sorry for the length of this, but I did not get the link to this article,
just the article.
Jim T.


>Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 18:08:34 -0700
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [NAIA-AnimalTalk] overview of liberation terrorism
>
>Philadelphia Inquirer
>June 11, 2000
>
>FEATURE
>Arsonist for open space
>
>TOP: Vince Scott thought he was building his dream house (above). Then he
>got a call from the fire department.
>
>BOTTOM: The arson, says Lisa Spector, "made people think." Spector (facing
>camera) often demonstrated outside a Starbucks.
>
>Photography by Dave Repp
>
>By Michael Sokolove
>Michael Sokolove is a staff writer for the magazine.
>
>Meet Vince Scott.
>
>He rises before dawn every weekday and is at the gym by 5 a.m. By 7, he's
>at work, running a company that supplies custom bearings and other parts
>for recreational vehicles. He leaves, religiously, at 5:30 to eat dinner
>with his family, unless he's on the road.
>
>While vacationing in the Bahamas in December, he rescued a couple from
>rough surf and led them safely ashore. The newspaper in Bloomington, Ind.,
>saluted his act of bravery ("Local Man Helps Save Couple From Drowning")
>while noting that this was the same Vince Scott, age 37, who is president
>of the town's Little League.
>
>Kelly Scott, 35, Vince's wife, used to coach the pom-pom team at
>Bloomington South High, but no longer works outside the home. She
>volunteers at the Bloomington Boys and Girls Club. Last fall, she completed
>the Chicago Marathon. When a friend underwent surgery for breast cancer,
>Kelly Scott organized the circle of women who provided her family with two
>weeks of dinners.
>
>The Scotts have two children (Kyler, 11, and Riley, 6), three dogs and two
>SUVs. It would never occur to them that they take more than they give. They
>are dutiful people, the glue that helps hold many a small community
>together.
>
>Whatever comes his way, Vince Scott knows, he has earned.
>
>On Jan. 21, television viewers in central Indiana got a brief glimpse of
>Vince and Kelly Scott's future home. An Indianapolis TV station,
>documenting a story on suburban sprawl, trained its cameras on some gaudy
>new houses outside Bloomington on the edge of the Hoosier National Forest -
>including the Scotts' under-construction dream house.
>
>Set on a wedge-shape, 3.5-acre lot, it was to have five bedrooms,
>four-and-a-half baths, a gourmet kitchen, all kinds of family space, a deck
>with a commanding view of the forest and a detached, three-car garage. An
>extra-large mudroom was to be mainly for the dogs.
>
>The house was not very different from the luxury homes rising on farm and
>forest land in Bucks and Chester Counties, in South Jersey, and in
>countless subdivisions across America. It was testimony, in lumber and
>square footage, to personal wealth and fat times.
>
>At 6 a.m. on the day after the newscast, a Saturday, Vince answered the
>phone at his family's Bloomington townhouse. It was the fire department.
>"Do you own the house at 4449 Forest Hill Dr.?"
>
>"Yes," he answered, although in truth he wasn't sure of the actual address.
>Vince Scott thought of the new house as part of the exclusive Sterling
>Woods development - more out in the country than on any particular street.
>
>"You better get down there," the dispatcher said. "It's on fire."
>
>The roof had been closed just days earlier, and the carpenters were set to
>work inside for the winter. By the time Scott reached the scene, there
>wasn't much left. The fire had destroyed several tall poplars. It melted a
>Porta Potty. The house itself was burned toast, right down to the
>foundation.
>
>Vince called Kelly. "It's gone," he told her. "It looks like arson."
>
>He did not, at that point, tell her anything about the weird graffiti left
>behind. The fire was enough to digest; he wasn't yet ready to deal with the
>message that came with it. In black spray paint on the builder's sign,
>about 100 feet from the house, were the words:
>
>No Sprawl - ELF.
>
>Local law enforcement in Monroe County, which includes Bloomington, is not
>accustomed to dealing with anything too exotic. There are a couple of
>murders most years, usually straight-ahead domestics, and lots of drunken
>driving, much of it committed by Indiana University students. Det. Capt.
