If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

A good documentary about a fascinating subject, but it opened up a lot of questions and left me wanting more. For example, a look at Wikipedia shows you that ELF did not begin randomly in Oregon in the late 90s, but in fact started in the UK and Europe. I wanted to learn more about these organizations - their views, their actions, and their leaders. The documentary shows pictures of the people involved, but we learn very little about them, and often don't even hear their names. One of them was even described as a rich, foxy internet executive, who did a little arson on weekends - but who the heck was she? Also, the trials aren't covered at all. However, the filmmakers do give us a full look at one of the group's leaders, a seemingly harmless soul named Daniel "Sorrel" McGowan, and we also get to see interviews with detectives and prosecutors who worked hard on the case, and got the ELF labelled terrorists. They were not terrorists because they did not kill random civilians - what they did was destroy property. And the fires they set are nothing compared to the fires that are burning in Oregon as I write this because of climate change.

This is a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front--an environmental terrorism group that has been associated with over 1200 cases involving vandalism. Their most extreme actions have involve fire bombings of businesses, National Park Service buildings, research labs and many other targets.

The film focuses on several folks who got caught up in various terrorist activities--in particular a guy now living in New York named Daniel. Most of the first half of the film appears to excuse or at least mitigate the fire bombings by these folks and make them and their cause seem valid. Now SOME of the ELF actions seemed very reasonable--such as camping out in trees so that they could at least present their case to the local city council. Others could clearly kill people and have damaged property that, in some cases, has NOTHING to do with harming the environment. In fact, in some cases, the ELF bombings caused MORE damage than if the businesses had simply been left alone. Or, they attack businesses that MIGHT be argued are helping the environment (such as a slaughterhouse that kills wild horses--something SOME environmental groups actually endorse since the horses are not native and damage the land).

So what about the quality of the film? Well, at first I hated it, as it seemed to only present a pro-ELF position. But, fortunately, as the film progresses they do present more folks who are working to stop the ELF--though, on balance, the film seems to be more pro-ELF than anti. This is NOT a complaint--it's almost impossible to present a film that is 100% neutral. And, at least it's neutral enough that I could see people on BOTH sides of the environmental war taking something from the documentary--so it's definitely worth seeing and is well-crafted. I don't have to agree with a film to respect it--and this film is an excellent example.

Finally, perhaps it's just me, but I was a bit taken by many of the pro-ELF folks, as they seemed to enjoy the fruits of modern life and, in some cases, decry the evils of capitalism. Had they lived in the wild and eschewed modern amenities, I would have respected them MUCH more. Give up the TVs, modern homes, internet (including IMDb), cars, store-bought clothing and all the other things that come from the evil corporations--then you have a much more valid case. In the meantime, word 'hypocrisy' seems quite appropriate.

What are the criteria for being a terrorist? What should be the criteria for a being a terrorist? Is an environmentalist who burns down the empty office of a logging company in the middle of the night comparable to crimes committed by people like Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden? Is this crime to be put on the same legal shelf as those who fly planes into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people? Ask any three people and you are likely to get three different answers, after all, the people you ask probably aren't the ones going to prison for it.

Marshall Curry's documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front begins by showing us some acts of "eco-terrorism", acts in which radical environmentalists whose peaceful protests have fallen on deaf ears and turned up the heat by setting fires to lumber mills, wild horse corrals, SUV dealerships and meat packing plants. They were called The Earth Liberation Front – or E.L.F. – unorganized group of radicals willing to cause millions of dollars in property damage in the name of keeping corporate America from destroying the planet. The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to dismiss these individuals as a bunch of over-zealous ya-hoos who just enjoy watching things burn. Yet, the film is something more, as we watch it, we are taken into the lives of some of the members of the E.L.F. and begin to understand what they are fighting for. That leads to questions of whether or not their legal prosecution is really fair.

The E.L.F. get the attention of, not only their targets, but the F.B.I. who quickly labels the group as "The number one domestic terrorist threat" and launches a full-scale investigation of the individuals involved, an investigation that resembles in many ways the F.B.I.'s investigation of the mafia 50 years ago.

What is interesting is that even while we don't agree with what the E.L.F. is doing, the film gives us images that allow us to understand their point of view. We see footage of trees that have stood for thousands of years, blindly cut down. We see horse mills, with hundreds of dead horses hung from the ceiling. We see the heartbreaking sight of a group of legendary trees sawed down to make a parking lot.

We see the protesters themselves, camped out in the trees that are to be cut down, beaten and maced unmercifully by the local police. In a scene that resembles the riots of the 1960s, we see members of the E.L.F. with their faces covered marching into the streets and then beaten and clubbed. The irony is that the members of the group who are clearly guilty of vandalism haven't done any physical harm to other human beings but are being beaten down by law enforcement as if they were murderers.

