In case you hadn’t
noticed, 12 young people (average age 33) have been charged with
arson and conspiracy to commit arson in several Western states. The
83-page indictment was handed down by a federal grand jury in
Oregon, and it must be important because the story made the front
page of the Western edition of the New York
Times on Jan. 21. Above the crease.
In
commenting on their arrests (some are being held without bail),
Attorney General Gonzales and FBI chief Mueller played the
“domestic eco-terrorism” card before the media, often dropping the
“eco” part.
Arson, terrorism or not, is, of course, a
crime, a serious crime of which the dozen have only been accused.
Fire scares people. It would scare me, if I were in one. But a
bunch of unarmed treehuggers torching some trucks and buildings
(including a ski-resort restaurant at Vail and a packing plant for
wild mustangs) at night, after making certain that no two-leggeds
or four-leggeds were anywhere close, is not, it seems to me,
something I would compare to taking out the Oklahoma City Federal
Building during working hours.
The 12, by the way (shades
of the Dirty Dozen?) are now 11. Bill Rodgers of Prescott, Ariz.,
managed to take his life with a plastic bag while in custody. One
of his several suicide notes, the one addressed to “my friends and
supporters,” reads:
“… Certain human cultures have
been waging war against the Earth for millennia. I choose to fight
on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff
rose 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.”
Poignant,
but an admission of guilt? Unless you’ve ever been in the
federal-indictment wringer (I was, after protesting the logging of
old-growth during the 1990s) don’t jump to any conclusions.
Bill was a gentle man, an explorer of caves, a bookstore owner and
decidedly nonviolent. Was he an arsonist in his spare time?
I’ve been attending enviro-gatherings for more than
20 years, and mostly I’ve been with urban, hike-oriented,
letter-writing, good-hearted folks who initially are reserved about
venturing their views but who, after a glass of wine, can get,
well, radical. As one after another tells of personal loss of a
favorite place on public lands we all own — forests,
wetlands, streams and such — their eyes get misty; then they
get angry, as they recall what has been taken. And not just in the
West, but in New York and New Jersey, Michigan and Florida.
Everybody wants to tell their story. After a while, as they get
madder and madder, the person stuck with moderating the discussion
has to close it off or close the bar.
Many of us are a
hair-trigger away from walking Bill’s walk.
Let me
quote a few lines from that federal indictment where it names the
Evil Eleven, though Rodgers, the dead guy, continues to appear as
an “unindicted co-conspirator.” This is odd, since he’d been
declared dead a month before the indictment was made public. As
Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.
But on to
those quotes: “In discussing their actions among themselves,
certain of the defendants and others used code words, code names
and nicknames.”
“Certain of the defendants and others
dressed in dark clothing, wore masks and gloves, and otherwise
disguised their appearance.”
“Certain of the defendants
and others acted as ‘lookouts” to ensure secrecy as the
crimes were carried out.”
Is anybody but me thinking
Boston Tea Party?
And almost every count — and
there are 65 of them — names the person or persons followed
by the phrase “and other person(s) known to the Grand Jury.” In
other words, a plant, or plants.
Is this surprising? The
FBI does it all the time. They do it in drug busts; they did it to
EarthFirst in 1989, thanks to infiltration via love, or what seemed
like love. We don’t have law enforcement; we set up stings.
What to do? You could opt to abandon the country
immediately. Rwanda, I understand, now has room. Or, you could
stand up for the Earnest Eleven at the five-week trial set to start
in Eugene, Ore., on Oct. 31. This may not be the Trial of the
Century but then again, it’s a young century. We could set
the bar.
Robert Amon, who is usually called
Uncle Ramon, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). A former insurance
salesman turned treehugger, he lives on an old Forest Service bus
here, there, and everywhere.
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