How America Turned Environmentalists into Terrorists - ELF Part 3

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 three of a three-part series.

This Our Changing Climate documentary series examines the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Earth Liberation Front. Part Three explores the aftermath of the Earth Liberation Front and the sabotage of the Dakota Access Pipeline by Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya.

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

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Transcript

SPEAKER_13 1:52

In 2007, Daniel McGowan and his co-defendants step into federal court. They stand ready to hear the final sentencing decision from Oregon District Court's judge Ann Aiken. Over the course of five years, McGowan and the Earth Liberation Front cell he was a part of destroyed over $48 million of industrial property across more than 40 acts of sabotage. This sentencing and their prison terms would come to define a new era of state repression against activists. This era of harsh sentences for property damage and even for attending protest has continued to this day. And it would, nine years later, shape the reaction of one of the fiercest battles against fossil capitalism in the United States. The fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

America's most serious domestic terrorist threat, radical eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front.

SPEAKER_13 2:48

Back in 2005, as four agents storm into the offices of women's law in New York City to arrest Daniel McGowan, across the country, a raid begins on the Catalyst Info Shop in Prescott, Arizona. There, the co-founder of the community space and bookstore Bill Rogers, known formerly as Avalon, was in the midst of starting his day. Since his time setting fires along the Ridgeline of Vale and the offices of the University of Washington, Rogers had built up Catalyst alongside his co-founders as a meeting place for activists, radicals, and organizers.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

The Catalyst is a very necessary space within this community.

SPEAKER_13 3:25

He hoped to forge a place of generation where people could share ideas and be in community. This wasn't surprising after all. For many, Rogers was a deeply principled man whose compassion and empathy for those around him made the Catalyst Info Shop an inviting place. December 7th, 2005 started like any old day. Rogers was sorting through some of the bookstock in the back room of Catalyst when all of a sudden, 15 FBI agents busted down the door. They stormed through the bookshop to the back room where they found a calm Bill Rogers. They immediately cuffed him, and as Bill Rogers was pushed out the door, the agents trashed the place.

SPEAKER_10 4:05

Fifteen or so federal agents had cordoned off the space. They proceeded to search the place top to bottom. They searched it for about eight hours.

SPEAKER_13 4:13

But their long search was fruitless. The agents found few pieces of evidence worth their time. On that day, while Bill Rogers rode handcuffed to the police station, five other Earth Liberation Front members of the Pacific Northwest Cell were rounded up across four states. The state repression that followed wouldn't just lead to years behind bars, but it would also lead to death. They inspect their work. With this kind of structural damage, the owner of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, would now have to shut off the flow of crude oil in this section until repairs are made. It was time to move on to their next target. From March to May of 2017, these two saboteurs waged a war of attrition against energy transfer partners. They made their way up and down the Dakota Access Pipeline throughout Iowa, wreaking havoc on the company's fossil fuel infrastructure. Their names are Jessica Raslinchek and Ruby Montoya. And for them, sabotage was seemingly the only tactic left that might scare energy transfer partners into backing away from finishing construction of a pipeline that would lock in carbon emissions equivalent to that of 21.4 million cars per year. As the Earth Liberation Front had done with arson more than a decade before, these two were trying to hit the fossil fuel industry where it hurt them the most: their profits. But much like for the members of the Earth Liberation Front Cells, sabotage for these two only became a tactic after the long struggle and failure of countless other alternatives. As Montoya and Rezninchek would soon learn, however, with escalated tactics comes an escalated response from those that hold profits so dear. After the December 7th raids on the Catalyst Info Shop, on Women's Law, and a number of other homes where the former ELF members had faded into obscurity, all hell broke loose. The green scare descended on the environmental community.

SPEAKER_07 6:31

In December of 2005, the FBI does a big roundup of these individuals, and of course, they had psychologically profiled the individuals and they knew who was most likely to become a snitch next.

SPEAKER_10 6:43

Today's indictment is a significant step in bringing these terrorists to justice.

