mostly for peter and anouk, David Agranoff interview

[Guest guest]

http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lawcontent & task=view & id=7727 & Itemid\

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Ring of FireA committed vegan, the Earth Liberation Front, and the FBI

 

By BEN EHRENREICH

Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 12:00 am

 

Photo by Joe Klein

 

“Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise.

Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering

cities of men.â€

 

—H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

 

“I had a dream the other night,†David Agranoff says, laughing. “I’m not

making this up — I had a dream about eating peanut-braised tofu!†Agranoff

wears a tan prison jump suit and blue canvas slip-ons. His eyes are slightly

sunken and his skin is sallow, probably because for the past 73 days, he has

only been allowed outdoors for an hour a week, and the vegan offerings at San

Diego’s Metropolitan Correctional Center leave something to be desired. In the

course of his first 10 weeks of incarceration, Agranoff has eaten, he estimates,

160 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, “and I’m getting pretty darned sick

of them,†he says with a smile that might seem bitter if he wasn’t having

such an obvious good time talking about food.

 

“Two pieces of bread with Veganaise and two fried bricks of tofu is my

favorite thing in the world, and I literally had forgotten what it tastes like.

I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is crazy — I’m dreaming about

tofu! What the hell is wrong with this picture?’â€

 

To answer his question we have to leave this tiny, glass-walled interview room a

few well-secured floors above downtown San Diego and travel two and a half years

back in time to August of 2003. It was billed as “Revolution Summer,†though

it wasn’t meant to be a particularly incendiary affair, just a series of

protests and events organized by various local progressive groups. Compassion

for Farm Animals, the organization founded by Agranoff and his wife when they

moved to California from the Midwest, was in charge of animal-rights week, so

they planned a rally in front of a nearby McDonald’s and a trip to a dairy

farm up in Norco. (“Our big campaign at the time was ‘California Cows Are

Tortured Cows,’?†Agranoff explains.) They also invited Rodney Coronado out

from Tucson to give a talk.

 

 

 

 

Coronado had been a hero of Agranoff’s for years. He first made the news in

1986 for using ordinary hand tools to sink two whaling ships docked in Iceland.

(Agranoff was 12 years old at the time, and living in Bloomington, Indiana. He

had just lost his mother to a stroke and was searching for solace in unlikely

places, mainly the novels of Clive Barker and Stephen King.) Coronado went

underground for several years, but in the early 1990s he was tied to a series of

Animal Liberation Front arson attacks on mink farms and animal-research labs.

Four of his associates were jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury

investigating the crimes. Coronado was nonetheless convicted in 1995, and was

serving a 57-month sentence in a federal penitentiary when he first received a

letter from a young David Agranoff, who had been led to veganism and

animal-rights activism via the straight-edge punk scene.

 

After his release in 1999, Coronado became the most visible spokesman for the

Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Earlier this year, an

FBI counterterrorism official told a Senate subcommittee that the two groups (if

“group†is the right word for a looser than loose network of anonymous

individuals united only by shared ideals and a willingness to leave the letters

ELF or ALF at the often-smoldering scenes of their actions) together form “one

of today’s most serious domestic threats†and are “way out in front†of

“right-wing extremists, KKK, anti-abortion groups and the like.†Agranoff

expected an enthusiastic crowd for Coronado's talk.

 

Coronado flew in from Tucson on the morning of August 1. Several hours before

his plane landed, someone set fire to a construction site at University Town

Centre, in northern San Diego. A five-story, 206-unit condominium project burned

to the ground, causing $50 million in damage. The flames could be seen for

miles. “It looked like sunrise,†one fireman said at the time. The arsonists

left a banner at the scene. “If you build it, we will burn it,†it read.

“The E.L.F.s are mad.â€

 

That evening, Agranoff brought Coronado to the gay and lesbian community center

where the lecture was to take place. About 120 people crowded into the hall,

along with a surprising number of reporters. Agranoff was excited by the turnout

and, he says, only learned about the morning’s arson — which would turn out

to be the largest act of ecosabotage in American history, causing as much

financial damage as all previous ELF attacks combined — when a news crew asked

him and Coronado for a comment. Coronado, who claims he had no prior knowledge

of the attack, answered that he supported “any action taken to preserve open

space... It’s become a legitimate response to urban sprawl.â€

 

Agranoff — who says he has no problem with arson as a political tactic, but

questions the wisdom of its use in wildfire-prone Southern California — kept

quiet. “I had no idea what had happened,†he recalls. “I thought,

‘That’s weird timing.’â€

 

The authorities thought so too. At the protest Compassion for Farm Animals had

planned at McDonald’s the next day, “the police presence was insane,â€

Agranoff says. After the rally, police followed the activists (Coronado had gone

to L.A. immediately after the lecture) to Balboa Park, and stood by while they

picnicked on vegan treats. “We were a security threat,†Agranoff laughs,

“having a picnic.†The next morning, when they left for the Norco dairy

tour, squad cars trailed behind them. Riverside Sheriff's deputies picked up the

tail when they crossed the county line.

