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THE VOCAL POINT: Feds finally bag suspected meat plant bomber
by Dan Murphy on Friday, December 16, 2005
Media trends are often tough to assess. Is the coverage of a single story indicative of a shift in social mores? Probably not, but certain watershed events cast a powerful shadow across subsequent interpretation of similar occurrences.
One obvious example is the attacks on 9-11. Since then — and in hundreds of ugly suicide bombings since — society, and the media that (allegedly) reflect it, have gained a profound new perspective on morality of using violence to achieve political objectives.
Not that we should have needed a catastrophic incidence of terrorism to conclude that people who preach destruction, vandalism and the accompanying threat of personal injury and death are fanatics who have no rational agenda.
But such is the glacial pace at which the media move that nearly 40 years after the waves of campus "radicals" first started torching ROTC buildings and blowing up science labs in this country, only recently could one read a story about bombings done in pursuit of some activist cause that treated the event as a criminal act meriting condemnation and punishment, if not a swift, satisfying dose of frontier justice.
Such is the case with the arrest this week of several suspects responsible for a series of so-called "eco-sabotage" attacks on ski resorts, condominium developments and a research laboratory here in Seattle.
One of the felonies that ringleader Chelsea Gerlach, an Oregon woman long suspected of being a front-line Animal Liberation Front operative, and several other accomplices are about to be charged with is the June 1999 firebombing of the Childers Meat Co. plant in Eugene, Oregon, a town where I spent a decade listening to anecdotes about underground activists and the brain-dead sympathizers who lionize their crimes and make martyrs of them when they're finally apprehended.
That wasn't my main activity when I lived there. The point is, like a Berkeley Lite, the place was crawling with people so consumed with hatred against "the system" that blowing something up was less a strategic maneuver and more an outlet for the rage.
So far, Gerlach, known in the movement as "Country Girl," has been indicted on one charge and named as a suspect in several other high-profiles incidents of eco-terrorism, according to assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl. Federal authorities have arrested six other men along with Gerlach in Oregon, Arizona, New York and Virginia in conjunction with the string of arson attacks and vandalism.
Along with the meat plant fire, Gerlach is suspected of participating in these attacks:
A May 2001 arson fire at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture in an attempt to destroy a genetics project aimed at developing fast-growing poplar trees. Decades of records from the Urban Food Garden project were destroyed, and the damage exceeded $7.2 million.
An October 1998 attempted arson at Bureau of Land Management wild-horse corrals in Rock Springs, Wyo.
The October 1998 firebombing of a ski resort at Vail, Colo., which caused $12 million in damage and was done to protest the planned addition of a ski lodge.
The Dec. 25, 1999, arson of the Monmouth, Ore., offices of Boise Cascade, a company targeted for its timber harvesting practices.
The December 1999 attack on a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower east of Bend, Ore., done by loosening bolts and support components that caused the tower to topple.
The May 2001 firebombing of the Jefferson Poplar Farm in Clatskanie, Oregon.
Even as you read this, evidence is being presented to an Oregon grand jury to seeking indictments against Gerlach in the Childers Meat Co. fire and the 2001 firebombing at the Clatskanie tree farm.
It's heartening to see that in the wire service reports from Knight Ridder and the Associated Press that the language reflects the standard manner in which the media handle crime stories. With the exception of a few "eco-saboteurs" and similar terms that glorify the violence, Gerlach and her accomplices are portrayed exactly as they should be: As violent felons.
Of course, even if Country Girl and the other six suspects are indicted, convicted and sentenced to appropriate terms of incarceration, the idea that true believers can detonate their way to some shift in social consciousness will endure. There will still be disciples willing to rationalize that violence is necessary, because "the enemy" simply refuses to do the right thing, and can only be persuaded by having a deserved dosage of violence inflicted upon them.
However such a warped mentality defines "them."
But what a swift and certain conviction for these particular defendants does do is re-establish the bright line that divides partisan passions from criminal initiatives. Without exception, what separates a reformer from a radical is the willingness to abandon the well-worn path to social change followed by nearly every successful campaign aimed at getting people to adapt their lifestyle choices.
Those groups and those leaders who either openly or tacitly support eco-violence, or whatever trendy label they try to concoct, are as far from role models as it's possible to be. It doesn't even matter which end of the political spectrum they choose to isolate themselves. Whether blowing up abortion clinics or meatpacking plants, the very action itself undermines whatever shreds of legitimacy can be claimed.
There can be no underestimating the threat to the industry posed by (alleged) firebombers like Gerlach.
There is likewise no doubt that, long term, society will neither respond positively to their messaging nor passively to their crimes.
From the coverage of this latest incident, it appears that the timeframe might finally be getting a little bit shorter.
Dan Murphy is a freelance writer and former editor of MMT magazine based in the Pacific Northwest . His column, THE VOCAL POINT, appears in this space each Friday.