SPEAKER_13 6:48

But four ELF members managed to escape the state crackdown. One was Joseph Dibby, who back in the 1995 Warner Creek encampment was known as Seattle. A man with a knack for engineering who oversaw the massive bipod construction over the gates of the blockade and helped drill holes into the side of the Cavali West slaughterhouse and filled them with diesel. An activist who had long stood in the path of industry and had fallen in love with the natural world after moving to Oregon from Syria when he was eight. That day, on December 7, 2005, the FBI cornered Dibby and hand him a grand jury subpoena. The agents claim that they had evidence mounting against him, thanks to Jacob Ferguson, and tell him to cooperate or risk contempt charges. Federal agents once again wield the cudgel of the grand jury to intimidate a suspect into cooperating. Two days later, he and his lawyer meet with federal agents who then lay out the case. The agents urge Dibby to become an informant before the indictments come, claiming that they know he has guns hidden away somewhere. At that moment, Dibby knows the writing is on the wall. Later, reflecting on the meeting, Dibby explains, I'm a Middle Eastern person, and it's not lost on me the implications of that in the United States. The government started the conversation by saying, We know he has firearms, and do you want to do what we tell you, or are we going to come and get you? That is a very thinly veiled threat, and I took it as that. So Joseph Dibby sheds his new life at Microsoft, calls up a trusted friend, and according to prosecutors, makes his getaway. The two hop in a car and drive to the Mexico border, where he hopes to escape the reach of the FBI. He makes it to the toll booth and hands over his papers. Sweat trickles down his back. The guard glances from Dibby to his papers, and then back up to Dibby. And then he weighs him through. Dibby has made it. He is now free, at least for the time being. Many others, however, stayed put. Federal agents detained six other ELF members that day. The cops made the former Earth Liberation members stew in jail and then laid out their evidence in front of the likes of Chelsea Gurlach, who went by Country Girl and helped drive the getaway truck for Bill Rogers after he burned down Vale, and Stan Meyerhoff, an integral part of the cell who helped orchestrate the burning of the Romania SUV dealership and helped plan the Vale fires. Or Suzanne Savoie, who we saw at the Superior Lumber and Jefferson Poplar actions. As each defendant faced down the possibility of multiple decades behind bars and the wiretaps and confessions from Jacob Ferguson, information started flowing. Comrades turned on comrades to minimize their prison sentences.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

I know the hardest decision I've ever made in my life whether or not I should take a plea bargain and cooperate or risk going to prison for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_13 9:42

It was in this swirling chaos of arrests and betrayal that Avalon, now going by his given name, Bill Rogers, the defender of the Lynx, entered the Pima County jail in Arizona to await trial. But a trial would never come. It would be the last time he would ever taste freedom. For 14 days, Rogers sat in jail. Federal agents pressured him to confess his crimes daily. For those 14 days in the tight confines of his cell, Avalon's light dimmed, facing down potentially life in prison for destroying the property of a few corporations. Then on December 21st, 2005, the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, Avalon took his own life. In a final note to his friends, he scrawled out a message on a scrap piece of paper. He writes, I chose to fight on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff rows, and all things wild. I am just the most recent casualty in that war. But tonight I have made a jailbreak. I am returning home to the earth, to the place of my origins. As the ink dried, Bill Rogers quenched the fire of his life.

SPEAKER_05 11:00

Our friend was put in jail. He was labeled a terrorist, and then he died. And whether he died because he put a plastic bed over his face or because he was just put in front of a wall and shot. It's a political thing. And it has to be understood in the political context.