 

“When we got back,†Agranoff says, “our house had been broken into and my

van was gone. Broad daylight, Sunday afternoon.†Oddly, he says, the only

thing missing was his computer. His television and stereo were untouched, as was

an open jar stuffed full of cash that had been sitting beside the computer.

 

Agranoff was sleeping when the phone rang early the next morning. It was the

police. His van had been found not far from his house. (“The engine was blown,

so they only got a couple of blocks.â€) He got on his bike and rode over. The

officer waiting with his van asked him for his ID, and he gave it to him. When

the officer asked if he had any tattoos, “I said, ‘I don’t understand why

that’s relevant. I’m here to pick up my stolen van,’†Agranoff recalls.

“[The officer] said, ‘Get down on the ground.’ He pulled out his gun. So I

got down. And then he said, ‘Your name has just come up in a terrorist

investigation.’ Terrorist? I pass out veggie burgers!†In the end the

officer sent him home without his van, which the police impounded for a few

days.

 

About two weeks later, Agranoff, who works as a teacher at a school for autistic

children, was at home on summer vacation. A self-described “Asian-action-movie

freak,†he was watching a Korean action film on DVD at 9 in the morning when

someone came knocking. He opened the door and found, he says, “a gun in my

face.†It was the FBI. They had a search warrant, and “went running through

the house with their guns drawn.†At that point Agranoff and his wife had six

rabbits (they’re now down to three: Luna, Lily and Yuen P. Newton, “the

revolutionary rabbitâ€), and Agranoff was worried for his pets. “The rabbits

started freaking out. I was afraid one of them would jump around and [the

agents] would just cock off a round.â€

 

No rabbits were harmed. The FBI took videotapes, a video camera and a computer

Agranoff had borrowed from a friend. Two weeks later the FBI searched an

apartment shared by two other activists, Kathryn Dougherty and Michael Cardenas.

They took just one item, Dougherty said at the time: a videotape of Rod

Coronado’s August 1 lecture.

 

The next two years were uneventful. Agranoff’s group put out a newsletter and

posted a Web site listing local vegan resources. They organized a vegan business

fair and went to anti-war rallies around the state. In the summer, they handed

out samples of tofu ice cream in Balboa Park. In the fall, they passed out

plates of Tofurky and mashed potatoes with vegan gravy. It wasn’t until this

June that two men in suits arrived at the school where Agranoff works and

presented him with a subpoena requiring him to testify before a federal grand

jury investigating the University Town Centre arson.

 

But when Agranoff appeared before the grand jury, he says, he was not asked

about the fire. Federal prosecutors seemed almost exclusively interested in the

speech Rod Coronado had given the following evening, particularly in the Q & A

that followed the lecture, during which Coronado showed the audience how he had

made the bombs that ultimately landed him in prison. (Legislation sponsored by

Senator Dianne Feinstein in 1997 made it a federal crime to share information

about “the making or use of an explosive†with the intent that the

information be used to break the law, even if the information shared is readily

available from other sources.)

 

Agranoff refused to answer the prosecutor’s questions. A federal investigation

of an open public meeting, he said, posed a serious threat to the freedom of

speech and assembly. “I will not take part in what I know in my heart is my

oppression and harassment,†he wrote in a July 28 letter filed with the court.

“They can hold me forever and I will not change my mind.†The U.S.

Attorney’s Office had granted him immunity from prosecution, which meant that

he had no recourse to Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

(It also suggests that the prosecutors, who would not comment on the grand-jury

investigation, never considered him a suspect of any serious crime.) Judge Irma

Gonzalez found him in contempt of court, and ordered that he be imprisoned at

the Metropolitan Correction Center until he agreed to cooperate.

 

So on this sunny fall afternoon, Agranoff sits with his legs crossed in a

cramped fluorescent-lit room. He’s happy to be out of his cell, and happy for

the chance to talk. His incarceration, he speculates, is intended only to send

the message “that you don’t tell the government, ‘No.’ That’s the only

reason I’m here.â€

 

In Agranoff’s view, the grand jury investigation has little to do with the

University Town Centre fire, and more with silencing Rod Coronado. Other

activists called before the grand jury were also asked extensively about

Coronado’s talk, and only very minimally about the arson. (About a dozen were

subpoenaed along with Agranoff. Two of them, Danae Kelley and Nicole Fink, were

also jailed for refusing to testify.) Ironically, Coronado himself has never

denied that he showed the audience how to construct a simple explosive, and is

fully expecting to be indicted when the grand jury’s term expires at the end

of this month.

 

More broadly, Agranoff says, the grand jury is being used to cast as wide a net

as possible over a movement that, however Dr. Dolittle-y its poultry-friendly

pronouncements may sometimes sound, is perceived by the government as a serious

threat. (At the same time that subpoenas went out in San Diego, another grand

jury was convened in San Francisco to investigate the 2003 bombing of an

Emeryville biotech firm.) “The Feds target us more than they do the Aryan

Brotherhood and all those people, because those groups just threaten to hurt

people. The Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front are a threat

to capitalism,†Agranoff says. “The industries that turn animals into food

are such an entrenched part of our society that the very idea of people who are

eloquent, effective ambassadors for animal rights turns us into public enemy No.