>Richard Blockson of the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, whose sole job
>used to be running investigations, recently took on the additional task of
>supervising the county's animal control officers. So he deals now with
>stray dogs, mountain lions, the occasional ostrich and periodic episodes of
>cattle on the highway.
>
>At the fire site that morning, Vince Scott tromped around with his
>dispirited builder and a local police officer. It had snowed overnight, and
>they noticed fresh footprints leading from the house to the sign. When
>agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) arrived - with
>accelerant-sniffing dogs - they confirmed the obvious. The house had been
>torched.
>
>Two days after the fire, the underground Earth Liberation Front - via its
>above-ground spokesman - claimed responsibility.
>
>"Greetings from Bloomington, In.," the communique began cheerily.
>
>"The Earth Liberation Front would like to take credit for a late-night
>visit to the Sterling Woods Development . . .
>
>"The house was targeted because the sprawling development . . . is in the
>Lake Monroe Watershed. This is the drinking water supply for the town of
>Bloomington, IN, and the surrounding area. It is already being jeopardized
>by existing development and roads.
>
>"Once again the rich of the world are destroying what little we have left
>in terms of natural areas and collective holdings (the water). Hopefully
>they will get the message that we will not take it anymore."
>
>The communique was forwarded to Indiana media outlets by Craig Rosebraugh,
>the 27-year-old proprietor of a vegan bakery in Portland, Ore. He had
>issued numerous other communications for ELF and a related group, the
>Animal Liberation Front.
>
>ELF claimed responsibility for the October 1998 arsons that destroyed ski
>lifts, restaurants and maintenance buildings in Vail, Colo., causing about
>$12 million in damage - as well as acts against U.S. Forest Service
>facilities, timber companies and university laboratories.
>
>ALF has hit mink farms, horse and cattle ranches, retail outlets that sell
>fur and university laboratories nationwide. It was responsible for a
>celebrated 1984 incident at the University of Pennsylvania, when its
>operatives vandalized a laboratory that used baboons in head-injury
>research. Videotapes stolen from the lab and forwarded to the news media
>and members of Congress showed research assistants blithely bashing
>baboons. ALF hit Penn a second time that same year, stealing dogs, cats and
>pigeons from a lab researching sudden infant death syndrome, breathing
>disorders and ear infections. In 1990 ALF stole records from the office of
>a Penn veterinary professor and scrawled "Cat Killer" on the walls.
>
>Numerous times over the last 15 years in and around Philadelphia, ALF has
>vandalized stores that sell furs, meat and leather - often in attacks never
>reported in the news media either because they were too small to attract
>attention or because storekeepers took pains to keep them quiet.
>
>The ELF communique taking credit for the Bloomington arson was typical in
>that it recognized no shades of gray: The house was bad and had to be
>burned.
>
>In fact, the Sterling Woods subdivision had gone through a series of
>governmental reviews and public hearings. The developer made concessions -
>including cutting back the number of lots - that satisfied most of the
>area's mainstream environmentalists. There was no evidence that Sterling
>Woods posed a direct threat to the area's water supply. And Lake Monroe was
>man-made, a fairly significant alteration of nature's original plan.
>
>The communique was not off base, though, in its reference to "the rich of
>the world." The Scotts' house, when completed, would have been worth close
>to $1 million. Sterling Woods was a village for the very well-off.
>
>Rosebraugh liked to call the arsons "acts of love" in support of animals
>and Mother Nature - as opposed to acts of violence. (He does not believe it
>is possible to commit violence against property.) Sabotage in support of
>environmental causes is also sometimes called "monkey-wrenching," a
>reference to The Monkey Wrench Gang, a 1975 novel by the late Edward Abbey
>that followed a clique of fictional "monkey-wrenchers" - and also inspired
>a generation of real-life eco-terrorists.
>
>"These are acts of political terrorism, violence to serve a cause," says
>Jim Casey, supervisor of the FBI's counterterrorism unit in Indianapolis,
>which is leading the investigation of the Bloomington arson. "That's how
>we're viewing this case: political terrorism."
>
>The manner in which ELF announced the arson at the Scott house was typical.
