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CW: Suicide In 2007, Daniel McGowan, and his co-defendants step into federal court. They stand ready to hear the final sentencing decision from the Oregon District Court's Judge Ann Aiken. Over the course of five years, McGowan, and the Earth Liberation Front cell he was a part of, destroyed over $48 million of industrial property across more than 40 acts of sabotage. Their prison terms would come to define a new era of state repression against activists. This era, of harsh sentences for property damage and even for attending protests,
has continued to this day. And it would, nine years later, shape the reaction to one of the fiercest battles against fossil capitalism in the US: the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. [Play intro music] Our Changing Climate's finances aren't looking amazing. So, I want to make quick ask for your support as I transition this chanel to become a viewer-supported endeavour. If you don't have the financial means right now, no worries, click ahead to this timecode to watch the rest of the video. But if you do have the means, I'll give it to you
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trove of bonus videos and extended content as well. If something else might entice you to become a supporter of Our Changing Climate, please do let me know. If you're still here, thanks for watching, and if you become a Patreon supporter to keep these videos high-quality and free for all, you have my endless gratitude. You are truly amazing. Anyways back to the video The Roundup Back in 2005, as four agents storm into the offices of WomensLaw in New York City to arrest Daniel McGowan, across the country, a raid begins on the Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott, Arizona. There, the
co-founder of the community space and bookstore, Bill Rodgers, known formerly as Avalon, was in the midst of starting his day. Since his time setting fires along the ridgeline of Vail and the offices of the University of Washington, Rodgers had built up Catalyst alongside his co-founders as a place for activists, radicals, and organizers. [Sarah Launius: The catalyst is a very necessary space within this community]. He hoped to forge a place of generation where people could share ideas and be in community. This wasn't surprising after all. For many, Rodgers was a deeply principled man,
whose compassion and empathy for those around him made the Catalyst Infoshop an inviting place. December 7th, 2005 started like any old day. Rodgers was sorting through some of the book stock in the backroom of Catalyst, when, all of a sudden, 15 FBI agents busted down the door. They stormed through the bookshop to the back room, where they found a calm Bill Rodgers. They immediately cuffed him, and as Bill Rodgers was pushed out the door, the agents trashed the place. [Randall Amster: 15 or so federal agents had cordoned off the space. They preceded to search the place top to bottom. They searched it for about eight hours].
But their long search was fruitless. The agents found few pieces of evidence worth their time. On that day, while Bill Rodgers rode handcuffed to the police station, five other ELF members of the Pacific Northwest cell were rounded up across four states. The state repression that followed wouldn't just lead to years behind bars, but would also lead to death… [transition music] Destroying Pipelines It's twelve years later in 2017, and two women hunch over a strip of the Dakota Access Pipeline at a shut-off valve station. Sparks from their oxyacetylene torches illuminate their faces. After minutes of cutting, they finally make their
way through the steel shell of the pipeline. They inspect their work. With this kind of structural damage, the owner of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, would now have to shut off the flow of crude oil in this section until repairs are made. It was time to move on to their next target. From March to May of 2017 these two saboteurs waged a war of attrition against Energy Transfer Partners. They made their way up and down the Dakota Access Pipeline throughout Iowa, wreaking havoc on the company's fossil fuel infrastructure. Their names are Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. And for them, sabotage was seemingly the only tactic
left that might scare the Energy Transfer Partners into backing away from finishing construction of a pipeline line that would lock-in carbon emissions equivalent to that of 21.4 million cars per year. As the ELF had done with arson more than a decade before, these two were trying to hit the fossil fuel industry where it hurt them the most: their profits. But much like the members of ELF cells, sabotage only became a tactic after the long struggle and failure of countless other alternatives. As Montoya and Reznicek would soon learn, however,
with escalated tactics comes an escalated response from those that hold profits so dear… After the December 7th raids on Catalyst Infoshop, on WomensLaw, and a number of other homes where the former ELF members had faded into obscurity, all hell broke loose. The Green Scare descended on the environmental community. ["In December of 2005 the FBI does a big roundup of these individuals and of course they had psychologically profiled the individuals and they knew who was most likely to become a snitch next] [Attorney General: Today's indictment is a step in bringing these terrorists to justice]
But four ELF members managed to escape the state crackdown. One was Joseph Dibee, who, back in the 1995 Warner Creek encampment, was known as Seattle. A man with a knack for engineering who oversaw the massive bipod construction over the gates of the blockade and helped drill holes into the side of the Cavel West slaughterhouse and filled them with diesel fuel. An activist who had long stood in the path of industry, and had fallen in love with the natural world after moving to Oregon from Syria when he was eight. That day, on December 7th, the FBI corner Dibee and hand him a grand jury subpoena.
