When Leslie James Pickering lived on the West Coast more
than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical
group that destroyed facilities believed to be involved in animal cruelty or
environmental degradation.
That included using arson and firebombs to destroy a
wild-horse slaughterhouse in Oregon, a ski resort that threatened a lynx
habitat in Colorado and a University of Washington horticultural center project
that the group believed – incorrectly – was involved in genetic engineering.
But life for Pickering – who says he never was a member of
the secretive group, just its spokesman – became too stressful, so he returned
to his home in Western New York and eventually opened Burning Books on
Connecticut Street.
Now federal authorities are keeping a close watch on
Pickering – checking his mail, asking past associates about whether he is
capable of violent activity and requiring greater clearance when he travels by
air – even though he insists he has done nothing to run afoul of the law.
Are Pickering’s views and past associations reason enough
for law enforcement agencies to look into what he’s doing now?
The FBI, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty
Law Center all considered the Earth Liberation Front that Pickering represented
to be involved in “eco-terrorism” that resulted in tens of millions of dollars
in property damage.
But Pickering has not been the group’s spokesman for more
than a decade, although he still justifies illegal actions against corporations
and government agencies under certain circumstances for what he and others
consider to be a greater good.
“I’ve had a very public position for almost my whole
activist career, and that hasn’t allowed me to do any of this illegal activity
I’ve defended,” Pickering said. “Even in my wildest dreams, I might have loved
to have been a Robin Hood hero, but that’s not what landed in my lap.”
But Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s
Center on Extremism, thinks law enforcement agencies have good reason to keep
tabs on Pickering.
“He’s still advocating a pretty radical ideology, and in
some sort of way violence against property, and this is criminal activity that
will get the attention of law enforcement,” Segal said.
Pickering – who notes that ELF actions never resulted in
physical harm to a person or an animal – has gained a small but vocal group of
followers in Buffalo, who feel he is being singled out for having leftist
views. Roughly 150 of them attended a fundraiser on his behalf last month.
“I do not advocate any kind of property destruction or
illegal activity because of what someone says or thinks. [But] when it’s a
company or a government agency that is doing massive physical harm, acting with
impunity and not listening to public opinion, then you have to do something
about it,” said Pickering, who notes that every social justice movement has had
an element of radical activism.
But he insists his views are besides the point. “I’m a
bookstore owner,” he said.
Tracking activities
Here’s how security agencies have tracked him in recent
months:
• Last September, the FBI called a friend of Pickering’s he
had been largely out of touch with for years and asked who Pickering associated
with in Buffalo, and if he was capable of violent and illegal activity.
• That same month, a card appeared to have been mistakenly
delivered to Pickering’s home mailbox, indicating the post office at 465 Grant
St. was providing surveillance of his mail from mid-August to mid-September at
the request of an unspecified law enforcement agency.
“Show all mail to supervisor for copying prior to going out
on the street,” the card read, with Pickering’s name, the date of the
surveillance and “Confidential” written in green highlighter.
• In mid-February, an entity that his bookstore interacts
with was presented with a federal grand jury subpoena to provide records.
• On March 3, Pickering was briefly detained in Buffalo by
officers from the Transit Security Administration – a branch of the Department
of Homeland Security – and reissued a United Airlines ticket with additional
screening measures.
Michael Kuzma, Pickering’s attorney, tried to pry loose
information from federal authorities through Freedom of Information requests,
but met roadblocks.
Representatives of the FBI’s Buffalo office, the U.S. Postal
Service, U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Transit Security Administration all
declined to say whether Pickering was under surveillance or investigation.
“It’s been stressful, and I think that’s kind of the point.
We’re not doing anything wrong, but this whole process is designed to make us
feel like we are, and make other people think we are,” said Theresa
Baker-Pickering, with whom Leslie has a 3-year-old daughter.
Social purpose
Pickering, who grew up in East Aurora and West Seneca, said
he knew by his early teens that he wanted his life to be guided by a social
purpose. He found it initially in the animal-rights movement after moving to
San Francisco with his mother, a nurse, after 10th grade at West Seneca East
High School.
Pickering became involved a few years later with the
Liberation Collective in Portland, Ore., and estimates he was arrested two
dozen times for acts of civil disobedience, including seven convictions for
violations or misdemeanors, the last in 1999.
The Liberation Collective also began receiving unsigned
“communiques” from the Earth Liberation Front, which between 1997 and 2001
committed more than 30 acts of destruction – at sites ranging from automobile
dealerships and housing developments to logging companies and universities –
that averaged $2.5 million in damages.
Those actions were championed by supporters, and condemned
by others – especially those victimized by the actions.
“ELF firebombings are hate crimes against those of us whose
missions in life are to increase human knowledge and bring a sense of wonder to
the classes we teach,” University at Washington professor Toby Bradshaw wrote
after his office was firebombed in the mistaken belief that he was planning to
conduct experiments on genetically engineered trees.
Pickering and another activist, Craig Rosebraugh, opened the
ELF’s official press office in 2000 and ran it for two years. They issued press
releases, held news conferences and defended ELF’s practices, with Pickering’s
media appearances ranging from Rolling Stone to Fox News.
Law enforcement took notice. The house they shared was
raided twice by the FBI, which carted away computers and other equipment but
never leveled charges.
It was after that incident that Pickering – who said he
never knew the identities of ELF members until they were arrested – returned
home to work on the family’s small blueberry farm outside East Aurora.
A different path
Pickering returned to school and graduated from Goddard
College in Vermont with master’s degrees in history and journalism. He wrote
books on the ELF and on Sam Melville, who in 1969 was involved in bombing the
Federal Office Building and other government and commercial buildings in New
York City before being killed in the 1971 Attica Prison uprising.
In 2008, Pickering, his wife and Nate Buckley bought the
Connecticut Street building where Burning Books is located, and after extensive
remodeling, opened their store two years ago.
The store is filled with books and videos about radical
history, many about the 1960s and ’70s, on subjects from the Black Panther
Party and Malcolm X to historians Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, as well as
animal rights, environmental activism, labor struggles and international
movements for social justice. The bookstore also hosts speakers and community
gatherings.
Posters commemorate the Attica uprising, Che Guevara and
Leonard Peltier, and there are flyers in support of Bradley Manning, a soldier
charged with leaking national secrets, and a petition against hydraulic
fracturing.
The bookstore also carries the 2011 Academy Award-nominated
documentary, “If a Tree Fell: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” in which
Pickering appears.
“We all know Buffalo is small enough, and there is no
terrorist threat,” said Kuzma, Pickering’s attorney. [Fear of terrorism] has
been used by the people who really own and run this country to curtail our
civil liberties, and Leslie is a victim of this.”
But Segal of the Anti-Defamation League thinks Pickering is
a legitimate person of interest to federal authorities.
“[The ELF] did advocate a pretty radical ideology in terms
of pushing for a form of violence in the street,” Segal said. “Even if it’s in
your past, you’re going to be looked at by law enforcement.”
(Source)
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