Letters to the Editor
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Briana and the ELFs
It is highly likely that Briana had little or nothing to do with ELF. However it points out several issues that white middle class kids posing don't seem to understand.
First point is that while it is exciting to pretend to be a radical activist and fight "the man" in reality "the man" usually wins. Ask the ladies formerly with the SLA and Weather Underground.
Secondly white middle class kids in the US are not the hardened cadres needed to pull these feats off. They are amateurs and behave like them
Third as a fellow in the Texas Rangers once told me, "There is no one in the world who will rat a partner out faster than a white middle class college kid who has just been busted."
If she was involved with the ELF to any degree she was probably the weakest one and the one who was set up to take the fall once the thing began collapsing. It is a shame but if you decide to fight you should be ready to get hurt. White middle class kids pretending to be terrorists and activists are too soft, too undisciplined and too easy to wedge to pull something like this off, not that it should be pulled off at all. In fact, what the ELF did was wrong, criminal, against the law, counterproductive and just plain stupid. Remember kids "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."