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*****

Eugene Weekly
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2006/11/22/coverstory.html
Flames of Dissent
The local spark that ignited an eco-sabotage boom -- and bust
STORY BY KERA ABRAHAM

This is the third piece in a five-part series providing
local context for a surge of environmentally motivated
sabotage crimes that flared across the West from 1996 to
2001. Since December 2005 the federal government has
indicted 18 people for the crimes, mainly arsons, in a sweep
known as Operation Backfire. Of those indicted, 12 have now
pleaded guilty, four are fugitives and one committed suicide
in jail. One has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

None of those indicted have agreed to speak with EW as they
await sentencing, but most were connected to Eugene's
eco-activist scene in its peak years. Except in cases where
they have left a record, we minimize their mention here.

In an effort to include more voices in this part of the
story, EW has agreed to protect some sources' identities by
using their activist names, or in one case, changing a name
altogether.

Finally, we use terms such as "eco-radicals," "Eugene
anarchists" and "anarcho-feminists" loosely throughout this
text. While generally referring to the shifting community of
people who concentrated in the Whiteaker neighborhood,
resisted authority and fought for environmental and social
causes, the terms are imprecise. Anarchy by definition is
autonomous and unorganized; statements about the community
in general do not necessarily apply to every individual
associated with it.

Part. III: Eco-Anarchy Imploding

Kari Johnson surveyed the chaos through a pair of swim
goggles, a bandana over her nose and mouth to filter the
tear gas, and steered her partner, Randy Shadowalker,
through the teeming streets of downtown Seattle. He peered
through the lens of a small hand-held video camera,
recording the Nov. 30, 1999 protests against the World Trade
Organization.

An estimated 50,000 people had descended on the city to
resist a global economy that, from their perspective,
treated workers, nature and consumers as mere cogs in a
money-making machine. A small group of those protesters,
mostly darkly clad young anarchists known as "the black
bloc," destroyed the property of corporations that they felt
represented the evils of globalized capitalism.

What Johnson witnessed remains etched in her memory seven
years later: A mainstream news van with its tires slashed,
its metal body covered with graffiti. The smashed-in window
of a jewelry store, its alarm blaring, its diamonds exposed.
A man splayed spider-like on the wall of a corporate shoe
store, bear-hugging the letters one at a time -- N, I, K, E
-- then ripping them off and tossing them down to a cheering
crowd.

Johnson periodically shuttled Shadowalker's tapes to Tim
Lewis and Tim Ream, charismatic activists who'd been
stirring up the anarchist scene in Eugene. The two Tims
spent the night of Nov. 30 in a Seattle editing studio,
jacked up on adrenaline as they cobbled together a 35-minute
video called RIP WTO N30. By 2 pm the next day they were
selling the film, a choppy but intense sampling of the
heaviest day of WTO protests -- most of it recorded by Lewis
himself -- at five bucks each in the streets. From there, it
would make its way to news outlets throughout the world.

Maybe media took their cue from Seattle Police Chief Norm
Stamper, who publicly blamed the property destruction on
Eugene anarchists just days before resigning, or from Eugene
Mayor Jim Torrey, who lamented to reporters that Eugene was
"the anarchist capital of the United States."

Whatever the reason, it seemed that national media had made
their collective decision: Eugene anarchists were
responsible for vandalizing downtown Seattle, provoking
police to assault nonviolent protesters and paralyzing the
WTO convention. Reporters for 60 Minutes, Harper's and
Rolling Stone swooped on this small city, inviting the
notorious anarchists to explain their behavior at the Battle
of Seattle.

And while a few loud-mouthed, hard-talking men stepped up to
the task -- most dominantly Tim Lewis, Tim Ream, John
Zerzan, Robin Terranova and Marshall Kirkpatrick -- many
others within the local eco-radical community rolled their
eyes. Hundreds of WTO protesters from Eugene were peaceful,
they noted, and people from all over the country had joined
the black bloc. Of the 570 protesters arrested at the WTO
protests, Seattle police identified only four from Eugene.

