Green Scare

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The Green Scare is legal action by the US government against the radical environmental movement, that occurred mostly in the 2000s. It alludes to the Red Scares, periods of fear over communist infiltration of US society.

Contents

The term was popularized by environmental activists. It is first known to have appeared in the wake of the February 12, 2002 congressional hearings titled "The Threat of Eco-Terrorism", which discussed groups including the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). [1] The spring edition of the prisoner support zine Spirit of Freedom defined the term as "the tactics that the US government and all their tentacles (FBI, IRS, BATF, Joint Terrorism Task Forces, local police, the court system) are using to attack the ELF/ALF and specifically those who publicly support them." [2]

The term has been used by activists to describe a sweep of arrests, convictions and grand jury indictments of ELF and ALF operatives on charges relating to acts of property damage, conspiracy, arson and use of destructive devices. [3]

Origin of the phrase

Will Potter presentation at Green Scare Event, Wooden Shoe Books, Philadelphia Willpotter2.PNG
Will Potter presentation at Green Scare Event, Wooden Shoe Books, Philadelphia

Journalist Will Potter first notably used the term 'Green Scare' in his publication Green is the New Red. [4] [5] [6]

Cases

Since 2000, the US government has prosecuted over 20 cases involving environmentalists, which Los Angeles CityBeat claims "redefined not only free speech, but also redefined environmentally motivated property destruction - like torching Hummers or tree-felling equipment." [7] These arrests, indictments and trials, which have collectively been termed the Green Scare by environmentalists, include:

Individuals

Rod Coronado, a prominent Native American eco-anarchist, who was arrested on a felony charge of demonstrating the use of a destructive device. [8] His indictment indirectly related to an August 1, 2003 fire in San Diego that destroyed an apartment complex causing an estimated $50 million worth of damage. [9] Coronado, a self-described "unofficial ELF spokesman", [10] stood trial in 2007. After two days of deliberations, the jury remained deadlocked so the judge declared a mistrial. [11] He subsequently entered a guilty plea and accepted a deal for a one-year prison term.

Jeff "Free" Luers, a veganarchist from Los Angeles, California, who served a prison sentence of almost ten years for arson. His initial sentence was over 22 years, but the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned it, [12] and the Lane County Circuit Court determined a new sentence of 10 years in February 2008, [13] after what The Independent described as an "international campaign for a more appropriate sentence for a crime in which no one was hurt." [14] In 2000 he set fire to three SUVs at Romania Chevrolet dealership in Eugene, Oregon as a protest against excessive consumption and global warming. [15] He has become a cause célèbre among some radicals, anti-prison activists, and people associated with the Earth Liberation Front, although Luers has said that he does not consider himself an ELF member. [16] Upon his resentencing, Judge Billings said that he expected Luers would be treated as an "elder statesman" among some activists, and hoped that Luers would use that influence in a productive way. Luers declared that he was looking forward to "promoting activism through legal means." [13]

Christopher McIntosh, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for setting fire to a Seattle McDonald's restaurant in January, 2003. [17] McIntosh admitted guilt as part of a plea agreement, in which the prosecution said they would not ask that he spend more than ten years in prison. [18] Supporters criticized the sentence as excessive "for someone who caused $5,000 damage". Prosecutors argued it was important to "protect the public" from some one who expressed no remorse, saying McIntosh was "proud of his crime, and, given the chance, he would do the same thing again." [18] Peter Daniel Young and a friend, Justin Samuel, who were indicted in by a federal grand jury in September 1998 on four charges of "Extortion by Interfering with Interstate Commerce", and two charges of "Animal Enterprise Terrorism". [19] They released over 8,000 animals from various fur farms in Iowa, South Dakota, and Wisconsin and disposed of the breeding records at each farm. Samuel was arrested on September 4, 1999 in Belgium and was extradited to the United States to face trial. He agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for a reduced sentence of two years. Young was arrested in San Jose, California on March 21, 2005 on charges of shoplifting from a local Starbucks and was extradited to Wisconsin to face trial for the fur farm raids. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison; 360 hours of community service at a charity; $254,000 restitution; and one year probation.

Groups

SHAC 7, six animal rights activists, who were found guilty of using their website to incite threats, harassment, vandalism and attacks against the company Huntingdon Life Sciences and their business partners. [20] Originally seven individuals were charged, leading sympathizers to describe the defendants as the SHAC 7, but the case against one of the defendants was dropped. Pamelyn Ferdin, the current president of SHAC USA, told the jury that "for the government to say you can't say this and you can't say that is going down a very scary path of going toward fascism." However, the US Attorney's Office described the convicts as "thugs who went far beyond protected speech and lawful protest to engage in and incite intimidation, harassment and violence." [21] The judge sentenced the individuals to an aggregate of 24 years in prison, and ordered to pay a joint restitution of $1,000,001.00.

