A building burns at the hands of the ELF

Marshall Curry has profiled NASCAR hopefuls and Newark Mayor Corey Booker (which earned him an Oscar nomination), and his latest, If A Tree Falls, follows the plight of Daniel McGowan, a former member of the Earth Liberation Front, a group that the F.B.I. once dubbed “America’s #1 domestic terrorist threat.” Curry traces McGowan’s journey from his identity as the mild-mannered son of an NYPD officer to a radical environmental activist in the Pacific Northwest, carrying out arson in the name of the ELF, and back again. McGowan faces a life sentence plus 335 years for committing acts of terrorism, and his guilt is never in doubt. But the movie forces us to think about who a “terrorist” is, and how our society treats citizens who feel that they have no voice.

Hailed by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, among others, the film is one of 15 documentaries on the Academy’s short list this year, and the official nominees will be announced tomorrow (UPDATE: the film was nominated). If you have a Netflix account, you can stream the movie now. We spoke with Curry about the parallels between the environmentalist movement and Occupy Wall Street, what a “terrorist” is exactly, and the Academy’s new rules that concern the nomination process for documentaries.

There’s some footage that you included in If a Tree Falls from the Warner Creek blockade in the mid-90′s, where activists were attempting to stop logging in a national forest in Oregon. Their encampment looks exactly like Zuccotti Park—the tents, the signs, everything. And it’s destroyed by the police, just like the Zuccotti encampment was. In what ways are eco-terrorism and “economic inequality terrorism,” as the authorities might call it, similar, and in what ways are they different?

I think there are a lot of thematic similarities between what happened in the 90s, in the environmental movement, and what we see now with the Occupy movement. There there are things that I was seeing on television as the Occupy movement was being covered that seem to be almost lifted from the movie. Whether it’s scenes like the one you describe where folks were being evicted from an encampment where they were trying to keep logging trucks from getting into the forest, or whether it was the use of pepper spray by police to go after non-violent protestors.

We saw it in Zuccotti and it’s similar to the WTO protests and a number of other places in the 90s in the film. And what’s been interesting is when the film came out in the theaters this summer, it was a couple of months before the Occupy movement had started, and a lot of people kind of saw protest movements in the United States as a quaint historical event. There was no discussion of a current protest movement about to happen. And as soon as it happened it really seemed to follow the playbook, and I feel like the film could be a cautionary tale both for activists to consider the types of tactics that they’re engaging in, and also for law enforcement to think about how they’re reacting to activists because I think there are some responses to activism that radicalize people and other responses that bring people into the democratic argument.

When you hear the word “terrorism,” which plays a huge part in your film, all of us sort of immediately gravitate towards 9/11, but you point out that the laws used to prosecute the protagonist, Daniel McGowan, were set after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The Times article on your movie points out that the Earth Liberation Front was the “number one domestic terrorist threat” in the U.S. in 2001. But further down on that same list were militia groups that had planned on attacking national guard armories in Florida, people who sounded considerably more bent on killing people than the ELF has. In your opinion, should there be a specific law on the books that links terrorism to murder to injuring others? Should it remain as this nebulous law that the authorities can use at their discretion?

You know, that’s one of the big questions of the film is how we define terrorism and, I think that it’s a complicated question. The people whose businesses were burned will tell you that they felt terrorized by those actions, even though, as supporters of the ELF will point out—no one has ever been hurt or killed in any Earth Liberation Fund action. So I think it’s tricky and ultimately, my position probably comes closest to the police captain in the film who spent a lot of time trying to break up the ELF. He says, “I just like to just focus on crime and non-crime. Arson is a crime and if you commit arson, then the government should try to catch you and you should go to jail for it.” But whether it’s terrorism or not, I’m not sure that that helps clarify or contributes productively to the conversation.

Right. That quote you got from the prosecutor at the end of the film, where he articulates that as time goes by and he sees things more in black and white was amazing. Did you get a sense that he and the detective viewed these people as terrorists? Or were they viewing these people as criminals? Did they want the terrorism charges to stick?

I think that the prosecutor, you know, by the end of the film does feel ambivalent about the group not that he excuses the arsons. He thinks that these folks should go to prison. And he was part of the team that was arguing for the terrorism enhancement so he feels like it does fit the statutory definition of terrorism. I think what he was reflecting on at the end of the film is the humanness of the people, and saying let’s get a little bit beyond viewing our opponents as two dimensional mugshots and instead, try to understand a little bit about who they are as people. You know, what the path was that took them towards committing these crimes. And that was a major goal of the film: to say listen, I don’t support arson, but it’s important for us as a society to look at people who feel that they have no voice. And to think about what the possible ramifications are of having members of our society feel completely voiceless.