The agents claim that they had evidence mounting against him, thanks to Jacob Ferguson, and tell him to co-operate or risk contempt charges. Federal agents once again wield the cudgel of a grand jury to intimidate a suspect into cooperating. Two days later, he and his lawyer meet with federal agents who lay out the case. The agents urge Dibee to become an informant before the indictments came, claiming that they know he has guns hidden away. At that moment, Dibee knows the writing is on the wall. Later reflecting on the meeting, Dibee explains, "I'm a Middle Eastern person, and it's not lost on me the implications of that in the United States… the government
started the conversation by saying, 'We know he has firearms.' and 'Do you want to do what we tell you to, or are we going to come get you?' That's a very thinly veiled threat. I took it as that." So, Joseph Dibee sheds his new life at Microsoft, calls up a trusted friend, and, according to prosecutors, makes his getaway. The two hop in a car and drive to the Mexico border. Where he hopes to escape the reach of the FBI. He makes it to the toll booth, hands over his papers. Sweat trickles down his back. The guard glances Dibee over… and then waves him through. Dibee's now free, at least for now.
[transition music] Many others, however, stayed put. Federal agents detained six other ELF members that day. The cops made the former ELF members stew in jail and then laid out their evidence in front of the likes of Chelsea Gerlach, who went by Country Girl and helped drive the getaway truck for Bill Rodgers after he burned down Vail, and Stan Meyerhoff, an integral part of the cell who helped orchestrate the burning of the Romania SUV dealership and helped plan the Vail fires. Or Suzanne Savoie, who took part in the Superior Lumber and Jefferson Poplar actions. As each defendant faced down the
possibility of multiple decades behind bars and the wire taps and confessions from Jacob Ferguson, information started flowing. Comrades turned on comrades to minimize their prison sentences. [Savoie talking about how you don't think its going to happen] It was in this swirling chaos of arrests and betrayal that Avalon- now going by his given name, Bill Rodgers- the defender of the lynx, entered the Flagstaff jail in Arizona to await trial. But a trial would never come. It would be the last time he would ever taste freedom. For fourteen days, Rodgers sat in jail. Federal agents pressured him to confess his crimes daily.
For fourteen days, in the tight confines of his cell, Avalon's light dimmed, facing down potentially life in prison for destroying the property of a few corporations. Then on December 21, 2005, the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, Avalon took his own life. In a final note to his friends, he scrawled out a message on a scrap piece of paper: "I chose 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 jail break - I am returning home, to the Earth, to the place of my origins." As the ink dried, Bill Rodgers quenched the fire of his life.
