Thoughts from the trenches Eugene eco-radicals weigh in on Operation Backfire.  Did the sabotage actions have their intended effect of waking up the public to environmental issues? Jim Flynn sees some actions, like the arson of the Cavel West horsemeat plant (which was never rebuilt) and the BLM wild horse releases, as valid. "I think sabotage is a perfectly good way to grab people's attention," he said. "Ethical monkeywrenching, if done thoughtfully, can be an effective tactic." But, he added, the general public might not make the link between eco-sabotage and its political motives. "I think sabotage has lost its meaning in this country and people see it as terrorism," he said. "This country has a big problem with arson for any reason. I don't know why that is." Chris Calef agrees that some actions may have been somewhat effective, but he cites others as ill-conceived, such as the arsons of the Oakridge Ranger Station, which incinerated years of Tim Ingalsbee's research, and the University of Washington horticulture center. "They destroyed some endangered seeds next door," he said of the UW arson. "Nice going." In the case of the 1998 arson of the Vail ski resort, Stella Lee Anderson said, "They public's looking at it and thinking, 'Oh my gosh, that poor ski resort.' They don't see the forest that was destroyed for the ski run. They public's just stupid and lazy and ignorant and for the most part, they just don't care." But forest defender Shannon Wilson hangs onto the hope that the actions weren't in vain. "Maybe when people read the stories and articles about these indicted folks some of them might stop and think about why these highly educated and idealistic young people risked their freedoms and life for such things as wild lynx, wild horses, ancient forests, wilderness, and our life giving biosphere," he wrote by email. "Perhaps they will think long enough to question their 'American dream' of building a 4,000 square foot McMansion with the 600 square foot redwood deck with two SUVs in the garage parked next to their 50 foot motor-home along side their 20 feet speedboat and their two all terrain vehicles on the edge of a once wild river. I believe that this is why these folks risked everything. They attempted to wake the people out of their 'American dream' nightmare that is destroying all life on this planet." But Jeff Hogg, who spent nearly six months in jail for refusing to testify to the federal grand jury, doubts that the eco-sabotage actions woke anyone up. "They drew the attention of people who were already paying attention, and the people who aren't think they're a bunch of crazy criminals," he said. "I think [Operation Backfire] is gonna have a pretty chilling effect on a lot of activism."   How do you feel about the primary informant, Jacob Ferguson? Tim Ream suspects that Ferguson may have been a federal provacateur all along. "I just don't know how else you can burn millions of dollars of property and not get indicted," he said. "Especially when you're the one link that brings everything together … I just can't understand why the guy who looks to me like the ringleader smack addict is driving around in an SUV and living free." Tim Lewis, who lived across the creek from Ferguson in Saginaw, saw him as extremely self-determined: "If he needed heroin, he could get it. If he needed a woman to live with him and pay rent, he could get it." In Lewis' view, Ferguson didn't crack out of weakness or spite, but for his kid. "That's the only thing I ever saw Jake give a shit about, was his son," he said. Cecilia Story is still creeped out by thoughts of Ferguson during the years he was secretly recording conversations for the FBI. "Wearing a fuckin' wire into my community? That is so not OK," she said. But Heather Coburn is willing to cut Ferguson a little slack. "He's as much a victim of the system as we all are," she said. "I still have dreams about Jake where he redeems himself. He comes back the way he used to look — he was into Aikido, he was a vegan, he was really kind and funny. What a heartbreaker." But now, local activists shun him. "When he goes walking down the street, he's like a ghoul," she said. "Jake is volatile sometimes; he's a Cancer. But he's not a violent person … I've never, ever been afraid that Jake was gonna hurt me. A lot of people try to paint him as sinister. He isn't; just maybe stupid."   Is it fair to blame the other Operation Backfire cooperators, given that they risked their freedom in an attempt to further their cause? Shelley Cater feels upset and betrayed by the cooperators, even as she has some compassion for them. "If you can't stand by your convictions, then you shouldn't have been there in the first place," she said. Although he's "pissed off" at some of the cooperators, Tim Lewis has a problem calling them snitches; they were the activists most willing to walk their radical talk. "I can look back at [the saboteurs] and what they did and say, 'Fuckin' A, man. They were kickin' ass.' These cats were out there in the middle of the night doing what they did … I think it's noble. I think it's very noble. I have a lot of respect for them." James Johnston is not willing to condemn anyone, short of Ferguson, for cooperating. "I'm withholding judgement because I don't know anything about it," he said. He also worries that so-called "snitches" could face violence in jail. "Inmates don't have anything better to do than learn all they can about the people they live with," he wrote by email. "And they do routinely kill and maim other inmates justly or unjustly labeled as 'rats' and 'snitches.'"   