>But the event itself was a sharp departure. Lots of people complain about
>suburban sprawl. But here was a case of someone actually doing something
>about it.
>
>Law enforcement officials and others who track fringe environmental groups
>said the arson was a milestone: the first act of eco-terrorism directed at
>a private house.
>
>Craig Rosebraugh is, up to a point, a helpful and remarkably upbeat
>revolutionary. I ask him what kind of treats his vegan bakery serves up. "A
>lot of things a regular bakery would make," he says, "but without any
>animal products." His favorite is a faux-Reuben sandwich made with grilled
>tempeh, lemon juice, tahini and a vegan mayonnaise, then topped with
>sauerkraut. "I also like our chocolate peanut butter bar," he says. "It's a
>takeoff on the Rice Krispie treats that a lot of us enjoyed as kids."
>
>Rosebraugh says that he was first contacted - he won't say how - by ALF and
>ELF in 1997. He sympathizes with their actions but insists he does not know
>who commits them.
>
>The claims of credit come to him anonymously, he says, and he simply passes
>them on. He confirms that this is the first ELF torching of a private home.
>"But I'm not surprised," Rosebraugh says. "The variety of actions are on
>the increase. We're seeing actions against deforestation, genetic
>engineering, against anything that undermines the environment."
>
>Rosebraugh is untroubled by the distress caused to the Scotts. He believes
>everyone should ask, "How can we walk as lightly on this earth as
>possible?" People who build big houses are either not asking the question -
>or are coming up with the wrong answer.
>
>"I'm sure the homeowner feels personally attacked, so it's difficult for
>him to stand back and see the true motive," he says. "His house was used as
>an example."
>
>A federal grand jury investigating eco-terrorism has sought Rosebraugh's
>testimony five times, most recently in April. In each instance, "I take the
>Fifth Amendment to every question," he says, "except when they ask my name."
>
>He understands that many people believe he must know the identity of the
>eco-saboteurs. "But I really don't," he insists. "If I did, I think I would
>probably be in jail right now for some sort of accomplice type of thing."
>
>The grand jury has summoned him again, this time with a warning that if he
>does not produce names he faces 18 months in jail for contempt of court.
>
>"I like to give the pizza example," says Monroe County Commissioner Brian
>O'Neill, who had been on the warpath for several years about sprawl around
>Bloomington. "I live out in the country, and I can't get a pizza delivered
>to my house. Why? Because the pizza places have decided it's not worth the
>gas and the time it takes to send somebody out my way. That's reasonable.
>
>"But in government we deliver pizzas anywhere. You can live well beyond the
>compact urban core, but you still get water and sewer, police and fire,
>buses that pick up your children and take them to school. I'm not saying we
>shouldn't let people live where they want, but it makes sense to price out
>the American Dream and find out the real costs involved."
>
>O'Neill is a typical resident of Bloomington, or of many college towns: He
>is highly educated, earnest, left of center politically. He called a press
>conference on Jan. 21 to announce that he had appointed a blue-ribbon task
>force to study the costs of sprawl.
>
>The press conference attracted the TV news crew from Channel 6 in
>Indianapolis. After the event, the crew went looking for additional footage
>and found its way to Sterling Woods - which, indirectly, may have led to
>Vince and Kelly Scott's house being torched the next day.
>
>O'Neill is sick about all of this. He is a civil man, a corporate
>consultant with a graduate degree in English who also teaches poetry at an
>institution for troubled adolescents. He believes in good government,
>dialogue and consensus. "How did I inspire rebellion? That's not what I
>intended," he says. "Whoever did this does not believe in democracy.
>
>"I don't buy that there are levels of violence. This was violence, pure and
>simple, and it could have killed someone - a neighbor or a firefighter."
>
>By a quirk of fate, O'Neill happens to be best friends with the Scotts'
>builder, Tim Laughlin, a Vietnam vet who returned from the war, took a
>degree in East Asian studies, became a long-haired antiwar protester, a
>laborer - and finally a beret-wearing builder of luxury houses.
>
>"If you would have told me that I would ever get a warm and fuzzy feeling
>talking to the FBI, I would have said you were crazy," says Laughlin. "But
>I want whoever did this caught."
