ELF Radical Environmentalist Gets 9-Year Term

ELF Radical Environmentalist Gets 9-Year Term
NYT--By William Yardley
By the time Chelsea D. Gerlach was 16, she was putting her passion for the environment into action.

She drove alone from Oregon to Idaho to protest a timber sale. She spoke at a university conference here alongside professors. Interviewed by her high school newspaper, The Axe, she said, “Our generation was born to save the earth.”

Now Ms. Gerlach is 30, and although she may continue to be an environmentalist, a federal judge said Friday that she was a terrorist, too.

“It was your intention to scare, frighten and intimidate people and government through the very dangerous act of arson,” Judge Ann L. Aiken of Federal District Court told Ms. Gerlach at her sentencing here.

Judge Aiken sentenced Ms. Gerlach to nine years in prison for her role in “the family,” a group of at least 10 radical environmentalists who have been convicted of arson and other destructive actions at an electrical transmission tower; timber research centers; a Eugene police station; a ski resort in Vail, Colo.; and other sites in five Western states that they viewed as threats to the environment or their mission.

The defendants are connected to the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. The crimes occurred from 1996 to 2001, and the arrests were made in 2005 and early last year.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/us/26sentence.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Here ya go, Les Ismore, these are some people up this way that got charged/convicted of considerably more than keying cars or shooting out windows...