An Interview with Dean Kuipers

Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

He was the firestarter, shooter of flaming arrows. He traveled the night-path, unseen,
leaving ashes and wreckage in his wake. He was the escape artist, the man of few
traces, the Yaqui warrior, who communed with animistic spirits. He was the sinker of
ships, liberator of coyotes, scourge of the animal skinners.

Or so the myth goes, anyway.

He is, of course, Rod Coronado, the most notorious radical animal rights activist—no,
activist isn’t the right word—avenger of our time. Some call Coronado a terrorist. But
he is devoted to non-violence—non-violence against living beings. He shows no
mercy toward machines, research labs, fur farms. In dozens of incendiary actions that
destroyed tens of millions in property, not one person was seriously injured. Not even
Rod. Yet it is fair to say that Coronado’s season of retributive fire changed the game
for environmentalists and animal rights activists. It upped the ante. Congress, pushed
by the fur lobby and medical research establishment, used Coronado’s dramatic raids
as a pretext for a series of punitive federal and state laws that equated nonviolent
acts of sabotage to domestic terrorism. Burning down a barn that housed animal
skinning equipment or torching a few SUVs could now land you in federal prison for
twenty or thirty years. With a straight face, the FBI would claim that
environmentalists, like Coronado, (and not neo-Nazis like John Van Brunn or anti-
abortion zealots like Scott Roeder) constituted the most dangerous domestic threat
to the United States. More than a dozen activists, many of them inspired by
Coronado’s tactics, are now in the federal pen staring down long prison terms for
emulating Coronado’s pyrowar. How did it come to this?

Now veteran journalist Dean Kuipers steps forward with a thrilling book about Rod
Coronado’s life and his audacious assaults against the fur industry and the medical
research complex. Kuipers’ book, Operation Biteback, is an intimate and chromatic
portrait of an American Revolutionary, the John Brown of the Animal Rights
Movement. Kuipers has known Coronado since the early 1990s and has had
unparalleled access to Rod and his circle. All this adds up to a rare inside look at the
tactics and social dynamics a militant underground movement. Kuipers vividly evokes
the battleground and the stakes, taking his readers into the gruesome abattoirs of
the animal skinners and the vile medical research labs on college campuses across
the country. The more buildings Coronado torched, the more draconian was the
government response. In tracking the often bumbling efforts of the FBI to nail
Coronado, Kuipers also tells the grim story of how non-violent environmental activism
came to be treated as terrorism by law enforcement at both the state and federal
level--Constitution (and coyotes) be damned.

You first met Rod Coronado at a cafe in Venice, California in 1992. At that
very moment, the FBI was zeroing in on him for string of daring raids and
arsons at mink farms and animal research labs on several campuses,
including Oregon State, Washington State and Michigan State. Even
though the smoke was almost fresh on his clothes, he looked you in the
eye and told you he had nothing to do with them. Did you believe him?

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I believed Rod when he told me he was not the arsonist, but I strongly suspected that
he had inside knowledge about the arsons. He was always in the proximity of the
fires, yet it seemed so unlikely that he would be talking to the press if he were guilty.
This was exactly the same position that law enforcement was forced to take at the
time: many people had a hunch that it was Rod, and some of the state and federal
arson investigators were sure it was him, but even they had to admit there was
simply no evidence. Nothing tied him to the fires, so we all had to go with Rod’s own
explanation: that he was just the messenger for the ALF. It was being the messenger
that finally got him busted for the MSU fires; he was prosecuted for being part of the
conspiracy, not for setting the fire itself. But then, unbeknownst to the rest of the
world, part of his plea bargain was that he admitted his role as the actual arsonist in
all of the Bite Back arsons. That information was sealed. No one knew that except
some federal prosecutors, his attorney and a judge, until Rod told me about a decade
later. He had a good poker face.

During those years, Rod was living a double life--at night launching raids
to liberate mink and coyotes and burning research labs during the day
publicly reporting on these anonymous feats as the spokesman for a
group called CAFF and later the Animal Liberation Front. You quote the
Oregon eco-commune leader Chant Thomas as referring to Rod as living a
"Clark Kent/Superman" existence. This must have exacted a tremendous
psychological toll, as well as putting the FBI on his trail.

By his own admission, Rod really wanted to control the way his message was
received by the press. He wanted his Operation Bite Back actions to be understood
as Ghandian nonviolence and as protests for the way animals are treated. Not as
rash, unconsidered violence. He thought the rest of the movement would step up and
explain that to the press, but of course they wanted no association with any arson
campaign. Too dangerous. So he exposed himself to the press, over and over, and his
paranoia grew. I think he became a paranoid wreck. He had no intention of getting
caught, so he had to accept that he would die in this campaign, and putting his face
on TV day after day only made it more likely someone would come after him. His
relationships with all his friends and lovers and supporters were strained by his
behavior. Lots of people wanted him to stay away. I think he came to believe that the
fur industry had a bounty on his head because of this paranoia. He did have some
reason to believe it was a bounty, but it was a thin logic. His exhaustion and fear just
blew it all out of proportion.

