Democracy for Vancouver

I wasn’t that surprised to see it in The Columbian, but I was disgusted that even the hosts on KPOJ have been referring to the Earth Liberation Front wackos who torched those McMansions up in Woodinville as terrorists.

E.L.F.’s actions are doomed to failure: burning a few model homes won’t stop sprawl or conspicuous consumption, any more than torching a few SUVs will change the tax code to make Hummers as unaffordable as they are ridiculous. But whatever the E.L.F. is, it is not a terrorist organization: its purpose is not to use violence and threats to intimidate or coerce an entire populace for political purposes.

Not unlike Luddites trashing mechanized looms, members of the E.L.F. are vandals, deliberately, mischievously and maliciously damaging and destroying property which the E.L.F. sees as a blight on the landscape and/or a direct threat to the environment.

The houses which the E.L.F. destroyed in Woodinville were empty. Only rarely do the actions of the E.L.F. (or other monkeywrenchers such as Tre Arrow) injure actual human beings.

I am by no means defending these vandals, but I do I understand their frustration with a country in which the corruption of the political process and the dilution of our democracy have made it all but impossible to implement the kinds of environmental protections which could slow global warming, preserve access to fresh, potable water, and protect other species from countless (and thoughtless) human depredations.

Back when I was in high school, I used to break my friend’s cigarettes in half or throw out her lighters - something that pissed her off enormously. I wasn’t trying to threaten her into quitting, I was just trying to make it much more difficult for her to smoke.

Destroying property, when that property itself is the source of offense, is vandalism, pure and simple. The E.L.F. was not firebombing construction offices during business hours in order to terrorize the builders.

BushCo and the various extractive/resource intensive industries that are the most frequent targets of this type of vandalism want to turn the vandals into terrorists, not only to weight the hammer of the law and to make people fear and hate environmentalists, but to make violence to humans and damage to property equivalent in the public mind. When property and profits are as sacrosanct as human life, corporations can do whatever the hell they want to protect their bottom line, no matter who gets hurt.

Individuals have already been severely devalued in this country, particularly by this administration. We must push back against this kind of defining down of terrorism. When property and profits receive the same protections as people, what follows the kind of corporatist dictatorships that allowed torture and murder for the protection and expansion of banana plantations in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s.

It should be obvious that people are worth more than bananas - or even oil profits; but Bush and Cheney are working hard to make it impossible for you to tell the difference.

So, by all means, investigate the Woodinville arsons, and prosecute the perpetrators. But don’t call it terrorism.