>
>What really enrages O'Neill, Laughlin and many others in Bloomington is
>that the arson has not been universally condemned. A small but vocal band
>of activists believe it was a pretty good idea.
>
>"It's depressing," says John Fernandez, Bloomington's 39-year-old mayor. "I
>know I sound like an old man, but I was young once. I marched against
>apartheid. I marched against the Contras. I went to Nicaragua.
>
>"The difference is, we were trying to influence the democratic process.
>These people don't want anything to do with it. They reject it."
>
>The Secret Sailors bookstore in downtown Bloomington is furnished with
>ancient couches and chairs that look to have been rescued from curbside on
>trash day. The shelves contain just a couple hundred books, many on
>anarchist themes. A "Free Mumia" poster occupies one wall.
>
>Pamphlets laid out on tables highlight a wide variety of causes:
>forthcoming protests against exploitation of workers in the Third World,
>against the
>
>World Bank and International Monetary Fund, against a proposed extension of
>Interstate 69 (pushed by its Indiana backers as the "Hoosier Link to the
>World"). One pamphlet advocates that women behave more ecologically by
>using washable cotton pads during menstruation.
>
>Another urges "Save the Chickens!" and goes on at some length about the
>life of a chicken: "Chickens love to take dust baths, sit in the sun,
>cuddle up to each other," it begins. "They cry out when someone hurts them,
>and they get excited and happy when they are free to scratch and explore."
>
>The bookstore is the clubhouse for a couple dozen activists. Most describe
>themselves as anarchists. Many are also vegans.
>
>Late one evening, several of them gather to explain their worldview and to
>defend their sympathy for the arson at the Scott house. The first order of
>business is to clear up confusion over the term anarchism. (One of the main
>jobs of being an anarchist is explaining that anarchism does not mean
>chaos.)
>
>"It's like the word has been hijacked," says Daniel Kruk, a lean young man
>with short black hair. "It doesn't mean disorder. An anarchist organization
>is not a contradiction in terms. We organize around affinity. We just kind
>of do stuff - we don't have to have a hierarchical structure."
>
>Marie Mason explains that she is an "anarchic primitivist" who advocates a
>society modeled on certain ancient cultures in which elders led with gentle
>wisdom rather than through force or privilege.
>
>This clan of activists became known in Bloomington through their weekly
>protests outside Starbucks, the corporate coffeehouse that the radical left
>has adopted as a symbol of globalization and corporatization. The
>Bloomington Starbucks spent much of the spring with plywood replacing its
>front window, because vandals had repeatedly smashed the big picture window.
>
>One of the people in the bookstore this evening is Lisa Spector.
>
>A few days after the Scotts' house burned, Spector, a mother with a
>15-year-old daughter (and one of the mainstays outside Starbucks), was
>quoted in the daily Herald-Times as saying: "I applaud it. I'm grateful to
>whatever group did it. It has made people think."
>
>In Bloomington, which touts itself as "A Safe and Civil City," people were
>genuinely stung by her remarks. The arson - as well as the rhetoric in
>support of it - is now widely assumed to be counterproductive.
>
>"These extreme actions and rhetoric alienate people," Mayor Fernandez says.
>"They silence mainstream environmentalists and hurt the very cause they're
>championing."
>
>But that is not necessarily so. Lisa Spector and her friends may seem to be
>tilting at silly targets. They may be strangely uninterested in cashing in
>on the boom economy. But it would be wrong to assume they have no impact.
>
>One reason is that their causes, as opposed to their rhetoric, are not all
>that extreme. Spector says Starbucks and other chains are "creating a
>sameness, closing out economic diversity."
>
>Wouldn't a great many settled, middle-class Americans agree that they do
>not want every Main Street to consist of a Starbucks, Gap, Banana Republic,
>Disney Store and NikeTown? Most, though, do not choose to spend evenings
>picketing their local Starbucks.
