FBI Raids Home of Earth First! Activist in Detroit

via Infoshop

From our friends at the Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network:

Dear friends,

ELP has learnt that last Tuesday, the 10th of April 2007, the FBI raided the house of a well known American Earth First! activist based in Detroit, MI.

The Earth First! activist told ELP “the 10 agents who searched my house were looking for incendiary devices (or components or reciepts), and were looking for computer files (they copied my hard drives). Anyway, the pretext was the failed arson attempt 3+ years ago at the Ice Mountain (nestle bottled water plant here in Michigan). At that time, a grand jury subpeoned my then wife and myself to give DNA and hand prints shortly after the incident. At the time they said they found hair or something and a hand print on the device. Obviously there was no match or the GJ would have indited one or both of us. They took a bunch of campaign literature, some tshirts, a couple of firecrackers and some other miscellaneous stuff.”

The activist states their innocence and no charges have been bought against this activist yet.

Althoygh ELP has decided not to name the activist at this moment in time, we would like to state that this is not the first time this particular activist has been targetted by the FBI. About 7 years ago the activist was raided, arrested and charged with involvmenet in an ELF tree spiking action which occured in Indiana, USA. On that occassion the charges where eventually dropped due to a total lack of evidence. At the time of that previous investigation ELP stated that the activist was being targetted in an attempt to silence them away from their vocal Earth First! campaigning. ELP suspects the same is true with this latest raid as well.

If anyone would like to send an e-mail message of support to the activist, please send your e-mail via ELP4321@hotmail.com clearly marked “For the attention of the Michigan Earth First! activist”.

If anyone else is raided or arrested in connection to their Earth First! campaigning please let ELP know.
– ELP Support Network

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British Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

North American ELP Support Network
www.ecoprisoners.org

dropping out of the dinosaur?

Recently, I’ve been fascinated by alternate, speculative history. I’ve been especially fascinated by scenarios in which the land currently occupied by the United States is instead occupied by many smaller countries, such as this one. My fascination stems, in part, from a yearning for a world without empires and for a world in which the horrors of European colonization had not happened, or were less than those in our world. It is interesting to me that I have been projecting such hopes into an imagined, alternative past (rather than into the future). Perhaps this is because I have been dealing so much lately with the horrors of my own past, with the cutting of my own psyche into separate places by the unnatural imposition of imperial lines.

Anyway, today, I discovered a fascinating reminder that saner, more localized and democratic societies may be located, not just in an imaginary past, but in the future. The Washington Post recently published an article in which two Vermonters argue that Vermont should secede from the United States. They explicitly describe this project as anti-imperial: “Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.” They argue, as do Rebecca Solnit and the Curious George Brigade, that broad social and ecological trends require smaller, localized, and more directly democratic societies to ensure human survival and thriving:

the 350-year swing of history’s pendulum toward large, centralized imperial states is once again reversing itself.

Why? First, the cost of oil and gas. According to urban planner James Howard Kunstler, “Anything organized on a gigantic scale . . . will probably falter in the energy-scarce future.” Second, third-wave technology is as inherently democratic and decentralist as second-wave technology was authoritarian and centralist. Gov. Jim Douglas wants Vermont to be the first “e-state,” making broadband Internet access available to every household and business in the state by 2010. Vermont will soon be fully wired into the global social commons.

Against this backdrop, secessionists from all over the state will gather in June to plan a grass-roots campaign to get at least 200 towns to vote by 2012 on independence. We believe that one outcome of this meeting will be dialogues among different communities of Vermonters committed to achieving local economic vitality, be they farmers, entrepreneurs, bankers, merchants, lawyers, independent media providers, construction workers, manufacturers, artists, entertainers or anyone else with a stake in Vermont’s future — anyone for whom freedom is not just a slogan.

If Vermonters succeed in once again inventing vibrant local economies, these in turn may reinvigorate the small-scale democratic town meeting tradition, the true American Congress, and re-create the rudiments of a republic once again able to make its own way in the world. The once and future republic of Vermont.

(If you’re interested, check out my previous post on dinosaurs and decentralization. Interestingly, in that post I talk about my fascination with alternative future histories of a “balkanized” North America.)

P.S. I think there is a danger in talking about technologies as “inherently democratic.” Certainly, there is potential for the Internet to be used as a tool to further democratic ends. However, while technological changes can and do cause social changes, it is also true that technologies reflect the societies which invent and manufacture them. This can be seen in unequal access to the Internet, i.e., the digital divide.