Oregon is home to every cockeyed bunch of people who spend their days and nights plotting destruction in the name of saving the planet.

From Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, Anarchists, Earth First! to Tre Arrow’s buddies, Occupy, Laughing Horse Books and Craig Rosebraugh’s lackeys, anti social radicals have cultivated a home in the fertile soil of Oregon.

Their radical kin teach in our schools, camp with Occupy, sit on cop watch boards, occupy positions at Portland State University and populate Neighborhood Associations and community boards, their backpacks overflowing with socialist tracts and minds full of Utopian plans.

Now one of the more notorious radicals has emerged from the ashes of her favorite arson at a Vail ski resort ( her favorite T shirt being one which read, “I Torched Vail, Ask Me Why”) and has penned an essay extolling the virtues of sabotage as a political tool and urging others to embrace it.

If  “Pitch” the tree sitter was going for shock value she succeeded.

In the essay entitled, “My Name is Emma Murphy-Ellis and I Support Sabotage,” the Earth Liberation Front/Earth First! radical exhorts her compatriots to embrace sabotage.

Radical actions and radical movements grow out of supportive cultures. Let us once again build a strong supportive base for them. …It is not illegal to talk about how awesome the blockade and sabotage was and say proudly that you wish there were more like it. And,it should not be illegal to openly support and generally advocate the use of incendiary devices.

She apparently misses the good old days.

Murphy Ellis aka “Pitch” made the news in the early 2000’s when she and her buddy Tre Arrow aka Michael Scarpitti, occupied the trees in the Eagle Creek area of the Mt Hood National Forest. They and others slung hammocks and tree houses in an area whose timber was to be sold off. Murphy-Ellis made news by threatening to commit suicide by hanging herself from the trees when the Feds busted up the action. Scarpitti moved his protest to Portland where City officials —including Mayor Vera Katz–embraced him; refusing to order him down from the ledge of the U.S. Forest Service building where he slept, pooped and protested for days,

Earth First! /ELF Drawing

Scarpitti was embraced by the Liberatti of Portland even though he was suspected of–and later pleaded guilty to—torching three trucks belonging to the Ross Island Sand and Gravel Company (full disclosure: my boss, Dr. Robert Pamplin, owns Ross Island Sand and Gravel but the incident happened before I was an employee) and and two trucks and a front loader owned by Ray Schoppert Logging Company.

His buddy, Murphy Ellis, wants to go back to those bad old days before federal officials actually arrested people for terrorism,

[The] Green Scare, in which dozens of activists were incarcerated, our movement got seriously screwed with, and we have had some extremely hard times because of the repression we have faced for the last six years.

But she says it’s time to go back to embracing domestic terrorism in order to save the earth, the cops be damned,

It is not illegal to talk about how awesome the blockade and sabotage was… and say proudly that you wish there were more like it. And, it should not be illegal to openly support and generally advocate the use of incendiary devices….If there is a knock on your door by the agents of state repression (supposedly because of your undying, unabashed support of pouring abrasive compounds into gas tanks, loosening bolts that hold up power lines, or smashing computers at your local biotech facility.) So what. [emph mine]

And you (and your private property) don’t count,

 [W]e must not allow concerns about property rights to stop us from protecting the land, sea, and air…

It’s good to know as these same folks turn their attention to today’s issues: coal trains and fracking, they’ll say anything, do anything to sell their viewpoint. And they’re willing because as “Pitch” says,

 [T]here are no promises in love and eco-war. Long live the Earth Liberation Front!

And don’t you forget it.