Let us make no mistake, what the E.L.F doing is wrong, unlawful and is deserving a punishment by law, and yes, jail time. The point is that this film questions the severity of the extent of that punishment. Curry's film moves very deeply into that very question and wonders about the fate of Daniel McGowen, whose story provides the film's bookends, goes under house arrest in his sister's home until his trial in which it will be decided what kind of jail time he will do for the crime of arson. He seems like a nice kid with a sweet voice, somewhere in his mid-20s who smiles a lot, but has eyes that are much more thoughtful, focused and intelligent than most kids his age. When he goes to trial and receives his sentence, we aren't surprised that it is harsh. What does surprise us is the information that McGowan is now going to spend the rest of his life on the government's terrorist watchdog list. Why? His crime, at best, results in malicious vandalism. Why a life sentence on the same list as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks?

I saw this film this July at the Traverse City Film Festival. Actually, I was dragged there by my daughter (who is much more of an activist concerning environmental issues than am I.) I generally avoid environmental documentaries because many times they paint a very black and white view of the issues. This film is an engrossing and gratifying exception.

The film follows former Earth Liberation Front (ELF) activist Daniel McGowan from his arrest by the FBI as an "environmental terrorist" through his legal efforts to avoid a life sentence. Even though his actions only resulted in destruction of property without loss of life or even physical harm to living creatures, the government was determined to make an example of Daniel and a few others of the formerly close-knit group. For many years they had no leads in ELF's membership and the crimes (destroying -- primarily by arson -- ranger stations and businesses that they considered destructive to the environment). They only cracked the case 5 years after the organization had disbanded by treating it as a "cold case." At that time, the FBI serendipitously uncovered information which led to the identification of one of the more hard-core and less altruistic members of the group who then turned informant on the rest of the members, which resulted in his doing no jail time at all while his fellow conspirators faced life sentences. Unfair, but not uncommon in our system of "justice."

Daniel McGowan is a city-raised young man from New York who became infatuated with environmental activists, participating in their peaceful and legal protests. Upon seeing the foolish and counterproductive hard-nosed repression of those protests by government and police agencies, he decided to throw his lot in with others in ELF and resorted to property damage to make corporations and the government "feel the pain" of their policies.

Here is where the documentary becomes wonderfully balanced, allowing the pursuing government agencies their frustrations and those property owners who had been attacked to voice the disruption and anxiety that ELF caused in their life. At times, ELF acted on faulty information which resulted in businesses being attacked who were completely innocent of the policies ELF felt were destructive to the earth.

Daniel himself comes off as idealistic and frustrated, but often misguided and gullible. As his life progresses, he becomes wiser about some of his decisions and regretful of the destruction in which he participated and how the consequences of that destruction was often (but not always) negative to the environmental movement. However, after his arrest he would not testify against his fellow ELF members (one of the few) and therefore received some of the harshest punishment. One can find some sympathy for him, especially with the idea that he was equated in the justice system with terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh or the 9/11 terrorists, although he never physically harmed any living being.

But the prosecutors are also portrayed in a generally positive light, with one saying at the end of the film (to paraphrase) that he was old enough to understand that not everything is black and white... that life is much more complicated than that. He said that once he understood where Daniel came from and why he believed as he did, he could understand why he might make the decisions he did, wrong-headed as they were. Such enlightenment being shown by our government officials is somewhat unusual.

The co-directer, Sam Cullman, who held a Q&A after the screening at Traverse City, said this is "A" story of ELF, and not "The" story, and I think that is well-stated. The organization probably has many stories as each member had his or her own motivations.

The larger question remains... if faced with a resistant and unresponsive establishment, how is change effected? This film adds to that discussion in a balanced and educational, but compelling way, making it one of the best docs about tactics used by social and environmental movements. 9/10

After the fiction comes the real stuff. This movie is about the elves out there, I mean, the E.L.F, and the shift of tactics from tree-sitting to going to burn down mills. As apologism of a terrorist organisation, it also contains a lot of reflexions and repentance, on specific actions that also had unwanted consequences or were misplanned, but in the end it is what it claims to be : a documentary on earth defenders, activism, around the pacific northwest and the eugene green anarchist scene in the 1990's. It then goes on to follow the case of Daniel McGowan, and his codefendent, whose actions were never linked to them until the police taskforce working on it found a weaker link to pressure to wear a wiretap and trick all of them into remembering vocally the past, so yeah, it's about the E.L.F and it's repression, making sure to include all possible viewpoints (the police who worked against them, the prosecutors from the legal system, the mills owners, other activists with different viewpoints, the snitch, etc.).