THE VOCAL POINT: Feds finally bag suspected meat plant bomber
by Dan Murphy on Friday, December 16, 2005
Media trends are often tough to assess. Is the coverage of a single story indicative of a shift in social mores? Probably not, but certain watershed events cast a powerful shadow across subsequent interpretation of similar occurrences.
One obvious example is the attacks on 9-11. Since then — and in hundreds of ugly suicide bombings since — society, and the media that (allegedly) reflect it, have gained a profound new perspective on morality of using violence to achieve political objectives.
Not that we should have needed a catastrophic incidence of terrorism to conclude that people who preach destruction, vandalism and the accompanying threat of personal injury and death are fanatics who have no rational agenda.
But such is the glacial pace at which the media move that nearly 40 years after the waves of campus "radicals" first started torching ROTC buildings and blowing up science labs in this country, only recently could one read a story about bombings done in pursuit of some activist cause that treated the event as a criminal act meriting condemnation and punishment, if not a swift, satisfying dose of frontier justice.
Such is the case with the arrest this week of several suspects responsible for a series of so-called "eco-sabotage" attacks on ski resorts, condominium developments and a research laboratory here in Seattle.
One of the felonies that ringleader Chelsea Gerlach, an Oregon woman long suspected of being a front-line Animal Liberation Front operative, and several other accomplices are about to be charged with is the June 1999 firebombing of the Childers Meat Co. plant in Eugene, Oregon, a town where I spent a decade listening to anecdotes about underground activists and the brain-dead sympathizers who lionize their crimes and make martyrs of them when they're finally apprehended.
That wasn't my main activity when I lived there. The point is, like a Berkeley Lite, the place was crawling with people so consumed with hatred against "the system" that blowing something up was less a strategic maneuver and more an outlet for the rage.
So far, Gerlach, known in the movement as "Country Girl," has been indicted on one charge and named as a suspect in several other high-profiles incidents of eco-terrorism, according to assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl. Federal authorities have arrested six other men along with Gerlach in Oregon, Arizona, New York and Virginia in conjunction with the string of arson attacks and vandalism.
Along with the meat plant fire, Gerlach is suspected of participating in these attacks:
A May 2001 arson fire at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture in an attempt to destroy a genetics project aimed at developing fast-growing poplar trees. Decades of records from the Urban Food Garden project were destroyed, and the damage exceeded $7.2 million.
An October 1998 attempted arson at Bureau of Land Management wild-horse corrals in Rock Springs, Wyo.
The October 1998 firebombing of a ski resort at Vail, Colo., which caused $12 million in damage and was done to protest the planned addition of a ski lodge.
The Dec. 25, 1999, arson of the Monmouth, Ore., offices of Boise Cascade, a company targeted for its timber harvesting practices.
The December 1999 attack on a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower east of Bend, Ore., done by loosening bolts and support components that caused the tower to topple.
The May 2001 firebombing of the Jefferson Poplar Farm in Clatskanie, Oregon.
Even as you read this, evidence is being presented to an Oregon grand jury to seeking indictments against Gerlach in the Childers Meat Co. fire and the 2001 firebombing at the Clatskanie tree farm.
It's heartening to see that in the wire service reports from Knight Ridder and the Associated Press that the language reflects the standard manner in which the media handle crime stories. With the exception of a few "eco-saboteurs" and similar terms that glorify the violence, Gerlach and her accomplices are portrayed exactly as they should be: As violent felons.
Of course, even if Country Girl and the other six suspects are indicted, convicted and sentenced to appropriate terms of incarceration, the idea that true believers can detonate their way to some shift in social consciousness will endure. There will still be disciples willing to rationalize that violence is necessary, because "the enemy" simply refuses to do the right thing, and can only be persuaded by having a deserved dosage of violence inflicted upon them.
However such a warped mentality defines "them."
But what a swift and certain conviction for these particular defendants does do is re-establish the bright line that divides partisan passions from criminal initiatives. Without exception, what separates a reformer from a radical is the willingness to abandon the well-worn path to social change followed by nearly every successful campaign aimed at getting people to adapt their lifestyle choices.
Those groups and those leaders who either openly or tacitly support eco-violence, or whatever trendy label they try to concoct, are as far from role models as it's possible to be. It doesn't even matter which end of the political spectrum they choose to isolate themselves. Whether blowing up abortion clinics or meatpacking plants, the very action itself undermines whatever shreds of legitimacy can be claimed.
There can be no underestimating the threat to the industry posed by (alleged) firebombers like Gerlach.
There is likewise no doubt that, long term, society will neither respond positively to their messaging nor passively to their crimes.
From the coverage of this latest incident, it appears that the timeframe might finally be getting a little bit shorter.
Dan Murphy is a freelance writer and former editor of MMT magazine based in the Pacific Northwest . His column, THE VOCAL POINT, appears in this space each Friday.
