It doesn't seem to me that the ELF and the ALF should always be spoken of in the same breath. The Animal Liberation Front is decades old and well-established in over 20 countries.
The Earth Liberation Front didn't really appear on the radar until 1998, when a Vail ski resort was torched. There are questions about the communique in which ELF claimed responsibility. There are questions about the authenticity of ELF website. There are questions about whether the ELF exists as an organization in any ontologically robust sense.
In general, the animal-rights movement has a much longer and more storied history of violent direct action than the environmental movement. Lumping them together as one amorphous threat is driven as much by the political needs of the powers-that-be as by events on the ground.
Terrorism laws are wrongly being used to round up eco-activists, says author Dean Kuipers
Police spy on climate activist while global warming goes unarrested
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josullivan58 Posted 10:06 am
22 Jan 2006
Texas had a long problem with air pollution. Under federal law Texas had to revise their program to reduce pollution. The levels of air pollution were exceeding the legal limits and causing health problems. Then Governor Bush's postition was that industries in Texas did not have to comply with the law and the health hazards they were creating should be ignored.
This sparked lawful protests outside the governor's mansion. The Bush adminstration considered people exercising their right of free speech and assembly potentially embarassing for his presidential campaign.
To stop these legal protests the Bush administration claimed they had to ban them for public safety reasons. I am not making this up: the Texas DPS (the state troopers) claimed the one or two dozen protesters were endangering people because pedestrians could have to walk around them and when they did they could walk in the street and since they were in the street they could be hit by a car. Citing this as a security concern, the DPS banned the protests.
However the the DPS, acting on behalf of the Bush adminstration, was violating a Texas law that explictly allowed small peaceful protests in front of the governor's mansion. The environmentalists did not comply with the unlawful ban and were arrested.
The environmentalists sued because the DPS violated their rights of free speech and assembly and broke the law when they arrested the protesters. As was reported in the Austin American Statesman, because the DPS was clearly wrong it settled the case and paid a 99,000$ fine.
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