SPEAKER_13 11:19

In his sister's apartment in New York City, Daniel McGowan types away on his keyboard, vigorously researching the law surrounding his upcoming sentencing. It's been two years since his arrest at the offices of women's law, and he's been on house arrest almost all of that time. A thick black ankle bracelet blinking conspicuously on his leg 24-7. Tomorrow, a judge will finally decide the course of the rest of his life. And that tomorrow comes. As he steps into the courthouse, however, McGowan and his lawyers are confident. In the years leading up to this sentencing decision, McGowan's lawyers managed to find a pressure point that made the prosecutors back off on those who had chosen not to cooperate. They requested information about whether federal agents had illegally wiretapped the Earth Liberation Front cell as a means to gather evidence. As one analysis of the Operation Backfire case explains, the government was loath to answer this question, and for good reason. There had just been a public scandal about NSA wiretaps, and if the court found that wiretaps had been used unconstitutionally, the entire Operation Backfire case would have been thrown out. Even still, the prosecutors had a mountain of evidence against McGowan. McGowan chose to take a non-cooperation plea deal, and the ploy would only serve to possibly lessen the charges and hopefully shrink his final sentencing. And then the moment finally comes. McGowan stands. The judge monologues. At one point, the prosecutors compare the Earth Liberation Front to the Ku Klux Klan, and then Judge Ann Aiken hands down the sentence. The Gavel hits the wood below with a hollow smack. Seven years in federal prison. McGowan's fate is decided. For those that didn't turn on their co-defendants, the sentencings were equally severe. But interestingly, those that did cooperate got roughly the same, if not longer, sentences. As an article from CrimeThink argues, the Green Scare cases show that cooperating with the government is never in a defendant's best interest. On average, the non-cooperating defendants in Operation Backfire are actually serving less time in proportion to their original threatened sentences than the informants. The exception to this was the first government collaborator, Jacob Ferguson, who received no jail time. As the dust settled, the judge required McGowan to report to federal prison on July 2nd, 2007. But his experience there would be far from normal. Fast forward to 2014. That year, the executives of energy transfer partners had a problem on their hands. They had too much crude oil to deliver and not enough infrastructure to handle it. Thanks to the 2006 discovery of a particularly rich oil field in the Back and Shale Oil Formation in the North Dakota oil boom, alongside new horizontal and hydraulic fracking technology, North Dakota became a gold mine. By 2014, fossil capitalists were extracting over a million barrels of oil a day from the land. But fossil fuel extraction companies kept hitting a bottleneck. To truly cash in on their black gold, they had to rely on rail lines connecting those oil fields to refineries and ports. So energy transfer partners set out to build a 1,172-mile-long pipeline stretching from the oil fields of North Dakota all the way to southern Illinois. They were ready to make millions off of this project. Except that as the time came to build the pipeline that would cross hundreds of bodies of water in four states, sacred indigenous burial sites, and reservation boundaries, resistance grew. At the Standing Rock Reservation, thousands of indigenous people and comrades came together to fight back. In 2016, Indigenous organizers erected multiple encampments from which groups would strike out almost every day and stand in the path of the oncoming pipeline construction. Meanwhile, leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux took to the courts suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws, while others gathered over 33,000 signatures for an environmental impact statement, arguing that the pipeline would inevitably leak, especially considering that the pipelines that Energy Transfer Partner owned had leaked 349 times since 2012, which was a rate of almost 100 times per year at that point. Across the country, people stood up in anger. Solidarity marches in major cities, encampments, and hunger strikes urged then-President Barack Obama to shut down the pipeline, to pull its permits and shutter it, much like had been done to the Keystone XL pipeline two years before. It's here, in late October of 2016, that we find Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznichek in a holding cell. At an anti-pipeline protest, as private guards and North Dakota police unleashed attack dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray on indigenous protesters and comrades at the Standing Rock encampments, Reznichek and Montoya were arrested for allegedly trespassing on energy transfer partners land. There, in that holding cell, facing down the failure of all other options and the rapid pace of the pipeline construction, the two realized what they had to do next. They had to attack it and the equipment building it directly. So on November 8th, 2016, the night that Donald Trump would lose the popular vote but still win the presidential election, Montoya and Reznacek got to work. They punctured a half dozen coffee tins with holes, stuffed them with rags, threw them in their truck alongside some motor oil, and set off down Iowa's Highway 7. After driving for roughly two hours, they finally reached their target, a pipeline construction site right off of the highway. They pulled off and got to work. Methodically soaking the rag-filled coffee cans with oil, the two place each tin on the seats of four extractors, a bulldozer, and a crane at the site. One by one, they strike a match and they start the burn. By the time they pull out of the work site, flames engulfed six of the excavators. Afterward, as the firefighters quenched the inferno, little but the husks of the equipment was left. $2.5 million in damages for a couple minutes of work. But this was just the opening salvo. A shot across the bow of energy transfer partners attempting to stop or at least slow down the reckless pursuit of profits at the cost of water, land, and people.

SPEAKER_04 17:44

We had a little taste of what it was like to actually stop construction. And that was good, but it wasn't enough.

SPEAKER_13 17:51

Over the next six months, Reznacek and Montoya's war of attrition would rain hell on the pipeline invading their home state of Iowa. It's July 2nd, 2007. Daniel McGowan takes his first step into federal prison. Today begins his seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to burning the property of Jefferson Poplar Research Farm and Superior Lumber. This low security prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, far away from his family and wife, would become his confines for the next seven years of his life. At least that's what he thought. Although the first few months behind bars were rough, McGowan soon settled in.

