Rethinking the danger.
Posted By Mikal Jakubal on August 10, 2009
“I never actually saw any of the fires…”
Convicted Earth Liberation Front eco-arsonist Chelsea Gerlach helped set many of the ELF’s more spectacular fires, yet she had never seen the actual flames. This is because the ELF used timers to ignite their incendiary devices instead of lighting them by hand, permitting a safe getaway before the flames erupted. They often didn’t know whether or not the fires actually started until they heard the 911 response on their scanners. By then, if all had gone according to plan, the target and the conflagration would be miles behind them.
As each Earth Liberation Front member was sentenced in the Eugene, Oregon, Federal courtroom, the prosecution played videos of the fires in order to demonstrate the seriousness of the crimes and justify the penalties they were asking the judge to impose. For the first time, in those videos, Chelsea was able to see what she had helped to unleash. This short clip was shot, as with the rest of her interviews, in the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland, OR as she awaited transfer to Federal Prison.
Chelsea has thought deeply about the path she once chose and the consequences of her actions on the victims of the arsons, on other activists and on her own life. This self-reflection, prompted by being put on suicide watch after another ELF member committed suicide in his cell, has led her to Buddhism and to a more spiritually-oriented view of how social change and environmental protection can happen.
In The House Of Fire, she explains why she first got involved in the ELF and how her views evolved through the experience of living underground, arrest, prison and, ultimately, spiritual transformation.
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