For me, Rod's first act of sabotage, the sinking of half of the Iceland
whaling fleet, remains the most spectacular and consequential. Can you
describe that raid and more generally his relationship with Paul Watson
and Sea Shepherd?

Paul Watson was one of Rod’s earliest environmentalist heroes and role models, and
he still maintains great respect for him today. Rod joined Sea Shepherd and began
giving them money when he was 12 years old. From my discussions with them both,
the respect is mutual and heartfelt. Rod had many historical role models, especially
among Native Americans, but Paul was the one Rod saw on TV, out on the ice in
Canada, physically interfering with the killing of seals. As Rod told me later, he didn’t
grow up wanting to be the cameraman on such a campaign, even though he knew
the images were part of Paul’s strategy: he wanted to be the man stopping the killing
just like Paul. And, remarkably, immediately after leaving high school he skipped
college and joined Sea Shepherd with his parents’ blessing and Paul welcomed him.
Rod’s parents dropped him off at the boat. He never looked back.

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Rod and David Howitt went to Iceland in 1986 to stop the country’s whaling industry,
which was small but took a fair number of whales every year. They lived in England
for a bit while the Sea Shepherds battled the traditional killing of pilot whales in the
Faroe Islands, then, already veterans of that campaign but only about 20 years old,
they both moved to Iceland and got jobs where they could observe
the whaling business there for about a month. They didn’t just sail
in there and do the job in a day. This action got a lot of accolades
because it was a model of nonviolence: they doggedly recorded the
comings and goings of the security for the boats and the whaling
plant until they were sure of a time when targets would be empty.
They went on to the boats when they knew they were empty, and
still searched them to be certain. Then they opened the valves in
the bottom that would let sea water in, at some fair risk to
themselves. They walked away undiscovered, but even if they had
been arrested, their intention was that no one was going to be hurt.

Same for the whaling station. They smashed it up and damaged equipment, but
made it obvious they were doing so. They didn’t sabotage the equipment in a way
that someone would inadvertently use it and be injured or killed. They made a loud,
clear statement. It was only luck that made it all go so well that they got on a plane
and got away, but anti-whaling sympathizers around the world were thankful that
they’d done it in such a way that no one was put at risk.

Plus, it was 100 percent effective. Those boats did not kill whales. It took the
Icelanders a while to refloat and rehab the boats, and during that time whales were
unmolested.

Rod had multiple affairs during the time of his Operation Bite Back and
many of these women would also join him in his acts of sabotage. During
the GreenScare cases, the FBI turned jealous former lovers into
informants. Can you talk a little about the sexual relations of the Animal
Rights Movement underground?

Very interesting question. The threat attending movement romances has definitely
changed in the last few years, and as far as I can tell, there are two explanations for
what has changed between the early ‘90s and now. The first is that in the Operation
Bite Back cases, prosecutors had no evidence against any of Rod’s contacts. They
jailed Kim Trimiew and Deb Stout for half a year each on contempt charges, hoping
they’d turn on Rod, but there was no evidence to compel them to do so. They were
massively inconvenienced, and suffered, but they were not under threat of being
prosecuted themselves as accomplices. In the Green Scare cases, they had lots of
evidence in the form of testimony from a drug addict who was definitely facing
consequences from the drug charges and needed an out.

The second is a change in the severity of the penalties allowed by the new eco-
terrorism laws and the use of terrorism sentencing enhancements. Rod was
prosecuted for arson, and got the max: 5 years. If he’d been prosecuted today, he
probably would have been charged with multiple counts of “Use of a Destructive
Device,” which could have brought a Life sentence. Faced with a charges like Life +
1,115 years, as some of the Green Scare defendants were, and with strong evidence
against them making it clear they are likely to be convicted, most people crack.

Sexually, however, I suspect this won’t change the basic dynamic of love in the
trenches. The heat of activism is a lusty environment, no matter if you’re a

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nonviolent treehugger or a fire-and-brimstone Christian evangelist or a crew of bank
robbers: when the action is hot, the one who is sharing it with you is also looking
hotter. That person next to you in the foxhole understands the cause and why it’s
important – or at least how you feel about it. They’re sharing a campfire with you and
maybe a cheap hotel room or at the very least, a secret. That’s sexy. That’s not
going to change. But these huge potential prison sentences have definitely
introduced a note of caution into any relationship, even platonic ones.