SPEAKER_15 18:30

You have a controlled movement. Every hour you have to get to where you're going, but like you go to the library, you go to the dentist, you go to the doctor, you go to the track, I play pickleball.

SPEAKER_13 18:39

At Sandstone, McGowan was still able to write articles for the Earth First Journal about the environment and prisons. He was allotted 300 minutes of phone time a month, and when his wife managed to get time off of work, she could come see him in the visiting room, play board games, and hug and kiss goodbye.

SPEAKER_15 18:56

You know, you go to the visiting, you have contact visits, you can hug your friends, have an ice cream bar, whatever.

SPEAKER_13 19:00

McGowan was by no means comfortable, but it was certainly better than what he was about to face. Eight months into his sentence, McGowan was in the prison yard when a guard announced his name over the loudspeaker, and he was told to report to the shipping and receiving department. Confused, McGowan made his way to the office. Perhaps he had received a package from his wife. Tomorrow was their second wedding anniversary, after all. But as McGowan entered the room, no such package was in sight. Instead, a staffer handed him a couple of boxes and told him to pack up his things. He was being moved. When McGowan asked for clarification on where he was going, the prison staffer stonewalled him and threw him into a cell to wait until the bus arrived. It was only once McGowan was pushed onto the bus heading south to Illinois that the guards finally told him. Marion.

SPEAKER_15 19:49

I was like, where am I going, man? I've only been here seven months out of nowhere I get transferred. Well man, you're going to Marion.

SPEAKER_13 19:55

Little did he know, McGowan was headed for a new secretive experimental prison, one that sectioned a part of the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, to create a high security detainment center meant to disappear dissenters, prisoners with high-profile cases, and perhaps most importantly for the state, alleged terrorists. McGowan was headed for what would come to be known as Little Guantanamo, a prison to silence political dissidents that the government called a communications management unit, or CMU for short. And the conditions at the CMU were horrible.

SPEAKER_15 20:28

So I show up there and there's like 18 dudes there. We occupy one range. Everything you do in that is in that unit. So like we were we were uh we had like a tiny yard with a bunch of razor wire and cages, and we essentially lived in what was the former segregation unit at Marriott. I mean, it's just a miserable place.

SPEAKER_13 20:47

For a state that was in the midst of a war on terror, Daniel McGowan's outspoken views on police repression, environmental issues, and abolition in the Earth First Journal, alongside his terrorism sentencing, couldn't go unpunished. So they took away the only thing he had left, his voice. Indeed, most of inmates were people who the government didn't want to be in the media.

SPEAKER_09 21:11

People that are held there are very politically charged cases. Cases that are either um the focus of scrutiny by the media or uh cases that the government doesn't want to be dragged through the media.

SPEAKER_13 21:23

McGowan was a political prisoner, one of the many caught in the crosshairs of a government that couldn't countenance any feasible threat to its power.

SPEAKER_15 21:31

It's a complete punishment unit. It's a they want to bury you there. And so they take people who had access to the media and they just want to bury you.

SPEAKER_13 21:40

Across the world, Joseph Dibby was carving out his own way towards freedom. After Dibby reached the Mexican border in 2005, he managed to make a safe crossing and found himself in a land he didn't know with no connections. So he followed his roots. Dibby's father had grown up in Syria and immigrated to the United States when Dibby was young, which is part of the reason why Dibby decided to run. He knew that the United States government would come down hard on a West Asian man, especially when the wounds of 9-11 were still festering. So Dibby made his way to Syria and built a life for himself. He soon found a position at the University of Kalamoon teaching computer science and renewable engineering and lived in a housing complex with other like-minded scientists. Dibby would live a quiet life of learning, teaching, and science. He would be instrumental in conceptualizing renewable technologies for Syria. That is, until 2011, when all hell broke loose across the country. Back across the Atlantic, as McGowan entered his second year under government repression in the CMU, the last flames of the Earth Liberation Front flickered out and died. On September 4th, 2009, the ELF claimed responsibility for the destruction of two broadcasting towers.

SPEAKER_14 22:56

Massive radio towers sabotage with an excavator in Snohomish County.