>
>Sprawl, too, is a distinctly middle-class concern. There is a growing
>national recognition that people do not just move to outlying areas but are
>enticed there by new roads and government services. Suburban sprawl - which
>the Sierra Club defines as "irresponsible, poorly planned development that
>destroys open space, increases traffic, crowds schools and drives up taxes"
>- flows from public policy that could be changed.
>
>Vice President Gore has made the control of sprawl a cornerstone of his
>presidential campaign. Gov. Whitman has committed to saving one million
>acres of New Jersey open space over the next decade. And in Pennsylvania
>Gov. Ridge recently announced anti-sprawl initiatives that he labeled a
>"growing smarter" agenda.
>
>Pennsylvania has one of the worst sprawl problems in the nation. A recent
>U.S. Department of Agriculture report said the state is losing more acres
>of undeveloped land than any other but Texas. But unlike Texas and other
>states at the top of the list, Pennsylvania's population is stagnant -
>meaning its sprawl is from a shift of people from cities to outlying areas.
>
>In February, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism released a poll that said
>sprawl - and related issues like traffic congestion - had become a
>"bread-and-butter community issue, like crime," right at the top of issues
>Americans cared most about. The torching of a house in Bloomington was a
>radical, attention-getting and lawless act. But it was in response to a
>distinctly mainstream concern.
>
>"It's not popular to say, but terrorism and violence sometimes do work,"
>says Gary Perlstein, a professor at Portland (Ore.) State University and
>author of Perspectives on Terrorism. "Look at the violent fringe of the
>antiabortion movement. They haven't won legislative victories, but they've
>terrified so many doctors from doing abortions that it's hard for women in
>certain places to find a doctor to perform one."
>
>Perlstein notes that domestic terrorism in the last two decades has come
>almost entirely from the American right. The eco-terrorists, he says, "are
>the last of the left-wing terrorists." And they have had their effect.
>
>In the Pacific Northwest, some logging companies are moving trucks only at
>night for fear of attacks from eco-terrorists. A few retail outlets have
>stopped selling fur.
>
>The 1984 attack on the Penn baboon lab - and especially the distribution of
>the videotapes - was a watershed moment. The U.S. Health and Human Services
>Department cited the lab for lapses in training and supervision and
>suspended a $1 million annual grant. Sheldon Hackney, then the Penn
>president, apologized for the sloppy atmosphere at the lab, which included
>personnel smoking during surgical procedures. And the National Institutes
>of Health adopted new guidelines requiring better record-keeping and more
>humane care at facilities receiving federal funds for animal research.
>
>None of this mollified the extreme animal activists. They don't want
>animals experimented on more humanely - they don't want them experimented
>on at all. They are absolutists, black-and-white thinkers with no interest
>in incremental measures, process or compromise.
>
>"Direct action is not about PR," says Daniel Kruk. "The mainstream
>environmentalists can decry it all they want, but they need it. It works."
>Lisa Spector will not back down from her support of the arson - while
>insisting, as everyone at the bookstore does, that she has no idea who did
>it. "I understand why someone would want to" burn the Scott house, she
>says. "People are getting cranky. A watershed was in danger."
>
>In the week after the arson, state and federal law enforcement officials
>descended upon Monroe County. "We talked to everyone. We shook the trees,"
>says Doug Garrison, supervising agent with the FBI in Indianapolis.
>
>The dry detail of their digging now resides within case files at the FBI
>and ATF offices in Indianapolis. Notes from interviews. Photographs of
>footprints in the snow. Lab test results on the accelerant that ignited the
>fire and on the paint sprayed on the builder's sign. A handwriting analysis
>of the spray-painted message.
>
>Then, on April 30, law enforcement got more to add to its probe: Fourteen
>pieces of heavy equipment at a highway project outside Bloomington were
>vandalized and set afire, causing at least $500,000 in damage. On one piece
>of equipment the letters ELF were scrawled, along with "Go Develop in Hell."
>
>The communique Craig Rosebraugh released was, even by ELF standards,
>taunting in tone. "The damages caused by our midnight soiree were in the
>vicinity of $500,000," it said. "Not bad for one night's work, though
>certainly no Vail."
>
>The communique also seemed to take another wallop at Vince Scott and his
>ilk. It said the equipment was targeted because construction around
>Bloomington had turned forested land into parking lots, roads and "luxury
>houses for rich scum."