If you added up the amount of economic damage done by all of Rod's acts
of arson and sabotage is possible to come to any conclusions about much
of a bite Operation Bite Back took out of the fur industry and the animal
researchers? In other words, is there any evidence at all that Coronado's
raids inflicted any long-term damage on his targets?

There was some damage and it had some strong effects. A couple operations just
folded up, like the Oregon State University experimental fur farm at Corvallis; it was
already greatly diminished by public outcry against fur in the 1980s and early ‘90s,
and was being supported by grants, and Rod knew that, so he targeted that grantor,
the Mink Farmers Research Foundation. When Rod burned it, it never recovered.
Some other private farms also eventually decided to go out of business rather than
risk that kind of attention any further. The man who sold Rod his mink farm went out
of business right there on the spot. So there were impacts.

But, as an industry, Teresa Platt of the Fur Commission USA tells me that the industry
was economically unharmed by Rod’s campaign. Operation Bite Back was a strong
psychological and political shock, but never really threatened to shut down the
industry.

You've been writing about the radical environmental movement for a long
time time. How where does Coronado rank as a figure of influence among
the likes of Dave Foreman, Paul Watson, Mike Roselle and Judi Bari?

Paul Watson has to be the big influencer right now, with his TV show, “Whale Wars.”
This is a coup in every way: as ecological campaign, as media, as spiritual influence.
No one in this movement has ever broken through this big. Funny, because friends of
Paul’s tell me that, even back in the 1980s when Hollywood was optioning his books
for money, he downplayed the significance of that, saying that what he really wanted
was a show like MTV’s “Real World.” He wanted a reality TV show to make a huge
impact. He was right. Oddly, Paul Watson is now the new Jacques Cousteau.

All these people are influential, however, among their various constituencies. Roselle
and Foreman are very well respected and that respect crosses over to Republicans,
conservatives, old-school Conservationists, and Sixties-style activists who believe in
beer and truth-telling but still also have a traditional self-image as patriotic
Americans. Judi Bari is hugely influential among women and North Coast forest
activists. Getting carbombed definitely gives a person a holy aura. Rodney is
influential with a later generation and his influence has persisted among the young.
He is young-seeming, not bound to Sixties ideologies or lifestyle tropes, not a hippie.
He is a Native American and thus seems less burdened by ideology and more
engaged in a spiritual pursuit. Plus he went way over the line into hardcore direct
action – arson, property destruction on a huge scale – so he kicked open a door that
many want to see left open: that one solution to many ecological problems is just to
sink the boat.

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Until recently, the radical environmental and animal rights movement in
the US (as opposed to Great Britain) could rightly claim that no one had
been killed or injured during any of its direct actions. Can you address Rod
Coronado's views on non-violence?

At the time of Operation Bite Back, Rod believed that no action was violent if it didn’t
harm or risk harm to any living thing. Thus, arson was not violent if the building
burned down and no one was hurt. His definition is very clean and many people
agree. Even the law used to agree. The definition of violence and also terrorism was
about visiting hurt on human beings and animals up until the late 1980s. It has
helped Rod’s definition greatly that no one was ever hurt in actions undertaken in the
U.S., in over 1200 known actions and $1 billion in damages. That is an astounding
track record. In the UK, there have been injuries and even deaths attributed to the
movement and so the movement there has forfeited a bit of moral high ground.

There is a very important struggle going on right now that should be a concern for
the U.S. environmental and animal rights movements: those who oppose the radical
environmental agenda have worked with the U.S. government to take control of the
definitions of both nonviolence and terrorism. Since the 1992 Animal Enterprise
Protection Act, property destruction is now defined as violent. Where that line is
drawn has now become incredibly vague. Pulling up survey stakes could now be
deemed “violent” under the law, depending on the situation. The 2001 Patriot Act
and the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act have only made that definition more
malleable in the hands of prosecutors, by opening up the definition of terrorism to
mean almost any act in support of a politically motivated federal act of violence.
Even websites. Or speeches.

In 2007, federal prosecutors threatened to give Rod a terrorism sentencing

enhancement for making a speech – a speech that resulted in no actual act, no
federal act of violence, no subsequent act at all. Leading to the inevitable conclusion
that even speech itself can be construed as violent. And as terrorism.

Now the Bureau of Prisons is stretching the definitions of terrorism to pull inmates
into secretive Communications Management Units in prison even if they’re acquitted
of terrorism charges but are convicted of some incidental procedural crime, like
contempt of court. Being associated with a terrorism investigation can get you locked
up in a hole where no one will ever find you. The rules about what is and isn’t
violence, and what is and isn’t terrorism are becoming very blurry. It would serve the
activist community well to begin demanding clarity.