"I don't think five or six Eugene hoodies went up there and
shut down the city of Seattle," Shadowalker said. "Media
attention after the WTO gave birth to what I call the
Anarchy Rock Star, and all these other people got tuned out."

Those other people were the feeders and the feminists of the
movement, the planters of gardens, the militant vegans, the
artists and techno-geeks, animal lovers, labor advocates and
zine-writers.

They had come together in the late '90s to oppose the
government, corporations and cops -- all the institutions
they saw destroying free spirits and wild places. And after
the WTO protests, they were finally getting international
attention for it. "Then it came down to what we wanted to do
with that," eco-radical Chris Calef later reflected by
email, "but it turned out we had very little agreement
amongst ourselves on the specifics."

That discord manifested in internal debates about gender
roles within the movement, violence versus nonviolence,
anarchists versus green hippies and the typical dramas of a
cliquish community. "All the while we're dealing with police
informants and infiltrators and state oppression that served
to exacerbate the distrust," Calef added, "and basically
just pour gas on the fire."

From the end of the Warner Creek forest blockade in 1996 to
the sentencing of Jeff "Free" Luers in June 2001, Heather
Coburn saw eco-radical women doing the work that was most
critical to the movement but drew the least media attention:
housing, feeding, educating and entertaining the growing
masses of activists. "During the heyday of anarchism, even
though it was the camo-clad men doing most of the talking,
almost all of those projects were being bottom-lined
logistically by women," she said.

Coburn was among those unsung heroines. In 1998 she and two
others took on the lease for Ant Farm, one of several
communal pads where hundreds of scrappy activists crashed
over the next three years. She ran an all-women's show
called "Vaginal Discharge" on the pirate radio station Radio
Free Cascadia and co-organized the "Free Skool" classes that
spread activism skills throughout Whiteaker. As a volunteer
with Food Not Bombs, she scavenged surplus food from local
businesses and served it to hungry people in neighborhood
parks. In 1999 she and a friend dug a garden into Scobert
Park and launched an urban gardening movement called Food
Not Lawns.

Another caretaker of the movement was Shelley Cater, a
friendly single mother then in her 30s who managed Out of
the Fog, an organic coffee house by the Amtrak station.
Cater invited Fall Creek forest defenders to hold meetings
in the café, opened her 5th Ave. home as a campaign
headquarters, shuttled donated food and supplies to the
aerial village and relieved tree-sitters between rotations.
The Fall Creek activists, mostly males under 25, started
calling her "Mom."

A few stalwart women also hung up in the trees -- including
a woman called Warcry, a smart and fiery activist who'd come
to Oregon after sitting in the redwoods of California's
Headwaters Forest. She relished the Fall Creek activists'
fuck-y'all, flag-burning attitude, so different from the
peacenik vibe at Headwaters. "In Northern California you
couldn't burn an American flag," she said with a laugh.
"Right up the road in Eugene, it was kind of expected of you."

But not all Fall Creek women felt safe in the forest.
According to an article in Earth First! Journal
("Confronting Oppression, Aug.-Sept. 2001), men were doing
most of the cool engineering work -- hoisting platforms into
the trees, stringing rope bridges between the tree-sits,
teaching one another to use the climbing gear -- without
passing that knowledge onto their female counterparts.
Worse, some creepy dudes were allegedly harassing and
sexually assaulting women, but male activists weren't
willing to kick out offenders who had valuable skills. "We
became pessimistic and depressed with the situation," wrote
the article's anonymous authors.

In early 2001 the women took a stand and asked four men to
leave Fall Creek, two of them for good. During a
"gender-bender" month, only women occupied the tree village,
teaching each other forest survival skills while men in town
organized funds, gathered donations and brought them food --
albeit reluctantly. "The men were totally against that,"
Cater said.

