"If they
haven't got prisoners, we have stopped fighting. If our prisoners are forgotten
about, they have beaten us."
— Keith Mann,
ALF activist and former prisoner
The term Green Scare, alluding to the Red Scares of the 1910-20's and
1940s-50s, is an expression used to refer to recent actions taken by the
U.S. government against the radical environmentalist movement.
It seems to have been coined in a 2002 edition of a prisoner support zine
or newsletter, Spirit of Freedom. The publication defined the Green Scare
as "the tactics that the US government and all their tentacles (FBI, IRS,
BATF, Joint Terrorism Task Forces, local police, the court system) are
using to attack the ELF/ALF (Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation
Front) and specifically those who publicly support them."
The term has now been widely used to describe an early 2006 sweep of
arrests, convictions and grand jury indictments of alleged ELF/ALF
activists on charges relating to acts of property damage, conspiracy,
arson and use of destructive devices dubbed "Operation Backfire."
Prisoners and Government repression: Grand Jury Defense
FBI Witchhunt
EcoPrisoners.org
