Tag: Earth First!

Rodney Coronado On His Recent Legal Troubles

In 2004, convicted animal rights arsonist Rodney Coronado, 38, was arrested after he and fellow Earth First activist Matthew Crozier, 32, along with Esquire writer John Richardson, allegedly entered Sabino Canyon, Arizona, and destroyed a mountain lion trap. Coronado faces up to seven years in jail.

All three were charged with federal misdemeanor trespassing on national forest land, interfering with a forest officer and violation of a special closure order (the canyon had been closed by officials due to the threat from aggressive mountain lions). Coronado and Crozier were also charged with federal felony conspiracy to impede or injure an officer. The state of Arizona also charged Coronado and Crozier with misdemeanor charges related to their removal of the trap and a sensor set up near the trap.

On the federal charges, which are clearly the most serious, Coronado could spend six and a half years in prison. And Coronado does not even bother to pretend he might be not guilty — in fact, he’s downright proud of what he did.

In an essay published in animal rights extremist magazine No Compromise, Coronado writes (emphasis added),

. . . While 2004 marked my fifth year out of prison, it was also the year that finally saw my re-arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Something those bastards have been trying to do since 1999, when I walked out the gates of the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson. My arrest wasn’t unexpected. As with many a practitioner of nonviolent civil disobedience, my actions were taken with a full understanding of the consequences I faced should I be arrested for opposing and interfering with this occupying government’s efforts to kill mountain lions last March.

Thank you, bastards at the FBI!

Coronado goes on to erase any doubt that he is guilty of the crimes of which he is accused (emphasis added),

When it came down to the lions versus the combined guns, snares, ground sensors, helicopters, hounds and 4×4 trucks of taxpayer-supported professional hunters, I found out who were the lionsÂ’ real friends and who really believed in animal liberation and deep ecology. Like many a direct action I have participated in, the people I patrolled that canyon with are some of the bravest and most beautiful people I know. ItÂ’s for these reasons my friends and I are now being threatened with seven years in federal prison. Because a few of us were not willing to sit back and watch as our public lands and wildlife were destroyed to once again assuage human fears of the uncontrollable wild in a never-ending invasion.

And I was, still am and always will be proud to be able to take such a stance against overwhelming odds when the people and places I love are being threatened or destroyed. It is with such honor, that I snuck into Sabino Canyon night after night, past federal officers patrolling for native wildlife whose only offense was not enough fear of humans and continuing to hunt in their occupied homelands. When we choose to be warriors of the Earth and her Animal Nations we accept that it might be our own lives and freedom that are one day threatened or taken away. That is the way for every generation of warrior and protector whose duty it is to protect home and family.

This gives us a nice insight into just how nutty Coronado was. When he referred to the “occupying government” above, I originally assumed he was making about related to his Native American activism. But no, as he makes clear, it is the lions themselves whose “homeland” is occupied by the government — although Coronado apparently is unconcerned about the sanctity “homelands” of the prey that the mountain lion hunts! Some “Animal Nations” are apparently more equal than others.

Coronado then complains that his fellow activists aren’t emulating his illegal ways sufficiently (emphasis added),

As IÂ’ve said before, IÂ’m proud to be an enemy of the United States. The enemy of a global invader that allows terrorism to happen on a daily basis. A regime that routinely allows not only the torture of animals in its licensed and regulated laboratories, but people in its military concentration camps as well. IÂ’m not surprised by any of this behavior, its what you come to expect from people who since their arrival have always used violence and terror to achieve their objectives.

The only thing that surprises me about it all is that there are not more of the many people I have met over the last twenty years of this struggle fighting here beside me. While a couple of those dear comrades sit in prison or are under federal indictment, many more hide amongst the society responsible for the violence we oppose, enjoying the privileges won with the very kind of terror they supposedly oppose.

So this is my question to you. How bad do things have to get before you are willing to fight back? And IÂ’m not talking about anything you do in front of a computer or that involves music bands, pamphlets, puppets or patches, IÂ’m talking about fighting back as if it was your own life under attack. Its not about who else is doing it among movements, groups or friends, when will you be ready to be the first? To do what the law says is wrong, but what you know in your heart is right. That has been and always will be the way peoplesÂ’ voices are heard, not through doing what is popular and polite, but a stand that however unpopular, allows you to exist as a part of a solution to it all, a life free from the liberal first world guilt felt by the aware but apathetic within different movements for social change. A stand that says to one and all, that you as one human being will not allow injustice to go unchallenged, despite the threatened consequences by those perpetuating it.

I couldn’t agree more. What we need are more animal rights extremists in jail and under federal indictment rather than enjoying the privileges of our society. Come on, guys and gals — step up to the plate and really stick it to the animal oppressors by going to prison. That’ll show ’em.