In Eugene, the gender divide was only getting worse. One
woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of
retaliation -- we'll call her "S." -- became alarmed around
2000 when an eco-anarchist allegedly commented that he would
rape a woman for the revolution. S. launched what she called
an anarcho-feminist counter-movement, criticizing and
publicly shunning the activists who she felt were fostering
abuse -- a list that started small, but widened to include
even well-known feminists such as Heather Coburn and Kari
Johnson. "There was a lack of analysis of white, male,
able-bodied, hetero privilege," S. said. "There's no way a
movement can sustain itself if it's not built from the
bottom up and if all of us haven't addressed our cultural
oppression."

The anarcho-feminists' work did prompt some people within
the movement to make changes. Most media and activist groups
adopted anti-oppression policies, and the question of
privilege became one that every activist confronted. But not
everyone appreciated it -- least of all Tim Lewis, who was
perhaps the biggest target of the anti-patriarchy movement.
"There was a major attack on men by women who felt like men
had too much power in the community," he said. "Some men
left town because they were literally threatened with murder
or having their balls cut off."

The turmoil fueled debates that blazed across a growing
number of home-grown independent media forums: on the
public-access TV show Cascadia Alive!, which aired weekly
from 1996 to 2004; on anarchist philosopher John Zerzan's
show, Radio Anarchy, which began on Radio Free Cascadia and
continues today on KWVA; in the pages of Earth First!
Journal, which was based in Eugene from 1993 to 2001, as
well as in Green Anarchy magazine; and in the films and
reports produced by Cascadia Media Collective, which Randy
Shadowalker launched in summer 2000.

The media surge stoked more discontent from
behind-the-scenes activists who felt that the movement's
largely hard-edged spokespeople didn't accurately represent
them. Shadowalker saw a cliquish, badder-than-thou attitude
begin to dominate the eco-anarchist scene, alienating its
natural allies on the left -- people who sympathized with
the movement but lived within the mainstream. "When that
[alliance] was gone, the spell was broken," he said. "It
almost went poof."

Other eco-anarchists saw liberals as unnecessary allies,
hopelessly trying to reform a political system whose very
existence they opposed. "People were tired of being told
what to do or how to act by these PC motherfuckers," Lewis said.

Compounding the internal strife, federal investigations made
Eugene anarchists edgy, paranoid and suspicious of
infiltrators. An ongoing string of incendiary crimes in the
Pacific Northwest brought the FBI magnifying glass
ever-closer to Eugene, directing a hot beam of surveillance
onto the scene.

On Dec. 25, 1999, arsonists placed gift-wrapped buckets of
fuel rigged with kitchen timers around the Monmouth, Ore.
offices of lumber company Boise Cascade, burning the place
to ashes. Days later the arsonists explained why in a
communiqué sent to ELF spokesman Craig Rosebraugh: "Boise
Cascade has been very naughty. After ravaging the forests of
the Pacific Northwest, Boise Cascade now looks toward the
virgin forests of Chile. Early Christmas morning, elves left
coal in Boise Cascade's stocking."

Five days after the Boise arson, saboteurs toppled a BPA
tower near Bend.

Activists report that police closed in on the scene --
tailing them after demonstrations, snooping outside their
punk parties, snapping photos of them in the streets. Tim
Ream, convinced that the feds were preparing to raid his
house, nailed legal statutes pertaining to searches on his
front door. "What does it mean to hang out with your lover
in your house when you feel like you're being bugged?" he
asked. "It's a weird space to live in."

Lacey Phillabaum sat somberly in front of a bed of poppies
in Whiteaker, her face darkened by night shadows, and
justified the black bloc's behavior at the Battle of
Seattle. "There's nothing in the world like running with a
group of 200 people all wearing black," she said, blue eyes
fixed on a point beyond Tim Lewis' camera, "and realizing
each of you is anonymous, each of you can liberate your
desires, each of you can make a difference right there."

It was mid-June 2000, just days before the premiere of
Lewis' documentary about the combustible trinity: Eugene,
anarchy and the WTO -- then called Smash!; now titled
Breaking the Spell. Anarcho-feminists had been calling Lewis
an attention-hogging sexist for months, and now he figured
he better get a woman to host his film. Phillabaum, an
articulate and bold activist who had been an EF!J editor
from 1996-1999, was an obvious choice. She would later
regret agreeing to it.