1.â€

 

For Agranoff, the choice was clear. “Why would I help them tear down the

movement I have fought for for 13 years?†he asks. Everybody knows — I’m

sure the prosecutors’ mothers know — that I’m not going to testify. If

I’m here 120 days or 365 days, I’m not going to testify.â€

 

And despite the food and the daily indignities and deprivations of prison life,

it hasn’t been that bad. Agranoff has had plenty of time to read — about

three books a week, he says — and he’s written 100 pages of a novel,

“probably 15 short stories,†and another 10 or 20 pieces of ultra-short

flash fiction, not to mention letters to family and friends. Standing up to a

grand jury wins you a certain degree of instant respect in prison, and the other

inmates have made sure Agranoff has been well taken care of. “They’ve been

very nice,†he says. Still, for someone used to spending most of his time

among progressive activists, the open racism, homophobia and misogyny that

dominate prison life have been hard to take. It all sometimes feels, he says, a

bit like the Star Trek episode where Kirk and Co. “end up going to a parallel

dimension where everyone’s evil and Spock has a beard.â€

 

Some things, however, keep it in perspective. The first weekend that he was in

jail, his wife and a friend trucked several hundred chickens from an egg farm to

a sanctuary for liberated farm animals. The birds had lived past their

egg-laying prime and were due to be slaughtered. When his wife told him about

the rescue over the prison pay phone, Agranoff felt like crying, he says.

“Okay, so I live in a fucking toilet with another guy. I can handle that.

I’m not one of those animals suffering on those farms. It could be worse.â€

 

Eleven days later, Agranoff’s hair is gelled wet into a short, Clark

Kent–ish twist. He wears camouflage shorts and a black T-shirt that says,

“Vegan Straightedge†in white letters. Some color has returned to his skin.

He’s just finished a soy-bacon cheeseburger, and he’s sitting in the sun in

the courtyard of a vegan restaurant. The previous week, on Agranoff's 80th day

behind bars, Judge Gonzalez had called him to court and, convinced at last that

further incarceration would not coerce him into testifying, ordered his release.

 

Kelley and Fink have now also been freed, and though Agranoff would much rather

be here than back at the correctional center, he is hardly in a celebratory

mood. “Yes, the First Amendment won in the end,†he says, “but it took

two-and-a-half months of my life.â€

 

And, of course, everything that Agranoff is fighting still stands — the vast

edifice of animal exploitation and the myriad forms of destruction that flow

from it: pollution, desertification, deforestation, global warming, heart

disease, mad cow, bird flu, wars for oil. “There is no wrecking ball against

the planet like the meat, dairy and egg industry,†Agranoff says, and rolls

off a litany of statistics: “One-third of all resources used for anything in

the entire country goes to the production of meat, dairy and eggsâ€; dairy cows

create 20 to 40 times more solid waste than humans; fish carry nine times more

pollution in their flesh than can be found in the water around them; it takes 16

pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef, not to mention many hundreds

of gallons of water and entire petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries

devoted to the production of fertilizer, hormones and antibiotics. “If the

Earth is dying and we’re in the noose, one of the biggest things that exists

in the fiber in that noose is humankind’s relationship with animals.â€

 

Agranoff sings the praises of veganism, and when he talks about it, it sounds

less like a set of dietary restrictions than a faith complete with conversion

narratives. (Agranoff gave up meat as a teen when the guitarist from a

straight-edge band confronted him: “‘You say you’re for freedom, but you

have the souls of thousands laying prisoner in your bowels.’ It was so

cheesy,†Agranoff laughs, “but it hit me.â€) It has realms of esoteric

knowledge, tight communal bonds, obligations to proselytize, opportunities for

martyrdom, and, of course, a complete vision of the apocalypse, if not of any

subsequent redemption. More than that, though, Agranoff’s worldview resembles

the metaphysical outlook of the sci-fi and horror novels he’s loved since he

was a kid. It’s a Lovecraftian vision of a damned world in which a thin crust

of rational coherence tenuously conceals a hideous, oozing chaos of violence,

suffering and doom.

 

“Underneath all this,†he says, waving his hand to indicate not just the

plastic tables and sun umbrellas around us, but the entire city behind them and

the world that yawns beyond it, “there’s a lot of forces that people don’t

witness on the surface. But when you become a vegan and an activist and you’re

trying to change things, you open your eyes a lot. You see the mechanics behind

it and it becomes impossible not to want to fight,†he laughs, “to tear it

all down.â€

 

Also this week, Judith Lewis' article about the Earth Liberation Front, and if

it even really exists.

 

 

" I challenge anyone to live on my salary " [$158,000 a year].

Tom Delay