[Ilse Asplund: Our friend was put in jail. He was labeled a terrorist, and then he died. And whether he died because he put a plastic bag over his face or was put in front of a wall and shot, it's a political death, and it has to be understood in a political context] [Transition music] Two years later In his sister's apartment in New York City, Daniel McGowan types away on his keyboard, vigorously researching the law surrounding his upcoming sentencing. It's been two years since his arrest at the offices of WomensLaw, and he's been on house arrest almost all of that time- a thick black ankle bracelet blinking conspicuously on
his leg 24/7. Tomorrow, a judge will finally decide the course of the rest of his life. The next day, as he steps into the courthouse, however, McGowan and his lawyers are confident. In the years leading up to this sentencing decision, McGowan's lawyers managed to find a pressure point that made the prosecutors back off on those who had chosen not to cooperate. They requested information about whether federal agents had illegally wiretapped the ELF cell as a means to gather evidence. As one analysis of the Operation Backfire case explains,
"The government was loath to answer this question, and for good reason: there had just been a public scandal about NSA wiretaps, and if the court found that wiretaps had been used unconstitutionally, the entire Operation Backfire case would have been thrown out." Even still, the prosecutors had a mountain of evidence against him. McGowan had to take a non-cooperation plea deal, and the ploy would only serve to possibly lessen the charges and hopefully shrink his final sentencing. And then, the moment finally comes. McGowan stands. The judge monologues. At one point
the prosecutors compare the ELF to the Ku Klux Klan, and then Judge Ann Aiken hands down the sentence. Seven years in federal prison. The gavel hits the wood below with a hollow smack. McGowan's fate is decided. For those that didn't turn on their co-defendants, the sentencings were equally severe. But interestingly, those that did cooperate got roughly the same, if not longer sentences. As an article from Crimethinc argues, "The Green Scare cases show that cooperating with the government is never in a defendant's best interest. On average,
the non-cooperating defendants in Operation Backfire are actually serving less time in proportion to their original threatened sentences than the informants." (The exception to this was the first government collaborator, Jacob Ferguson, who received no jail time.) As the dust settled, the judge required McGowan to report to federal prison on July 2, 2007. But his experience there would be far from normal. Blocking a pipeline In 2014, the executives of Energy Transfer Partners had a problem on their hands. They had too much crude oil to deliver and not enough infrastructure to handle it. Thanks to the 2006 discovery of the Bakken shale oil
formation in the North Dakota oil boom, alongside new horizontal and hydraulic fracking technology, North Dakota became a gold mine. By 2014, fossil capitalists were extracting over a million barrels of oil a day from the land. But fossil fuel extraction companies kept hitting a bottleneck. To truly cash in on their black gold, they had to rely on rail lines connecting these oil fields to refineries and ports. So, Energy Transfer Partners set out to build a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) pipeline stretching from the oil fields of North Dakota all the way to southern Illinois. They were ready to make millions off of this project,
except that as the time came to build the pipeline that would cross hundreds of bodies of water in four states, sacred Indigenous burial sites, and reservation boundaries, resistance grew. At the Standing Rock reservation, thousands of Indigenous people and comrades came together to fight back. In 2016, Indigenous organizers erected multiple encampments from which groups would strike out and stand in the path of the oncoming pipeline construction almost every day. Meanwhile, leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux took to the courts suing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for
violating the National Historic Preservation Act and other laws, while others gathered over 33,000 signatures for an Environmental Impact Statement, arguing that the pipeline would inevitably leak- especially considering that pipelines that Energy Transfer Partner owned had leaked 349 times since 2012, which was a rate of almost 100 times per year at that point. Across the country, people stood up in anger. Solidarity marches in major cities, encampments, and hunger strikes urged then-President Barack Obama to shut down the pipeline. To pull its permits and shutter it, much like had been done to the Keystone XL pipeline two years before.
It's here, in late October of 2016, that we find Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek in a holding cell. At an anti-pipeline protest, while private guards and North Dakota police unleashed attack dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray on indigenous protestors and comrades at the Standing Rock encampments, Reznicek and Montoya were arrested for allegedly trespassing on Energy Transfer Partner land. There in that cell, facing down the failure of all other options and the rapid pace of the pipeline construction, the two realized what they had to do next. If the
pipeline was the problem, they had to attack it, and the equipment building it, directly. So, on November 8, 2016, the night that Donald Trump would lose the popular vote but still win the presidential election, Montoya and Reznicek got to work. They punctured a half dozen coffee tins with holes, stuffed them with rags, threw them in their truck alongside some motor oil, and set off down Iowa's Highway 7. After driving for roughly two hours, they had finally reached their target. A pipeline construction site right off the highway. They pulled off and got to work.
