Jul
21
2011
Environmental activist-turned FBI-informant, Jacob Ferguson, is facing 4 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation. Ferguson last week admitted to a judge that he had committed crimes and used illegal substances including heroin while on probation. He had initially avoided a prison sentence for a variety of criminal acts related to his environmental activism, but, in 2004, was pressured by government agents into implicating dozens of his fellow activists, and even covertly recording conversations to use as evidence. Ferguson’s cooperation was the big breakthrough that federal law enforcement and security agents were looking for in their long-standing efforts to indict activists they call “eco-terrorists.” Despite the fact that anti-abortion and other right-wing activists and organizations have committed far more heinous crimes injuring and killing human beings, their activities are hugely overshadowed in government circles by the sabotage-heavy activities of environmental and animal rights activists. The term “eco-terrorist” was pioneered by a conservative anti-environmentalist named Ron Arnold, who helped convince government officials that members of groups like Earth First!, Earth Liberation Front, and Animal Liberation Front, were on par with Al Qaeda. Explaining the rise of the so-called “Green Scare,” journalist Will Potter writes in his book Green is the New Red, that it was the result of “slowly merging the rhetoric of industry groups with that of politicians and law enforcement.” Potter, himself a environmental activist, was once arrested for leaf letting and approached by the FBI to be an informant.
GUEST: Will Potter, author of Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of A Social Movement Under Siege
Read more by Will at his website www.GreenIsTheNewRed.com
Join Will at a book reading and signing tonight
When: 7pm
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore in Brentwood, in the Brentwood Country Mart – 225 26th Street, Santa Monica
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