Operation Backfire, a multi-agency criminal investigation into destructive acts in the name of animal rights and environmental causes in the United States, that resulted in the December 7, 2005 arrest of seven people. [22] At least six people were subpoenaed to testify before grand juries. Three of the individuals subpoenaed ended up on a January 20, 2006, 65 count, 84-page-long indictment. The new indictment charged 11 people with conspiring to commit 18 acts of arson and vandalism over a 5-year period across multiple states. Some of the charges relate to a 1998 arson attack on the Vail Ski Resort in Colorado and the sabotage of a power line near Bend, Oregon, in 1999. The FBI considered these crimes to be acts of domestic terrorism and the ELF to be the nation's top domestic terror threat. [3] [23]

Response

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Operation Backfire indictments have elicited concern, from activists, that authorities have "cracked the super-secrecy of ALF and ELF". [24] Alternative media organizations have condemned the arrests, some calling them a "witch-hunt", "aimed at disrupting and discrediting political movements". Activists, maintaining the Red Scare allusion, claim the operations are "fishing expedition[s]" carried out "in the midst of 9/11 McCarthyism. The FBI disputes these claims, with former Director Robert Mueller stating the agency takes action "only when volatile talk crosses the line into violence and criminal activity." [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

Radical environmentalism is a grass-roots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged from an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism.

Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rod Coronado</span> American animal rights and environmental activist

Rodney Adam Coronado is an American animal rights and environmental activist known for his militant direct actions in the late 1980s and 1990s. As part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, he sank two whaling ships and destroyed Iceland's sole whale-processing facility in 1986. He led the Animal Liberation Front's Operation Bite Back campaign against the fur industry and its supporting institutions in the early 1990s, which was involved in multiple firebombings. Following an attack on a Michigan State University mink research center in early 1992, Coronado was jailed for nearly five years. He later admitted to being the sole perpetrator. The 1992 federal Animal Enterprise Protection Act was created in response to his actions. The operation continued with a focus on liberating animals rather than property destruction. Coronado also worked with Earth First.

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates. It has been the subject of several major leaks or undercover investigations by activists and reporters since 1989.

Jeffrey "Free" Luers is an American political activist from Los Angeles, California, who served a ten-year prison sentence for an arson motivated by environmental concerns. On February 14, 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned Luers' sentence, instructing the Lane County circuit court to determine a new sentence. That court reduced the sentence from 22 years, 8 months to 10 years in February 2008, after what The Independent described as an "international campaign for a more appropriate sentence for a crime in which no one was hurt."

Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups, or individuals, challenge an established institution such as a law, economic system, social order, or government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent protest and civil disobedience to vandalism, terrorism, and other violent activity.

Tre Arrow is a green anarchist who gained prominence in the U.S. state of Oregon in the late 1990s and early 2000s for his environmental activism, bid for Congress as a Pacific Green Party candidate, and then for his arrest and later conviction for committing acts of arson on cement and logging trucks. He unsuccessfully sought political asylum in Canada, and was extradited to Portland, Oregon, on February 29, 2008, to face 14 counts of arson and conspiracy. These actions were claimed as acts of protest by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). On June 3, 2008, Arrow pleaded guilty to 2 counts of arson and was sentenced with 78 months in prison. He was released to a halfway house in 2009.

William Jensen Cottrell is a former Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Technology who was convicted in April 2005 of conspiracy associated with the destruction of eight sport utility vehicles and a Hummer dealership in the name of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He was sentenced to eight years in federal prison on conspiracy charges and ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution. He was released August 16, 2011.

Operation Backfire is a multi-agency criminal investigation, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), into destructive acts in the name of animal rights and environmental causes in the United States described as eco-terrorism by the FBI. The operation resulted in convictions and imprisonment of a number of people, many of whom were members of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front.

Darren Todd Thurston is a Canadian former animal rights activist.

William Courtney Rodgers, also known as Bill Rodgers and Avalon, was an environmental activist, animal rights activist and a co-proprietor of the Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott, Arizona, US. He was one of six environmental activists arrested December 7, 2005 as part of the FBI's Operation Backfire. His charge was one count of arson for a June 1998 fire set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) at the National Wildlife Research Center in Olympia, Washington. He was found dead in his jail cell on December 21, 2005. According to police, Rodgers committed suicide using a plastic bag.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel G. McGowan</span> American environmental activist

Daniel Gerard McGowan is an American environmental activist, formerly associated with the Earth Liberation Front. The U.S. government considers him a domestic terrorist, having been arrested and charged in federal court on multiple counts of arson and conspiracy, relating to the arson of Superior Lumber company in Glendale, Oregon, on January 2, 2001, and Jefferson Poplar Farms in Clatskanie, Oregon, on May 21, 2001. His arrest is part of what the FBI dubbed Operation Backfire.