Methodically soaking the rag-filled coffee cans with oil, the two place each tin on the seat of four excavators, a bulldozer, and a crane at the site. One by one, they strike a match and start the burn. By the time they pull out of the worksite, flames engulfed 6 of the excavators. Afterward, as the firefighters quenched the inferno, little but the husks of the equipment was left. $2.5 million in damages for a couple of minutes of work. But this was just an opening salvo. A shot across the bow of Energy Transfer Partners attempting to stop or at least slow down the reckless pursuit of profits at the cost of water,
land, and people. Over the next six months, Reznicek and Montoya's war of attrition would rain hell on the pipeline invading their home state of Iowa. Communications Management It's July 2nd, 2007. Daniel McGowan takes his first step into federal prison. Today begins his seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to burning the property of the Jefferson Poplar Research farm. This low-security prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, far away from his family and wife, would become his confines for the next seven years of his life…at least that's
what he thought. Although the first few months behind bars were rough, McGowan soon settled in. [Daniel McGowan: You have controlled movement. Every hour you have to get to where you're going, but you go to the library, you go to the dentists, you go to the doctor, you go to the track, I played pickleball]. At Sandstone, McGowan was still able to write articles for the Earth First! Journal about the environment and prisons. He was allotted 300 minutes of phone time a month, and when his wife managed to get time off of work, she could come see him in the visiting room, play board games, and hug and kiss goodbye. [Daniel McGowan: You go to
visiting. You have contact visits. You can hug your friends. Have an ice cream bar, whatever.] McGowan was by no means comfortable, but it was certainly better than what he was about to face. Seven months into his sentence, McGowan was in the yard when a prison guard announced his name over the loudspeaker, and he was told to report to the shipping and receiving department. Confused, McGowan made his way to the office. Perhaps he had received a package from his wife? Tomorrow was their second wedding anniversary after all. But as McGowan entered the room, no such package was in
sight; instead, a staffer handed him a couple of boxes and told him to pack up his things. He was being moved. When McGowan asked for clarification on where he was going, the prison staffer stonewalled him and threw him in a cell to wait until the bus arrived. It was only once McGowan was pushed on the bus heading south to Illinois, that the guards finally told him, "Marion." [Daniel McGowan: I'm like, where am I going man? I've only been here seven months out of nowhere I get transferred. Oh man you're going to Marion].
Little did he know, McGowan was headed for a new, secretive experimental prison. One that sectioned a part of the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, to create a high security detainment center meant to disappear dissenters, prisoners with high profile cases, and perhaps most importantly for the State, alleged terrorists. McGowan was headed for what would come to be known as "little Guantanamo." A prison to silence political dissidents that the government called a "Communications Management Unit" or CMU for short. And the conditions at the CMU were horrible
[Daniel McGowan: I show up, there's like 18 dudes there. We occupy one range… Everything you do is in that unit. We had a tiny yard with razor wire and cages, and we essentially lived in the former segregation unit at Marion… It's a miserable place…] For a state that was in the midst of a war on terror, Daniel McGowan's outspoken views on police repression, environmental issues, and abolition in the Earth First! Journal, alongside his "terrorism" sentencing, couldn't go unpunished. So they took away the only thing he had left: his voice. Indeed, most of McGowan's fellow inmates were people who the government didn't want to be in the media. They wanted them to disappear.