Arson remains a taboo tactic even among some of the most militant
environmentalist, such as Dave Foreman in his prime and Paul Watson.
Can you speculate on why arson had such an allure for Coronado?

It’s easy, cheap and totally effective. Simple as that. If you burn a business down, like
Jonathan Paul and his co-defendants burned the Caval West horse slaughterhouse,
sometimes it never reopens. That can cost as little as a gallon of gasoline and a
sponge. For Rod and others, it also once had a spiritual element; it was seen as a
cleansing fire. A redemptive act.

It seems to me that Rod engendered tremendous loyalty among his

friends and often his friends paid a heavy price for even a passing
association with him. They were placed under surveillance, their homes
were raided, they were hauled before grand juries and publicly harassed.

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At least three of his friends spent more than 150 days in prison on
contempt charges rather than talk about Rod to federal grand juries. That
goes with the territory, I guess. But on several occasions Rod seemed to
exploit this loyalty without much regard for the potential consequences.
I'm thinking here mainly of the philosophy professor Ric Scarce, author of
Eco-Warriors, who let Rod stay in his house in Pullman while he and his
family went on a vacation. Rod used the Scarce home as a staging area to
launch raids on animal research labs on the campus. Is there any evidence
he felt any regret about the extreme jeopardy he exposed his friends and
family to?

Rod tells me he had all kinds of regrets, but in the same way he had accepted that he
would likely be killed during this campaign, he accepted that he would also likely lose
the friendships of everyone who worked with him. He had decided this was just a cost
of going to war. Of course, it didn’t actually work out to be so clean and neat,
because Rod is a friendly, loving person and all throughout the campaign he tried
hard to maintain his relationships where he could. He tried to convince people to
forgive the fact that he had to go all the way or else just quit. Then, much to his
surprise, he survived and eventually got out of prison and had to deal with all the
messiness he’d left. As you see in the beginning in my book (the final version has a
quote in the preface from an unidentified activist who is angry at Rod), many people
did not welcome him back afterward. Even now, 17 years after the last time he set
any kind of fire that I know about, people say they’re afraid to have him around.

When Rod was arrested, the mainstream environmental and animal rights
movement were quick to denounce him. Indeed they even supported bills
like the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to prove how much they
opposed his tactics. Who stood by him?

The radicals and Indians stood by him. The Earth First Journal lionized him and took
him into its editorial collective: when he got out of prison, he immediately went to
work there. The Native American community never even batted an eye. They were
there for him all through the trial and afterward. You can’t get a crew that is more
likely to doubt the claims of the federal government than Native Americans. ALF and
ELF and similar underground organizations quickly claimed Rod as a hero. Among
animal rights organizations, only PETA came close to embracing him. Because Ingrid
Newkirk’s positions are so strident, she could afford to say she supported his goals,
even if she still had to back away from his use of arson. No membership group could
actually support the use of arson.

It is true that most mainstream groups had to denounce the use of arson. It’s just too
likely to hurt someone – a firefighter, a passerby, and unintended victim. However,
Rod didn’t really lose much support among individuals in the movement. His stature
amongst environmental activists is largely untarnished. Privately, people still tell me
all the time that the Iceland action is one they will admire forever and that Bite Back,
though problematic, is work they understand and respect. As one respected
professor told me in a note a few days ago (and I’m paraphrasing): “I’m sitting here
drinking a Sam Adams. He was another radical that was not embraced during his
time. But one day we’ll probably be drinking a Rod Coronado or a Dave Foreman and
toasting what a patriot he really was.” I think Rod’s legacy among the movement is
secure.

The subtitle of your book is Rod Coronado's War to Save the Wilderness.
Isn't this something of a misnomer? Most of Rod's direct action in

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Operation Bite Back was geared toward animal liberation wasn't it, not
keeping roads out of wild lands and chainsaws from old growth forests?

True enough, it probably would have made more sense to say “Rod Coronado’s War
to Save American Wildlife.” But that’s just too limiting. It was the mountains and
trees and rivers and PEOPLE, too; he was trying to save Native Americans as much as
native wildlife. All part of the wilderness, to me.

For at least, a couple of decades there's been a sometimes bitter divide

between animal rights activists and environmentalists. Rod was someone
who had a lot of respect in both of these often camps. But his tenure as
editor of the Earth First! Journal was contentious. Many old-line Earth
First!ers saw the Journal, once the principal magazine of the radical
environmental movement, become transformed into an organ of the
animal rights movement and stifled by an obsession with identity politics.

