The Next Eco-Warriors (37 page)

As I awaited questions from members of Congress and braced myself for the reaction from the Democrats who invited me, I looked down at my notes and at my hands. It struck me that they were perfectly still. It was an empowering feeling, to have my words and my actions completely in line with my beliefs. Never in my life had I felt so calm.

Immediately after the hearing, I began calling activist groups and urged them to notify their members about the legislation. I began to write regularly for a website I created,
GreenIsTheNewRed.com
. And I began speaking at law
schools, conferences, churches, potlucks, punk rock shows—anywhere I could to raise awareness about the law and help stop it.

Months later, the law was rushed through the House of Representatives with only six members of Congress in the room. Most lawmakers were breaking ground for a new memorial honoring Martin Luther King Jr. when legislation was being passed that labeled King's tactics—including nonviolent civil disobedience—as terrorism.

It was a major defeat, and for the corporations who supported the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, it was only the beginning. Since then, similar legislation has been introduced in many other states.

In Utah, a lawmaker said legislation is needed to target people like Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who disrupted an oil and gas auction by bidding on parcels of land. In Tennessee, Rep. Frank Niceley argued before the general assembly for eco-terrorism legislation, saying, “Eco-terrorists are left wing eco-greenies. It's a different type of terrorism. They don't have Osama bin Laden leadin' them.”

So how have these “eco-terrorism” laws been used? In California, four activists were arrested under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for protesting animal experimentation outside of the experimenter's home. Their indictment lists that they chanted, protested, made fliers, and wrote slogans on the ground in children's sidewalk chalk. As I write this, they are awaiting trial.

For those who have been convicted as “terrorists,” the label follows them from the courtroom into prison. For example, Daniel McGowan was arrested in 2005 for his role in two arsons by the Earth Liberation Front. He targeted genetic engineering and a timber company that logged old-growth forests. In a court hearing, the lead prosecutor called the Earth Liberation Front a terrorist organization and compared the property destruction of McGowan and his codefendants to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan.

McGowan pleaded guilty to his charges and was sentenced to prison as a terrorist. He is now incarcerated in a secretive prison facility on U.S. soil, called a Communications Management Unit (CMU ). He was transferred there without notice and without opportunity for appeal.

The CMUs radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the Supermax AD X-Florence. Inmates and guards at the CMU s call them “Little Guantanamo.” They have also been described as prisons for “second-tier” terrorists.

According to the Bureau of Prisons, these inmates “do not rise to the same degree of potential risk to national security” as other terrorism inmates. Most prisoners are Muslim, and the secretive prisons have also housed Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” charges.

Through interviews with attorneys, family members, and a current prisoner, it is clear that these units have been created not for violent and dangerous “terrorists,” but for political cases the government would like to keep secret.

_________

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE FBI PALES IN comparison to what many activists have endured, both during this “Green Scare” and in other eras of government repression. I have not been threatened with prison time, terrorism enhancement penalties, or anything like that. However, my experience has prompted the stark realization that the overly broad use of the word
terrorism
affects many more people than those who set foot in a courtroom.

Few activists will be visited by the FBI, even fewer will be arrested. The real purpose of all this—the FBI visits, the public relations campaigns, the legislation—is to instill fear and make everyday people afraid of speaking up for their beliefs. The scare mongering has had what attorneys call a chilling effect: it has made everyday people feel as if they must choose between their activism and being labeled a terrorist, and that is not a choice anyone should have to make.

It can be unsettling and frightening to learn how far the government has gone to attack political activists, and sometimes I wonder if spreading this information simply makes more people afraid. But time and again, in dozens of venues, from the New York City Bar Association to anarchist
bookstores, I have seen an incredible thing happen when people learn about these issues and then turn to their neighbors. Their conversations are never about how they are afraid; they are about how they are angry and want to take action.

The best way to handle the fear these scare tactics create, I learned, is to confront it head on. “Never turn your back on fear,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote. “It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

_________

THE LEAFLETING CASE IN CHICAGO WAS EVENTUALLY dismissed, and we decided to move back to Texas. Kamber and I packed our few belongings and prepared for the journey home. I dreaded moving day. Not because of any attachment to the city, but because I did not want to walk downstairs, through the marble lobby with its Corinthian columns and Victorian couches, and enter Steve the Landlord's office to turn in our keys. He knew, I thought. He must.

The building was old, but secure. The FBI agents did not kick down any doors when they visited our apartment. They flashed badges and were escorted inside. They probably told Steve that Kamber and I were suspected terrorists, and that this was a national security matter that needed urgent attention. Perhaps they showed him my photo, film noir style. Would he even buzz me into his office? I wondered. Would he ask me to slide the keys under the door, to keep me at a safe distance? Would he refuse to return my security deposit, because there was a “no terrorist” clause in the fine print of the lease?

I opened his door and walked up to his desk as he spoke with a couple of young, beautiful prospective tenants. I tried to silently slip the keys across the desk, but they jangled like jailer's keys, and the sound of metal on wood echoed up into the vaulted ceiling. I turned, exhaled, and walked away. He called after me when I was almost to the doorway. Here it comes, I thought. Steve the Landlord is going to say how disappointed he is in both of us. How he is going to take custody of the dogs because they should not live with such terrorist scum.

“Hey, Will,” he said. I turned to face him. “Give ’em hell.”

_________

Will Potter is an award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, DC. He frequently lectures at universities and law schools and writes for both mainstream and independent media outlets. He has just released his first book
, Green Is the New Red,
from City Lights Books
.

Twenty-six
United States
Mobilizer

Joshua Kahn Russell (right) with Vandana Shiva
.
PHOTO BY MATT STERN

THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF US. The snow was four and a half inches (11.4 centimeters) deep and it was nineteen degrees Fahrenheit (minus 7.2 degrees Celsius) outside. We could already hear the Fox News commentators and their usual absurdities: “A global warming protest in the snow? Maybe this climate change stuff isn't real after all.” But by the end of the day, even Fox gave positive coverage to the largest civil disobedience to solve the climate crisis in U.S. history.

On March 2, 2009, around four thousand people came to the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, DC, a coal plant that powers the Capitol building. More than two thousand of them risked arrest in a sit-in. The vast majority had never been to a demonstration of any kind before, let alone engaged in a form of nonviolent direct action. People from communities most directly impacted by coal's life cycle—from Navajo reservations in the Southwest to Appalachian towns in the Southeast—led the march. With vibrant, multicolored flags depicting windmills, people planting gardens, waves crashing, and captions like community, security, change, and power, we sat-in to blockade five entrances to the power plant that literally fuels Congress. We called the whole thing the Capitol Climate Action. I was a lead organizer. And I was exhausted.

We had been organizing for ten months. Watching the idea grow and take a life of its own was almost like raising a child—complete with snotty temper tantrums and sleepless nights among the awe of bringing a light into this world. And the action scenario was actually pretty simple.

The belching smokestacks just two blocks from the Capitol building made a fitting target for a national flash point. They symbolize the stranglehold that the dirty fossil fuel industry—and coal industry in particular—has on our government, economy, and future. Democrats on the Hill had spent nearly three decades trying to get the plant off coal, only to be blocked by coal-state legislators in their own party. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had made feel-good statements about cleaning up Washington before, but we had yet to see any action. She enters our story later though. But here's the point: burning coal is the single biggest contributor to global warming. We won't be able to solve the climate crisis without breaking its hold.

_________