>
>"I felt like they were talking about me," Scott said. "These people are
>really sick, aren't they?"
>
>Authorities now believe there may be an ELF cell based near Bloomington or
>somewhere nearby in the Midwest. Whoever hit the Scotts' house and the
>highway construction site may also be responsible for a fire last New
>Year's Eve at Michigan State University that caused $400,000 in damage at a
>laboratory developing genetically engineered crops - as well as strikes
>early this year at a genetic engineering lab and a highway construction
>site in Minnesota.
>
>There is no apparent optimism about cracking the Scott case, or at least
>not any time soon. Arson is notoriously difficult to solve. "It takes
>balls" to set a fire, Garrison says. "It doesn't take a lot of money or
>expertise."
>
>The nature of groups like ELF complicates the investigation. Law
>enforcement believes they are organized into cells, with no central
>leadership or structure. "They are very amorphic," Garrison says. "You join
>by doing. That makes it difficult to do a traditional law enforcement
>investigation. I don't think it's a secret that the FBI makes use of
>informants, and in these cases it's important to recruit them."
>
>James Johnson has been an editor of the EarthFirst Journal in Portland,
>Ore., and a longtime activist with EarthFirst, which is suspected in
>several acts of eco-terrorism. Many law enforcement officials believe ELF
>is an offshoot of EarthFirst, formed in the early 1990s after older
>EarthFirst members began to "mainstream" the organization and eschew
>criminal acts. "It would be impossible to say what EarthFirst stands for,"
>Johnson says. "It's not a monolithic entity with an organized structure.
>It's a movement.
>
>"The saying is that EarthFirst has no members, just EarthFirsters. When it
>was created in the late '70s, early '80s, one of the many important tools
>in the toolbox was sabotage, what was called monkey-wrenching. The vast
>majority of EarthFirsters probably still believe that nonviolent property
>destruction is a legitimate tactic."
>
>Has Johnson himself engaged in monkey-wrenching? "Oh, of course not," he
>says. "Absolutely not." A task force of law enforcement agencies in the
>Pacific Northwest has been presenting evidence and testimony about numerous
>acts of eco-terrorism to the same grand jury that called Craig Rosebraugh.
>If the Scott arson is to be solved, it may very well flow from progress
>made in Oregon.
>
>But James Damitio, a special agent with the U.S. Forest Service in Eugene,
>Ore., says law enforcement still has not devoted sufficient resources to
>fight eco-terrorism. "There's a high degree of interest in international
>terrorism, but this is viewed as a very small group of civil disobedience
>freaks," he says. "Maybe that's the way it started, but I can tell you
>that's not the way it is now. These people are becoming increasingly
>dangerous."
>
>Federal agents have lately noticed new alliances. "The lines between some
>of the radical environmental groups and some of the anarchists and vegans
>are becoming blurred," Damitio says. "To some extent, they're strange
>bedfellows, but they have found sufficient common ground."
>
>The FBI's Garrison also talks of seemingly disparate underground groups
>with overlapping interests. "This guy's got a gig against sprawl. This
>guy's got a gig against minks. This guy's got a gig against Starbucks.
>Everybody's got some kind of gig. You can't be sure where it comes
>together, but it does."
>
>Federal agents have a working profile of the type of person involved in
>eco-terrorism: educated, white, from the middle or upper classes. An irony
>is that a major area of common ground among the disparate groups is a
>resentment of wealth and privilege.
>
>"It's the rich who are building ski resorts, patronizing ski resorts,
>wearing fur, building these big houses which are perceived to use more
>resources," says Perlstein, the Portland State professor. "This is very
>much about class, probably as much as it is about the environment."
>
>Federal agents suspect the typical eco-terrorist has belonged (or may still
>belong) to above-ground environmental organizations, but no longer believes
>his goals can be attained through the legislative process. Craig Rosebraugh
>agrees with this last point: "I'm not inside the head of the individual who
>did this [the Scott arson]," he says, "but ELF is rejecting the myth of
>democracy in this country as it relates to protecting the environment.