[Daniel McGowan: People that are held there are very politically charged cases. Cases that are either um the focus of scrutiny by the media or uh cases that the government doesn't want to um be dragged through the media.] McGowan was a political prisoner. One of many caught in the crosshairs of a government that couldn't countenance any feasible threat to its power. [Daniel McGowan: It's a complete punishment unit. They want to bury you there. So they take people who had access to the media and they just want to bury you.] Across the world, Joseph Dibee was carving out his own way towards freedom. After Dibee reached
the Mexican border in 2005, he managed to make a safe crossing and found himself in a land he didn't know, with no connections, so he followed his roots. Dibee's father had grown up in Syria, and immigrated to the United States when Dibee was young, which is part of the reason why Dibee decided to run. He knew that the United States government would come down hard on a West Asian man especially when the wounds of 9/11 were still festering. So, Dibee made his way to Syria, and built a life for himself. He soon found a position at the University of Kalamoon teaching computer science and renewable engineering, and lived in a housing
complex with other like-minded scientists. Dibee would live a quiet life of learning, teaching, and science. He would be instrumental in conceptualizing renewable technologies of Syria, that is until 2011, when all hell broke loose across the country. Across the Atlantic, as McGowan entered his second year under government repression in the CMU, the last flames of the Earth Liberation Front flickered out and died. On September 4th, 2009, the ELF claimed responsibility for the destruction of two broadcasting towers. [Newscaster: Massive radio tower sabotage with an excavator in Snohomish County and then there was a message left at the scene… The radical underground environmentalist
group Earth Liberation Front has just claimed responsibility for this act of destruction] This would be the last publicly claimed Earth Liberation Front action in the United States. In total, the ELF claimed 462 acts, totaling upwards of $100 million in property damages according to some estimates. This historical specter certainly influenced the fossil capitalists and the State in their hunt for and subsequent crack down on Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. The crackdown After pulling off their first arson at the construction site, Montoya and Reznicek pivoted to a different tool:
the oxyacetylene torch. With a super-hot flame fueled by pure oxygen, these torches can bore holes through the thick steel hulls of pipelines, which is exactly what Montoya and Reznicek did over the next three months between March and May 2017. After teaching themselves how to wield these fire cutters, the two started their war against the pipeline. Their goal was, according to Reznicek not to ["delay construction not just for days, but for weeks and months for the ultimate purpose of shutting this pipeline down and having investors pull out."] Across Iowa, the two hit pipeline hulls with their torches and damaged construction
equipment with their tried and true coffee tin igniters. Delaying construction for weeks, they hit four different points in the pipelines path and stopped 30 million barrels of oil from reaching refineries. Unlike the ELF, however, very little was made of these attacks in the media. One local station in March of 2017, mentioned that saboteurs had burned holes into a pipeline at valve station, while another radio station reported tampering, but that was it. Radio silence as the world watched the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly descend
towards its terminus in southern Illinois, just 93 miles away from the Communications Management Unit at Marion where Daniel McGowan was imprisoned. Ultimately, however, the power of capital survived the sabotage siege. The momentum of the fossil fuel industry brushed these acts of sabotage that caused millions of dollars in damages off like a mosquito. As the pipeline construction neared completion, Montoya and Reznicek felt exhausted. They had done all they could do, but fossil-fueled capitalism continued unabated. But the two had one last desperate move they
could make to draw attention to the environmental travesty they saw unfolding across the Midwest. On July 24th of that year, Montoya and Reznicek drove to the offices of the Iowa Utilities Board which had issued the pipeline permits to Energy Transfer Partners, with a backpack filled with a hammer, crowbar, and a collection of papers. There, in front of the sign that read Iowa Utilities Board, the two pulled the papers from their bag and began to read in front of the news crews and lawyers present. [Ruby Montoya: Some may view these actions as violent, but be not mistaken. We acted from our hearts and never threatened human life nor personal property. ==What we
did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country, seizing land and polluting our nation's water supply. You may not agree with our tactics, but you can clearly see their necessity in light of the broken federal government and the corporations they represent.] and media cameras. Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek confessed to the sabotage campaign they had carried out in defense of the land and water. With their final act, they pulled the hammer and crowbar out of the bag and started to dismantle the sign behind them. They were almost immediately arrested. And their arrests and sentencing couldn't have come at a worse time.
In 2017, the forces of fossil capital were mobilizing. Fossil fuel corporations and their subsidiaries lobbied politicians, and leaned heavily on law enforcement and private mercenaries like TigerSwan to criminalize and sideline activists as a means to protect their extractivist interests. During that year, in the wake of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, fossil fuel lobbyists and politicians pushed for so-called "Critical infrastructure laws." These laws were (and still are) at the forefront of this effort to paint climate activists as terrorists
in the eyes of the public. The past tactics the state wielded against the Earth Liberation Front have been born anew. Since 2017, 45 states have considered 356 bills limiting people's right to assembly and protest, with 23 states enacting laws that place felony charges of domestic terrorism and conspiracy on protestors who trespass or sabotage "critical infrastructure." In the eyes of these laws, this critical infrastructure has been expanded to now encompass facilities like oil pipelines, natural gas refineries, and storage tanks. Infrastructure that is directly
causing climate change, and leading to the death of millions of people each year from air pollution alone. Through this slew of legislation, the state can not only directly protect the infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry by targeting and criminalizing environmental activists, but they also lock in oil and gas infrastructure as essential in the eyes of the law. It was within this swirling tempest of anti-environmental protest sentiment that Reznicek and Montoya had to plead their case. They argued, together with their lawyers, that this was an act of necessity. They were defending land,
water and people from the much larger crimes of Energy Transfer Partners. [Jessica Reznicek: we committed a crime but it's to prevent a larger crime from happening… it's the same kind of ideology of like if a building were burning and there's a baby inside I'm gonna break a window and go in and get that baby and bring that baby out] Despite the intense legal battle Montoya and Reznicek waged, the judge would not see the humanity in their actions. Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in prison. What would have been a 3 to 4 year sentence was turned into eight years followed by three years of parole. All because Jessica Reznicek was deemed a terrorist.
