Eco-Terrorism: The Earth Liberation Front (2011)

Arson is suspected. You may have heard of the Earth Liberation Front, and the attorney general himself says it's a domestic terrorist organization, the FBI, says it is one of the most dangerous groups in the country. The ELF has claimed responsibility for more than two dozen major acts of eco-terrorism since 1996, fire bombings include attacks on lumber mills, wild horse corrals, and two meatpacking plants. So far, not one of the cases has ever been solved. And authorities acknowledge they know next to nothing about the membership or the leadership of the organization. In 2001, I was involved with the Earth Liberation Front, and I was involved in two separate arson's in one year. There was no way that any of these facilities, no one got hurt, no one was injured, and yet I'm facing life plus three and thirty-five years. I was born in 1974 in Brooklyn.

I moved to Rockaway when I was around three, Rockaway Beach in Queens. It's mostly working class, people. My dad was a cop in the New York Police Department. And I was a track runner, and I got scholarships and stuff like that. And then when I got to college, I was like, oh, I guess I'll measure in business because that's practical. I moved to I'm Western in October of 98, and I started becoming a really different person. I had never seen trees like that before, and had a really profound impact on me. I have memories of, like, for the first time seeing log trucks, you know, and be like whoa. You saw the mills, or you going into the forest, and you stumbled upon a clear cut.

Like, it just blew me away. I couldn't believe the fact that people accepted what was going on, just the arrogance of it. You know, it made me think like, why are we being so gentle? Why are we so gentle in our activism when this is what's happening, you know? Sometimes when you see things you love, you destroy it, you just want to destroy those things. The more radical environmental community have, in my opinion, a misconception about this industry and what we do. Does it have an impact? Certainly. Nobody likes the looks of a fresh harvest, but we really do regrow these trees. You know, I'm a third generation lumberman. You can't be in the lumber industry without having trees to cut, so it's ridiculous

for people to think we're going to go out there and cut the last tree. We were quite surprised that we had been targeted. I went up to Portland and wrote the communique and sent it in. Even then, it wasn't real. It was just like still like kind of this cartoonish thing. And I wasn't real until I really saw the newspapers, seeing the man from the company, I think Steve Swanson just walking through this like charred remained and I was just like, holy crap. It's like when you're involved with it and you're in the thick of it, it's hard to look at like all the consequences and like the real repercussions of that. Like, you know, did this action push them in a better direction? Did it scare them? Did it help the movement in any capacity on Oak Rough Log? There's lots of questions, but I don't think at the time I was asking those questions

too much. A federal judge must determine whether the fires qualify for something called the terrorism enhancement. If the judge rules that Daniel's fires were terrorism, Daniel could be sent to a new ultra-restrictive prison that was set up after 9-11 to house terrorists. In the media and in the courtroom, the question is debated. Ecoserrorism, terrorist acts by radical groups, eco-terrorism, environmental terrorists. People need to question like this buzzword and how it's being used and how it's like just become the new communists, it's become the new, you know, it's the boogie man, it's a boogie man word. It's like, whoever I really disagree with is a terrorist. Some people have the problem with, you know, calling this terrorism that when you're basically making the threat where people go home at night wondering if they're going to be a target, that's what terrorism is.

After the fire for a long time, you really looked over your shoulder. And we put all our answers in our home and things like that that before we hadn't thought about. You know, being a New Yorker with experiencing such serious terrorism firsthand is like, how are you going to call someone who sets fire to an empty building, a terrorist? It's just inappropriate in every way and it's an insult. The word terrorism to me is about killing humans. It's about ending innocent life. And that is the antithesis of what these people did. Concerned for life was a very big part of the plan and implementation of these actions. And is why no one was ever harmed or injured in them. 1200 incidents are being accredited to the ELF and ALF in this country and not a single injury or death.

Those statistics don't happen by accident.