SPEAKER_13 23:08

This would be the last publicly claimed Earth Liberation Front action in the United States. In total, the ELF claimed 462 acts throughout the country, totaling upwards of $100 million in property damage, according to some estimates. And this historical specter certainly influenced the fossil capitalists and the state in their hunt for, in subsequent crackdown on, Jessica Raznicek and Ruby Montoya. After pulling off their first arson at the construction site, Montoya and Raznichek pivoted to a different tool the oxyacetylene torch. With a super hot flame fueled by pure oxygen, these torches can bore holes through the thick steel holes of pipelines. Is exactly what Montoya and Rezincheck did over the next three months between March and May of 2017. After teaching themselves how to wield these fire cutters, the two started their war against the pipeline.

SPEAKER_06 24:04

Their goal was, according to Rezincheck, Four hours is great to shut down a construction site, but ultimately, like, if we need more than four hours, we need not just days, but weeks and uh months to delay this construction for uh the ultimate purpose of shutting the pipeline down and having investors pull out.

SPEAKER_13 24:22

Across Iowa, the two hit pipeline hulls with their torches and damaged construction equipment with their tried and true coffee tin igniters. Delaying construction for weeks, they hit four different points in the pipeline's path and stopped an estimated 30 million barrels of oil from reaching refineries. Unlike the Earth Liberation Front, however, very little was made of these attacks in the media. One local station in March of 2017 mentioned that saboteurs had burned holes into a pipeline at a valve station.

SPEAKER_11 24:53

One with noticeable damage getting replaced.

SPEAKER_08 24:56

It did appear that either a cutting torch or a blow torch had been taken to the pipeline and a hole was cut through the pipeline.

SPEAKER_13 25:02

While another radio station reported tampering. But that was it. Radio silence as the world watched the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly descend towards its terminus in southern Illinois, just 93 miles away from the communications management unit at Marion, where Daniel McGowan was imprisoned. Ultimately, however, the power of capital survived the sabotage siege. The momentum of the fossil fuel industry brushed these acts of sabotage that caused millions of dollars in damages off like a mosquito. And as the pipeline construction neared completion, Montoya and Reznichek felt exhausted. They had done all they could do, but fossil fueled capitalism continued unabated. The two had one last desperate move that they could try to make to draw attention to the environmental travesty they saw unfolding across the Midwest. On July 24, 2017, Montoya and Reznichek drove to the offices of the Iowa Utilities Board, which had issued the pipeline permits to energy transfer partners, with a backpack filled with a hammer, crowbar, and a collection of papers. There, in front of the sign that read Iowa Utilities Board, they pulled the papers from their bag and began to read in front of the news crews and lawyers present.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Some may view these actions as violent, but be not mistaken. We acted from our hearts and never threatened human life nor personal property. What we did do was fight a private crop corporation that has run rapidly across our country, seizing land and polluting our nation's water supply. You may not agree with our tactics, but you can clearly see the necessity of them in light of the broken federal government and the corporations they continue to protect.

SPEAKER_13 26:46

In front of the utility board sign and media cameras, Ruby Montoya and Jessica Rezinchek confessed to the sabotage campaign that they had carried out in defense of the land and water. And with their final act, they pulled the hammer and crowbar out of their bag and started to dismantle the sign behind them. They were almost immediately arrested, and their arrests and sentencing couldn't have come at a worse time. In 2017, the forces of fossil capital were mobilizing. Fossil fuel corporations and their subsidiaries lobbied politicians and leaned heavily on law enforcement and private mercenaries like Tiger Swan to criminalize and sideline activists as a means to protect their extractivist interests. During that year, in the wake of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, fossil fuel lobbyists and politicians pushed for so-called critical infrastructure laws. These laws were and still are at the forefront of this effort to paint climate activists as terrorists in the eyes of the public. The past tactics the state wielded against the Earth Liberation Front have been born anew. Since 2017, 45 states have considered 356 bills limiting people's right to assembly and protest, with 23 states enacting laws that place felony charges of domestic terrorism and conspiracy on protesters who trespass or sabotage critical infrastructure. In the eyes of these laws, this critical infrastructure has been expanded to now encompass facilities like oil pipelines, natural gas refineries, and storage tanks. Infrastructure that is directly causing climate change and leading to the deaths of millions of people each year from just air pollution alone. Through this slew of legislation, the state can not only directly protect the infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry by targeting and criminalizing environmental activists, but they also lock in oil and gas infrastructure as essential in the eyes of the law. It was within this swirling tempest of anti-environmental protest sentiment that Reznocek and Montoya had to plead their case. They argued, together with their lawyers, that this was an act of necessity. They were defending land, water, and people from the much larger crimes of energy transfer partners.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

The same kind of ideology of like, if uh if a building were burning and there's a baby inside, I'm gonna break a window and go in and get that baby and bring that baby out.