With any luck, Coronado can set a shining example in a federal prison for the next several years.

Sources:

Fighting Back: Crimes of Resistance. Rodney Coronado, No Compromise, March 3, 2005.

2 mountain lion activists face new counts of theft. Patty Machelor, Arizona Daily Star, March 29, 2005.

Scared of lions? So move, activist says. Tony Davis, Arizona Daily Star, March 27, 2004.

Helen Woodson Will Say Anything to Excuse Her Violence

Someone on AR-News recently pointed to an article by convicted environmental/anti-globalist activist Helen Woodson that was originally published in the Earth First! Journal.

The person who re-posted Woodson’s article on the Guerilla News Network web site provides this bit of introductory comment,

Some interesting insights about current efforts to associate EF!, ELF, and ALF with the popular notion of “terrorism” and also with more ‘mainstream’ and pacifist collectives espousing ‘direct action’. From the Plowshares, anti-nuke, activist Helen Woodson, who was arrested in 1984 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for a non-violent protest at a nuclear missile silo. Also, current contact information to support Helen; since she was recently re-arrested and is now facing several more years of confinement.

It is fascinating how extremists like this just outright lie. If you didn’t know anything about Helen Woodson, you’d think she is some sort of pacifist.

For some reason, the GNN poster didn’t think it was relevant to point out that in addition to her sentence for using a jackhammer on a Minuteman II missile silo, Woodson is also currently in jail after being convicted of armed robbery and for threatening communication. In typical non-violent, pacifist style Woodson mailed threatening letters accompanied by .38 bullets to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Federal Reserve Board chair, and a number of other government officials. Also, it is worth noting that she only served 7 years in the silo case — she’s spent far more time in jail for her violent crimes than she did for the Minute Man case.

Like other violent extremists, Woodson doesn’t consider anything she did to have been violent. As she writes,

The real terrorism is the destruction wreaked by US government, military, corporate and economic power. It is what the writer Arundhati Roy calls “the arrogance of the human race toward other living things, which will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species.”

What’s a little death threat or armed robbery, after all?

Anyway, Woodson’s article is as confused as she is. On the one hand, she complains that the government has unfairly linked her actions with the Animal/Earth Liberation Front and Earth First!, but then says that she’s happy to be linked to such groups and likely won’t dispute the government’s claims,

Recently, I received my Presentence Investigation Report (PSI). A section of the PSI devoted to my “group and associate affiliations” says that I am considered an “imprisoned terrorist.” Three of my alleged affiliations are grouped together—Earth First!, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)—all believed to be dangerous. The ELF is singled out as “one of the nation’s most prolific domestic terrorist organizations.”

Until recently, both state and federal courts could use such information as an “aggravating factor” warranting “upward departure” in sentencing. However, in June, the US Supreme Court ruled in Blakely v. Washington (124 S. Ct. 2531) that only factors proved in court can be considered. Allegations of “terrorist group affiliation” or “federal crime of terrorism” will have to be made in the indictment or plea agreement, as will the many other factors previously introduced at the last minute in a variety of cases.

. . .

I am expected to appeal the PSI “terrorist group affiliation.” If it goes unchallenged, I am considered to have acceded to it, and it could be used against me in the future. Even more, I am expected to want it off of my record because my actions have a religious foundation, and this association could “tarnish my image.” I suggest that the best response is to do just the opposite, not with a meaningless display of unanimity, but with a respectful acknowledgement and acceptance of differences in orientation and approach.

. . .

It is those opposing that arrogant power who are acting responsibly and with integrity. It is a richly varied community of conscience, and for my part, affiliation with EF!, the ALF and the ELF is one that I am happy to embrace, clearly and publicly.

Sources:

Terrorism, the Law and Guilt by Association. (50mb PDF) Helen Woodson, Earth First! Journal March 2005, p. 56.

Update 12/7/2020: Woodson was sentenced to 51 months in prison, and was released in September 2011.

Suspect Arrested in Attempted Ecoterrorism Arsons

In February, Ryan Lewis, 21, was arrested in New Castle, California, and charged with the attempted January 12 firebombing of an Auburn, California, commercial complex.

Five incendiary devices were found by construction workers at the commercial complex in Auburn on January 12. According to the FBI, the devices were similar to three incendiary devices found at an upscale Lincoln, California, subdivision. No one has been charged yet in the attempted arson in Lincoln.

Both attempted arsons were claimed by the Earth Liberation Front in letters sent to a number of newspapers.

The full text of the criminal complaint against Lewis can be read here.

Sources:

Suspect in ecoterror attack called polite, sweet. KRCA, February 11, 2005.

Arrest made in one of three alleged eco-terror arsons. Don Thompson, Associated Press, February 10, 2005.