It had been a heavy couple of months. Phillabaum and others,
under the banner Eugene Active Existence, had organized the
Seven Weeks Revolt!, a roster of community education, street
theater and resistance rallies that actually spanned about
eight weeks. It kicked off around April 24, when more than
100 people gathered in front of the Lane County Jail to hold
a candlelight vigil for jailed Philadephia journalist and
convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Police alleged that
protesters blocked traffic, ignored orders to disperse and,
in one instance, kicked a burning can at them. Protesters,
in turn, accused the cops of showing up in excessive
"robo-gear," intimidating and assaulting them. Police fired
rubber bullets at one demonstrator and arrested eight.

Eugene anarchists became the boogeymen of the Northwest,
repeatedly blamed for police overreactions at protests. When
a group of Eugene radicals joined more than 300
demonstrators in Portland during a May Day march, some 100
cops fired beanbag shots and slammed horses and ATVs into
the mass, injuring at least 20 people. Portland's police
chief blamed Eugene anarchists for the excessive police
presence, just as cops in Tacoma, Wash., cited rumors of
Eugene anarchist mischief when explaining why 350 cops
showed up at a canceled steelworkers' union protest in March.

In the wee hours of June 16, 2000, activists Jeff "Free"
Luers and Craig "Critter" Marshall drove from a northwest
Eugene warehouse to the Joe Romania Chevrolet dealership on
Franklin Boulevard, where they set fire to three pickup
trucks in protest of gas-guzzling culture. After they drove
away, Springfield police pulled them over for a busted
headlight at the request of undercover Eugene police who had
been following the pair. That day, Eugene police raided the
warehouse where Luers lived and Chris Calef was leaseholder.

The next night, after Lewis' documentary Smash! premiered on
the UO campus, masked activists in black marched toward the
Lane County jail to rally for Luers and Marshall. Police
again showed up in riot gear, arresting about 40 protesters
who linked arms in resistance. Police broke them up with
pain holds and pepper spray; one officer allegedly hit a
professional videographer in the head with a flashlight.

The following day marked the one-year anniversary of the
June 18, 1999 protest, and activists held another protest
rally downtown. Police arrested 37 demonstrators, and an
officer struck a KLCC reporter with a baton on the head, the
blow landing on her headphone band.

In August 2000, the Eugene police released a report
absolving themselves of all wrongdoing during the
Seven-Weeks Revolt! protests.

A spate of federal laws stiffened the penalties for
eco-sabotage during those volatile years. As the FBI's
counter-terrorism budget grew, Joint Terrorism Task Forces
increasingly looped local cops into the surveillance of
radical environmentalists. The May 1999 Juvenile Justice
Bill made it a federal crime to share information on
bomb-making and created a central database called the
"Animal Terrorism and Ecoterrorism Incident Clearinghouse."
In March 2001 the Oregon House passed two bills expanding
the definition of organized crime to include sabotage
against animal enterprises and the timber industry,
punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Warcry noted these
developments in an article in the Earth First! Journal ("The
Criminalization of Ecology," Aug.-Sept. 2001).

Still, eco-sabotage burned hotter across the Pacific
Northwest. In September 2000 arsonists singed the EPD's West
University Public Safety Station, and four months later the
Superior Lumber offices in Glendale, Ore., burned to the
ground. On March 30, just as Luers was about to go to trial
-- "Critter" Marshall had already pleaded guilty and
received five and a half years -- eco-anarchists attacked
Joe Romania Chevrolet a second time, damaging more than 30
SUVs. ELF claimed responsibility in a March 31 communiqué,
noting that although Luers and Marshall had been charged
with torching the same lot a year earlier, "The
techno-industrial state . . . cannot jail the spirit of
those who know another world is possible."