SPEAKER_13 29:16

Despite the intense legal battle Montoya and Reznichek waged, the judge would not see the humanity in their actions. Rezniček was sentenced to eight years in prison. What would have been a three to four year sentence was turned into eight years, followed by three years of parole. All because Jessica Reznicek was deemed a terrorist. Ruby Montoya was sentenced to six years in federal prison, and she too was slapped with a terrorist enhancement for welding holes in a pipeline. Both of them are still in the carceral system to this day. Many years before, while Montoya and Raznicek were still in the midst of radicalization, and while the blueprints for the Dakota Access Pipeline were making their way through the boardrooms of energy transfer partners, Daniel McGowan took his first step of freedom. The year is 2013, and for good behavior, he's placed in a halfway house for six months. That is, until he publishes an op-ed explaining the unconscionable repression he experienced at the hands of the capitalist state. In documents later uncovered by the Freedom of Information Act, this op-ed led to McGowan's reimprisonment. Once again, McGowan was placed in prison for speaking out against the unseen terrors of the state. A state that silences and disappears those who attempt to stop or reveal the harm it does to protect even more harmful industries. But Daniel McGowan finally left the carceral system in June of 2013. Years later, as McGowan reflects on the Earth Liberation Front, it seems he's conflicted. If anything, though, the Earth Liberation Front was an emphatic punctuation mark on the history of the United States. Over the course of 13 years, they glued, smashed, and burned their way into the minds of capitalists across the nation. Leafing through the group's trail of sabotage, however, it seems as if the $100 million in property damage did little to move the needle. Did the Earth Liberation Front fail? But maybe a more important question: what can the climate movement today learn from the Earth Liberation Front? And more recently, the exploits of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. Critiques of the Earth Liberation Front abound from all over the political spectrum. So to focus in on what the climate movement might learn from the Earth Liberation Front, three points are worth mentioning. First, the decentralized leaderless resistance model of the ELF made long-term organized and targeted campaigns almost impossible. The nature of the cells lent itself to ideological heterogeneity and a scattershot approach to industrial sabotage. While this did mean that, as sociologist Paul Juice writes, leaderless resistance fosters ideological inclusiveness, meaning that it can mobilize numerous different actions without political debate. It ultimately meant that the ELF was scattered. The wide array of targets, from a ski resort to a McDonald's to a logging company, meant that there never was and could never be a targeted effort to topple one specific industry. The Earth Liberation Front destroyed property that in the long run capitalists could shrug off, especially with insurance, knowing that these acts of sabotage were not accompanied by a highly mobilized mass movement. Looking towards how the climate movement might learn from this, human ecologist Andreas Malm writes, this implies that climate militancy would have to be articulated to a wider anti-capitalist groundswell. Much as in earlier shifts of modes of production when physical attacks on ruling classes formed only minor parts of a society-wide reorganization. Here we can see the second critique unfold. The Earth Liberation Front was much too focused on sabotage and not enough on mobilizing a mass working class movement. To be fair, this was not their goal. The Earth Liberation Front was necessarily an underground movement. Cells were taking to acts of sabotage in the face of a deeply hostile capitalist state. But after the Ash settled at these sites of sabotage, there was no mass environmental movement at the time to complement this radical flink. In short, there is very little coordination. Perhaps if there were, the Earth Liberation Front's property destruction might have made deeper inroads into dismantling capitalist extraction. Here we can see Montoya and Rezninchek's sabotage swarm tactics in a different light. The indigenous-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline was already in full swing. Daily protests struck out from a series of camps established on the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux. These peaceful protests were met with attack dogs, pepper spray, batons, and tear gas. There was already a mass mobilization against the Dakota Access Pipeline when Reznichek and Montoya took their blowtorches to the pipeline. Indeed, it was only after the writing was on the wall for the Standing Rock encampments and the violent state repression of indigenous protesters that Reznicek and Montoya escalated to property destruction. And a large part of the groundswell of support against the Dakota Access Pipeline came from long hours of organizing and coordination, but also positive media attention towards the anti-pipeline movement. Couched in this anti-pipeline narrative, Montoya and Reznicek's tactics became tolerable, or at least made all the other protests more appealing. The world had seen the violence that both private security and public police officers used against nonviolent protesters to defend the property of energy transfer partners. So damaging a pipeline seemed a little more justified. Granted, in the US, sabotage is almost always taboo, even if that piece of property being sabotaged will kill thousands.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