You include some footage in the film of the WTO protests where a woman is interviewed about property destruction, and after she spends a minute condemning it, whoever’s manning the camera says, “Do you support the Boston Tea Party?” and she says, “Of course.” Is property destruction, or “monkeywrenching” as the ELF called it, a viable tactic? Is it a symptom of voiceless people trying to have a voice or lawlessness?

Well, certainly members or Earth Liberation Front pointed often to the Boston Tea Party as an example of property destruction that is generally considered to have been on the right ethical side of that fight. They point to that because for them it’s not really a question of whether property destruction is evil, it’s just a question of whether the property destruction is supporting a cause that feels important to you. For lots of Americans, the Boston Tea Party was on the right side and so we have a generally positive feeling towards it. I think there are lots of people who think given today’s political climate, they’re not as interested in seeing property destruction and who maybe don’t care as much about the environment and environmental causes. It doesn’t feel as urgent to them so they don’t feel like it warrants such extreme tactics.

Speaking of urgency, President Obama cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline today and maybe you can call him slightly kinder to the environment than President Bush. Do you see the ecoterrorism movement going away? Has it manifested itself into something else?

I think there will always be people who feel that America, whether its Democrats or Republicans in charge, is not taking care of the environment as well as it should. I mean, in the 90′s, Bill Clinton was the president and had been president for two terms when a lot of this stuff was happening. But I also do think that the farther the country moves from from taking the stewardship of the planet seriously, the more panicked and frustrated some folks will become. And often when people become frustrated they resort to extreme tactics.

And you know, I feel like there is a lot of overlap with the Occupy movement, but I wouldn’t want there to be some implication that I think that the Occupy movement has, you know, lurking eco-arsonists in their midst. Or that I consider them terrorists at all.

Yeah, I’ve actually been somewhat amazed at the restraint of the protestors and the police alike. There was one night where they were dumping garbage out but, at least in New York City, no windows were ever broken. I never saw bottles being tossed, I never saw any sort of the stuff that happened at the WTO or that you see the video feeds coming back from Egypt. That violence hasn’t materialized yet.

Though, out West there was a little bit of that. And I know there were big arguments within the group of whether that is productive or counter-productive. Again, it’s really similar to the arguments that were happening in the 90′s at the WTO and places like that.

That’s true, especially in Oakland. Why are activists out there so much more open to those tactics whereas protesters on the east coast are much more hesitant to embrace them? Can you pinpoint a specific difference in those two groups?

Marshall Curry (IMDB)

You know, I can’t say for sure, but I think it was similar in the 90′s as well. Towns like Eugene and Oakland and Seattle were really the centers of the radical environmental movement and if you lived in New York, you probably moved west, like Daniel did, to become part of that scene. But I don’t know. And it’s going to be very interesting when the weather changes and the Republican and Democratic conventions start up. I think that in the last couple of months of last year all we saw was just a very small preview of what next year is going to be like. I think there are a lot of folks who think, “Oh, the Occupy movement disappeared.” But I know enough folks that are part of it that have been working all winter to prepare for the coming year and it definitely didn’t disappear. It will be interesting to see whether there develops a more radical section of that group that feels that traditional nonviolent tactics are not being listened to and decides to do more of the window breaking and whatever else. 

Daniel moves back to New York City in part because of the fissures in the environmentalist circles. The term “environmentalist” can even get tricky. Are you an environmentalist if you compost, are you just if you regularly recycle? Do you have to attend demonstrations, do you have to sign petitions, do you have to chain yourself to a tree? Or can you just buy paper towels that are “green?” Even the president of the logging company says he’s an environmentalist in the film. In a way, it’s sort of similar to the “terrorism” argument.

And it kind of goes both ways because you know in the 70′s and 80′s, if you were an environmentalist in lots of circles you were considered a kook. You were a radical for being an environmentalist. And back then, I think a lot of environmentalists felt frustrated that taking care of the planet wasn’t considered more mainstream. Well now, it has become pretty mainstream and even the head of the timber company considers himself to be an environmentalist. A lot of folks complain that the word’s been diluted and co-opted by industry. So it’s tough—the language games are tough.