Less than two months later came the double whammy, the
biggest arson the anarchists had seen since the 1998 blaze
at the Vail Mountain ski resort. On May 21, 2001 activists
burned an office and 13 trucks at Jefferson Poplar Farm in
Clatskanie, Ore. On the same day, they torched the office of
a biochemist who was doing research on genetically
engineered poplar trees at the University of Washington. ELF
claimed responsibility in a June 1 communiqué, linking the
two arsons and denouncing GE tree research.

On June 11, 2001, Judge Lyle Velure sentenced Luers to 22
years and eight months in Oregon State Penitentiary for
arson at the Romania dealership and attempted arson at Tyree
Oil Inc. in Whiteaker -- a penalty stiffer than that handed
to some rapists and murderers. More than a slap on the wrist
or even a rap on the knuckles, it was as if Velure had
chopped off the hand of Eugene's eco-anarchist community.

More blows followed in quick succession: In July 2001,
Italian military police shot and killed a masked protester
at the G8 trade summit in Genoa. Then came the Sept. 11
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, followed
by the free-speech-chilling PATRIOT Act. Eugene anarchists
would help light one more arson in mid-October, burning down
a hay barn and releasing 200 horses and burros from the BLM
Wild Horse Facility in northeast California.

Eugene's eco-radicals may have been aware of the arsons, and
some even impressed, but few say they suspected that the
saboteurs were members of their own community. "Half of the
arsonists were good friends of mine at one point or another
while the actions were going on," Heather Coburn said, "and
I had no idea."

She still has a hard time accepting that that one of her own
housemates was involved in just about all of the sabotage.

It wasn't just the sabotage crimes and their consequences
that squelched eco-anarchy in Eugene. Most involved
activists agree that by mid-2001, Eugene's eco-anarchist
scene had imploded on its own.

One exception was the Fall Creek activists, who hung tough
in the trees even after an environmentalist lawsuit forced
the Forest Service to dramatically reduce the size of the
planned logging in order to protect the red tree vole. They
hung on until Zip-O-Log Mills finally gave up its plans to
log the remaining 24 acres. In 2003 they finally came down
from the tree village, having spared 96 acres of forest from
chainsaws since "Free" Luers made the first tree-sit in 1998.

Meanwhile, Eugene's eco-radicals moved on to other
endeavors. Some moved away and kept up their activism
elsewhere. Some stayed and pushed forward with above-ground
environmental projects based out of Eugene. A few ended up
in prison; still others moved on to college, families,
mortgages, 9-to-5s. And although the movement's dissipation
saddened some activists, it also sparked new endeavors. "For
me, the most radical things we did were in the process of
falling apart and then getting back together as
individuals," Coburn said.

But four years after the movement deflated, it would return
to haunt everyone involved -- dragging 10 activists who
thought they'd moved on with their lives before federal
courts in Eugene. The feds hadn't closed the books on the
eco-anarchists yet.

Check back on Dec. 7 for Part IV: The Bust.

*****

http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2006/11/22/letters.html

HISTORICAL REALITY

I am a bit surprised to be called a vigilante in EW ("Flames
of Dissent II," 11/9), and would like to make a comment.

Just a few years prior to the history told in Kera Abraham's
article, I had been nearly killed twice during street
rioting in Kathmandu while covering the revolution as a
photojournalist for a European news agency. That revolution
brought down one of the world's last monarchs, and was
bloody and dangerous. People standing next to me on the
street were shot dead, bone and brains disgorged. To be
confronted in my own neighborhood in Eugene not long after
by radical politicos shouting intimidating bullshit slogans,
who were not honest and who were targeting the innocent for
brutality, was for me like being heckled by bantams. What
most surprised me was that many of my neighbors were afraid
and confused, yet of good heart and right intent.

Kera got the timeline slightly confused, understandably so
for a story so complex. It was first the Scobert Park
incident, in which the citizenry went through an intense and
proper public debate about how to end the debauch taking
place there, that showed the community that the newly
arrived rads were bent on hijacking public process, not on
joining and participating. It was, for them, about
cop-baiting, and Whiteaker was their chosen bait.

