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At a time when everyone is going green, most people are unaware that the FBI is using anti-terrorism resources to target environmentalists. Here is a guided tour into an underground world of radical activism and an introduction to the shadowy figures behind the headlines. But here also is the story of how everyday people are prevented from speaking up for what they believe in. Like the Red Scare, this "Green Scare" is about fear and intimidation, and Will Potter outlines the political, legal, and public relations strategies that threaten even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with the label of "eco-terrorism."
Anonymous
Posted December 27, 2011
This thoroughly researched and unsettling investigation should be required reading for every American. Will Potter weaves personal anecdotes with cold truths to produce an even-handed look at the deterioration of civil liberties in the USA after 9/11, particularly the terrorism narrative and hiw we contexualize it today.
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Posted November 2, 2011
Green is The New Red by Will Potter tells the story of Daniel McGowen, an eco-activist. At first we see Daniel as a passionate young man, born and bred in New York, living in a typical American family. He goes on to graduate college with the normal every day passions of a budding adult. It is one fateful day that he encounters an activist organization in New York City that is advocating for the environment and against corporate pollution. McGowen quickly becomes an instrumental member of the group and from here his passion for the natural world is ignited. Fast forward to present day: Daniel is awaiting trial on eco-terrorist charges which can bring a hefty federal prison sentence and a designation as a domestic terrorist. It is not so much what McGowen and members of The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) are accused of, rather it is how the United States Justice system has been politicized by a corporate agenda which finds the destruction of property to be the highest crime designation while murder and the terrorization and violence to human beings are not even listed in its rolls of what constitutes terror on US soil. The reader is shocked to learn that those who advocate for the environment and for the safety of animals are listed as the number one domestic threat to United States citizens. Potter does not sugar coat the crimes that McGowen and his cohorts did commit and the reader is left to wrestle with the moral dilemma of this action against the utter powerlessness that anyone has against big corporate interests. The question is proportionality of punishment to the crime committed. The arson attacks were carefully planned so that no human or animal life would be harmed, so the designation of "terrorist" and all that this entails appears to be heavy handed at best. Daniel is eventually sentenced incurring the full force of the political agenda that has made him an "example." He is designated a "domestic terrorist", sentenced to a special, top-secret prison designed for "threats" such as Daniel. The irony is that others who terrorize and kill human populations under religious and political ideologies are regarded as "lone bad apples under the law" and ignored in this terrorism context, while a young man whose only crime was "chalking" a sidewalk in front of an animal testing laboratory is now sitting in federal prison with the most heinous life changing designation haunting the rest of his life.
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Overview
At a time when everyone is going green, most people are unaware that the FBI is using anti-terrorism resources to target environmentalists. Here is a guided tour into an underground world of radical activism and an introduction to the shadowy figures behind the headlines. But here also is the story of how everyday people are prevented from speaking up for what they believe in. Like the Red Scare, this "Green Scare" is about fear and intimidation, and Will Potter outlines the political, legal, and public relations strategies that threaten even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with the label of "eco-terrorism."