Eric McDavid is an American green anarchist who was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property and sentenced to 20 years in prison. While U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott has called McDavid the first person in the U.S. to be prosecuted on Earth Liberation Front (ELF)-related charges, the trial revealed that McDavid's group had not decided whether or not to claim the planned actions in the name of the ELF. On January 8, 2015, after he spent eight years and 360 days in prison, McDavid's conviction was overturned after the prosecution conceded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had withheld thousands of pages of potentially exculpatory evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Young (activist)</span> American animal rights activist

Peter Daniel Young is an American animal rights activist. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in 1998 on charges related to fur farm raids in Iowa, South Dakota, and Wisconsin in 1997. He was in hiding for seven years, before being arrested in San Jose and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 2005. Young was released in February 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal Liberation Front</span> Animal rights direct action organization

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, leaderless, decentralized political and social resistance movement that advocates and engages in what it calls non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelty. It originated in the 1970s from the Bands of Mercy. Participants state it is a modern-day Underground Railroad, removing animals from laboratories and farms, destroying facilities, arranging safe houses, veterinary care and operating sanctuaries where the animals subsequently live. Critics have labelled them as eco-terrorists.

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".

Marius Mason is an American anarchist who in 2009 was sentenced to 22 years in prison after admitting 13 counts of arson and property damage amounting to US$4 million. Mason, a member of the Earth Liberation Front, was prosecuted for a 1999 attack on a building at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, that caused more than US$1 million in damage, undertaken as a protest against research into genetically modified crops. A further US$3 million in damage included attacks on homes under construction, and on boats owned by a mink farmer.

The University of Washington firebombing incident was an arson which took place in the early morning hours of May 21, 2001 when a firebomb was set off at Merrill Hall, a part of the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, causing an estimated $1.5 to $4.1 million in damages. By 2012 four of five accused conspirators behind the attack admitted their guilt in plea bargains. A fifth committed suicide in federal detention while awaiting trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Potter</span> American journalist

Will Potter, born circa 1980, is an American investigative journalist and public speaker. From 2016 to 2017, he was the Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan. He has written for several publications, including the Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, and Legal Affairs. In his writings, he has focused on how the "war on terrorism" affects civil liberties. He has become a leading critic of the US government's Green Scare tactics, through his website, GreenIsTheNewRed.com. He has written several articles on this topic, as well as participating in conferences and giving lectures at universities, with some of his papers used in courses. In 2006, he spoke to the U.S. Congress about his reporting on these issues, and in 2008 his article about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, was discussed in the book, Censored 2008, as one of the top 25 overlooked news stories of 2007. Potter is also a TED Fellow, having given a talk about communication management units.

Joseph Buddenberg is an American animal rights activist.

References

  1. ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation – Congressional Testimony Archived 2002-10-02 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ "A Burning Rage" (video). Internet Archive (in English and Czech). 22 February 2009. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  3. 1 2 Federal Bureau of Investigation - Press Room - Headline Archives - Eco-Terror Indictments Archived 2010-08-17 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ Duignan, Brian (30 May 2011). "Will Potter's "Green Is the New Red"". Saving Earth | Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
  5. ↑ "Green is the new Red: An interview with journalist Will Potter". The Minnesota Independent. 2 December 2009. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  6. ↑ "Boycott Feinstein". SF weekly. 28 November 2009. Retrieved 24 November 2009.
  7. ↑ Dean Kuipers, The Green Scare Archived 2008-03-24 at the Wayback Machine , Los Angeles CityBeat , 3 May 2007,
  8. ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation - San Diego Field Division - Department of Justice Press Release - February 22, 2006, San Diego FBI.
  9. ↑ "SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Metro - Feds arrest environment radical over S.D. speech" . Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  10. ↑ Watson, Paul (27 February 2006). "Paul Watson: Assault on the foundations of freedom". The New Zealand Herald . Retrieved 2 October 2011.
  11. ↑ Hoffman, Alison. "Mistrial Declared for Environmentalist", Associated Press, September 19, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  12. ↑ "Appeal from Circuit Court, Lane County". Archived from the original on 15 January 2008. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  13. 1 2 Taylor, Rebecca (29 February 2008). "Arsonist's sentence cut in half". Register-Guard. Archived from the original on 31 May 2008. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
  14. ↑ The Battle of Bear Creek: New Threat in Americas Backyard, The Independent , March 5th 2008.
  15. ↑ Barcott, Bruce (7 April 2002). "From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist". The New York Times. p. 5. Retrieved 28 February 2008.
  16. ↑ "An interview with jailed "eco-terrorist" Jeffrey Luers". 4 May 2006. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  17. ↑ Shukovsky, Paul (26 September 2005). "Animal activist pleads guilty in McDonald's fire". Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
  18. 1 2 Lewis, Peter (17 December 2005). "8-Year Sentence For 2003 Arson At Eatery". The Seattle Times.
  19. ↑ Richmond, Todd. Associated Press, October 7, 2005.
  20. ↑ Williams, Chris. "US jury convicts animal rights extremists". The Register. Retrieved 26 February 2008.
  21. ↑ "Americanchronicle.com". www.americanchronicle.com. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  22. ↑ "Six people arrested for Northwest ecoterrorism attacks". The Seattle Times. 8 December 2005.
  23. ↑ "Earth Liberation Front is now FBI's No. 1 Domestic Terrorist Threat". prfamerica.org. Archived from the original on 12 April 2008. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  24. ↑ Knickerbocker, Brad (30 January 2006). "Backstory: Eco-vigilantes: All in 'The Family?'". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  25. ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation - Major Executive Speeches - January 20, 2006 Archived April 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
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