Montoya was sentenced to six years in federal prison, and she, too, was slapped with a terrorist enhancement for welding holes in a pipeline valve. They are still in the carceral system today. Free* While Montoya and Reznicek were in the midst of radicalization and while the blueprints for the Dakota Access Pipeline were making their way through the board rooms of Energy Transfer Partners, Daniel McGowan took his first step of freedom. The year is 2013, and for good behaviour he's placed in a halfway house for six months, until he publishes an op-ed explaining the unconscionable repression he experienced at
the hands of the capitalist State. In documents later uncovered by the Freedom of Information act, this op-ed led to McGowan's re-imprisonment. Once again, McGowan was placed in prison for speaking out against the unseen terrors of the State. A State that silences and disappears those who attempt to stop or reveal the harm it does to protect even more harmful industries. But Daniel McGowan, finally, left the carceral system in June of 2013. Years later, as McGowan reflects on the Earth Liberation Front, he seems conflicted: [38:32 - I felt that what we were doing was
not particularly effective after a period of time- we got addicted to the most "bang"] If anything, though, the Earth Liberation Front was an emphatic punctuation mark on the history of the United States. Over the course of 13 years, they glued, smashed, and burned their way into the minds of capitalists across the nation. Leafing through the group's trail of sabotage, however, it seems as if the $100 million in property damage did little to move the needle. Did the Earth Liberation Front fail? But perhaps a more important question: what can the climate movement
today learn from the ELF, and more recently the exploits of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya? Critiques of the Earth Liberation Front abound from all over the political spectrum. To focus in on what the climate movement might learn from the ELF, three points are worth mentioning. First, the decentralized, leaderless resistance model made long-term, organized, and targeted campaigns almost impossible. The nature of the cells lent itself to ideological heterogeneity and a scattershot approach to industrial sabotage. While this did mean that,
as sociologist Paul Joose writes, "leaderless resistance fosters… ideological inclusiveness," meaning that it can mobilize numerous different actions without political debate. The wide array of targets, from a ski resort to a McDonald's to a logging company, meant that there never was and could never be a targeted effort to topple one specific industry, like logging. The ELF destroyed property that, in the long run, capitalists could shrug off especially with insurance, knowing that these acts of sabotage were not accompanied by a highly mobilized mass movement. Looking towards how the climate movement might learn from this,
Andreas Malm writes, "This implies that climate militancy would have to be articulated to a wider anti-capitalist groundswell, much as in earlier shifts of modes of production, when physical attacks on ruling classes formed only minor parts of society-wide reorganization." Here we see the second critique unfold. The Earth Liberation Front was much too focused on sabotage and not enough on mobilizing a mass, working class movement. The Earth Liberation Front was necessarily an underground movement. Cells were taking to acts of sabotage
in the face of a deeply hostile capitalist state. But, after the ash settled at sites of sabotage, there was no mass environmental movement at the time to complement this radical flank. In short, there was very little coordination. Perhaps if there were, the Earth Liberation Front's property destruction might have made deeper inroads into dismantling capitalist extraction. Here, we can see Montoya and Reznicek's sabotage swarm tactics in a different light. The indigenous-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline was already in full swing.
