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December 12, 2012

Jailed Environmentalist Daniel McGowan Released to Halfway House 
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Environmentalist Daniel Mc Gowan has been released to a New York City
halfway house after spending five-and-a-half years in prison for his
role in two acts of arson as a member of the Earth Liberation Front. In
2007, Mc Gowan was sentenced to a seven-year term for setting fires at a
lumber company and an experimental tree farm in Oregon. The judge ruled
he had committed an act of terrorism, even though no one was hurt in
either of the actions. Mc Gowan appeared on Democracy Now! just before
he went to jail.

Daniel Mc Gowan: "I definitely have regrets. I have regrets that I, you
know, employed arson as a tactic. I don't think morally I'm wrong about
what I did, but I do think, strategically and tactically, it was an
unwise decision. I wish that I had people in my life at the time to kind
of guide me back to a different path. But, you know, I was very
disenchanted and very upset about what I saw. I think those feelings are
legitimate, and I think young kids that have these feelings right now,
and not-so-young kids, are — you know, they're legitimate
thoughts, and we have to — we have to come up with ways of dealing
with this crisis and stop ignoring it. And that was my message to the
media that day, after sentencing, was we have to stop pretending this is
all about crime and punishment and start dealing with, like, real
issues, like global climate change."

Mc Gowan was jailed for nearly all of his term in secretive and highly
restrictive prison units known as Communication Management Units, or
CMUs. Most prisoners held in CMUs have been Muslim men, but the units
have also held political activists. A documentary film about Mc Gowan,
"If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front," was nominated
for an Oscar. Mc Gowan was released from prison in Indiana Tuesday and
flew back to New York with his wife, Jenny.

 

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