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ELF Activist Daniel McGowan Free After 7 Years in “Little Guantanamo”

by Leighton Woodhouse | 12.12.2012 21:43 | Animal Liberation | Ecology | World

Earth Liberation Front activist Daniel McGowan, who was profiled in the Oscar-nominated documentary “If A Tree Falls,” has been released from federal prison in the US after 7 years.



Original post here:
 http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/12/11/12806/

McGowan was one of a dozen underground environmental and animal rights activists with the ELF and its sister movement, the Animal Liberation Front, who were swept up in a two year, multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional investigation called ‘Operation Backfire,’ which culminated in a series of high-profile arrests and prosecutions at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006. The activists were charged with committing a series of arsons and other property crimes against numerous targets that they deemed to be agents of environmental destruction and animal exploitation, including U.S. Forest Service ranger stations, a horse slaughterhouse, a dairy farm, lumber company facilities, SUV retailers, wild horse corrals, a university horticultural research center, a meat company, and, most famously, the Vail Ski Resort.

Though none of the crimes targeted people nor resulted in human death or injury, the Justice Department wasted little time in publicly declaring the arrestees “terrorists.” At a 2006 press conference announcing the defendants’ indictments, FBI Director Robert Mueller referred to the perpetrators of environmental and animal rights-related crimes as one of the agency’s “highest domestic terrorism priorities.” Congress passed legislation that year specifically singling out animal rights activists for enhanced criminal penalties, classifying property crimes against industries that exploit animals and even, in some contexts, First Amendment activities, as “terrorism.” No such special legislation has ever been passed to selectively brand white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, anti-immigrant vigilantes and right-wing militias — all of which have targeted, injured and killed humans — as terrorists.

McGowan was detained in two different prisons, both of them belonging to a category of new experimental facilities called “Communications Management Units,” or CMUs (he also spent a brief period of his incarceration in general population). CMUs are designed to severely restrict and control the amount and nature of inmates’ communications with the outside world, earning them the nickname among inmates and prison staff of “Little Guantanamo,” according to journalist Will Potter. They are built to contain low-level terrorists rounded up in the War on Terror; most of their prisoners are alleged to be connected with Islamic networks. For several years, their existence was kept secret. There are only two CMUs in the United States, in Illinois and Indiana; McGowan served time in both.

For the next six months, McGowan will be living in a halfway house in New York City, and then be under supervised release for three years.

ELF and ALF activists have been demonized by prosecutors, politicians, law enforcement officers and the media as terrorists, sociopaths, ordinary criminals hiding behind an ideology or, at best, naïve kids with overly romantic notions of what it means to fight for a cause. A more neutral, less agenda-driven perspective would recognize their movement’s dialectical and almost inevitable emergence out of a prevailing political culture that has stubbornly refused to even begin to address some of the most dire and vexing problems facing every living thing on the planet. When mainstream political institutions fail to rise to the scale and urgency of epochal crises like global warming, deforestation or massive species extinction —in some cases, even failing to acknowledge their reality — among those who understand what’s at stake, there will be some who are driven to desperate acts.

The ELF and ALF could never be solutions to the problems they point to, but neither are they incidental to them: radical movements tend to be harbingers of the struggles to come when ossified political systems bury their heads in the sand rather than measure up to the profound challenges they face and to their own internal contradictions. Rather than vilify McGowan as a terrorist or mythologize him as a martyr for the earth, we should consider his story for what it tells us about a society that is so blind to its circumstances that it provokes individuals to engage in extreme political acts and risk serving years in Little Guantanamos in order to do something to stem an unfolding catastrophe.

by Leighton Woodhouse

Additions

Daniel McGowan released from prison!

13.12.2012 08:38


Earth Liberation Front political prisoner and Rockaway native Daniel McGowan was released from the Communication Management Unit (CMU) in Terre Haute, Indiana this morning. He was driven by federal authorities to Indianapolis International Airport, where he met up with his wife.

Though the two have been able to visit during Daniel’s imprisonment, today marked the first time in years that they could hug, hold hands, or make any physical contact (save for a few month stint when Daniel was in general population in Marion, Illinois– between the CMU there and the one in Terre Haute). The two flew back to New York City together, where they were met by a small group of close friends at the airport.

From the airport, Daniel had one hour to make it to the halfway house, where he will be living for as long as the next six months. Though he has secured employment, it is unclear when he can start work (at the discretion of the halfway house, not his new employer). Until he has had time to settle in, there are more questions than answers.

After being released from the halfway house, Daniel will be under supervised release for three years.

Regardless, this is great news and we’re excited to see our comrade on the other side of the wall.

Please remember that prisoner support doesn’t end when a comrade is released. Through halfway houses, supervised release, parole, or probation, there is usually state supervision beyond the initial sentence. Also, prison is traumatic. And of course there is the stigma of being a former prisoner that effects nearly every aspect of one’s life. All of this adds up to the less obvious, but equally necessary, support needed when our loved ones come home.

Welcome back, Daniel! We love you!

NYC Anarchist Black Cross
- Homepage: http://nycabc.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/daniel-mcgowan-released-from-prison/


Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Great news!

13.12.2012 00:11

Thanks for the post.

T


curious

13.12.2012 21:29

Not sure how burning things down, that are going to just be rebuilt using more resources, is saving the planet - but never mind

burning is co2


Breathing is CO2 also

14.12.2012 16:16

A curious world indeed

last gasp


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