Daily protests struck out from a series of camps established on the lands of Standing Rock Sioux. These peaceful protests were met with attack dogs, pepper spray, batons, and tear gas. There was already a mass mobilization against the Dakota Access Pipeline when Reznicek and Montoya took their blowtorches to the pipeline. Indeed, it was only after the writing was on the wall for the Standing Rock encampments and the violent State repression of Indigenous protestors, that Reznicek and Montoya escalated to property destruction. Part of the groundswell of support against the Dakota Access Pipeline came from long
hours of organizing and coordination, but also positive media attention towards the anti-pipeline movement. Couched in this anti-pipeline narrative, Montoya and Reznicek's tactics became tolerable. The world had seen the violence that both private security and public police officers used against nonviolent protestors to defend the property of Energy Transfer Partners, so damaging a pipeline seemed justified. Granted, in the U.S., sabotage is almost always taboo. Even if that piece of property being sabotaged will kill thousands. [Ruby Montoya: The idea that property destruction is somehow violent is an unexamined belief] Finding Freedom In 2011, Joseph Dibee was developing a potentially
groundbreaking renewable array for Syria. Since fleeing the Green Scare crackdown, Dibee sought to protect the earth around him not through destruction, but through generation. He, and a team of scientists, were building a prototype for a massive solar array that could generate 35% of Syria's electricity needs while also creating much-needed potable water as a byproduct through desalination. They were about to embark on the pilot project, when civil war broke out across Syria. Dibee and his coworkers soon became targets. Militant forces targeted Dibee's housing
complex, and he very narrowly escaped to a nearby village, where he hid for 10 days in pure terror. Some of Dibee's coworkers were not as lucky, and were murdered on the doorsteps of their home. Haunted by the specter of war, Dibee once again fled a country he called home. This time, to Moscow, where he fell in love and built a third life. In Russia, he attempted to launch a biodiesel venture, but failed twice, as his partners turned on him with corrupt intentions. Depleted and strung out, Dibee was done with life on the run. He hired a team of attorneys to negotiate a surrender deal with the U.S., but they denied him once,
then twice. It was decided: Moscow would be his home. That is, until a twist of fate would once again turn Joseph Dibee's life on its head on a business trip in Ecuador. His past of burning down the Cavel West horse rendering facility would finally catch up to him. The last lesson: In the echoes of the Cavel West fire we can see the third critique at play. The ELF's scattershot sabotage campaign lacked context. Despite the valiant efforts of Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie Pickering with the ELF Press Office, the media soured on the Earth Liberation Front. There was no clear connection
between Superior lumber, Vail, and the GMO research at University of Washington that the media could easily latch onto. There wasn't a mass campaign against timber extraction, nor a general anti-capitalist movement against extractive industries to hold the ELF accountable. There was no mass movement for the Earth Liberation Front to be their radical flank. So, the ELF could be painted as outlaw acts-the lashing out of a minuscule minority. [John Stossol: You don't know anything. You're just a kid] This is not to say that there wasn't any movement that the Earth Liberation Front
was flanking. The fires at Cavel West and Vail, for example, seemed to be extensions of a longer non-violent struggle against those particular industries. The cell took to arson only once it seemed that road blockades, court battles and public hearings had been exhausted. But on the whole, cells often were isolated from the broader environmental activist community. [McGowan: Some of these people in my group were sort of cut off. They just cut off from the world, and I feel like cutting yourself off from the world can create really, like. It led to some real big theoretical mistakes. Not even theoretical,
applied mistakes that we made because we cut off, we were out of touch.] And without the support of the public, or at least the support and connection to the political left, the State could crack down hard on the ELF with impunity. Cells were subjected to surveillance, alleged phone taps, and grand jury intimidation; it was hard not to break under the pressure. Today, all of those tactics of political repression are multiplied in an age of smartphones, critical infrastructure laws, AI surveillance, and private mercenary groups.
