Letters to the Editor
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If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and calls itself a duck...
As a resident of the Northwest, as a person who knows people whose work was destroyed by the hortoculture center fire, and as someone recently reminded, yet again, by the burning of the Street of Dreams, that ELF is alive and well out here, I'm really irritated by the tone that suggests that, just because an action didn't kill 3000 people, we shouldn't call it terrorism.
So they're burning down university buildings and eco-friendly homes instead of flying planes into to buildings. Their goals are the same: scare people, make the establishment look foolish, get their pet cause in the news. SO FAR, they seem to have been lucky enough to avoid killing anyone, but anyone who uses homemade pyrotechnics to blow up buildings is already making it clear that "innocent human life" is not one of their priorities.
I would ask the author of this piece to imagine if, instead of blowing up the environmentally supporting hard work of scientists, they were burning down medical clinics to stop a certain procedure, or schools, to stop a particular point of view from being taught. Would THAT count as terrorism to you, even if it didn't kill a thousand people?
If Briana Waters has been unjustly convicted, I sincerely hope that an appeals process can help release her. That doesn't change the fact that ELF is a terrorist organization, by its own design and action.