For Whiteaker residents, many of whom intentionally live
here because of our diversity, radical ideologies are
welcome and the choir wishes to be preached to. But as with
other radical movements we've seen, the Charlie Mansonoids
eventually arrive, the poison Kool-Aid is served and the
choir sings off-key. Sadly, the beautiful green tones of the
movement morphed into jagged black dissonance. When one of
the black-shirts fired a rifle through the front door of the
Red Barn one night as his way of counting coup against
life's cruel injustices, my gloves flew off.

There was significant injury done to the community by both
the anarchists and the heroin/meth epidemic during this
time. Whiteaker, like the Balkans, has been a crossroads and
a dumping ground for other jurisdictions' social problems
and political failures. A very high percentage of all social
services for the region are located in Whiteaker, as are the
cheapest high-density apartments, the state's parolees and
the 400-bed Mission just next to the railyard. People get
tired of a stacked deck, and eventually there is a social
disaster and a public reaction. Complicate this scenario
with an unresponsive city government and a new influx of
angry outsiders with their own agenda, and a lot of
hostility can be generated.

In our case the citizens eventually won but paid a high
price, and I suppose I shouldn't mind being called names
over it even at this late date, as long as there is some
appreciation for the historical reality that if no one ever
has the courage to stand up and shout bullshit to fascist
posturing, even while the choir sings a different tune,
mayhem and malevolence in the guise of liberty and justice
will again take the stage. We deserve a happier script.

Dennis Ramsey, Eugene

POLITICAL CONTEXT

Kudos to Kera Abraham for her brave attempt to cover the
eco-radical movement in Eugene! It's a tough issue to write
about, and she's giving it a heck of a good shot.

I do feel the need to clarify my quote in the second article
("Flames of Dissent II," 11/9): "If it's violence and mayhem
[that bring attention to the issues], then fuck it". The
context of that was that the mainstream media seem unable to
report on anything but violence and mayhem. To penetrate the
wall of corporate propaganda, people who have something to
say often have to go to the streets in order to say it.

Something else that could have been stressed more in the
article is the political context in which these protests
occurred. In 1999 we didn't have the Bushes to blame for the
state of the world, and we did not have the hope of electing
a Democrat who would make things better. We had a Democrat
in power, and what did we get from it? We got the Salvage
Rider, outlawing any form of legal challenge to many old
growth timber sales. We had the president's unmitigated
support for neoliberal trade policies that were effectively
enslaving and even killing farmers and workers, from Nigeria
to Korea to the maquiladoras in Mexico. Even with a Democrat
in power, our country still refused to sign the Kyoto
Protocol or take active steps toward nuclear disarmament.

These are not abstract issues that a rational, responsible
person can simply ignore or timidly debate. They were, and
still are, life and death issues that must be confronted and
resolved, by whatever means possible.

Chris Calef, Eugene

FIGHT THE POWER

Michael "Ike" Terrance (11/16) is "extremely appalled" by
Kera Abraham's "history of eco-terrorism in Eugene." His
letter is patronizing, self-righteous and all too typical.
So many know-nothing know-it-all liberals feel the need to
denounce ELF at every opportunity, declaring their loyalty
to "law and order" and the status quo instead of the
community and the natural world.

Memo to Ike: Social change is made by people willing to get
their hands dirty. Power concedes nothing without a fight,
never has, never will. No amount of tofu eating and ass
kissing by the likes of you will change this historical
fact. Expecting big business and government to do anything
other than carry on trashing the planet, invading countries,
looting resources and exploiting people is fatally naïve.

That does not make the ELF beyond criticism. Their tactics
are often flawed, and illegal clandestine groups are no
substitute for a social/environmental mass movement. But
comparing these people to al-Qaeda and giving their captives
harsher punishment than right-wing vigilantes who target
minorities or sexual predators who target children is
inexcusable.

I applaud Kera Abraham for her background series on
anarchism and environmentalism in Eugene. Contrary to what
Ike says, many people are interested in this piece of our
history. There are many lessons to be drawn from the experience.

*****

--
Dan Clore

Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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