Lets talk about the new rules that the Academy has created for documentaries to be nominated for an Oscar. The movies have to be screened and reviewed in New York or Los Angeles. If A Tree Falls was on the shortlist—so you guys qualified?

It did qualify, yes. We had a theatrical release of the film, and Oscilloscope, a theatrical distribution company, was our distributor. So we did a theatrical release over the summer and it got a review in the New York Times and the LA times, as well as lots of other newspapers, so we qualified in the way that the Academy generally wants people to qualify. But, you know, there are certainly other films, and our film is on the short list this year which means it’s one of 15 films that has been selected from the hundred and however many films that qualified to be considered for a nomination.

On the 24th, I think, of January, they’ll pick the five nominees from that short list. But there were other films that were really good films that didn’t qualify in the same way and probably wouldn’t have qualified if the rules were what they are now. So, I don’t know, I still am not a hundred percent clear, to be perfectly honest with you, about how the rules are gonna be rolled out, how the short list is selected, and how the nominees are selected from the short list in the new system.

Do you think the requirements are generally fair? Why did they make the change?

It’s hard to say. I think the reason that they changed the rules was to deal with the fact that a number of films this year that were widely considered to be frontrunners for Oscars, including The Interrupters by Steve James, one of the folks who made Hoop Dreams, didnt make the short list. And it seems like for a number of years in a row there have been very high profile films that haven’t made the short list and, and so the rules committee was trying to find a way around that by first making sure that the list wasn’t crowded out by films that were not, you know, serious theatrical films, and second by changing the way that the short list was created.

In the past the short list has been created by small screening committees, who rate the films according to a numerical system and that is what generates the short list. My understanding—and I’m not hundred percent sure this is right—is that in the future the entire documentary branch of the Academy will be voting on the short list, so you’ll get the more popular films on the short list. The downside, of course, to that is that unusual films that don’t really have the same buzz probably wont be seen by very many people in the documentary branch and therefore won’t be voted for by members of the documentary branch. So there are always tradeoffs in trying to come up with the best system. 

Do you think this sort of fomentation of dissent over the past six or seven months helped your film to, for lack of a better phrase, ride the zeitgeist to the short list?

It’s hard to say, but it definitely makes the film more relevant. I mean, like I said, when it came out this summer, a lot of people saw it as a historical film and when the Occupy movement emerged, it became a film that touched on some of the most important issues that people were arguing about at the time. And we’ve seen screenings and DVD sales and things like that from universities that have young people that are arguing about what kind of tactics they should use, what lessons can we learn from the movements of the past. Some of the Occupy folks have even scheduled screenings. On the night that the Oakland group was evicted, there was supposed to be a screening of If a Tree Falls at their site. So it has definitely become part of the conversation and I’m sure that that you know played a part in people’s appreciation of it.

What are you working on now?

Well, I’ve got a few different things that I’m working on at the same time but the main thing right now is a film about Lennox Lewis, the former heavyweight boxing champion. He retired a few years ago and is now in an interesting position of having worked his whole life to achieve something, achieved it, and now is a 46 year old—he’s got a long life ahead of him and has to figure out what’s next.

They can’t all sell low-fat, countertop grills.
Yeah, that’s right. He’s gotta come up with some cooking utensil.

What do you think your chances are of getting the nomination?
To be perfectly honest, I think we’re longshots because there are a lot of strong films this year.

JURIST Guest Columnist Will Potter, an independent journalist who specializes in the topic of eco-terrorism, says the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act classification of activists as terrorists threatens to end activism, in part to stem corporate profit loss…

A recent undercover investigation into one of the nation’s largest egg producers, Sparboe Farms, documented hens mangled in cage wire, many with open wounds, and chicks having their beaks burned off by workers. This is just one of many investigations by animal welfare advocates that have exposed standard industry practices, created national dialogue about factory farming and in some cases prompted criminal charges. Newly released FBI documentsshow that the government is less concerned about these abuses and more concerned about the economic loss caused to businesses. The FBI has also been keeping files on factory farm investigators, and recommends prosecuting them as terrorists.

It may come as a shock to most people to learn of potential terrorism charges for investigators who, at worst, have trespassed or rescued a few injured animals. Yet, this is merely the latest chapter of a long-running campaign. I have documented how corporations created the term “eco-terrorism” in the 1980s and then used public relations campaigns, congressional hearings and ambitious court cases to manufacture what the FBI calls the “number one domestic terrorism threat.”