Rod had spent a lot of time with militant movement women, Native Americans and
others who demanded to have their perfectly legitimate issues heard, and who
thought the EF Journal was a good place to air them. He listened. He himself is Native
American and of Mexican heritage, so he brought his own concerns about the
environmental movement, which has always been about white men. You can see
even in the Bite Back communiqués that the list of key issues is broadening, as
several of the missives talk about the subjugation of women and other issues that are
not strictly about animals or conservation. This was the main reason Dave Foreman
told me he left Earth First!: he understood that it was important to find supportive
communities for transgendered individuals, or multiracial environmentalists, but
those issues weren’t strictly about conservation of species. Those were human
problems, and needed a publication dedicated to human problems. Rod was
predisposed to have more tolerance for identity politics.

While Rod grew up in a middle class Bay Area home, he is of Yaqui descent
and one of only a handful of environmental activists who isn't white. Can
you talk about the role that Native culture played in informing Rod's
philosophy and his style of resistance?

At one point in his life, Rod was a mad Indian. And Indians have plenty of reasons to
be mad. During Rod’s youth, the FBI snuffed the American Indian Movement with a
bag of dirty tricks and Rod studied that history, the history of the Indian Wars of the
1800s, and the particular histories of his personal heroes like Geronimo and Crazy
Horse. His heroes, including Ghandi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all died
bloody.

That history drove him in two directions. For one, it drove him into militant
confrontation with those who exploit native wildlife. He saw himself as a Native
American defending his own kind. Like Geronimo, he went to war.

However, indigenous spirituality also turned him away from that path. When he was
on the run after Operation Bite Back, his interest in finding a living, ritualized
spirituality on which he could base his environmental activism drove him back to the
Yaqui, on a quest. There, he found he needed to help spiritual leader Anselmo
Valencia, and the at-risk youth on the Pascua reservation south of Tucson, and his
own people. He needed to help them get along and survive as people, not as warriors
in an environmental struggle. He veered off the warpath and began working on the

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reservation, and particularly with religious rituals and the youth. This was an entirely
new direction that he continued in prison and after he was released.

Can you talk about Rod's relationship to his friend Jonathan Paul, who in
2006 plead guilty to burning down the West Cavel slaughterhouse in
central Oregon?

I’ll let Rod and Jonathan Paul speak for themselves, I think, but my understanding is
that they came to some disagreements when they were both working as Global
Investigations in 1990 and ‘91, getting video footage of fur operations, and Rod kept
pushing for more dangerous actions. They had a falling out, but when Rod was
underground Jonathan tried to see him and also defended him in public, and went to
prison on a contempt charge for half a year for refusing to divulge information about
him. And Rod expresses nothing but admiration for that. So their mutual respect
remained unbreakable.

Rod came to believe that the fur industry and the feds had put a bounty
on his head and that he would likely be killed by the feds or some hired
gun of the fur lobby. Ironically, many of the fur farmers felt the same way
about Rod, believing that he was intent on hurting or killing them. Can
discuss the kind of paranoia that descended over both camps?

I believe this came mostly from federal dissemination of information about attacks in
the UK, some of them unverified and some later discovered to be the work of
provocateurs. The UK animal rights movement, beginning in the 1970s, had engaged
in much more aggressive actions, many including bodily harm to researchers and
even attempted murder, and all the talk at the federal level, including Congress, was
that this type of behavior was headed for the U.S. But it never materialized. The
movement in the U.S. was adamant about publicly denouncing firearms, in particular.

Some of my interviews demonstrated this perfectly. One of the officers who once
spotted Rod doing surveillance at Washington State University expressed certainty
that Rod and his accomplice had a rifle. He was terrified that they were going to
engage in a “running gun battle.” But Rod had no weapon with him on that
surveillance. It was just fear that made the officer see that.

Rod had more reason to think that he might be shot as he continued his campaign.
On more than one occasion, farmers told him outright that they’d shoot trespassers,
and many farm hands wore sidearms on the job. Rod was breaking the law, trying to
burn people’s property and destroy their livelihoods in the dark of night. On one
occasion a farmer burst out of his trailer door with a rifle in his hands. That wasn’t
imagination. It just wasn’t so far-fetched that he might catch a bullet in this line of
work.

In 1992, Congress enacted the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, largely in

response to Rod's raids on the University animal research labs. This bill
was the first step toward equating non-violent acts of sabotage with eco-
terrorism. It was followed over the next decade by the Patriot Act and the
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which impose life sentences for non-
violent crimes. Does Rod feel at all responsible for prompting this
crackdown? Should he?