The idea that property destruction is somehow violent is an unexamined belief.

SPEAKER_13 35:23

In 2011, Joseph Dibby was developing a potentially groundbreaking renewable array for Syria. Since fleeing the Green Scare crackdown, Dibby sought to protect the earth around him not through destruction, but through generation. He and a team of scientists were building a prototype for a massive solar array that could generate 35% of Syria's electricity needs while also creating much-needed potable water as a byproduct through desalinization. They were about to embark on the pilot project when civil war broke out across Syria. Dibby and his co-workers soon became targets. Militant forces targeted Dibby's housing complex, and he very narrowly escaped to a nearby village where he hid for 10 days in pure terror. Some of Dibby's co-workers were not as lucky and were murdered on the doorsteps of their home. Haunted by the specter of war, Dibby once again fled a country he called home. This time to Moscow, where he fell in love and built a third life. In Russia, he attempted to launch a biodiesel venture, but failed twice, as his partners turned on him with corrupt intentions. Depleted and strung out, Dibby was done with life on the run. He hired a team of attorneys to negotiate a surrender deal with the US, but they denied him once, then twice. It was decided Moscow would be his home. That is, until a twist of fate would once again turn Joseph Dibby's life on its head on a business trip in Ecuador. His past of burning down the Cabo West horse rendering facility would finally catch up with him. In the echoes of the Cavill West fire, we can see the third critique at play. The Earth Liberation Front's scattershot sabotage campaign lacked context. Despite the valiant efforts of Craig Rosebra and Leslie Pickering with the ELF press office, the media soured on the Earth Liberation Front. There was no clear connection between Superior Lumber, Vail, and the GMO research at University of Washington that the media could easily latch onto. There wasn't a mass campaign against timber extraction, nor a general anti-capitalist movement against extractive industries to hold the Earth Liberation Front accountable. There was no mass movement for the Earth Liberation Front to be a radical flank. So the ELF could be painted as outlaw actors, the lashing out of a minuscule minority.

SPEAKER_14 37:42

You don't know anything.

SPEAKER_13 37:48

This is not to say that there wasn't any movements that the Earth Liberation Front was flanking. The fires at Cavill West and Vail, for example, seemed to be extensions of a longer, nonviolent struggle against those particular industries and companies. In these instances, the cell took to arson only once it seemed that the road blockades, court battles, and public hearings had been exhausted. But on the whole, cells often were isolated from the broader environmentalist community.

SPEAKER_15 38:15

Some of the people in my group were sort of cut off. You know, they just like cut cut off from the world. And I feel like cutting yourself off from the world can create real big, like theoretical mistakes and then not even theoretical, applied mistakes that we made because we were cut off.

SPEAKER_13 38:29

And without the support of the public, or at least the support and connection of the political left, the state could crack down hard on the ELF with impunity. Cells were subjected to surveillance, alleged phone taps, and grand jury intimidation. It was hard not to break under the pressure. And today, all of those tactics of political repression are multiplied in an age of smartphones, critical infrastructure laws, AI surveillance, and private mercenary groups. Ultimately, though, the splintering of the Earth Liberation Front doesn't necessarily mean it was a failure. If anything, it can teach today's climate organizers lessons and strategies for building a stronger and more effective movement.

SPEAKER_17 39:09

Just because what you did wasn't perfect doesn't mean that it was a mistake and a certain doesn't mean that it can't be improved upon.