Perhaps the most dangerous tactic employed by corporations has been the manipulation of post-9/11 fears to enact designer terrorism legislation. Foremost among these new laws is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). The act was passed in 2006 at the request of the National Association for Biomedical Research, Fur Commission USA, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Wyeth, United Egg Producers, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and many other corporations and business groups that have a financial stake in silencing animal rights activists.

The AETA expands the definition of “animal enterprise terrorism” in 18 USC § 43. Its sweeping language criminalizes “interfering with” the operations of an animal enterprise, instilling a “reasonable fear” in those who are protested, and causing a “loss of profits.” The scope of the law is widened further through its emphasis on “tertiary targeting.” It not only protects animal enterprises, but also any business that does business with an animal enterprise.

In response to civil liberties advocates and in implicit recognition of the vague language, supporters of the bill included a paragraph noting it does not “prohibit any expressive conduct … protected from legal prohibition by the First Amendment.” While it is true that the AETA does not explicitly outlaw protest, saying “This is Constitutional” does not make it so.

The true threat of the law is the fear it has created. This chilling effect on First Amendment activity is at the core of a new lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Blum v. Holder [PDF], filed on behalf of five longtime activists who say the vague, overly broad language of the AETA has made them think twice about using their rights. One of the plaintiffs, Ryan Shapiro, is now a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He uncovered the FBI file discussed previously through a Freedom of Information Act request. Shapiro once participated in undercover investigations; he stopped after the passage of the AETA. He says this file — which lists him by name — and other prosecutions confirmed his fears of being prosecuted as a terrorist.

The industries targeted have countered that the AETA is no different from hate crime legislation targeting the Ku Klux Klan. “It’s always been possible to punish those who burn crosses, deface houses or otherwise harass people on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation,” Dan Murphy wrote in Dairy Herd. “But often, the small fines and minimal jail terms prescribed by trespassing and property damage statutes don’t fit the egregious nature of the offenses.”

To most reasonable people, the offenses by factory farms are much more egregious than the act of videotaping them. The purpose of the AETA is not to fulfill a legal void, as supporters claim. Animal rights activists have never committed physical violence against a human being, which is but one trait that makes a comparison to hate crimes so offensive and desperately overreaching. The crimes they have committed, such as trespassing and theft, are already crimes. When it comes to the extreme crimes of underground groups, like the Animal Liberation Front, reclassifying them as “terrorist acts” does not deter the groups. According to a Justice Department report [PDF], animal rights crimes were actually on the decline until the passage of “animal enterprise terrorism” legislation, then they spiked.

The purpose of the AETA is to deter aboveground activists like Shapiro by leveraging the power of fear. Exposés by national groups like the Humane Society of the United States, Mercy for Animals, and PETA have rattled these industries to their core in a way that vandalism or arson never could. Animal enterprises are trying to deflect scrutiny, and hope to use the War on Terror to scare their opposition into submission.

Regardless of how one feels about animal rights or animal rights activists, the targeting of political activists as “terrorists” because they cause a loss of corporate profits sets a dangerous precedent. Occupy Wall Street, for example, clearly is focused on challenging corporate power and has utilized a diversity of tactics currently classified as “animal enterprise terrorism,” including non-violent civil disobedience and home demonstrations. If this legislation is not overturned, it will be the blueprint for targeting all protesters that pose a threat to business as usual.

Will Potter is an award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, DC. His reporting and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, the Vermont Law Review, and he has testified before Congress. His book, Green Is The New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, was awarded a Kirkus Star for “remarkable merit” and named one of the best books of 2011.

Suggested citation: Will Potter, Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Threatens Activism, JURIST – Hotline, Jan. 24, 2012, http://jurist.org/hotline/2012/01/will-potter-aeta-terrorism.php.

Left, Associated Press; Right, James Barron/The New York TimesThe rubble at 18 West 11th Street after the blast in 1970, and the address today. The town house was a bomb-making site for the Weathermen, a radical group also known as Weatherman and as Weather Underground.

Charles LockwoodWest 11th Street moments after an explosion in a town house that had been used by the Weathermen.

A City Room post recently about a town house on the Upper East Side that blew up in 2006 brought to mind another town house, another era and another explosion — the town house in Greenwich Village that became a bomb factory for the radical group the Weathermen.