He does not feel responsible for this, as far as I can tell. Because he wasn’t alone.
Even in 1992, there had been attacks at Texas Tech and medical facilities out East

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that weren’t Rod’s doing and which got even more Congressional attention than his
campaign did. He merely contributed. Rod has been most influential, however, when
it comes to communicating his beliefs about property destruction and environmental
philosophy. That has led to a serious and still-mounting effort to shut him up, and
shut up all peole like him. Thus, the BOP has built the Communications Management
units in prison to curtail the prosyletizing of eco-radical inmates. And they’ve
prosecuted Rod’s speech.

And now, just in the last few days, they’ve imposed absolutely outrageous probation
restrictions on Rod, who is out of jail and trying to reconstruct his life in Michigan. He
was a model prisoner in jail, but they’ve got him on house arrest, no cell phone, no
computer, a whole raft of draconian restrictions. It’s not because of his behavior, or
his crimes. And it contradicts the instructions of his sentencing judge. It’s because of
his influence as a communicator of ideas.

In 2006, Rod was arrested on the flimsy charge of demonstrating how to

use an explosive device during a talk in southern California, even much
more detailed information on how to make firebombs is available to any
teenager on the internet or in the Anarchist's Cookbook. During the trial,
it was revealed that federal agents had deliberately manipulated some of
the evidence to make it seem like Coronado was encouraging someone in
the audience to make such a bomb and use it. The case ended in a hung
jury with 11 of the 12 jurors voted to acquit. Can you explain why
Coronado ended up entering a plea deal in this case and serving a one-
year prison term? Doesn't it set a bad precedent for first amendment
cases?

Yes, the First Amendment took a real ding in this weird, rare case. But they
prosecuted Rod for a speech he made regularly. And even though the government
lost, it required huge resources for Rod to muster a defense. So when they lost, the
government came right back to him and told him they had recordings of many other
similar speeches, and they’d just keep prosecuting him unless he took a plea. Eager
to get this off his back, to not go broke constantly defending himself, and to get to
the real business of raising his two kids, he took a year and a day.

The new wave of animal rights activists seem to have abandoned Rod's
commitment to nonviolence. Researchers and their families have been
targeted in the past couple of years. Assassination of vivisectionists has
been openly talked about, if not directly advocated. Much of this seems to
be emanating from your end of the coast down there in southern
California. I tend to believe that one reason we've seen this kind of threat
escalation is because of the punitive nature of the eco-terrorism laws.
When you can be facing multiple life sentences for an arson where no one
was injured there's not much deterrence for engaging in actions that
might maim or kill people. Thoughts?

This is a very important topic of discussion for the environmental and animal rights
movements. I don’t have any problem saying that the people who target researchers
for actual bodily harm and assassination actually are terrorists, because that’s the
definition of terrorism. And that makes every day activism more dangerous – far
more dangerous – for the entire movement. It sets everyone up for conspiracy
charges. It turns the public against the movement. It drives a terrified Congress to
pass stiffer and stiffer laws and to loop more and more people into crimes of
association in an attempt to stop the threat. It puts the local cop and hired security

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firm in a defensive position where they think every animal rights activist carries a
gun, and so makes it much more likely innocent (or at least unarmed) people will get
hurt.

But while the temptation is to see these superheated sentences as a kind of feedback
loop, driving the truly militant over the edge, I don’t have any evidence that this is
what’s causing the recent rash of terrorist acts in L.A. It could be one group of
acquaintances, or even like-minded folks who’ve never met, who’ve just decided
they’re fed up and they’re going to kill someone.

Crossing the line into arson or heavy property damage – burning labs, destroying
experiments, etc. – puts a person at risk no matter what the laws. Rod was only
facing 5 years for arson, but he figured he’d get shot by a farmer or a security guard,
and so he resigned himself to the idea that he’d die during Operation Bite Back –
even if he maintained his nonviolent principles. Heavier jail sentences probably
wouldn’t have made him abandon those principles, so let’s not make too much of
that logic.

Your last book was Burning Rainbow Farm about the self-immolation of a
stoner community in Michigan. Now you've written about the country's
most famous eco-arsonist. Any concern that you might be perceived as
suffering from "pyromania-by-proxy" syndrome?

Ha! No, it’s purely coincidence that both of these stories happen to involve fire. As I
noted above, fire is cheap, effective, and has a spiritual quality that drives people to
use it in protest and in anger. Maybe my next book will have to feature lots of snowy
mountains or a chain of clear mountain lakes to bring me back into balance as a
writer. I’ll look forward to getting cooled off.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me:
the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad
Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at:
sitka@comcast.net.

The Satya Interview: Freedom from the Cages:

Rod Coronado Part 1

Rod Coronado is currently in the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona

serving a four and a half year sentence, having been convicted of aiding and abetting
arson at a Michigan State University research facility, in which 32 years of data
intended to benefit the fur industry was destroyed. He is the first Native American
Animal Liberation Front member in U.S. history to be sent to Federal Prison. In a two-
part interview, Satya asked him for his views on extremism and the future of direct
action.

