaw.
SPEAKER_20Toby Bradshaw is working to develop a fast-growing poplar tree for the paper industry.
SPEAKER_14The electrical timers spark, and flames roar to life in Washington and Oregon.
SPEAKER_05A radical environmental group claims it started the fire that severely damaged part of an Oregon tree farm and the fire of the damaged part of the University of Washington.
SPEAKER_14In just that one night, the ELF did $3.5 million in damages across two states.
SPEAKER_19It reduced to ashes the labs and offices of 50 people, not far away, and at about the same time, two buildings on an Oregon tree farm were also destroyed.
SPEAKER_14In the aftermath, however, new information came to light. The group had acted on bad intel. It turned out that the Jefferson Poplar farm wasn't growing genetically modified trees. They were using tried and true crafting methods that had been around for centuries. The ELF had burnt it down for nothing. This was a crushing blow to McGowan.
SPEAKER_16So left me with a really bad taste in my mouth.
SPEAKER_14Combined with a growing internal debate of whether to escalate tactics even further or pull back, the cell was on the precipice of disbanding. McGowan himself was feeling disillusioned. From the outside looking in, however, the fervor of activity on the East Coast, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest seemed to reveal that the Earth Liberation Front was building momentum in the revolutionary struggle against capitalist destruction. Little did the public know, however, that that momentum would soon be dashed. Cracks were growing. The group was on the precipice and would soon splinter. Betrayal was on the horizon, and lurking in the shadows were agents of the state. Soon everything would change. McGowan, Avalon, and Country Girl would find themselves behind bars, and their capture would come from a betrayal within the cell itself.