How did the bust affect Eugene's eco-radical community? Fire ecologist and activist Tim Ingalsbee has mixed emotions. "At this point I am dangerously ignorant of all this ELF stuff," he said. "I am aggrieved that good people are going down … I am genuinely saddened, and in deep denial." But he also feels that the saboteurs did real damage to the eco-radical movement. "This is kind of a pattern: These opportunists who think their heart is in the right place, but their brains certainly aren't," he said. "That is the danger with libertarian anarchy. It's completely unaccountable … While we [above-ground activists] are trying to educate the larger community, you [underground saboteurs] undermine the action, and you make all of the community activists targets." Shelley Cater said the shared sense of persecution may have laid to rest old beefs that now seem petty by comparison. "Operation Backfire has gelled people in this town in a way I haven't seen them gel in a long time," she said. "The evil's so huge now that people are compelled into action … We are a battered community. Everybody's suffering some kind of grief. But it's made the strong stronger. The people who are dedicated are still in the fray… Our survival nature is coming to the fore." Kari Johnson has drawn lessons from the peak and crash of Eugene's eco-radical scene. "I have learned to not accept other people's strategies if they aren't working," she wrote by email. "I won't let an individual jockey for a power position … I've also learned that rallies and marches and such aren't so effective at changing the minds of the rulers as they are at changing the minds of the participants." She complains that media have taken the eco-sabotage angle and made a "cowboys and [I]ndians story out of real life," leaving out the less sensational characters — the old, the young, "the weirdos and the moms," — and the positive, quirky things the local eco-radical community did, like forging art alliances and forming a Red Rover line against the riot cops. "It comes down to young white black-clad folks who destroyed property worth money," she wrote by email. "How can anyone who wasn't here make any sense of it?"   How did the bust affect the larger environmental movement? "There is renewed activism and involvement, not only in EF!, but also in the National Lawyers Guild, grand jury education projects, prisoner support networks, indymedia, etc.," Jim Flynn wrote by email. "The movement cannot be killed simply because of the fact that the planet is being killed. Time and time again people will rise up when they realize their life support is being cut off … At the end of the last decade many enviros became involved in the anti-globalization movement which continues to this day. With the election of Bush, many enviros are also now civil rights activists, even more so after the busts." Humboldt State sociologist Tony Silvaggio, who lived in Eugene for years and knows several of the defendants, sees the bust in the context of a larger neo-conservative attack on progressive activism. "It's destroying the institutions and communities in Eugene. The government's guilt-by-association and divide-and-conquer approach has really succeeded," he said. "They're out to crush dissent, period. They've targeted this movement because it's an easy target; Al Qaeda is fuckin' hard. They need to show results. They need to show the American people that 'There are terrorists out there, and we caught them.' … Where is the mainstream environmental movement in any of this? Where is the labor movement? If we let this go, 10, 20 years down the road, any traditional protest activity is gonna be labeled as terrorism." "It's not hard to imagine environmental radicals coming out of this about as popular as Al-Qaeda in the mainstream press," wrote Chris Calef by email. "However, just as the factors that led up to anti-American sentiment abroad are rooted in world history and American foreign policy, so is the background to this case quite complicated and justified on both sides. The public has a right to be concerned about people who burn buildings, there's no doubt about that. But conscientious middle-class kids, like most of these were, do not just up and decide for no apparent reason to risk their freedom by engaging in clandestine political sabotage. The environmental issues that motivated these acts are very real, and as yet unresolved. If there were tens of thousands of mainstream liberals out in the streets every day demanding resolution on global warming, oil dependency, nuclear proliferation, and so on, then we probably wouldn't see these kids feeling the need to take desperate steps like the ones that got them in so much trouble. It's easy to blame the immediate culprits, but until the problems get solved, I think it's fair to expect that more and more young people might make similar choices. Calling them 'terrorists' and locking them away isn't going to solve anything."
		Table of Contents | News | Views | Calendar| Film | Music | Culture | Classifieds | Personals | Contact | EW Archive | Advertising Information | Current Issue |