Q: What is extremism, and how do you personally define it?

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A: Extremism comes in varying degrees. Most people associate extremism with
religion or politics, but the extremism that most concerns me is environmental, social
and spiritual, which I differentiate from religion. Extremism to me is not what we as
socially conscious individuals do to fight a greater evil. It's what multinational
corporations, governments and consumers do to the earth and animals that pushes
the extremes of the earth's carrying capacity at the expense of other life forms and
future generations.

Extremism to me is continuing to manufacture and produce products that we know

are destroying our ozone and contaminating our water. Extremism to me is the
tyrannical degree of police and military repression that citizens sanction and that
results in the imprisonment, torture and death of any who stand in the way of
progress. Extremism is also the distance we have allowed ourselves to become from
the laws and power of nature which taught us how to live in harmony with other life
for millennia. This is an extremism that allows us to label those trying to reverse the
destruction of earth and animals as "extremists" while calling the activities of the
destroyers legitimate, and those responsible law-abiding citizens. I consider myself
anti-extremist in every sense of the word because extremism tips the scales of all life
on earth precariously close to disaster.

Q: How far should one be willing to press for a cause or belief system?

A: It depends on the cause and belief. Capitalism and communism are causes and
beliefs, as are most institutionalized religions which, I believe, have been pressed so
far, to the point that those opposing them and striving to maintain spiritual or
cultural autonomy are persecuted. If you believe in something or rally behind a
cause, the best you can do is to embody your principles and beliefs in your own life.
People recognize sincerity and true faith. Nothing is gained by forcing someone to
believe in something. If your cause or belief is true and does not negatively impact
the balance of nature, then it is good for the earth, and most likely good for you and
all other life.

When the balance of life on earth is negatively impacted by the actions of others,
whose cause and belief come at the expense of ecological integrity and the human
spirit, and which cause the unnecessary suffering and exploitation of other life
striving to live in harmony with us, then we are justified in taking action that would
restore balance and preserve life and freedom. We are justified as long as that action
is only to the degree of righting wrongs and obtaining true justice, rather than
turning into a cause or belief which obstructs the path to peace and harmony with all
Creation. Freedom does not mean you have the right to exploit or abuse others.
Using physical force to prevent an atrocity has always been commendable
throughout history, when fighting a greater evil. If we can direct that force
specifically against the tools and machines of life's destruction, with the goal of also
liberating the oppressed without causing harm or loss of life, then there can be no
truer path for those fighting tyrannical oppression.

Q: Should we blame others for not being radical enough?

A: Once again, all we can do is make an example out of our lives. Rather than
pointing fingers at others, we should be asking ourselves if we're radical enough.
Being radical is not about using more and more force. I don't like the world "radical,"
as the only radicals are those we're trying to stop from destroying the planet. So, the
question is whether we are conservative enough. It's not just about what we eat, but
what we consume. Paper made from forests, plastics which create dioxins, electricity

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generated by damming rivers, burning coal and nuclear reactors, agricultural
products like cotton and vegetables which use pesticides and insecticides being
introduced into the environment. It's a question of living as simply as possible with
minimal impact on the earth and animals. It's about asking ourselves whether we're
paying the rent -- not to landlords, but to the earth. As citizens of a country that
consumes most of the earth's resources and creates most of its pollution, we should
be fighting from within the belly of the beast to stop the destruction the U.S. is
responsible for here and abroad. We do that by not blaming others, but by blaming
ourselves for supporting evil industries and politicians with our money and our votes;
by educating ourselves and others about every impact of our actions. From realizing
that buying coffee is helping to steal lands from indigenous peoples living in poverty
because they must grow cash crops rather than food, to realizing that driving a car is
supporting the destruction of habitat in the quest for oil and sponsoring wars in other
countries, we must measure our own impact on the earth rather than just on animals,
and then pay the rent by rescuing animals, smashing windows, and striking the evil
empire where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook.

Q: When is violence acceptable?

A: That depends on the definition of violence. I define violence as physical force

directed at a sentient being or natural creation. I do not believe that violence can be
committed against something inanimate whose sole purpose is the destruction of
innocent life and natural creation. The violence that is legally committed against
animals in labs, fur and factory farms, and in the wild is totally unjustified and
unacceptable, as is the violence committed when the remaining wild places are
destroyed. The violence committed against women, people of color, indigenous
peoples, and anyone who opposes the loss of human rights and freedoms to
governments and corporations, is especially despicable. It prevents those with a
close relationship with the earth from displaying the path of harmony.