Unlike with the physician on the Upper East Side who apparently intended to destroy his town house, the explosion on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, in 1970, was an accident.

Charles Lockwood remembers how loud it was. He was down the street, taking pictures.

He was a senior at Princeton. He and a classmate with a new camera had driven to Manhattan to take photographs for Mr. Lockwood’s senior thesis. It served as the basis for his book “Bricks and Brownstone: The New York Row House,” published in 1972 and reissued by Rizzoli in 2003.

They had set up their tripod by the parked cars down the block and were focusing on a Greek Revival doorway when the blast went off. Mr. Lockwood said they were thrown by the force of the explosion but were not knocked down. As smoke streamed from the town house, they ran up the street and snapped about a dozen photos, unaware that three people lay dead inside or that two women had fled.

Neither of the women had much on in the way of clothes as they ran out. One had apparently been taking a shower, and the other had been ironing. As the fire trucks pulled up, a neighbor let them in to clean up and gave them clothes. Then they left, coolly heading to the subway.

Before long, the details of the bomb-making emerged. “Shortly after that,” Mr. Lockwood recalled recently, “I started getting visits — one from the New York Fire Department and two from the F.B.I.” His friends at Princeton were nonchalant. The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents found him at his eating club. The second time they showed up, someone yelled, “Charlie, the F.B.I.’s here again.”

“The F.B.I. was particularly curious if I had seen two naked women running from the house,” Mr. Lockwood said. “They kept asking, ‘Did you see the naked girls?’ I told them no, I hadn’t. What I was really worried about was the rest of the block would blow up while we were standing there. I didn’t see Dustin Hoffman, either.”

Mr. Hoffman had lived next door. The living room wall of his apartment had been blown open. His desk had tumbled into the wreckage.

The two women, Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin, remained at large for the rest of the 1970s. Ms. Wilkerson turned herself in in 1980 and was sentenced to three years in prison. Ms. Boudin was arrested in 1981 after an armored-car holdup in Rockland County that left three dead: two police officers and a Brink’s guard. She pleaded guilty in 1984 and was released in 2003.

As for the town house that was destroyed, it dated to the 1840s. It had once been owned by Charles Merrill, a founder of Merrill Lynch. He called it “the little house on heaven street,” which sounded like a line that could have come from the man he sold it to, Howard Dietz, a Broadway lyricist and movie publicist. Ms. Wilkerson’s father, James, had bought it in 1963.

After the rubble was cleared, the vacant lot was sold for $75,000 to the architect Hugh Hardy and Francis Mason, a dance devotee and critic who was working as an assistant to Arthur A. Houghton Jr., the president of Steuben Glass and chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mr. Hardy said the idea originated with his wife, Tiziana. “Tiziana said, ‘Why don’t we buy the land, and you can design the house?’” he recalled last week.

He said he remembered thinking, “Oh, no.”

He designed a two-family structure that was “much less confining than a conventional brownstone.” The idea was for the Masons and their children to take the bottom two floors and the garden and for the Hardys and their children to have the top two floors and a terrace.

His design matched the height and scale of the houses on either side, but had a angular facade that jutted out toward West 11th Street. “It was this whole idea that a new building should express something new,” he said, adding, “We were deeper into diagonals at that point.”

He went before the Landmarks Preservation Commission to convince it that his design was “appropriate” for the site and won approval after agreeing to some changes.

“We couldn’t build it,” Mr. Hardy said. “We went to the bank to try to get a mortgage. This guy says: ‘I can see you’re a nice young man. I could give you a mortgage. There are wonderful houses in’ — he named some part of the East Village — ‘but I am not going to give you a mortgage on any of those places.’”

The man mentioned Westchester County, Mr. Hardy said, adding: “He had redlined all of Manhattan. I got so angry I almost hit him.”

They sold the lot, and the new owners built the house.

Mr. Lockwood went back to Princeton and finished his thesis. He said it contained not a word about the bombing.

“No,” he said. “I remember my faculty adviser getting a kick out of it, but that was about it except for ‘Hey, Charlie, the F.B.I.’s here.’ I turned in my thesis. I won a prize for the thesis. That led to getting a grant, 16 to 18 months of money so I could turn the thesis into a real book.”

Cyber criminals launch underground search engine

BRIAN KREBS

ILLEGAL: A screenshot of MegaSearch.cc.