SPEAKER_13 39:15

Clearly, the Earth Liberation Front did at least something right. Because despite not killing a single person, the state was so scared of a potential public-backed Earth Liberation Front that they labeled them the number one domestic terrorist threat and hunted them down with a bandit. And that hunt would finally track down Joseph Dibby during a layover in El Salvador. It's 2018. Daniel McGowan is five years out of prison. 750,000 barrels of oil flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline each day, a number of spills have already wreaked havoc on surrounding water systems, and Montoya and Resinchak are gearing up to fight for a fair sentencing in court. Joseph Dibby, meanwhile, is on his way back from a business trip in Ecuador. During a layover, the El Salvadoran National Police stop Dibby and bring him in for questioning. The air is tense. Could this be the moment when the long arm of the FBI finally captures him? As he sits through the interrogation, though, it quickly becomes clear that his detainment is racially motivated. They seem to know nothing of his past with the Earth Liberation Front. According to Dibby, many of the other people waiting to be questioned were of West Asian descent. His suspicions were confirmed as one of the officers rushed through his fingerprint process, complaining to another cop that we need to hurry him alone. As Dibby walked out of the interrogation room, his shoulders relaxed. He was free, but he was late for his connecting flight. Running through the airport, he manages to board and makes it to Havana, Cuba. One last 26-hour layover before he can get home to his wife and stepson in Moscow. As Dibby curls up to get some sleep, however, he feels a tap on his shoulder. Three Cuban officials tower over him. The biometric data that the El Salvadoran cops obtained had pinged a hit. The FBI finally found its white whale. The three cops pushed Dibby out of the airport and into a car, driving him to an undisclosed site where he was caged and tortured for reasons that still remain unclear. This was a kidnapping. For three days, Dibby baked in the sweltering Cuban sun, exacerbated by the hot concrete underneath his skin. The jailguards withheld water as Dibby, now 50 years old at this point, quickly dehydrated. He passed out frequently and thought he was going to die. On the third day, officials that seem to be from the Cuban military intelligence hauled him out of the cell and into an air-conditioned room and handed him water. They tell him, We think you're a terrorist, and start questioning him. Dibby made up stories to appease him, but his interrogators slowly, over the course of days, figure out who he was. Perhaps because they were talking to the FBI at that point. Then, on August 9th, 2018, the torture ended. The Cubans handed one of the last remaining Earth Liberation Front members of the Pacific Northwest cell over to the Americans.

SPEAKER_11 42:11

And suspected of being an eco-terrorist in Oregon and Washington on the run for more than a decade, is now behind bars in Portland.

SPEAKER_13 42:19

Dibby was shipped to Portland, where this journey all started. And for a little under two and a half years, Joseph Dibby was forced behind bars awaiting his trial. He would survive a broken jaw from a punch from a white supremacist inmate, be among the first people in jail to contract COVID, and watch as the country fought back against racist police brutality in the summer of 2020. All of this in punishment for burning down the property of a business that killed wild horses for profit. A crime for which he had not even stood trial yet. But finally, that day would come. He reached a plea deal, and on November 2nd, 2022, the Oregon District Court judge announced the sentencing decision. Joseph Dibby's fate had been decided. After pleading guilty to two acts of arson, Dibby hoped to persuade the judge that he had already been through enough. He was now almost 20 years removed from those acts of sabotage. That was not him anymore. On that day, the judge saw the humanity in Dibby, and his sentence was lenient.

SPEAKER_12 43:20

Dibby was ordered to serve 1,000 hours of community service and to pay part of $1.3 million in restitution.

SPEAKER_13 43:28

Dibby wouldn't have to suffer the fate of so many of his fellow ELF comrades. He could walk up free. And as Dibby leaves the courthouse, the last licks of the Earth Liberation Front flames, flicker, and burn out. But as the smoke clears, just over two years later, in 900 miles south, a raging fire destroys the homes of the rich. Except this fire wasn't sparked by a firebomb. It's a wildfire supercharged by climate change. Los Angeles County reels as 18,000 buildings are destroyed. An estimated 440 people lay dead. This is arson on an unimaginable scale, and it's caused by the emissions of fossil fuel companies. Emissions that Jessica Raznichek and Ruby Montoya attempted to prevent. They were forced behind bars. As the state cracks down on those attacking fossil capitalism, they assure the continued existence of out-of-control fires like those in Los Angeles, all to protect the infrastructure of an industry dousing the planet in fuel. Arson, then, seems to be just a matter of who holds the torch.