2002 national public radio story on the earth liberation front

A reporter who does work for NPR programs like The World and Marketplace forwarded me this link to a Great Lakes Radio Consortium program that I had interviewed for on the Earth Liberation Front in 2002.

featured in the epoch on the earth liberation front

Malcolm Cecil-Cockwell wrote a feature length article on the Earth Liberation Front for the Spring 2008 issue of The Epoch, a literary journal that, according to its website, prides itself on being “a neutral forum for discussion and debate” that strives “to contemplate all possibilities in the quest for truth.”
While the article gives the sense that this “quest for truth” has yet to see a light at the end of the tunnel, it did have a moment or two, including the recognition that when it comes to the Earth Liberation Front, “most [media] sources are blatantly biased.”

On the other hand, there was also this assertion by the author:
“ Most people following the recent developments in North America’s corporate culture can all see that many companies are making a sincere effort to improve their industrial processes, while government officials ratify ever-stricter regulations and limits on pollution. From General Electric to Toyota, and from British Petroleum to Gazprom, firms actually appear to be competing with each other for recognition as being ‘green.’”

As one of four people interviewed, I was quoted throughout the article, at one point speculating that, “People will see [in the Earth Liberation Front] one day what they now see with the Underground Railroad: That they were the only sane ones around at the time.”

Later I was quoted explaining, “What I can see is that the mainstream movement is isn’t really bringing much forward by itself. That’s part of the reason that I’m proud to say that I’ve helped promote radical environmentalism. At least the ELF is willing to take action and take risks, not getting stuck in the status quo, not allowing the problem to continue any longer. There is something very legitimate about people who are angry and willing to act now.”

quoted and featured on the cover of "eco-terrorism"

Donald R. Liddick published his book, Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements in 2006 but I’ve only now discovered it. That wouldn’t be so unusual except for the fact that I’m pictured on the book’s cover and featured extensively under the heading, “Leslie James Pickering and the Unabomber.” This lengthly quote from the book was taken from an e-mail conversation I had with the author in early 2006:

I don’t think influencing bureaucrats to place huge wilderness areas off-limits to commercial enterprises is a specific goal of the ELF. Maybe some members or supporters would see this as a minor improvement, but I don’t see how sabotage of this scale would be effective in influencing government policy. If influencing government policy were the objective I would think an organization would either take more dramatic action, like the FLN in Algiers for example, or would simply go through the existing processes like lobbying and courts.

As I’ve grown to understand it, sabotage efforts like we’ve seen with the ELF are more intended to build radical or even revolutionary resistance movements to the existing power structure than they are intended to influence government policy. In this light, if the ELF loses it’d be because they failed to inspire people to unite and struggle for change, not because the government never set huge wilderness areas off-limits to commercial enterprises.

I would guess the future either holds growth or decline for the ELF and their larger movement. If they are successful, the resistance will grow and we will see more ELF activity and more people thinking and expressing the kinds of ideas the ELF represent. If they are not successful, they will fizzle out and will eventually be lost in history. We’ve also seen many examples that fall between these two outcomes. A number of resistance movements experience devastating repression and are destroyed as a result, but continue to be an inspiration to movements that sprout up in the generations that follow.

For the period that I had the privilege to serve as spokesperson, the ELF were clearly growing and building much public support. This is because they were taking frequent spectacular actions and consistently evading capture. They were very successful at gaining media attention and causing extensive economic damage to their chosen targets. For whatever reasons their activity seemed to cool off and now we are seeing more in the news about the government’s actions against individuals suspected to have been involved in the ELF than anything the ELF might be up to now.

There was a shift in strategy at some point, which I was concerned about from the beginning. Targets changed from buildings housing corporate headquarters and government agencies to SUV dealerships and luxury housing developments. When large corporate and government buildings were burning down people were awed and there was a sense of separation between the targets of the ELF and the public. When car dealerships and housing developments were burning it was generally less impressive and the perceived separation between the targets of the ELF and the general public was not as clear. The media and the government worked to exploit this situation, as expected, and in general these smaller actions failed to gain the exposure that the multi-million dollar corporate and government attacks gained.

Good strategy is a direct result of theory. As spokesperson I often offered my personal understanding of ELF theory, as I could make it out, by analyzing their apparent strategy from my sympathetic standpoint. The later strategy of the ELF to target SUV dealerships and housing developments did not fit as well with my understanding of the group’s theory. Of course my understanding of ELF theory may very well be inaccurate and there were a number of people who were very glad to see Hummer dealerships and McMansions aflame, but if their strategy was not a linear result of their theory, and more of a result of something like opportunity, then I would not be surprised if that strategy failed to lead the group where they hoped to go.