>People are tired of hearing the same lines that we should be going through
>legal channels. It's not working."
>
>Whoever torched Vince Scott's house got, in some perverse sense, the right
>guy. The perfect foil.
>
>"This society doesn't do anything for the rich," he says to me one
>afternoon as we're walking the sunny streets of Bloomington. "Everybody
>figures, they've got money. They're happy."
>
>A few minutes later, he spies a bearded, unkempt man in a public square
>known as People's Park. "Would you look at that freakin' goof," he says.
>"We've got all these freaks here. We've got these goofball skateboarders.
>I'm telling you, Bloomington is the Seattle of the Midwest."
>
>Scott is a compact, muscular former college football player. His most
>memorable physical feature is his hair - a red brush cut of the type
>featured by generations of drill sergeants and high school gym teachers.
>Scott's scalp is so well-bristled it looks as if it could do a job on a
>greasy pan.
>
>Until he was 12, Scott lived in State College, Pa., where his father was a
>Penn State administrator. After their marriage, Vince and Kelly decided
>they wanted to live in a college town - for the sports and spirit, not the
>politics and eccentricity.
>
>In the fire's aftermath, Scott hasn't felt supported. "Look at my
>background and see how we raise our family," he says. "I'm a good guy. I
>employ people. I'm president of the baseball league. But I don't think
>people around here cared.
>
>"If it had been an abortion clinic, all kinds of politicians would have
>stood up. Jesse Jackson would have been here if it was a black family
>getting their house burned. People are resentful of money and success.
>These people [activists who support the arson], they probably don't have
>jobs, or they're working for $6 an hour. Why don't they funnel all that
>enthusiasm and make a success of themselves?"
>
>When I tell Scott that I visited Secret Sailors bookstore the previous
>night, he asks if I found it "spooky." I suggest that we stop in so he can
>get a look for himself.
>
>"You're the reporter, right?" a young man at the front counter says. He is
>thin, has multiple piercings, and his hair is cut in an odd geometric
>shape. He looks very much like a typical employee of the despised Starbucks.
>
>"Who's he?" he asks, looking at Vince. "Does he work with you?"
>
>"This is Vince Scott," I tell him, "the gentleman whose house was burned
>down."
>
>The young man takes a big step back as we walk through to browse the store.
>Scott picks up some free pamphlets and buys an EarthFirst Journal, but he
>doesn't want to stay long.
>
>Out on the sidewalk, he asks, "What did that kid have in his hair? Did you
>see it? He had some kind of s- in his hair."
>
>I hadn't really noticed. Scott also complains that it smelled bad in the
>bookstore, which I had noticed. I attributed the sour, musty odor to the
>vintage furniture. "I think it's from people who don't bathe," Scott says.
>I could not say for sure he was wrong.
>
>The arson left the Scott family badly shaken, especially 11-year-old Kyler,
>who suffered nightmares and twice became scared at school and had to come
>home.
>
>"He took it very personally," Vince Scott says. "He saw it as an attack on
>his family. He was worried about his mom and his dad and his little sister.
>We had to explain to him that it wasn't personal."
>
>Vince and Kelly Scott collected insurance and, after much soul-searching,
>decided to rebuild. They had contemplated picking up and moving somewhere
>new, away from Bloomington, but in the end did not want to feel they had
>been pushed out.
>
>They're hoping, now, to be in their new house for Thanksgiving.
>
>When I asked Craig Rosebraugh if the Scotts should worry about being burned
>out again, I assumed he would say no, they had done their part. There are,
>after all, tens of thousands of suburban mansions being slapped up each
>month. Many of them in areas that could be construed as environmentally
>sensitive.
>
>But the idea of terror, though, is that no one should feel too comfortable.
>
>"Well, yes," Craig Rosebraugh said, "they should still worry. The ideology
>is that anybody who continues to inflict damage or exploit the environment
>or take part in the destruction of our natural resources should take steps
>not to.
>
>"And if they don't, they should feel some threat that they will be visited
>by underground groups like the Earth Liberation Front."
>Michael Sokolove's e-mail address is [log in to unmask]
>


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