Self-defense is not violence. Should anyone defend themselves from violence with
violence, then I believe it is acceptable. But as a movement whose fundamental
belief is respect and reverence for all life, there is no place for violence as a means to
preserve life, especially when we have yet to exhaust the avenues of non-violent,
illegal direct action against the tools and institutions of life's destruction.

Q: What do you think is the future for direct action movements like Earth
First! (EF!), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals (PETA)?

A: For Earth First! I see a wider body of support as more and more people become
disenchanted with mainstream environmentalism. I also see Earth First! gaining more
respectability, which I don't necessarily think is a good thing. When any movement
gains respectability it tends to want to retain it by focusing on the more legitimate
and legal avenues for obtaining its goals and objectives. I've always loved EF!
because of its primitive edge and its no compromising support of illegal direct action,
"monkeywrenching." But now EF! sometimes seems to become swallowed up by the
corporations they oppose by placing too much faith in media-orchestrated actions
rather than in actions that cost corporation profits. Still, I have total faith and
allegiance to EF! and have incredible hope for the young warriors they attract who
must face their own trials and tribulations before deciding whether to place their faith
in the powers of earth, or the powers of the media, courts and Congress. For the
Animal Liberation Front, I see an escalation in its attacks on institutions of earth and
animal abuse, and a greater emphasis on economic sabotage as police repression

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and physical security prevent the more popular tactics like live animal liberations. I
see the ALF being treated in the future as the domestic terrorist organization the
Justice Department has labeled it, meaning wider persecution of anyone who publicly
supports ALF. Basically, I see the ALF leading other direct action underground
movements to defend earth and animals into the 21st Century. I believe that in order
to survive, the ALF must learn the lessons of their British counterparts, hopefully
without the costs of imprisoned warriors. If the ALF can only grow through continued
imprisonment of its members, then it is everyone else's obligation to ensure that
strong prisoner support exists for them. Either way, illegal, direct action will continue
to grow as more and more people realize that governments and corporations whose
very existence is based on animal abuse will never afford legal protection to animals.
If we truly believe in animal liberation, then we better be ready to break society's
laws and do some time for it if necessary.

For PETA, I see the mainstreaming of animal liberation. Where other large
organizations compromise their more "radical" beliefs to gain acceptance, I have yet
to see PETA compromise in this fashion. They have pushed animal rights into every
home, and have brought the idea of respect and reverence for animals past the stage
of ridicule and into the borders of acceptance. They also have never shied away from
recognizing or supporting their troops -- the ALF -- which I think is vital. Above-ground
organizations like PETA and EF! have an obligation to support illegal, direct action
because so many of the things both groups believe in can only be won by breaking
the law. Very rarely if ever have struggles for justice and liberation been won without
breaking establishment laws.

Q: Do you think there is a "too far" that can be reached in defending

animals and the environment?

A: It depends on how far humans are willing to go to destroy earth and animals.
Right now, I have complete faith that we can stem the tide of animal abuse and
ecological destruction with non-violent illegal, direct action should all other tactics fail
(which they are). But when we are talking about the preservation of our life-support
system, the earth, and prevention of the extinction of literally thousands of species
which play an integral role in a healthy environment, then allowing that to happen is
what has gone too far. To stop it whatever we are forced to now may seem extreme,
but will be appreciated by future generations who will be able to live and survive
thanks to this generation's actions on behalf of earth and animals.

The question is whether we've already gone too far by allowing governments and
corporations to play Russian roulette with the fate of this planet and our future
without taking greater personal responsibility to stop it at all costs. We, as citizens of
earth, and as the guardians of the planet for future, generations can never go too far
in preserving earth and the many Nations of Life upon it. Such is our obligation.

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Considering I'd much rather go back to sleep right now and have no desire to work, but
will so I can cover most of your rent BECAUSE you decided partying was more
important, you have some serious balls Serena.

And I prefer being straight and honest 100% over being passive aggressive and fake.
Hypocritical? Hello? I have no problem telling people exactly what I think and you know
that! I think you're projecting a little because you're the one who pretends to be all nice
but turns around and makes a catty comment.

I can't even respond to some of your email right now because I am too angry. I can't even
believe you're actually pointing fingers and putting me down. Seriously Serena, putting
blame on others for your problems is not the way to go here and trying to absolve
yourself of having been an asshole is not gonna fly. If you believe the shit you're saying,
then good for you but your verbal abuse, your obstination in always being right, knowing
better than anyone, stuborness in refusing to consider others side and anger/rage issues
make it impossible to talk to you in a manner that is productive or conducive to any
resolution.

If it makes YOU feel better, then knock yourself out but I only see it as rabbid ramblings
of a manipulative person in denial.

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