With the loose autonomous structure that the ELF embraces it wouldn’t at all be surprising to see a non-linear relationship between strategy and theory, or even the fatal underdevelopment of theory and strategy prior to action. While this kind of structure is in some ways very egalitarian and works to keep the membership out of prison, in this example it may have failed to foster a healthy development and relationship between strategy and theory necessary to lead the ELF to achieve their goals.

*Donnald R. Liddick, “Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements” (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006) 102-103.

mad bomber melville correction

The two F.L.Q. fugitives who Sam Melville harbored in the spring of 1969 were Alan Allard and Jean Pierre Charette, not Raymond Villeneuve and Mario Buchand as was mistakedly printed. This correction will be made in all future editions. Thank you to Luc for catching my mistake.
*Judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada (United States v. Allard. 14 May 1987)

mad bomber melville book release

September 6, 2007, brought the release of Mad Bomber Melville at Rust Belt Books in Buffalo. This is a video of the first in a tour of releases for the book that included Manhattan’s Bluestockings, Arise! in Minneapolis, Internationalist Books in North Carolina, Big Idea in Pittsburgh and the New World Resource Center in Chicago among others. Thank you to everyone who helped to organize a release in your area and who came out to the events.

artvoice features previews of mad bomber melville

Buffalo’s weekly paper, ARTVOICE, printed these four serial previews of Mad Bomber Melville in June of 2007:

part one

part two

part three

part four

nimbus dance performs to reading of political prisoner jeff luers

Nimbus Dance included this recording of me reading one of Jeff Luers’ letters from prison in a production they performed to a crowd of hundreds at the Albright-Knox art museum on January 26, 2007.

luce guillén-givins review of mad bomber melville

Luce Guillén-Givins, who helped with editing Mad Bomber Melville and is currently a key organizer in the RNC Welcoming Committee, wrote this review:

In the violent shadow of the Vietnam War, Samuel Melville stood apart from his peers. Already beyond the trust ceiling of age 30 when he got involved in “the Movement,” he was remarkable in his determination and initiative. In collusion with Jane Alpert and several others, he preempted the militancy of groups like the Weather Underground with a rash of “bring the War home” bombings of centers of American imperialism throughout New York City.

Mad Bomber Melville, by Leslie James Pickering, is a concise and quick-moving account of his political life, and a refreshing break from the tradition of 60s and 70s-era biographies. Melville’s personal life was certainly fraught with abusive and self-destructive behavior- worthy of examination, but not of a nature unexpected given the society to which he was born. Yet without turning apologist, the text foregoes sensationalism in favor of emphasizing his significance as a revolutionary figure in American history. While many a book has been written on the bigger-than-life characters who studded this country’s radical scene, rare is the mention of Samuel Melville. Pickering’s book is a fact-based portrait of total commitment to revolutionary change, embodied in a flawed but entirely sincere white radical.

The book builds to the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising where Melville, then a prisoner in the upstate New York correctional facility, was part of a core group of inmates organizing against the repressive conditions of their confinement. On September 9th, rioting prisoners took hostages and seized control of the grounds. After five long days spent holding law enforcement at bay, the government unleashed a full-scale assault on the rebels. Having so briefly experienced the intense unity of the resistance he gave himself to building, Samuel Melville was among the 29 men murdered.

A celebration of the revolutionary spirit, Mad Bomber Melville informs and inspires.

david gilbert writes a jacket quote for mad bomber melville

Political prisoner, author and Weather Underground member, David Gilbert, Wrote this jacket quote for Mad Bomber Melville:

We are long overdue for the kind of serious consideration of Sam Melville’s political role and development that Leslie James Pickering has undertaken. Before the Weather Underground had formed, Melville, even without the resources and support we had at elite universities, initiated armed propaganda attacks on buildings (not people) of the corporations and government responsible for war and plunder of the third world. Like all of us, he had plenty of faults, especially at a time when we’d had so little collective struggle on sexism and ego. As a prisoner, Melville went on to become a searing and inspiring example of a white radical willing to risk his life fighting alongside Black and Latin struggles when he became a leader, and was killed by police, during the earthshaking Attica prison rebellion of 1971. This study reclaims an important, but largely unheralded, piece of radical history, with valuable lessons about initiative, shortcomings and growth in striving to be fully on the side of the oppressed.

twin cities fights the green scare

December 7, 2006, was the first anniversary of the Operation Backfire indictments, which charged a number of people with crimes committed in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. I was invited to speak that day on a panel at the Jack Pine Community Center in Minneapolis billed, “Twin Cities Fights the Green Scare,” and was able to get an audio recording of my segment of the panel. This recording contains explicit language.