Ultimately, though, the splintering of the Earth Liberation Front doesn't necessarily mean it was a failure. If anything, it can teach today's climate organiziners lessons and strategies for building a stronger and effective movement. [Daniel McGowan: Just because what you did wasn't perfect doesn't mean it was a mistake, it doesn't mean that other people can't take it and improve upon it] Clearly, the Earth Liberation Front did at least something right because, despite not killing a single person, the State was so scared of a potential public-backed Earth Liberation Front, that they labeled them the number one domestic terrorist threat and hunted them down with
abandon. And that hunt would finally track down Joseph Dibee during a layover in El Salvador. The Capture It's 2018. Daniel McGowan is five years out of prison, 750,000 barrels of oil flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline each day, a number of spills have already wreaked havoc on surrounding water systems, and Montoya and Reznicek are gearing up to fight for a fair sentencing in court. Joseph Dibee, meanwhile, is on his way back from a business trip in Ecuador. During a layover, the El Salvadoran National Police stop Dibee and bring him in for questioning. The air is
tense. Could this be the moment when the long arm of the FBI finally captures him? But as he sits through the interrogation, it quickly becomes clear that his detainment is racially motivated. They seem to know nothing of his past with the Earth Liberation Front. According to Dibee, many of the other people waiting to be questioned were of West Asian descent. His suspicions were confirmed as one of the officers rushed through his fingerprint process, complaining to another cop that "we need to hurry him along." As Dibee walked out of the interrogation room, his shoulders relaxed. He was free.
But he was already late for his connecting flight. Running through the airport, he manages to board, and makes it to Havana, Cuba. One last 26-hour layover before he can get home to his wife and stepson in Moscow. As Dibee curls up to get some sleep, he feels a tap on his shoulder. Three Cuban officials tower over him. The biometric data that the El Salvadoran cops obtained had pinged a hit. The FBI had finally found its white whale. The three cops pushed Dibee out of the airport and into a car, driving him to an undisclosed site where he was caged and tortured for reasons that still remain unclear. This was a kidnapping. For three days, Dibee baked in the sweltering Cuban sun,
exacerbated by the hot concrete underneath his skin. The jail guards withheld water, as Dibee, now 50 years old, quickly dehydrated. He passed out frequently, and thought he was going to die. On the third day, officials that seemed to be from the Cuban military intelligence hauled him out of the cell into an air-conditioned room, and handed him water. They were blunt, "We think you're a terrorist," and Dibee made up stories to appease them, but his interrogators slowly, over the course of days, figured out who he was, perhaps because they were talking to the
FBI at that point. Then, on August 9, 2018, the torture ended. The Cubans handed one of the last remaining Earth Liberation Front members of the Pacific Northwest cell over to the Americans. [Newscaster: A Man Suspected of ecoterrorism in Oregon and Washington-on the run For more than a decade is now Behind bars in Portland.] Dibee was shipped to Portland, where this journey all started. For a little under 2 and a half years, Joseph Dibee was forced behind bars awaiting his trial. He would survive a broken jaw from a punch from a white supremacist inmate, be among the first
people in jail to contract COVID, and watch as the country fought back against racist police brutality in the summer of 2020. All of this in punishment for burning down the property of a business that killed wild horses. A crime for which he had not even stood trial yet. But finally that day would come. He reached a plea deal, and on November 2nd, 2022, the Oregon District Court Judge announced the sentencing decision. Joseph Dibee's fate has been decided. [news clip]. After pleading guilty to two acts of arson, Dibee hoped to persuade
the judge he had already been through enough. He was now almost 20 years removed from those acts of sabotage. That was not him anymore. On that day, Ann Aiken saw the humanity in Dibee, and his sentence was lenient [play news clip explaining sentencing]. Dibee wouldn't have to suffer the fate of so many of his fellow ELF comrades. He could walk free. And as Dibee leaves the courthouse, the last licks of Earth Liberation Front flames flicker and burn out. But as the smoke clears, just over two years later and over 900 miles south, a raging fire destroys the homes of the rich. Except this fire wasn't sparked
by a firebomb. It's a wildfire supercharged by climate change. Los Angeles County reels as 18,000 buildings are destroyed. An estimated 440 lay dead. This is arson on an unimaginable scale. And it's caused by the emissions of fossil fuel companies. Emissions that Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya attempted to prevent. They now sit behind bars. As the State cracks down on those attacking fossil capitalism, they assure the continued existence of out-of-control fires like the Los Angeles fires-all to protect the infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry dousing the planet in fuel. Fire, then, seems to be just a matter of who holds the torch.
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