(image via Woodland Trust)
1995 offered numerous options for the American kid who preferred outrage over sloth. There were corporate scumbags in America to loathe. There were faceless Communist tyrants in China to defeat. There were political prisoners everywhere to be freed. And there were precious resources of an abused planet to save. It was a time when you could choose your own enemy. And then do battle against him or them or it in whatever way made you feel good. The stakes were high and self-serving all at once: an odd cocktail of nobility and narcissism.
We used the word “revolution” because our thesauri offered no better descriptors. And because we hoped our faces may someday be silk-screened onto someone’s t-shirt. Like Malcolm. Or Che. Most of us knew, on some level, that America was already settled. There were no more shining seas to set off in search of. And what bits of inequality remained were relics that would likely die with the generations who insisted upon creating them in the first place. We were, as Chuck Palahniuk wrote, history’s middle children. Our task was to wait it all out. We could do so loudly. Or sitting on the couch in front of the big screen.
An unsatisfied and aggressive minority would not stand for those choices. They thought they could see Che and raise him. They went to the place where a line signified the very edge of reasonable, mostly legal protest and took a running leap across it. Those were the kinds of people who joined the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
(image via TargetOfOpportunity.com)
Over the years, that acronym — ELF — has featured in much TV news coverage of a phenomenon that has been named “eco-terrorism.” Those video packages — like most TV news — were cut to scare the milk and cookies out of you. In three minutes or less, members of the ELF were prosecuted, condemned and sentenced. They had committed acts of eco-terrorism and eco-terrorism was bad, we were told.
But what exactly is eco-terrorism? Who or what is harmed by it? And what does it mean to be guilty of it? Those are the questions driving the deep character study portrayed in the film, If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.
The film follows the case of Daniel McGowan who was arrested in 2005 in connection with a series of arsons in the Pacific Northwest and deposited into the federal court system so the U.S. government could contemplate the questions about eco-terrorism. We meet Daniel in the middle of the 1990s when he was a simple letter-writer and protest marcher living in New York City. We follow him to Eugene, Oregon where his passions for the environment drove him to enlist in more radical causes. As Daniel and the people who became his ELF compatriots/co-conspirators recall their various actions, the film toggles between recounting what happened then and what is happening now as Daniel defends himself against severe criminal charges. We ultimately learn both why that collection of radical environmentalists disbanded as an active unit and how Daniel’s trial played out.
The time the film spends in Oregon provides a great history lesson in the civil unrest that comprised public life in Eugene at the close of the 20th Century. It also chronicles the WTO protests that took place just to the north in Seattle. Together, these sequences provide clear context so we may understand how the urge to protect the planet informed the setting of a spectacular series of fires. It is sympathetic to Daniel and his compatriots/co-conspirators. It is also coldly objective in presenting the facts of the arson cases. Some of the people who set the fires — including Daniel — appear on camera to explain why and how they were set. The film makes it plain that crime occurred. The film’s real conflict — with apologies to Daniel’s dilemma of struggling to defend himself against the criminal charges — concerns those questions about what is in a name: “eco-terrorism.”
(image via Berkeleyside.com)
Never mind the prefix, terrorism has become the great sofa king of our time. It has lost all meaning even as it continues to be used again and again to separate “us” from “them.” As a tactic, it remains potent. But should every tactic that elicits fear and terror rate as terrorism? At what point does a tactic become a purpose? Thoughtful people should agree on a delicate threshold at the very least. It may be the one thing separating the mobs from ripping each other apart. That, more or less, is the point made in If A Tree Falls.
Two sound bytes really resonate. The first comes from an authority figure (e.g. the police, the FBI, etc) who says, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” The second comes from someone who worked on Daniel’s defense who reports no person or creature was killed — or even injured — in the dozens of fires set by this ELF unit. The film doesn’t track Daniel into a courtroom so we never get to see what his actual defense was, but he and his compatriots/co-conspirators declare in different scenes that the point was never to harm any living soul, but to stop some souls from doing harm to the planet. Their intent, they assure us, was noble. And the execution of their tactic, according to the facts, yielded millions of dollars in property damage and lost business. Nothing more.
If you believe the first sound byte to be true, the actions of this ELF unit present an either/or proposition. That’s the easy way out and it suggests a very low threshold for terrorism. If they’re not on our side and they play dirty, then they must be terrorists. If they violently disrupt the order of things, then they must be terrorists. If the TV news says they’re terrorists, well …
If you consider the planning necessary to burn dozens of buildings without killing or injuring anyone, you have to wonder about the belief system that informs the conviction of the perpetrators. You also have to wonder about the circumstances that drove them to ignite those infernos. I never lived in Eugene, Oregon but I lived around and among plenty of history’s middle children during the years immediately before and after Y2K. I wrote letters. I marched. I ran from the tear gas and the rubber bullets. When the powers that you’re fighting get to write the rulebook AND decide when the rules don’t matter, it is difficult to stay the course of reasonable, mostly legal protest. Malcolm talked about that in his Ballot or the Bullet speech. Che chose to fire some bullets. The kids from the ELF … they just set fires. Without killing anyone.
Why?
That’s a much better question than are they or are they not terrorists? A tactic, after all, is just a tactic.
